Dramatics of Faith

Brian Brock is one of the most unusual theologians and ethicists writing today, and the set of interviews newly published as Captive to Christ, Open to the World is an excellent introduction to Brock’s work.

Early on, he explains why he uses the term ethos rather than character, virtue, or theodrama to describe the setting of Christian ethics. “Theodrama” suggests the need to gain “an aesthetic grasp of my whole life” or “the whole context of my own action,” but the Christian life is not like that. Rather, “the life of faith is a bit like driving a night a little faster than your headlights allow. This situation is dramatic, in that anything can happen.” Brock always wants to emphasize what he calls the “pro meity” of the life of faith: “if Christ died ‘for me’ and is my savior, then it is not illegitimate to pray for divine rescue” (8).

This way of thinking about ethics fits biblical examples better than notions of “character,” which focuses attention on the agent himself, implies a life of steady moral improvement, and runs the risk of encouraging complacency: “Moral improvement is the result, not the aim of Christian ethics. Did David or Samson achieve a better character through faith? I think not. Did they display a faithful habitus? Sometimes more so and sometimes less so. But they certainly had a dramatic life of faith and were never abandoned by a God who kept intervening in their lives and directly them to intervene in those of others.” For Brock, ethos “intends to name this dramatic feature of faith as well as the fact that their faith waxed and waned, and with it the appropriateness of their actions” (10). 

Ethos emphasizes the centrality of the deportment of the heart, and the need for the heart to be constantly redirected to God: “we never have the script memorized, but must always go back to Scripture and ‘chew’ on it in the hope that God will remind us of how he has promised to be toward us, and so our hearts right” (11).

The decision about framework is foundational to ethics, Brock argues, because “to ask what I should do in this particular situation in the light of the lordship of Jesus Christ and in expectation of his salvation will bring quite different sorts of considerations into view than asking how what I might do in this situation might make me a better and more virtuous person” (9).