Ethics · John Dewey
THE HEBREW MORAL DEVELOPMENT
Sec. 1. GENERAL CHARACTER AND DETERMINING PRINCIPLES =1. The Hebrew and the Greek.=--The general character of the Hebrew moral development may be brought out by a contrast with that of the Greeks.[48] While many phases are common, there is yet a difference in emphasis and focus. There were political and economic forces at work in Israel, and religious forces in Greece. Nevertheless, the moral life in one people kept close to the religious, and in the other found independent channels. Conscientious conduct for the Hebrew centered in doing the will of God; for the Greek, in finding rational standards of good. For the Hebrew, righteousness was the typical theme; for the Greek, the ideal lay rather in measure and harmony. For the Greek, wisdom or insight was the chief virtue; for the Hebrew, the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. The social ideal of the Hebrews was the kingdom of God; of the Greeks, a political State. If we distinguish in conscience two aspects, thoughtfulness in discovering what to do and hearty desire to do the right when found, then the Greeks emphasize the former, the Hebrews the latter. Intellect plays a larger part with the Greek; emotion and the voluntary aspect of will with the Hebrew. Feeling plays its part with the Greeks largely as an aesthetic demand for measure and harmony; with the Hebrews it is chiefly prominent in motivation, where it is an element in what is called "the heart," or it functions in appreciation of acts performed, as the joy or sorrow felt when God approves or condemns. Both peoples are interesting for our study, not only as illustrating different kinds of moral development, but also as contributing largely to the moral consciousness of western peoples to-day.
The meaning of this covenant and the symbols by which it was conceived, changed with the advance of the social relationships of the people. At first Jehovah was "Lord of Hosts," protector in war, and giver of prosperity, and the early conceptions of the duty of the people seemed to include human sacrifice, at least in extreme cases. But with later prophets we find the social and family relationship of husband and father brought increasingly into use. Whether by personal experience or by more general reflection, we find Hosea interpreting the relationship between God and his people in both of these family conceptions. The disloyalty of the people takes on the more intimate taint of a wife's unfaithfulness, and, conversely, in contrast to the concepts of other religions, the people may call Jehovah "my husband" and no longer "my master" (Baal). The change from status to contract is thus, in Israel's religion, fruitful with many moral results.
This makes a vital difference in the view taken of the violation of these observances. When a man violates a custom he fails to do the correct thing. He misses the mark.[49] But when the observance is a personal command, its violation is a personal disobedience; it is rebellion; it is an act of will. The evil which follows is no longer bad luck; it is punishment. Now punishment must be either right or wrong, moral or immoral. It can never be merely non-moral. Hence the very conception of sin as a personal offense, and of ill as a personal punishment, forces a moral standard. In its crudest form this may take the god's commands as right simply because he utters them, and assume that the sufferer is guilty merely because he suffers. We find this in the penitential psalms of the Babylonians. These express the deepest conviction of sin and the utmost desire to please the god, but when we try to discover what the penitent has done that wakens such remorse within him, we find that he seems merely to feel that in some way he has failed to please God, no matter how. He experiences misfortune, whether of disease, or ill-luck, or defeat, and is sure that this must be due to some offense. He does not know what this may be. It may have been that he has failed to repeat a formula in the right manner; it is all one. He feels guilty and even exaggerates his own guilt in view of the punishment which has befallen him. Job's three friends apply the same logic to his case.[50]
But side by side with the conception that the laws of Jehovah must be obeyed because they were his commands, there was another doctrine which was but an extension of the theory that the people had freely accepted their ruler. This was that Jehovah's commands were not arbitrary. They were right; they could be placed before the people for their approval; they were "life"; "the judge of all the earth" would "do right." We have here a striking illustration of the principle that moral standards, at first embodied in persons, slowly work free, so that persons are judged by them. =3. The Cultus as Morally Symbolical.=--The elaborate cultus carried on by the priests, symbolized, however imperfectly, certain moral ideas. The solicitous care for ceremonial "purity" might have no direct moral value; the contamination from contact with birth or death or certain animals might be a very external sort of "uncleanness." Nevertheless, they emphasized in the most forcible manner a constant control over conduct by a standard which was set by a divine law. The "holiness" of the priests, as set apart to special service of Jehovah, emphasized the seriousness of their work; and further, it contributed to that distinction between spiritual and material, between higher and lower, which is a part of moral life. Moreover, while part of this value inheres in all ritual, the contrast between Jehovah's worship and that of other deities challenged moral attention. The gods of the land, the various Baals, were worshipped "upon every high hill and under every green tree." As gods of fertility, they were symbolized by the emblems of sex, and great freedom prevailed at their festivals. At certain shrines men and women gave themselves for the service of the god. The first born children were not infrequently sacrificed.[51] These festivals and shrines seem to have been adopted more or less fully by Israel from the Canaanites, but the prophets have an utterly different idea of Jehovah's worship. The god of Sinai rejects utterly such practices. License and drunkenness are not, as the cultus of Baal and Astarte implied, the proper symbols of life and deity. The sensual cannot fitly symbolize the spiritual.
Moreover, one part of the cultus, the "sin offering," directly implied transgression and the need of forgiveness. The "sins" might themselves be ceremonial rather than moral, and the method of removing them might be external--especially the process of putting the sins upon a scapegoat which should "bear upon him all their iniquities into a solitary land,"--nevertheless, the solemn confession, and the shedding of the blood which was the "life," could not but remind of responsibility and deepen reflection. The need of atonement and reconciliation, thus impressed, symbolized the moral process of reconstructing, of putting away a lower past, and readjusting life to meet an ideal. =4. The Prophets as a Moral Force.=--The prophets were by far the most significant moral agency in Israel's religion. In the first place, they came to the people bearing a message from a living source of authority, intended for the immediate situation. They brought a present command for a present duty. "Thou art the man," of Nathan to David, "Hast thou killed, and also taken possession?" of Elijah to Ahab, had personal occasions. But the great sermons of Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, were no less for the hour. A licentious festival, an Assyrian invasion, an Egyptian embassy, a plague of locusts, an impending captivity--these inspire demand for repentance, warnings of destruction, promises of salvation. The prophet was thus the "living fountain." The divine will as coming through him "was still, so to speak, fluid, and not congealed into institutions."
In the second place, the prophets seized upon the inward purpose and social conduct of man as the all-important issues; cultus, sacrifice, are unimportant. "I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies," cries Amos in Jehovah's name, "But let justice roll down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream." "I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts," proclaims Isaiah, "new moons, and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies,--I cannot away with iniquity and the solemn meeting." You need not ceremonial, but moral, purity. "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings;--seek justice, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." Micah's "Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" seized upon the difference once for all between the physical and the moral; a completely ethical standpoint is gained in his summary of religious duty: "What doth God require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" And the New Testament analogue marks the true ethical valuation of all the external religious manifestations, even of the cruder forms of prophecy itself. Gifts, mysteries, knowledge, or the "body to be burned"--there is a more excellent way than these. For all these are "in part." Their value is but temporary and relative. The values that abide, that stand criticism, are that staking of oneself upon the truth and worth of one's ideal which is faith; that aspiration and forward look which is hope; that sum of all social charity, sympathy, justice, and active helpfulness, which is love. "But the greatest of these is love."
The book of Job gives the deepest study of the first of these problems. The old view had been that virtue and happiness always went together. Prosperity meant divine favor, and therefore it must be the good. Adversity meant divine punishment; it showed wrongdoing and was itself an evil. When calamity comes upon Job, his friends assume it to be a sure proof of his wickedness. He had himself held the same view, and since he refuses to admit his wickedness and "holds fast to his integrity," it confounds all his philosophy of life and of God. It compels a "reversal and revaluation of all values." If he could only meet God face to face and have it out with him he believes there would be some solution. But come what may, he will not sell his soul for happiness. To "repent," as his friends urge, in order that he may be again on good terms with God, would mean for him to call sin what he believes to be righteousness. And he will not lie in this way. God is doubtless stronger, and if he pursues his victim relentlessly, may convict him. But be this as it may, Job will not let go his fundamental consciousness of right and wrong. His "moral self" is the one anchor that holds, is the supreme value of life.
"As God liveth, who hath taken away my right, And the Almighty who hath vexed my soul; Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness. Till I die, I will not put away my integrity from me, My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go."[52] Another suggestion of the book is that evil comes to prove man's sincerity: "Does Job serve God for naught?" and from that standpoint the answer is, Yes; he does. "There is a disinterested love of God."[53] In this setting, also, the experience of suffering produces a shifting of values from the extrinsic to the internal. The other treatment of the problem of suffering is found in the latter half of Isaiah. It finds an interpretation of the problem by a deeper view of social interdependence, in which the old tribal solidarity is given, as it were, a transfigured meaning. The individualistic interpretation of suffering was that it meant personal guilt. "We did esteem him stricken of God." This breaks down. The suffering servant is not wicked. He is suffering for others--in some sense. "He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." The conception here reached of an interrelation which involves that the suffering of the good may be due to the sin or the suffering of others, and that the assumption of this burden marks the higher type of ethical relation, is one of the finest products of Israel's religion. As made central in the Christian conception of the Cross, it has furnished one of the great elements in the modern social consciousness.
Sec. 3. THE MORAL CONCEPTIONS ATTAINED The moral conceptions which were thus worked out may now be brought together for convenient summary under the two heads of the "How" and the "What" indicated in our introductory chapter. Under the first we specify the conceptions resulting (1) from recognition of a standard of right, and an ideal of good, (2) from free choice of this ideal. Under the What we indicate the content of the ideal on both its personal and its social sides. =1. Righteousness and Sin.=--Righteousness and sin were not exact or contradictory opposites. The righteous man was not necessarily sinless. Nevertheless, the consciousness of sin, like a dark background, brought out more emphatically the conception of righteousness. This conception had its two aspects, derived from the civil and the religious spheres of life--spheres which were not separate for the Hebrew. On the one hand, the just or righteous respected the moral order in human society. The unrighteous was unjust, extortionate, cruel. He did not respect the rights of others. On the other hand, the righteous man was in "right" relation to God. This right relation might be tested by the divine law; but as God was conceived as a living person, loving his people, "forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin," it might also be measured by an essential harmony of spirit with the divine will. There was the "righteousness of the law," and the "righteousness of faith." The first implies complete obedience; the second implies that in spite of transgressions there is room for atonement[54] or reconciliation. As the first means ethically the testing of conduct by a moral standard, a "moral law," so the second stands for the thought that character is rather a matter of spirit and of constant reconstruction than of exact conformity once for all to a hard and fast rule. Specific acts may fail to conform, but the life is more than a series of specific acts. The measurement of conduct by the law has its value to quicken a sense of shortcoming, but alone it may also lead either to self-righteous complacency or to despair. The possibility of new adjustment, of renewal, of "a new birth," means liberation and life. As such it may be contrasted with the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, the causality from which there is no escape but by the extinction of desire.
"Sin" had likewise its various aspects. It stood for missing the mark, for violating the rules of clean and unclean; but it stood also for personal disobedience to the divine will, for violation of the moral order of Israel. In this latter sense, as identified by the prophets with social unrighteousness, it is a significant ethical conception. It brings out the point that evil and wrongdoing are not merely individual matters, not merely failures; they offend against a law which is above the private self, against a moral order which has its rightful demands upon us. =2. Personal Responsibility.=--The transition from group to individual responsibility was thoroughly worked out by the prophets, even if they were not able to carry full popular assent. In early days the whole kin was treated as guilty for the offense of the kinsman. Achan's case has already been cited; and in the case of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, "Their wives and their sons and their little ones" were all treated alike.[55] In like manner, the family of the righteous man shared in the divine favor. The later prophets pronounced a radical change. The proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge," is no more to be used, declares Ezekiel, speaking for Jehovah. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son;" and it is especially interesting to note that the Lord is represented as pleading with the people that this is fair, while the people say, "Wherefore doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father?" The solidarity of the family resisted the individualism of the prophetic conception, and five hundred years after Ezekiel the traces of the older conception still lingered in the question, "Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?"[56] For another aspect of responsibility, viz., intent, as distinct from accidental action,[57] we have certain transitional steps shown in the interesting "cities of refuge"[58] for the accidental homicide in which he might be safe from the avenger of blood, provided he was swift enough of foot to reach a city of refuge before he was caught. But the fullest development in the ethics of responsibility along this line seemed to take the form described under the next head.
"For though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation."[62] =4. The Conception of "Life" as an Ideal.=--The content of Israel's moral ideal on its individual side was expressed by the term "Life." All the blessings that the leader of Israel could offer his people were summarized in the phrase, "I have set before you life and death; wherefore choose life." The same final standard of value appears in the question of Jesus, "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own life?" When we inquire what life meant, so far as the early sources give us data for judgment, we must infer it to have been measured largely in terms of material comfort and prosperity, accompanied by the satisfaction of standing in right relations to the god and ruler. This latter element was so closely united with the first that it was practically identical with it. If the people were prosperous they might assume that they were right; if they suffered they were surely wrong. Good and evil were, therefore, in this stage, measured largely in terms of pleasure and pain. The end to be sought and the ideal to be kept in mind was that of long and prosperous life--"in her right hand length of days, in her left hand riches and honor." Intellectual and aesthetic interests were not prized as such. The knowledge which was valued was the wisdom for the conduct of life, of which the beginning and crown was "the fear of the Lord." The art which was valued was sacred song or poetry. But the ideal values which came to bulk most in the expanding conception of "life" were those of personal relation. Family ties, always strong among Oriental peoples, gained in purity. Love between the sexes was refined and idealized.[63] National feeling took on added dignity, because of the consciousness of a divine mission. Above all, personal union with God, as voiced in the psalms and prophets, became the desire. He, and not his gifts, was the supreme good. He was the "fountain of life." His likeness would satisfy. In his light the faithful would see light.
But even more significant than any specific content put into the term "life," was _what was involved in the idea itself_. The legalists had attempted to define conduct by a code, but there was an inherent vitality in the ideal of life, which refused to be measured or bounded. The "words of eternal life," which began the new moral movement of Christianity, had perhaps little definite content to the fishermen, and it is not easy to say just what they meant in moral terms to the writer of the Fourth Gospel who uses the phrase so often. With Paul, life as the realm of the spirit gets definition as it stands over against the "death" of sin and lust. But with all writers of Old or New Testament, whatever content it had, life meant above all the suggestion of something beyond, the gleam and dynamic power of a future not yet understood. It meant to Paul a progress which was governed not by law or "rudiments," but by freedom. Such a life would set itself new and higher standards; the laws and customs that had obtained were felt to be outgrown. The significance of early Christianity as a moral movement, aside from its elements of personal devotion and social unity to be noticed below, was the spirit of movement, the sense of newly forming horizons beyond the old, the conviction that as sons of God its followers had boundless possibilities, that they were not the children of the bond woman, but of the free.
Certain features of this ideal order have since found embodiment in social and political structures; certain features remain for the future. Certain periods in history have transferred the ideal entirely to another world, regarding human society as hopelessly given over to evil. Such theories find a morality possible only by renouncing society. The Hebrews presented rather the ideal of a moral order on earth, of a control of all life by right, of a realization of good, and of a completeness of life. It was an ideal not dreamed out in ecstatic visions of pure fancy, but worked out in struggle and suffering, in confidence that moral efforts are not hopeless or destined to defeat. The ideal order is to be made real. The divine kingdom is to come, the divine will to be done "_on earth_ as it is in heaven."
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.