The Ethical as the Beautiful
Part 2, A Particular Manner of Conducting Oneself
In his essay "A Sense of Style: Beauty and the Christian Moral Life," David Bentley Hart argues that our actions should balance the True, the Beautiful and the Good. Christian life should imitate Jesus' sense of style.
But what does that look like? Hart gives an example from John's gospel (my bolding):
To see what I mean, consider for instance the story of the woman taken in adultery: it is a tale that in a sense refuses to leave us with any exact rule regarding any particular ethical situation, much less any single rule for all analogous situations; but it definitely provides us with a startlingly incisive exemplar of an extremely particular manner for conducting oneself, even in circumstances that might be fraught with moral ambiguity, or even with terror, and for negotiating those circumstances by way of pure bearing, pure balance. Christ’s every gesture in the tale is resplendent with any number of delicately calibrated and richly attractive qualities: calm reserve, authority, ironic detachment, but also tenderness, a kind of cavalier gallantry, moral generosity, graciousness, but then also alacrity of wit, even a kind of sober levity (“Let him among you who is without sin . . .”). All of it has about it the grand character of the effortless beau geste [Note: French for "beautiful gesture"], a nonchalant display of the special privilege belonging to those blessed few who can insouciandy, confidently violate any given convention simply because they know how to do it with consummate and ineffably accomplished artistry— aplomb, finesse, panache (and a whole host of other qualities for which only French seems to possess a sufficiently precise vocabulary). And there is as well something exquisitely and generously antinomian about Christ’s actions here. It embodies the same distinctive personal idiom that is expressed in the more gloriously improbable, irresponsible, and expansive counsels of the Sermon on the Mount—that charter of God’s Kingdom as a preserve for flaneurs and truants, defiantly sparing no thought for the morrow and emulous only of the lilies of the fields in all their iridescent indolence—and that is expressed also in everything about his ministry and teachings that, say, Nietzsche could interpret only as the decadence of a dreaming symbolist.
This is David Bentley Hart, so feel free to Google definitions. I had to check "insouciantly" (from the word "insouciant" meaning "showing a casual lack of concern, free from worry, or anxiety; carefree; nonchalant").
An important word to track down for what Hart is saying is his descriptions of Jesus' actions as "antinomian," meaning "relating to the view that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law."
If you're unfamiliar with antinomianism you may want to explore that rabbit hole of Christian history, thought, and controversy. But at its heart Christian antinomianism simply follows St. Augustine's famous line, "Love, and do what you will." The idea being that, if we truly love others, we don't need to follow any moral rules, code, or law. Love, on its own, will create a good moral outcome. As Paul famously wrote, "Love is the fulfillment of the law."
That vision goes to Hart's argument about Christian moral action embodying a sense of style rather than an adherence to a long list of Do's and Don'ts, treating life as a Christian ethics class. As Hart writes about Jesus' treatment of the woman caught in the act of adultery, "it is a tale that in a sense refuses to leave us with any exact rule regarding any particular ethical situation, much less any single rule for all analogous situations; but it definitely provides us with a startlingly incisive exemplar of an extremely particular manner for conducting oneself."
The story in John 8 leaves us no moral rules. If anything, Jesus seems antinomian in how he blows off the rules. Consequently, it's hard to translate Jesus's actions into hard ethical guidance. Rather, what is passed on to us is a sense of style, a beautiful gesture, an "extremely particular manner for conducting oneself."
And it's that style that Christians try to capture and emulate.
On the one hand, I want to explore this path. On the other, there is something in Hart's own style that sets off warning bells for me. "aplomb, finesse, panache (and a whole host of other qualities for which only French seems to possess a sufficiently precise vocabulary)". It's hard for me not to read that the main word Hart is going for is "refinement". I get the feeling of a dinner party of Ivy-league educated, sabbatical-in-Europe academics tossing around French phrases, knowing that they are the best Christians, because they've invested so much time in a "sense of style", while the poor grubby rubes have broken all their fingernails digging away at how to renovate their home-built souls to grasp after crude moral rules like "Thou shall not covet". This is not the first time that I wish Hart's indisputable theological skills were matched with a humbler style of presentation.
We tend to focus on the woman who committed adultery than the fact that the Pharisees were also committing adultery. The woman was probably a common (and known) prostitute and was not hiding what she was doing, yet the religious leaders were secretly prostituting themselves with the Roman authorities while acting like they were pure. Jesus called them hypocrites all the time and repeatedly said to them "go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice."
Jesus doesn't deny that the woman committed a sin. He just doesn't allow the Pharisees to use her as a scapegoat.
The religious leaders of the time were a pretty twisted lot, they had no qualms about using common people to achieve their secret political aspirations, believing that the end justified the means and that they were doing the work of God. Jesus calls them out on the conditions of the religious leaders hearts in John 8 and shows mercy to both the accusers and the accused.