If this is the kind of expectation that we ought to have...

If this is the kind of expectation that we ought to have about religions which have a longer history than had the societies they outlasted, then it is pre-eminently the kind of expectation that we ought to form of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. We shall not be disappointed.

The successive expression of the forms of life of Hebraic tribalism, Hellenistic monarchy, the Roman imperial proletariat, Constantinian bureaucrats, and the long list of their successors results in a theology which can accommodate a wide range of views in ethics.

To an age which, like our own, has been continually exhorted to find the solutions to its own problems in Christian morality, it will perhaps come as a relief to consider that the whole problem of Christian morality is to discover just what it is. What bishops and journalists suppose to exist somewhere-if not on tables of stone, at least in materials of undoubted durability-turns out to be almost as elusive as the snark.

And yet in speaking of a continuous tradition and of a single religion we appear to presuppose some sort of unity. This unity consists in certain themes which, although they can provide a context for very different sorts of norm and behavior, still furnish an entirely distinctive context. These themes are essentially as follows. God is our father. God commands us to obey him. We ought to obey God because he knows what is best for us, and what is best for us is to obey him.

We fail to obey him and so become estranged from him. We therefore need to learn how to be reconciled to God so that we can once more live in a familial relationship with him. These themes are of course susceptible of doctrinal development in a number of quite different directions. But what every such development necessarily embodies is the problem of reconciling two quite different models for understanding moral concepts and moral precepts.

The first of these conceives of moral precepts in terms of commandments and of moral goodness in terms of obedience. Why should I do that? “Because God says so.” This at once raises the question, But why should I do what God commands? and to this there are three possible kinds of answer. The first points to God’s holiness, the second to his goodness, the third to his power. I may answer “Just because he is God,” and refuse to amplify this in any way.

By this refusal I remain within the closed circle of religious concepts.