Abstract
The book is in two parts, the first giving an analysis of the concept of ‘accountability’, the second suggesting a theological account of accountability to God.
The author defines accountability as the condition of standing in relation to one who has justifiable authority over ‘who a person is and should be’, in relation to some shared project, when it is oriented towards ends proper to that person. He distinguishes this from ‘responsibility’, insists that it requires personal relationship, the communication of what the authority demands, and a teleological relation to fulfilling the true ends of the accountable person. He argues that the disposition to be accountable is a primary virtue, which must be carefully distinguished from submission to an abusive relationship. He illustrates this by analysing slavery as founded on illegitimate authority, and as not oriented to the good of the victim.
In Part II, the author seeks to show that God as the Creator who wills fulfilment for creation is the ultimate authority, to which all are accountable. He argues that we should not seek to justify God by appealing to humanly invented stories about what God should do (subordinating God to our own moral judgements), but that we should, guided by the Holy Spirit, accept the authority of God’s own revealed story of what humans are. Humans are characters in God’s story; God is not just a character in some human story. The author thus makes a sharp disjunction between human autonomy and divine authority, and argues that ‘we have no autonomy to judge God’s judgment’ (p. 142). He gives an acute analysis of ‘the fear of the Lord’, and sees baptism as entrance into a community that participates in Christ. He concludes with a discussion of St Paul’s Damascus Road experience, and sees it as a move from autonomously defining himself as a character in his own story to obediently accepting himself as a character in God’s story.
Christ is, he movingly writes, the centre of the human story, but, more importantly, the centre of God’s story of creation and redemption. His story must take precedence over any competing story that aims at some humanly invented moral authority. There is force in this point, but most Christian theologians – certainly most Catholic ones – have thought that humans have some innate sense of goodness. Although this may be expanded or corrected by revelation (by the magisterium, for instance), is it true that ‘prioritising our own moral autonomy over against God’s authority … is the root of all that is wrong with humanity’? Some qualification of this absolute disjunction would be more consistent with a broader range of Christian traditions, and would qualify this valuable analysis of the theological idea of accountability. Humans need some sense of goodness and beauty before they can identify God as supremely good, beautiful and loving, and, as such, as the supreme authority. This might, as the author clearly desires, better safeguard against some ‘Christian’ views that are dangerously like forms of submission to an abusive relationship.