In defence of the Archbishop of Canterbury
I’d like you to imagine there is an empty runaway train coming down the tracks: its brakes somehow cut and disaster is inevitable. As it happens, you are- by pure coincidence- standing by a lever that will switch the tracks that the train is running on. At the moment, the lever is set so that the train will run onto the main track, where some evil villain has tied down ten children who will certainly be instantly killed. If the lever was switched, however, it would then run into a siding, where two old men are working away on the track. What do you do?
It’s the famous “trolley problem”. By your inaction, 10 people will die when the trolley or railway carriage runs them over. If you act, two people will die.
If an Isaac Asimov robot was at the lever, it would know what to do. The three laws of robotics would tell them that by their action or inaction they may not cause harm to human. The robot would then have to operate a difference engine upon the two scenarios, calculating how much harm is going to arise, and it would come to the conclusion that ten lives are worth more than two, that the children have more to lose than the men, and therefore it must switch the trolley to the sidings, killing the two older workmen. This is simple utilitarian ethics. Maximising the pleasure and minimising the distress or pain with every action. Sometimes this is called teleological ethics: the quality of an action is measured by its end result, or if you prefer “The ends justifies the means.” On this occasion, the saving of ten lives is worth the killing of two. Most ethicists these days reject teleological or utilitarian ethics because it leads to some very unpleasant consequences – by the strict application of utilitarian ethics, it’s acceptable to murder one person if you can use their organs to save the lives of three others. The Bible never uses utilitarian ethics.
The Bible does, however, use normative, situational, and virtue ethics. Normative ethics are the norms or laws which God sets down. Situational ethics asks wisdom questions about which law is best appropriated in which situation. Virtue ethics asks if the action is carried out by a good person or a bad person, for good or bad reasons. So, for example, if a sinner loves his friends, that does not make them good according to Jesus in Luke 6:32. They may be keeping the law on this occasion, but that does not make them good in general. Or take the current trend of “malicious compliance” where employees deliberately take the words of their bosses literally in petty (and often humorous) revenge; they have obeyed, they have even kept God’s law in obeying their masters, but they have not been virtuous, or applied the right law in the situation.
Jesus is our ultimate example of the perfect ethicist. He always obeyed the law, a perfect normative ethicist. When faced with a conundrum between seemingly conflicting laws (keep the Sabbath or love your neighbour) he knew which law applied in which situation; the ultimate situational ethicist. As for virtue, he was the Son of God: intrinsically good and incapable of evil.
What would Jesus do with the trolley problem? He would pray, sure. He may have been granted from the Father the opportunity to perform a miracle. Here’s what he would not do: he would not switch the lever. To switch the lever is to commit murder, but leaving the lever alone is not.
The problem is often posed as a trick question: “Who would you kill?” but that is not what is going on here. If a Nazi gave you a choice between which person in the concentration camp gets shot, it is not your fault when one of them dies: the murder belongs to the Nazis who shot them or who forced the evil situation upon you. The choice in the trolley problem is not between who gets murdered, but between allowing a disaster or a murder which otherwise was bound to happen, and committing a murder yourself in order to prevent it. Had you not been there, the ten would have died; that was not your fault. If the ten children die, that is on the man that tied them up, or on the woman who cut the brakes. If the two workmen die, that one is on you.
Last week at General Synod, Justin Welby nearly broke down in tears when he said, in rejecting an amendment on the LLF prayers,
I am genuinely torn. It is not just about listening to the rest of the world, it is caring. Let’s just be clear on that. It’s about people who will die, women who will be raped, children who will be tortured…
When we vote, we need to think about that – it is not just about what people will say – it is about what they will suffer.
People have been critical of the Archbishop for advising the rejection of the amendment, knowing that this could then happen. I am not sure that’s fair. He said whatever Boko Haram do, we still have to do the right thing, and that is correct. We are responsible for our actions, they are responsible for theirs.
We can only lay part of the blame on the Archbishop if he actively encouraged them: inciting someone to a crime is a criminal offence, and they are held partially culpable for the other’s sin. But he has not done that. So if Boko Haram murder people because the Archbishop approves of same-sex relationships, that’s on them. That is not the Archbishop’s fault, and we should be very careful about laying that on him. If - or when - that happens, we should defend him.
But Boko Haram are not the only ones who might do evil as a result of this debate. If just “one of these little ones who believes in me” is persuaded to sin (Mark 9:42), Jesus says it would be better had we simply drowned before we spoke. They sinned, and they will pay. But the person who told them it was a good idea to sin will also pay.
If a follower of Jesus now decides, because of what has been said at General Synod, that it is acceptable and reasonable to commit sexual immorality because instead of defending the faith, the Archbishops, bishops and ministers of the Church of England questioned it, well, that one genuinely is on them.