Abstract
The apostle Paul's arguments in Romans 14–15 have played an important role in the history of Christian thinking about moral disagreement. In recent years, this passage has been significant in debates about sexuality. Yet Paul's arguments are more complex than is sometimes recognised. They support a distinction between moral disagreements that should be endured within a Christian community and disagreements that should not be endured. More than ‘agreeing to disagree’, the fruitful endurance of disagreement involves openness to ongoing dialogue, in hope of final consensus. These arguments have the potential to enrich our thinking about contemporary moral disagreements, including those appearing on the horizon in relation to questions associated with assisted dying. Reflection on these questions also points to a role that might be played by academic Christian ethics in enduring disagreements.
Introduction
In an ecclesiastical context characterised by painful and protracted conflicts over moral questions, one of the tasks that the discipline of Christian ethics is called to is to recall and reconsider the resources Christian people have for understanding and engaging in disagreement. Among the most important of these resources is the apostle Paul's careful and theologically rich discussion in Romans 14–15. This passage is significant for the way the apostle marshals weighty theological arguments not primarily to resolve a particular moral question, but to commend different approaches to handling disagreement.
Romans 14–15 has been an important reference point throughout the history of Christian ethics, receiving special attention in the wake of the Reformation in debates about ‘adiaphora’ that focused first on practices of worship, and later, on the enjoyment of secular activities. Although in recent years it has received less sustained attention from Christian ethicists than might have been expected, 1 it has played an important and contentious part in debates over sexuality within the Anglican communion.
This article aims to increase Christian understanding of the moral tasks of disagreement by reading Romans 14:1–15:13 with an eye on contemporary disputes. It begins by noticing some of the ways the concept of adiaphora has been deployed in recent Anglican debates over sexuality, before moving to a reading of the Romans passage in dialogue with contemporary commentators, and two interesting older discussions, from Thomas Aquinas and H. Martensen. It then seeks to draw out some of the implications of this reading for contemporary disagreements. Mindful of the proverb about grabbing a stray dog by the ears (Prov. 26:17), however, this section focuses on disagreements emerging in my own context surrounding the introduction of ‘voluntary assisted dying’, rather than debates over sexuality. This section aims not to resolve these questions but to allow the implications of the reading of Romans to come to the surface. The article concludes with a brief reflection on the possible significance of the argument presented here for our understanding of the task of Christian ethics as an academic discipline.
Disagreement and Adiaphora in Recent Debates about Sexuality
The concept of adiaphora and the biblical text of Romans 14 have played a role in recent Anglican debates about sexuality. It is instructive to observe the use of these ideas in two key texts that have played a role in these debates: the Windsor Report and Living in Love and Faith. I offer nothing like a comprehensive analysis of these texts, but merely some observations that highlight the significance of this passage for contemporary thinking about ethical disagreement.
In the 2004 Windsor Report the concept of adiaphora played a relatively important role. 2 Adiaphora, it was said, ‘has been a major feature of Anglican theology’. 3 Despite the fact that it does not use the term, Romans 14 was understood as the most important biblical text behind this tradition, setting out ‘Paul's notion of adiaphora’. 4 ‘There’, the authors wrote, ‘Paul insists that such matters as food and drink … are matters of private conviction over which Christians who take different positions ought not to judge one another. They must strive for that united worship and witness which celebrate and display the fact that they are worshipping the same God and are servants of the same Lord.’ 5 Yet the report explained that this did not apply to every kind of disagreement. ‘Paul insists that some types of behaviour are incompatible with inheriting God's coming kingdom, and must not therefore be tolerated within the Church.’ 6 Boldly, the report asserted that, ‘For Paul, the categories are not arbitrary, but clearly distinct.’ 7 It also pointed out that the argument in Romans aims at ongoing dialogue and development. ‘Paul does not envisage this as a static situation. He clearly hopes that his own teaching, and mutual acceptance within the Christian family, will bring people to one mind.’ 8 On the basis of this reading, the report concluded that in any given controversy, we must ask, first, whether this matter could count as inessential, and second, whether it is sufficiently scandalous that those on one side ought to have patience. 9 If ‘a sufficient number of other Christians … will be led into acting against their own consciences, or … will be forced, for conscience's sake, to break fellowship with those who go ahead … the biblical guidelines insist that those who have no scruples about the proposed action should nevertheless refrain from going ahead.’ 10
This deployment of the logic of Romans 14 in response to the questions about sexuality in view in the report did not persuade everyone. Some suspected that the concept of adiaphora should not have been deployed at all. Mark Thompson, for example, pushed back on the use of the category in relation to questions of sexuality, insisting that adiaphora only applied to matters of ‘outward ceremony and ecclesiastical organisation’. 11 Apparently for Thompson, the report's first question—‘is this in fact the kind of matter which can count as “inessential”, or does it touch on something vital?’ 12 —should be answered by definition in the case of an issue of sexuality.
Others objected strongly to the implication that different views on this question might be intolerable, or might require restraint. The implication that steps should not be taken—or have been taken—if a sufficient number of people are offended was particularly controversial. Andrew Linzey argued that, ‘we must give up as infantile the notion that all Christians have to morally agree on every issue’. 13 If there can be disagreement among Christians about questions as consequential as the ethics of war, surely there can also be disagreement about sexuality, argued Linzey. For Marilyn McCord Adams, similarly, the report's policy was ‘a betrayal of our own honest and prayerful discernment’. 14 Instead, she argued, ‘we should agree to differ, not only where the issue is unimportant, but also where the question is momentous yet not decidable by us with enough clarity to convince one another’. 15 Vincent Strudwick argued that there needed to be room for ‘a variety of expression, not only in “adiaphora” but in matters about which we care passionately but disagree’. 16
Although the issues were many, an interesting part of the problem for our purposes was the lack of effective development within the report of the thought that Paul's argument in Romans ‘does not envisage this as a static situation’, and looks toward an eventual coming to one mind. Although this point, which we will consider further below, is acknowledged in the report, 17 the sections that follow this discussion do not really take it further. 18 The ‘listening process’ referred to in Lambeth 1998 Resolution 1.10 is noted and commended, but without detail about what the ‘processes and structures to facilitate ongoing discussion’ might be. 19 For Linzey, ‘the absence of dialogue with those who differ’ was a striking and offensive feature of the longer story. 20 In his own response to the issues raised by the report, which in general came to very different conclusions, Oliver O’Donovan articulated the problem acutely: ‘It risks adding insult to injury to demand forbearance while at the same time refusing explanations.’ 21
The Living in Love and Faith project was conceived with this desire to listen in mind. 22 Here we will limit our focus to the use of Romans 14 in the book produced by the project, which appears at an important point, as the discussion moves from its survey of the wider context and situation to ‘Seeking Answers’. 23 Romans 14 comes into focus towards the end of this chapter, in a section titled ‘Deep Disagreements’. 24 The disagreements in view have primarily to do with the Bible and the nature of biblical authority. But these differences are clearly focused upon practical questions of sexuality. The discussion is one of the book's longest treatments of a single biblical text.
That said, only the first six verses of Romans 14 are considered. While an understandable economy, this decision oversimplifies Paul's approach. It results in an interpretation that emphasises Paul's refusal to resolve the debate: The striking thing is that Paul makes no attempt to resolve the difference between these groups, as though one position were right and the other wrong. Rather, he appears to recognize that certain differences among Christians may be intractable, incommensurable, irresolvable. Therefore his concern is how Christians should live with differences of principle and practice.
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The focus on verses 1–6 also produces an emphasis on underlying attitudes. What matters to Paul is not primarily, ‘the particular issue at hand’, but ‘the basic attitudes of despising and judging one another’.
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These attitudes justify an analogy between contemporary and first-century debates; ‘it isn’t difficult’, we are told, ‘to recognize these attitudes in debates throughout history’.
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Underlying attitudes are also the key to resolving the ‘tension’ between Romans 14 and other New Testament texts that involve different patterns of managing differences, including exclusion.
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We are told: What seems to be at stake here is persistence in certain behaviours, or a wilful disregard for what is right or the way of Christ. It is the spiritual attitude of moving away from God rather than seeking God that is at stake. Discerning what type of question we are considering, then, becomes key—though Paul's warning about attitudes within disagreement are still deeply relevant.
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Restraint and Dialogue: Romans 14:1–15:13
With such questions in mind, let us turn now to the letter. Although many exegetical questions will have to go unexamined in what follows, which aims only to observe the core dynamics at work in this passage, let me begin by indicating a few decisions about how I am reading this text. First, with most modern commentators, I assume that the dispute in view has to do with Jewish practices and commitments. Though the groups Paul calls ‘the weak’ and the ‘strong’ (15:1) were probably not simply Jews and Gentiles, they were most likely predominantly Jewish Christians and predominantly gentile Christians. 31 John Barclay sums up the situation thus: ‘Paul is describing the practice of Roman believers who, out of regard for the Mosaic Torah, declined to eat meat considered “unclean” in Jewish terms at community meals provided by Gentile believers, while upholding Jewish practices regarding the holiness of the Sabbath.’ 32
Second, the specific context Paul had in view was most likely a shared fellowship meal when a number of groups that normally met in separate residences gathered together. 33 ‘The issue that arises here’, Barclay writes, ‘is a typical problem of commensality—how observant Jews (and perhaps law-observant Gentiles) can participate in a meal hosted by those who do not scruple to observe the law.’ 34 These common meals ‘were the most neuralgic occasions created by the Pauline mission’, Barclay comments. 35
Third, I think Paul is addressing both groups, at least in the sense that he intends the passage to be readable by both groups. Although as Francis Watson concludes, Paul may have been ‘less confident of his access to a Jewish’ audience than to the Gentile group, 36 Engberg-Pedersen's argument that Paul does not address the weak at all seems unlikely to me. 37 This point bears on my understanding of the rhetorical strategy of Paul's arguments.
Finally, as will become clear, I think it good to include 15:7–13 in the discussion, though I recognise that this section relates to the whole letter and not just this section. 38
With these points of orientation in mind, let us now explore three features of Paul's argument in Romans 14:1–15:13. First, the ways it implies a distinction between disagreements that should be endured by the Christian community, and disagreements that should not be endured. Second, the implicit aim of Paul's argument, which is not to close down discussion but to hold it open and thus facilitate mutual understanding. Finally, the extent to which Paul anticipates a resolution of the disagreement. I will discuss these features in dialogue with two insightful, older treatments of these issues, the Lutheran bishop and theologian H. Martensen, and Thomas Aquinas.
Distinguishing Disagreements
We noted above that both the Windsor Report and Living in Love and Faith recognise that while in Romans Paul urges the community to endure their disagreement, in other texts he makes it clear that some kinds of action require of a Christian community not tolerance but decisive rejection. John Barclay sums up the distinction with reference to some core Pauline examples: Whereas participation in idolatry, or in sex with a prostitute, were utterly incompatible with Christ, and could not be performed in honour of Christ or in gratitude to God (1 Cor 6, 12–20; 10, 14–22), there is nothing about kosher-rules or Sabbath observance that Paul considers intrinsically incompatible with loyalty to Christ.
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The phrase with which the apostle begins Romans 14 can be understood to support this distinction. The main addressees, later called ‘the strong’, are called to welcome ‘the weak in faith’, ‘but not for the purpose of diakriseis dialogismōn’. These two words, variously translated as ‘quarrelling over opinions’ (NRSV), ‘quarrelling over disputable matters’ (NIV), ‘doubtful disputations’ (AV), ‘quarrels over opinions’ (NASB), indicate that the differences in question do not have a first-order significance. They are the kind of thing that can be legitimately debated, but that should not prevent mutual welcome.
Already here we should signal some doubts about the approach to this passage represented in Living in Love and Faith. Although the dispute in question in Romans 14 was not trivial, and was clearly keenly felt, Paul's argument depends upon the fact that, in the most important sense, it is not a ‘deep disagreement’ but a ‘disputable matter’. Nor is it solely a question of the spiritual attitudes involved. These are significant, yet the inappropriateness of ‘judging’ and ‘despising’ is related to the kind of disagreement that is in question. We may contrast the example of 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul calls precisely for judgment (1 Cor. 5:12).
If then a distinction between disagreements about the morality of action that can be endured by a Christian community and disagreements that should not be endured is reasonable, how are we to understand the logic of it? How may these different kinds of moral conflict be distinguished?
In his commentary on the passage, Thomas Aquinas suggests that Paul's encouragement in 14:5 for each to be convinced in their own mind, ‘seems to apply to things that are not of themselves evil. In things that are of themselves evil, however, man must not be left to follow his own mind.’ 40 This comment has in view the distinctions Aquinas makes in his account of action in the Prima Secundae, and especially question eighteen. There Aquinas explains that because every action ‘takes its species from its object’, 41 there are actions that are good and evil in kind; and there are also actions that are indifferent in kind, because their object does not itself pertain to the order of reason, ‘for instance, to pick up a straw from the ground, to walk in the fields’. 42 However, to say that an action is indifferent in kind is not to say that a specific action of that kind is indifferent. In fact, Aquinas insists, ‘every individual action must needs have some circumstance that makes it good or bad, at least in respect of the intention of the end’. 43 If an act is done on purpose (rather than unconsciously, as when someone, say, absent-mindedly strokes her hair), it must be good or bad. For Aquinas, Paul's discussion in Romans 14 applies to this category: actions that are indifferent in species, though morally significant in individual instances.
Similar judgments on these points have been reached within protestant traditions, too. Reformed thinkers generally stressed that in one sense there can be nothing indifferent, because there are no actions that fall outside morality. To quote from Herman Bavinck's discussion: ‘in concrete circumstances, in a specific historical context, there are no adiaphora. Since we are moral persons, we stand in a moral relationship to all things, even the most elementary things.’ 44 Similarly, the Lutheran theologian H. Martensen spoke of the ‘individual Moment’ in action. He writes, ‘In our actions and in our whole manner of existence there is something—undoubtedly on the foundation of the universally binding and necessary—belonging exclusively to the individual and personal determination.’ 45 This ‘individual Moment’, ‘which does not admit of being formulized in the ordinary manner’, justifies the idea of ‘the permissible’ insofar as it expresses the individual instantiation of moral duty. 46
Romans 14 lends significant support to the idea that dimensions of action beyond what Aquinas would call the ‘external act’ 47 are at times the critical factor. At three important points, the apostle's words point to a moral complexity of action, arising from the dimensions of action that are ‘internal’ to the agent and dependent on the agent's perspective, and on the wider impacts of actions. Verse 14 points to the importance of a person's own construal of their action: Nothing is unclean in itself, but ‘to the one who regards something as unclean, it is unclean’. Verse 23 suggests something similar: ‘whatever does not proceed from faith is sin’. And verse 20 highlights the importance of consideration of wider ends of action—all food is clean, yet the effect of my eating on my brother or sister, which I may anticipate without difficulty, may make it ‘wrong’ to do so. 48
At its best, the concept of adiaphora aims to identify kinds of action where these other dimensions of action are morally decisive. These actions are ‘indifferent’ in the specific sense that they are not good or evil in kind. The notion of adiaphora should not be used to mean kinds of action that are merely trivial, and neither good nor evil in an individual instance; it should refer to those kinds of action about which disagreement ought to be endured by a Christian community, because their goodness or evil depends particularly upon the subjective dimension of action and the wider significations an action has in a particular situation. 49 Although the term adiaphora is not used by Paul, the apostle's reference to diakriseis dialogismōn can be understood along such lines. For Martensen, Romans 14 was perennially useful at this point. 50 Barclay, too, calls Romans 14–15, ‘Paul's Christian equivalent’ to the Stoic concept of adiaphora. 51
These clarifications may help to begin to answer the question of how we determine which category a disagreement belongs in—whether a matter ‘can count as inessential’, to use the language of the Windsor Report's first question. There are some kinds of action for which their goodness and evil depends upon subjective factors such as intention and internal construal, or upon wider significations or consequences. These may reasonably be considered adiaphora, matters about which disagreement ought to be endured. But there is no reason to think this applies to all kinds of action. There are kinds of action that no underlying spiritual attitude can justify, in view of their objective quality.
In practice, however, making this distinction can be difficult, because the question of what belongs intrinsically to an action is often contested. Actions can be construed in different ways, and the whole problem in a disagreement is often a clash of evaluations of the objective quality of a kind of action. 52 We may well agree that it is wrong to commit murder; but is this murder, or legitimate self-defence? We may agree that it is wrong to commit adultery; but is this adultery, or is it a permissible remarriage? We may agree that it is wrong to use disproportionate violence in war; but is this disproportionate? As O’Donovan puts it at one point, in practical reasoning, ‘the minor premise never follows easily, but is always the focus of whatever moral disagreement there may be’. 53
Most likely all parties in the Roman church agreed that it would be wrong for Christians to worship idols, or to continue living as if righteousness depended upon law-keeping. The difficulty lay in the construal of the actions of eating meat that might have been sacrificed to idols, or keeping the sabbath. What did these actions mean? Were these wider significations intrinsic to these actions, or separable from them? Simply to assert that these questions were debatable issues could not have been enough to convince all parties that they really were such.
This is the point at which the question of the ‘spiritual attitude’ underneath people's actions does become weighty. An important and clear feature of the apostle's argument in the opening verses is his emphasis that the positions he is discussing are being taken out of sincere Christian conviction. The weak are still the weak ‘in faith’ (v. 1).
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They are servants of the Lord, who will make them stand on the last day (v. 4). They act as they ‘judge’, and they are called to be ‘fully convinced in their own minds’ (v. 5). They eat and they observe thoughtfully (note the use of phroneō in v. 6), like all parties: Those who observe (phronōn) the day, observe it (phronei) in honour of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honour of the Lord (literally, ‘to the Lord’), since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honour of the Lord and give thanks to God. (v. 6, NRSV)
This impulse towards mutual comprehension is an important purpose of Paul's writing. It leads to the second major feature of the argument I want to notice, below. Before we examine this, however, we should notice that the apostle's framing of the disagreement in this way points us to how the distinction between disagreements that can be endured and those that cannot be will appear in practice in conditions of debate about the character of a kind of action.
The invitation to understand the position of the one with whom I disagree as a position taken in faith implies a horizon beyond which this effort to understand becomes untenable. Barclay points to this horizon in the quotation above, when he suggests that, for Paul, sex with a prostitute or participation in idolatry ‘could not be performed in honour of Christ or in gratitude to God’. That is the limit implied in Paul's invitation to mutual understanding. The line between matters that can be seen as ‘disputable’ and matters about which debate becomes intolerable, will be drawn practically, within a particular community, according to whether the claim that some action is done ‘to the Lord’ can be entertained seriously, even if with difficulty, or whether it can only appear as incomprehensible and offensive.
It should be emphasised that Paul's argument aims to ensure that this horizon is not marked by our first instincts about a claim, which may well be to see it as preposterous. The initial reaction of some of those to whom Paul wrote may well have been to see his claim, for example, that ‘those who eat, eat to the Lord’, as a joke, given what they know about ‘some of those people’. Yet Paul's words invite them to see if they can begin to see the other in this way. The invitation is also communal: it is an invitation to a discernment as a group, rather than just to each individual. It is instructive to imagine how in other circumstances such an invitation might be unsuccessful, and how this might signal the point at which, in practice, a disagreement ceases to be endurable for a community. The ability to endure disagreement depends in practice upon the ability to recognise that the alternative position is sincerely understood to be a coherent expression of Christian faith.
Openness to Dialogue
This leads to the second feature of Paul's argument I want to explore, namely the apostle's implicit aim to hold open space for dialogue and mutual understanding.
Romans 14:1–15:13 is anything but a summary dismissal of the issues in debate, or an attempt quickly to get them off the table. The length and theological seriousness of the argument show that the apostle was not seeking to avoid discussion of these issues, but to keep open the kind of space within which ongoing dialogue can take place.
As well as reinforcing Paul's call to refrain from ‘judging’ and ‘despising’, verses 5–9 subtly put in place a framework that could allow people to gradually move out of fixed positions. His description in verses 5–6 of acting from conviction, ‘to the Lord’, with thanksgiving, is also a subtle provocation. What the apostle hopes, it seems to me, is that his readers will take this seriously: that those who are eating meat without thinking will begin to give thanks; and that those who are keeping the sabbath will not do so just from habit and tradition, but because they recognise that it does and should belong to Christ. By opening the discussion up, in verses 7–9, to the more basic moral question of to whom they belong, Paul gives his readers a way of approaching their disagreements that draws attention to what is held in common and holds open space for thought. I think Paul expects that this will shift people in a range of ways, because it will make them start to think about their positions, and not just take them for granted and fight about them.
In the following verses, Paul deploys weighty theological warrants to support his argument. Combined with the promise of v. 4, the description of final judgment (vv. 10–12) invites a posture of restraint and humility before the mystery of sanctification. What I may know for my sister is that the Lord will make her stand; what I may know for myself is that I must give an account to God. Paul reminds his readers of the preciousness of the brother—he is one for whom Christ died (v. 15), and ‘the work of God’ (v. 20). He remarks on the nature of the kingdom of God (v. 17). He also, as we have noted, invites his readers to think about the nature of their actions, and of sin—indeed, this text is perhaps the most sophisticated discussion of action in the Bible.
Paul offers these weighty theological and moral arguments because his aim is not simply to keep peace, but to provoke thoughtful and productive dialogue. He calls them to pursue not just peace, but peace and ‘mutual edification’ (v. 19).
This is also why the apostle does not disguise his own position (vv. 14, 20). When he says, in verse 22, ‘the faith that you have, have as your own conviction before God’, that cannot be a permanent recommendation of silence, because clearly he does not do this himself. This is a position that is right to take at a particular moment, when someone is distressed and offended. But Paul's aim is not to shut down discussion entirely. In fact, I think the opposite is true. The apostle's hope is that showing restraint at some moments will win the chance to continue to talk, and even to persuade.
It is useful at this point again to observe the conclusions reached by Aquinas and Martensen. Facing the question of how far the call to restraint goes, Aquinas makes a distinction between two kinds of scandal. One kind, ‘proceeds from the weakness or ignorance of those scandalized’. Aquinas calls this, ‘the scandal of little ones’, thinking of Matt. 18:10. The other kind ‘arises from the malice of those scandalized, such scandal is Pharisaical and the Lord taught that it should be ignored’.
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The text in mind in this case is Matt. 15:12. This distinction clarifies the limits of restraint: But yet in regard to the scandal of little ones, it should be noted that to avoid it, a person is bound to postpone the use of lawful things, until this scandal can be removed by explaining one's conduct. But if the scandal still remains after such explanation, then it would seem to proceed not from ignorance or from weakness but from malice, so that it will now be Pharisaical scandal.
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Martensen comes to similar judgments in his discussion of these issues. His discussion is worth quoting at length: If now the law of love necessitates that they who hold the freer opinions should not recklessly use their liberty, and in certain cases must even find themselves called upon to abstain from the disputed modes of action, in order not to shock the weak members, and thus to break down the Church instead of building it up; still love requires, moreover, that this submission be not unlimited. For then the weak would only be confirmed in their mistake, whilst the strong would be hindered in their progress, and the truth would be denied. The requirement that we should accommodate ourselves to the weak must therefore be combined with this, that on the one side we must make it apparent that we are not overcome by these enjoyments, and therefore can dispense with them; but, on the other side, we must seek to lead the weak among us to a clearer knowledge, and show them that these matters may be contemplated from another point of view than the merely worldly and unethical. Accommodation must therefore be combined with correction, the accommodative method with the corrective.
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With One Voice?
Paul's purpose in this part of his letter, then, was not completely to avoid discussion of a divisive topic, but to avoid the kind of quarrels and provocation that would result in a collapse of relationships. Does Paul then hope that the weak will in the end be persuaded?
Not in any straightforward sense. Aquinas thought that the accommodations in Romans 14 applied only to a period prior to the expansion of gospel mission in the gentile world, ‘when the practices were dead’, and yet ‘were not death-dealing’.
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Yet this is too definitive. There is an open-endedness to Paul's argument, which concludes in an exhortation to endurance sustained by eschatological hope (15:2–6). Barclay is more perceptive when he concludes that Paul saw how the two groups in the Roman church needed one another, and anticipated spiritual benefits from their enduring this disagreement: In recognising one another, despite their differences, as authentic believers in Christ, all sides are rescued from repackaging the Christ-gift as a validation of their own cultural traditions. In this sense, the presence of the ‘strong’ in Rome, to be welcomed without judgement, keeps the ‘weak’ from lapsing into unbelief, by refocusing their identity on the Christ who unites them with the ‘strong’. Conversely, the presence of the ‘weak’, and the necessary efforts to accommodate their more vulnerable position, strengthens the faith of the ‘strong’, because in that adaptability their faith is further detached from both cultural traditions, their own and those of the ‘weak’.
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Yet this is not to say that Paul envisaged no future convergence, or that he hoped they would merely continue to ‘agree to disagree’. David Horrell argues that in Romans 14, Paul ‘is primarily concerned to secure and strengthen the unity and solidarity of the Christian community while at the same time sustaining this diversity of ethical practices’. 63 The second half of this statement should be nuanced. Paul's aim was not to sustain diversity of practice, but to endure it in hope.
The weight of the conclusion of Paul's argument should be felt. The apostle's final prayer in 15:5–6 concludes with the hope that, ‘together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’. This is then followed by 15:7–13, and its eschatological vision of the Gentiles rejoicing with ‘the circumcised’. The string of quotations from all the major parts of the Old Testament (2 Sam. 22:50; Deut. 32:43; Ps. 117:1; Isa. 11:10) is intended to emphasise that everything in the Scriptures is ‘for our instruction’ (15:4), and to sustain hopeful endurance by connecting the struggle here and now with the eschatological promise. The call for present endurance is sustained by a vision of final unanimity in praise.
As we saw above, the Windsor Report commented that ‘Paul does not envisage … a static situation. He clearly hopes that his own teaching, and mutual acceptance within the Christian family, will bring people to one mind.’ 64 In broad terms, this is true, but with the caveat that this hope stretches to the far horizon of the kingdom of God. Before that horizon, it may be that endurance must be sustained, perhaps indefinitely.
Enduring Disagreement and Intolerable Disagreement: Considering Voluntary Assisted Dying in NSW
How could this reading of Romans inform the navigation of contemporary moral disagreements? Rather than returning to debates about sexuality, I will pursue this question by considering an issue emerging in my own context, drawing on work I have done with others to respond to the pastoral challenges posed by the introduction of ‘assisted dying’ in NSW. 65 While some details are probably unique to my context, I am confident the questions will be of wider interest and application. The aim of this section is not to try to resolve the questions emerging in this area, nor to imply that the issues here are identical to those raised in debates about sexuality, but to let the implications of the discussion of Romans emerge a little more clearly.
The Voluntary Assisted Dying Act 2022 was passed by the Parliament of New South Wales in May 2022, and took effect on 28 November 2023. 66 The Act is similar in many ways to other Assisted Dying legislation that has been passed in Australian states in the past five years. With several caveats, it allows Australians over the age of eighteen with a terminal illness to access either euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, which it calls ‘practitioner-administered VAD’ and ‘self-administered VAD’, respectively.
In reflecting on the questions this change of law would raise for Christians, it became clear that there are different levels of potential disagreement. There is, first of all, the important, in-principle question of whether Christians could ever accept assisted dying as a morally legitimate course of action for an individual, in a situation where it has become lawful. Beyond this, however, there are a range of potential differences of judgment that would be brought about by the change of law. It is easy to imagine situations created by the change of law in which Christians might come to different judgments that had potential for conflict. 67 There might be disagreements, for instance, about how someone should respond to decisions made by their parents, siblings, partner, or friends. People might well feel strongly about whether and how clergy should conduct funerals or respond to requests to support the dying—does a person's presence at the bedside of a person dying by euthanasia constitute tacit support for their decision? There will inevitably be differences of judgment about how Christians working in aged-care facilities in which assisted dying takes place should think about their involvement.
Reflecting on these different kinds of potential disagreement in the light of Romans 14–15 suggests two points of reference by which to navigate. First, any particular church community should avoid the assumption that all differences of moral judgment should, or can, simply be managed. As we noticed above, both the concept of adiaphora and the logic of Paul's invitation to understand how another's position flows from faith imply that fellowship cannot sustain some differences of judgment. The concept of adiaphora is valuable to demarcate actions in which the internal dimension of action is morally decisive; it therefore depends upon the idea that the objective character of some actions means that disagreement about them cannot be responsibly endured. Likewise, the call to understand the different position of another as a position taken in faith implies a horizon beyond which this effort to understand becomes untenable. For the ability to endure disagreement depends upon the ability to recognise that the alternative position is sincerely understood to be a coherent expression of Christian faith. If the claim of one party, that their way of acting is done ‘to the Lord’, continues to appear utterly incredible to another, then a disagreement may well be unendurable for a community.
This is not to say that we are not called to a patient, generous effort of understanding; clearly, that is the direction in which Paul's words in Romans point. However, it is also important to be clear that Paul's words are not designed for every difference of judgment. Calvin joined other commentators in highlighting how in Rom. 14:19, ‘Paul connects edification with peace’. ‘We are to notice’ this connection, Calvin writes, ‘because occasionally those who are too generous in making allowance for one another do very much harm by their compliance’. 68
In relation to the issue of assisted dying, it seems likely that a distinction would need to be made between the basic moral question of whether euthanasia or physician assisted suicide could be legitimate courses of action for Christians, and the other potential disagreements that might arise from the change in the law. Death by euthanasia or assisted suicide invites assessment as an objective species of action in a way that, say, a decision to be present at the bedside of a person dying by euthanasia, or to continue working in a care facility in which assisted dying was practiced, does not. In these kinds of examples, the subjective or internal features of the action, and the wider significations it may or may not have, seem to be the decisive factors.
Similarly, it is possible to imagine a Christian community managing to endure disagreement about actions such as these, and to imagine people holding different views being able to recognise how one another's judgments were expressions of faith. One nurse stays working in a facility in which assisted dying takes place, ‘to the Lord’, out of his conviction that it is important to bear witness even in the darkest places. Another resigns, again ‘to the Lord’, out of a conviction that it would compromise the stand she had taken for her to remain. It is much harder, however, to imagine this being possible for a difference over the fundamental question about the legitimacy of euthanasia. For the decision to refuse absolutely to entertain assisted dying as a possibility mostly depends upon the conviction that it is forbidden. I cannot at this point imagine a pastoral approach that could accommodate different viewpoints on this basic question. 69
The second reference point suggested by our reading of Romans 14–15 is to be clear that the productive endurance of disagreement depends upon both restraint and ongoing dialogue. The purpose of the restraint the apostle calls for in Romans 14 is to avoid the kind of quarrels and provocation that would result in a collapse of relationship, without abandoning the goal of acting and speaking with integrity together.
Disagreements, then, ought to be endured with an assumption of ongoing, careful dialogue, and should envisage different potential outcomes. The endurance of disagreement may end through the emergence of agreement. This can happen in two ways. On the one hand, one group may come to see that they may indeed enjoy the liberty the other group has. Imagine, for instance, how a chaplain who initially disagreed with her colleagues that she could not be present at the bedside of someone dying by euthanasia might come to see how she could do so without becoming objectionably involved in that act. 70 On the other hand, agreement might emerge if one group came to see that the liberty they felt they had was illicit, and that the caution of the other group was well-judged. Reversing the above situation, the chaplain's colleagues might rescind from their confidence about their presence at the bedside of the dying, after experience taught them that they could not avoid giving the impression of support for the decision itself.
The policy of restraint involved in enduring disagreement could also end through the discovery that the offence being alleged was insincere. This is the insight of Aquinas's distinction between the ‘scandal of the little ones’ and ‘Pharisaical scandal’. It is one thing to be genuinely offended by the freedom another claims in Christian faith; it is another thing to be offended at the displacement of one's position and intellectual grasp on the world implied by another's freedom. Consider, for instance, the difference between a person who was genuinely shocked and upset by the decision of a person at their church to continue working for an organisation involved in providing assisted dying services, because they cannot see how that cannot imply support for these practices, and a person whose offence at such a decision was really about the maintenance of a preconception about ‘how Christians (‘we’) think about this issue’. The difference might be made clear by the degree of interest the offended person had in the actual other person and their action. As Aquinas recognised, it is possible for it to become clear that an offence is insincere, and so not worthy of our patience. Or as Martensen put it, ‘we ought not to allow ourselves to be placed by the weak under any law of thraldom’.
Finally, the endurance of disagreement may remain open-ended, because the disagreement is sincere, and explanations have not yet proven persuasive. In such a case a community is called to ongoing patience in hope of final unanimity of praise in the kingdom of God. However, this ongoing endurance should not ossify into mere silence and ‘agreeing to disagree’. ‘Accommodation must be combined with correction’, as Martensen puts it. For, to return to a comment already noted by Oliver O’Donovan, ‘It risks adding insult to injury to demand forbearance while at the same time refusing explanations’. 71
The Contexts of Toleration
By way of conclusion, let us briefly consider again those disagreements where, to recall the words of Marilyn McCord Adams, ‘the question is momentous yet not decidable by us with enough clarity to convince one another’. 72 What is to be done when, even though both parties honestly insist on their Christian convictions, to one or both parties this stance is incomprehensible, and the policy taken by the other can only be understood as an attempt to manufacture agreement between Christ and Belial?
For McCord Adams, in such circumstances ‘we should agree to differ’. The discussion above suggests that caution, at least, is warranted at this point. Although some Christian communities may find ways to endure disagreement over a non-trivial action construed by one side as objectively wicked, or where one party's position seems to the other to be utterly incongruous with Christian faith, this is neither a common experience, nor one to be desired. It risks, to recall Calvin's comment, ‘very much harm’ by being ‘too generous in making allowance’. ‘Love requires’, as Martensen saw, that the disciplines of endurance and patience ‘be not unlimited’.
Much hangs, though, on the question of who is meant by ‘we’ in McCord Adams's sentence. Different levels of community afford different opportunities for the endurance of disagreement. Just as it is likely that the tensions reflected in Romans 14 emerged when different house-churches met together for a common meal, it is also true that what may be endured within an individual congregational community is different to what may be endured by a whole local church, or by a diocese, or by a national church, or a wider network. In each case, what ‘we’ are able to do may be somewhat different.
It may still happen, though, that even at the highest, most abstract levels of Christian fellowship, the endurance of disagreement becomes impossible. This appears to be the character of some contemporary disagreements over sexual ethics. Perhaps it may also in time apply to disagreements between Christians over the in-principle question of whether a Christian can legitimately choose to die by euthanasia or assisted suicide. Is there no recourse in such cases other than separation, even when both parties earnestly maintain that what they do they do ‘to the Lord’?
At risk of idealism, perhaps we may articulate here a significant ecclesial role for the academic discipline of Christian ethics. By sustaining a somewhat abstract form of Christian community, through formal meetings and modes of communication that are free to a certain extent from the representative burdens of synods and other ecclesiastical gatherings, academic Christian ethics may provide a context for a limited endurance of disagreements that have proven unmanageable for actual churches. Whether this were possible or fruitful would depend on a disciplined, active hospitality to different viewpoints, and the deliberate pursuit of the virtues of restraint and generosity called for by the apostle Paul.
