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The Constitutive Good via the Holy Spirit

As the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is important to the discussion of goodness and freedom. As stated in previous posts, morality is essential to freedom. Although it exceptionally helpful, can humans live by the example of Jesus alone? If goodness is a dynamic, mysterious gift, and cannot be achieved by human effort alone, even heroic effort to build one’s character, then where does Taylor’s motivation of the constitutive good come from? How is quality of the human will enhanced to a higher level? Michel Foucault’s aesthetic self struggles to attain this level of goodness through autonomous, creative self-making alone. Many young people today struggle to build their identity from the ground up and promote this self to the world. 

How is moral goodness/right relationship mediated in this transcendent turn beyond/followint through from the life example and moral teaching of Jesus of Nazareth? Clearly, there must be a source of empowerment for living in this positive, inspiring relationship to the good, also called a new creation, for the practices of the good, for mediating transcendent goodness in everyday life. If one pursues it on one’s own, how can transcendent goodness avoid the charge of unattainable idealism? Are we not sure to fail? What is the nature of its human possibility? With these questions in mind, it is crucial knowledge that the Holy Spirit is a key inspirational and transformational factor in human goodness, that is, the human actualization and mediation of divine goodness in society. D. Steven Long (2001) is optimistic about the human quest for the good because of this key factor. He believes that with the Holy Spirit, moral self-constitution can be intimately and fruitfully related to the goodness of God, and that this will rejuvenate ethics and moral consciousness and self-constitution significantly. It offers a reconstitution of both goodness and freedom for the moral individual. Dostoyevsky spoke this in his idea of the ‘circulation of grace’. 

The Holy Spirit infuses a goodness into us that makes us better than we know we are by ourselves. This better is what theologians mean by grace. People find themselves caught up in a journey that results in the cultivation of gifts and beatitudes they did not know were possible. They discover that this journey was possible only through friendship.… The mission of the Holy Spirit is to move us towards the charity that defines the relationship between the Father and the Son, a charity so full that it is thoroughly one and yet cannot be contained within a single origin or between an original and a copy, but always, eternally, exceeds that relationship into another. The Holy Spirit is that relationship. (D. S. Long, 2001, 302-3) 

Divine transcendent goodness is made available as a gift by means of the Holy Spirit for the transformation/transfiguration of a person. The Holy Spirit offers relationship and empowerment towards doing and promoting the good. Humans can thereby become entrepreneurs of divine goodness. This is the truly magnificent message of the Apostle Paul’s letters to the early church (Ephesians for example).

This is an example of the epiphanic experience of encounter of the I-Thou sort that I talked about in previous posts in this series. The Holy Spirit is central to the moral life because he gifts individuals for works they cannot achieve in their own autonomous power, within the limits of their own human resources. He makes them capable of forgiveness, reconciliation, justice and love in the agape sense. He makes actual and effective the mission of goodness of Jesus Christ and his followers, the church. He represents the ongoing presence of Jesus in the church and the world, and makes possible the personal transformation within community–towards love in communion, the deepest human longing.

The Spirit catches humans up into the life of God in a personal way, into the communion of love within the Trinity. This process of self-constitution opens up the horizon of human moral thinking and action, first towards God, but secondly, connecting oneself through compassion with the human suffering and deprivation of others. This empowers the individual to move beyond consumeristic self-interest into servant leadership. Within this trinitarian plausibility structure, the answer to Taylor’s question, ‘Can we sustain our world benevolence?’ is a resounding Yes because the Holy Spirit enriches and empowers people to form one-another community as the abundant and fecund source of goodness–the empowerment of human good beyond the imagination of any one individual. 

Dr. Steven Long has an important addendum: Along with Christoph Schwöbel, he finds that the kind of ethics (as in Foucault) that emphasizes the will, power struggles, and absolute freedom of choice, is dysfunctional and ill-focused. It leads to the human temptation to set one’s own standard of goodness as the final standard, and thereby to manipulate the language of the good in the direction of vices such as pride and self-indulgence. Humans are quite capable of using their freedom in contradiction to God’s goodness: to coerce other humans or abuse the natural world through their own controlling interest in prestige, promoting a negative moral currency. Long and Schwöbel promote an ethical focus on the constitution of the self as it relates dynamically to, and embraces, God and transcendent goodness as a moral a priori. This is parallel to the thought of Charles Taylor who noted that the first question of ethics is Who or what do you love? The quality of the will, the quality of freedom, comes into play at exactly this point. Long believes that moral self-constitution must be rooted in, and animated by, a love of God and a relationship with the infinitely superior goodness of God. This is the route of self-transformation and a correction to narcissistic human false claims to the good and virtue. 

The picture of a lone will choosing between good and evil, or embracing both in an aesthetic move of self-mutilation, or choosing to define self, constitutes a distraction from moving into the goodness-which-is-God, being captivated and transformed by this goodness. Long’s focus is to build one’s life-orientation, one’s identity, one’s lifestyle around this high goodness. It ought not be reduced to a mere achievement of the human will. Goodness-making is not a faculty within the self that can be conjured. He puts such transformation this way:

Human freedom is not about the capacity to choose [merely] between good and evil. Human freedom occurs when our desires are so turned toward God and the good that no choice is necessary.… Jesus shows us that such a life is possible in our humanity—not against it. (D. S. Long, 2001, 46) 

Real moral transformation comes through a commitment to the good, not through seeking a controlling knowledge of good and evil or through creative strategies for self-control or manipulation of power relations or truth games. Human creatures as self-legislating beings do not possess the moral capacity within themselves to enact such goodness. They tend to mess it up. Acts of the will do not automatically constitute acts of goodness, as we know from hard experience. Goodness is rather discovered, not invented. Long, somewhat further along the trajectory of Charles Taylor, concludes that the primary question for the moral self, for human morality itself, is “What or who is the good I seek and that seeks me?” (D.S. Long, 2001, 130) There is that notion of quest once again. Christoph Schwöbel sums up these thoughts: 

The reconstitution of created freedom through the appropriation of the revelation of God’s goodness in Christ which is made possible in the Spirit is characterized by the acknowledgement of the limitations of human freedom that become evident where this freedom is no longer understood as self-produced, but as a gift of grace. The liberation from the abortive attempt of self-constitution of human freedom discloses the reality of the other person and the non-human creation as the one to whom good action is directed. Human goodness is realized where it is acknowledged that it is not self-produced, but the gift of God’s creative, revealing and inspiring action. (C. Schwöbel, 1992, 75) 

Through the Spirit, goodness becomes a communicable and accessible human reality as gift/grace. The individual is not left alone to fend for herself, left to her own devices and resources to make her way in the world, and continually fight to justify any behaviour. This connection of human goodness to the transcendent brings an appropriate hopefulness of reviving and continuing the ancient language of the good, and yet shows humility regarding any human claim to, or construction of, the good. The conversation about the good in moral self-constitution is enhanced to the next level.  

This is a qualitative paradigm shift away from Foucault’s position: where he assumes that individual humans are the origin and controlling agents of moral currency and the moral life through his ethics as aesthetics, life as a work of art. The moral self, in his picture, seeks for autonomous resources apart from God in the pursuit of a radical freedom of expression and self-construction (Taylor’s expressive individualism). In the debate between Foucault and Taylor, at a preliminary level of discussion, it does come to a watershed between the sovereignty of the self or the sovereignty of God (who is goodness of the most excellent sort) in ethical self-constitution/self-discovery , the telos of self or the telos of divine love and will. It makes an exponential difference whether God and agape love are allowed to enter the map of one’s moral horizon.

Application: In the moral teaching of Jesus, “Mammon entails turning wealth into an idol that displaces God in the human heart. It invites God’s wrath. This is why Jesus encouraged some of his followers to sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor and needy. Such idolatry is not just something in the human heart, but it is encouraged in the ethos and structures of economic life and human culture” (D. P. Gushee, 2024, 86). “Greed constitutes insatiable desire, excessive or rapacious desire, the unsatisfiable quest for more, usually in relation to material possessions” (D. P. Gushee, 2024, 126). “Overall, Jesus exhorts his followers to obey God’s will out of a humble, meek, just, merciful, pure heart that is seeking God’s kingdom (a higher road lifestyle). This builds real substance into a life and shapes one’s identity towards true flourishing. Jesus’s teaching is all about the solid rock of love: this leads to joy, peace, justice, and covenant love” (D. P. Gushee, 2024, 100).

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD Philosophical Theology, Meta-Educator with UBC Postgraduate Students, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinars. 

Florensky, P. (1997). The Pillar and Ground of the Truth. Princeton University Press. (Letter Five: The Comforter).

Gushee, D. (2024). The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God. Cascade Books.

Long, D.S. (2001). The Goodness of God. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 

Schwöbel, C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Smith, G. (2021). Welcome, Holy Spirit: A Theological and Experiential Introduction. IVP Academic.

Access to Divine Goodness: the Incarnation 

Transcendent divine goodness is present and accessible in the human sphere through the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth. Transcendence does not thereby mean aloofness and indifference, a burdensome or unreachable standard of perfection. It calculates instead as a creative, fruitful engagement with the world, society, and institutions. Transcendent divine goodness takes on an historical and christological determination in order to impact the human moral, political, and cultural world. By reading the moral life through the life of Christ (David Gushee, The Moral Teachings of Jesus, 2024), one cannot espouse a minimalist and juridical conception of the moral life that merely acts on what is permitted or forbidden. Instead, we find a moral life that makes sense in the light of a Christ who is himself full of goodness (an exemplum), who incarnates goodness in human flesh, articulates it historically and culturally with integrity. D. S. Long appeals to the moral normativity of the life of Jesus. 

In Christian theology, Jesus reveals to us not only who God is, but also what it means to be truly human. This true humanity is not something we achieve on our own; it comes to us as a gift.… The reception of this gift contains an ineliminable element of mystery that will always require faith. Jesus in his life, teaching, death and resurrection, and ongoing presence in the church and through the Holy Spirit … orders us towards God. He directs our passions and desires towards that which can finally fulfil them and bring us happiness … [and] reveal to us what it means to be human. (D. S. Long, 2001, 106-7) 

This immanence offers the option of life of the self, lived not autonomously but in cooperation with divine wisdom and goodness. In the incarnation of Jesus Christ, goodness is made accessible, personal, and real; it is not left as an abstract unattainable ideal, or a wholly other reality alone; it is transcendent goodness expressed in immanent, here-and-now reality. Jesus is claimed to be the very image of the invisible God (John 1:1-4). The incarnation is a statement about how God has chosen to use material reality to reveal the divine self. J. Richard Middleton writes:

The incarnation, at the very centre of Christian faith, provides a touchstone for understanding the world as God’s good creation and human beings as called to embodied, dialogical relationship with their creator. Dr. Carkner in his book contrasts the incarnational Christian vision with contemporary permutations of ancient Gnosticism, teasing out philosophical implications of an incarnational spiritual culture for human identity in the twenty-first century. (J. R. Middleton, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture).

Within this particular plausibility structure, the roots for the ethical life, i.e., the transcendent condition for the moral life, lie in God himself, not in a mythological ontology of freedom nested within the ideology of the aesthetic. Jesus and his followers, the church, form the dynamic unity between the transcendent and the temporal, the absolute and the contingent. The relational goodness of God is discovered, not by means of a mere abstract speculation, but in real human lives that are oriented toward God. This entails a subjectivity engaged and inspired by the needs of the human other, as well as by the goodness of God. It is inspired by both top-down and bottom-up movements. Therefore, the first human life to consider for this position of hope is the life of Jesus of Nazareth depicted in the Four Gospels. The brilliant interdisciplinary thinker William Cavanaugh puts it this way: “The very idea of the Incarnation means that Jesus takes on, while also transforming, the particulars of human life in a particular time and place.” (W. T. Cavanaugh, 2024, 340). Yes, this trinitarian goodness is a gift, and profoundly it is the gift of Jesus Christ. He is God’s goodness embodied historically in the complex dynamics of the ancient world. This is God’s own self revealing his love for humans in profound ways. The big paradigm shift from Foucault’s interpretation is that the human self, in this case, is constituted by its engagement with the divine self in the process of discovering spiritual and moral epiphany. This is an encounter which provides transformation/transfiguration of the self or human identity. The focus here is not power, but love and humility (servant leadership). We can become fully and genuinely ourselves through a relationship with a transcendent self who is goodness, and love in the communion of the trinity. 

The veracity of the gospel–the claim that, in Christ, God has decisively reconciled humans to God–hinges on Christ being fully human, subject to the conditions of bodily life where people and things are related to one another in a way appropriate to the spatiality of the created world. But the gospel also hinges on the Son being at every point the eternal Son of the Father, sharing the Father’s being and life, living as the one through whom all creation is upheld and held together. That is to say, the incarnate Son inhabits both the “space” of the triune God (primordially) and the space of the world. God’s immensity, God’s uncontaianbility by created space–therefore has nothing to do with the impossibility of fitting God’s enormity into a finite container. It has everything to do with the pressure of divine love–with God’s desire to relate creatively and savingly to the entirety of the world as spatial, and yet without that spatiality being compromised in any way. John Webster writes: Immensity and embodiment … are not competing and mutually contradictory accounts of the identity of the Son of God. Incarnation is not confinement, but the free relation of the Word to his creation–the Word who as creator and incarnate reconciler is deus immensus. (J. S. Begbie, 2023, 141-2)

There is a second aspect of incarnation, beyond Jesus’ particular presence on earth. It is God the Son’s presence in his church, who he wants to represent his values and vision. The church offers, at its best, an historical and cultural presence, performance and embodiment of God’s goodness, socially locating divine goodness in a human community and a lively, transformative narrative. Christoph Schwöbel (1992, 76) notes that divine goodness “finds its social form in the community of believers as the reconstituted form of life of created and redeemed sociality.” D. W. Hardy (2001, 75) underlines that the task of the church is to face into “the irreducible density of the goodness that is God in human society.” William Cavanaugh finishes the point in his climactic statement: “Central to the Incarnation is a profound sense of communion, both with our contemporaries and with those who have gone before us…. The Incarnation reveals something true about the world and makes possible a different way of living in the world. The Incarnation opens possibilities not just for Christians but for the world more generally” (W. T. Cavanaugh, 2024, 346). We cannot read God off the face of humanity; we can, however, read a renewed humanity off the face of Jesus Christ.

Thereby, one’s own self-constitution is seen to require the flourishing of the other, the honouring of the other, as well as receiving from the other in mutuality, in this wonderful communion of love. Other people change in significance within this calculus: from a categorical threat, a potential dominator in the world of will to power and disciplinary practices in Foucault’s ethics, to an esteemed opportunity for creative mutuality or one-anotherness. She is highly valued as an end in herself. In this case, one discovers and re-articulates oneself within community, exhibiting a moral inclusiveness that involves the pursuit of peace, forgiveness, compassion, rather than pursuit of radical autonomy. 

However fragile or imperfect this incarnation of trinitarian goodness in Christian community appears, it is no less profound for the transformation of the individual according to a strong transcendence of depth. Human creatures are called upward morally and spiritually to image and give witness to the dynamic being and activity of the triune God. This imaging transforms one’s moral vision in a dynamic way. It enhances human possibilities for action towards the common good of all of society.

That most poignant image of hope, the Kingdom of God, expresses the relation of free divine love and loving human freedom together in depicting the ultimate purpose of God’s action as the perfected community of love with his creation. (C. Schwöbel, 1995, 80) 

This entails a transcendent moral turn for the self, beyond alienation, fear of domination and mutual competition (agonisme) or pursuit of self-indulgence (an anti-humanist stance), to a pro-humanist, self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Jesus identified the divine nature with giving. 

At its weakest, the institutional church can obfuscate this goodness, reneging on its most fundamental mandate. But at its best, as Christ’s representatives on earth, it produces people on a quest for goodness of this higher quality, people who seek to mediate this transcendent goodness in society. The church at its best still believes that God speaks and acts, that the triune God is present to the world, cares deeply for individuals, wants to open dialogue. At its best, religious experience and spirituality are a seamless experience of God that has both an inner and an outer dimension: a personal and communal experience of God that leads into wisdom, ethics, self-sacrifice and kindness/compassionate care. Authentically, the church also believes that it is vital to engage and love this personal Good and allow ourselves to be loved/affirmed/validated by God. It is vital to seek the divine personal Good and be sought by him. God’s transcendence does not mean God is far away. As creator of all, God is wholly other to creation, and precisely therefore God is not another thing competing for space with created things. As the ground of all being, God is innermost to all beings. God is both wholly transcendent and wholly immanent in all things. One does not have to leave the world to escape into some gnostic space to experience such transcendence (epiphany).

In fact, this renders problematic the seeking of the good or goodness apart from seeking God, making up morality on our own terms, the pursuit of the good while walking away from a relationship to God. The always ends up in a form of idolatry. Ethics within the economy of human relations changes from a contest within a general will to power, to the economy of grace within a communion of agape love. It is not the economy of a naked, free human will choosing to follow a moral law or choosing to design self autonomously (expressive individualism). Goodness is no mere achievement of the human will; it is truly a mysterious gift of God. Once again, Cavanaugh captures the pulse of it: “The community receives its identity not by looking in a mirror narcissistically but by looking toward the weakest among them, who are icons of the self-emptying God whose power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). (W. T. Cavanaugh, 2024, 383)

Practical Application: Meditate on the Psalms of Ascent 120-134. Our movement towards God must be metaphorically upward, like climbing Garibaldi Mountain or Everest. Focus and effort are involved in growing in virtue, and in moral strength. Then reflect on the lives of faith in Hebrews 11. What made the difference in these personal spiritual journeys and how is their freedom discovered within the exercise of their calling? There is endless potential for those who set out to focus on finding freedom in Christ, hope in Christ, meaning in a relationship with the Logos become flesh, creating a robust identity rooted in the great drama of the ages. It is existentially yours to discover. David P. Gushee (2024) does a splendid job of showing how the moral teachings of Jesus set people free in a creative direction.

People who are determined to love their enemies are the freest and the most powerful people in the world. They set their own agenda, and no one can distract them from it—making the journey through fear, through anger, even through hate, all the way to love. This is what we see in Jesus. (D.P. Gushee, 2024, 73).

See especially Chapter 26. The Greatest Commandment.

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinars and Lectures, Meta-Educator with UBC Postgrad Students and Faculty.

Begbie, J. S. (2023). Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionist Age. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.

Carkner, G. E.. (2024). Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishing.

Cavanaugh, W. T. (2024). The Uses of Idolatry. Oxford University Press.

Gushee, D. (2024). The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God. Cascade Books.

Hardy, D.W. (2001). Finding the Church: The Dynamic of Anglicanism. London: SCM Press. 

Long, D. S. (2001). The Goodness of God. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 

Schwöbel, C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Schwöbel, C. (1995). Imago Libertatis: Human and Divine Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.) God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 57-81). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 

Agape Love, Ethics, and the Transcendent Turn

So, I have been writing about epiphanies of transcendence in the previous post. Here I want to build on that concept. It takes us into the economy of grace which is captured in the Christian term in Greek: agape love. Agape exceeds the bounds of reciprocity; it cannot be defined in terms of prescriptions for self-realization or self-interest alone. In this love, we find the self involved in a transcendence of the strong variety. But when this grace disappears, coercion, contempt and terror sometimes flow in to take its place. Dostoyevsky makes a very interesting connection between self-hatred and terror in the previous discussion (Post 14). The Foucauldian autonomous self takes a stance over against society and the other, a stance of resistance and self-protection, attempting to discover dignity in precisely this manner which Dostoyevsky discourages, of separation from the world. This explains the willingness of the aesthetic self to take responsibility for itself, but its unwillingness to take responsibility for other people and the common good. Some top authors who write clearly about agape are Glenn Tinder (The Political Meaning of Christianity), Larry Siedentop (The Invention of the Individual), and David Bentley Hart (Atheist Delusions).

Charles Taylor’s recovery of transcendent moral sources ultimately implies an opening of the self to something outside that empowers the self. This larger horizon could give enhanced perspective and positive energy to Foucault’s artistic self-creation. In fact, it does rethink his modern doctrine of self-creation/self-definition. Foucault is open to the epiphany of self within a self-reflexive horizon, but does not access, was not open to, the epiphany of agape love accessed within a transcendent horizon. Frame of reference is very important here. In fact, he never refers to this central theme in the Christian New Testament in his analysis of technologies of self. His focus is on the restrictive, self-negating versions of Christian self-construction, which calculate as good reason to deconstruct, reject and move beyond its ethics. This is a tragic miscalculation in the sources of the self and identity.

At this juncture in my discussion of a transcendent turn, it is valuable to move beyond the philosophical insights of Charles Taylor. I want to enlist the aid of two key theologians, D. Stephen Long and Christof Schwöbel, for a richer articulation of the point of a transcendent turn to the divine good/goodness. Their work on the interface between divine and human goodness shows strong resonance with Taylor’s trajectory of such a turn to agape love. Taylor also follows this argument through into his book A Secular Age. The following discussion will help to define more fully the rich and creative character of such transcendence and the concept of an epiphanic encounter. In Taylor’s thought, agape, at one level, is a quality of human relationships, a hypergood that informs and even organizes the other goods within one’s horizon. But at another level, agape can also be seen as animating and empowering the ethical subject, and thus reveals a constitutive good which is rooted in transcendent divine goodness. Now let us proceed to a further understanding of this concept and its implications for the moral self.

There is a certain strangeness to the idea of transcendent divine goodness. It exceeds one’s human cognitive grasp, or ability to define it. One can use terms like infinite, excellent, most intense, purest, unfathomable, or superlative as adjectives to describe this goodness. But one cannot fully grasp the qualitative dimensions of transcendent divine goodness with propositions alone. It is radically other, a radical alterity, trans-historical even though it is revealed in time, space, and history. At one level, it is incompatible, incommensurable with human concepts of the good. It is certainly no mere human projection into the cosmos. Goodness that we find in the world points to and participates in, but is not identical with, the goodness that is God. 

By definition, it is much more than an absolute or highest principle. Goodness is of the very essence of God and the claim that God is good entails a distinctive character trait. D.S. Long (2001, 21) attempts such an articulation when he writes, “God is good in the most excellent way.” This means that there is no greater good, nor a position of goodness from which to judge God. This is a qualitative transcendence that is worthy of love and admiration, a goodness that is much more than moral virtue or useful goodness. God is the gold standard by which all human currencies of the good are measured. Another way of saying this is that there is an “irreducible density to God’s goodness” (Hardy, 2001, 75). Schwöbel (1992, 72) proceeds logically from this to say that in creation, “God has set the conditions for being and doing the good and for knowledge of the good in the human condition.” On this account, transcendent divine goodness is the ontological/metaphysical ground of the human good. The entire human moral horizon derives from, is rooted in God or contextualized by God. It is not autonomous.

Furthermore, the knowledge of the good is intimately linked with the knowledge of God, and one’s relation to the good is ultimately connected to one’s relationship to God. Long adds the following. 

Participation in God is necessary for the good and for freedom. Evil arises when freedom is lost through turning towards one’s own autonomous resources for ethics. The fall does not result from people seeking to be more than they are capable of through pride but from their becoming less than they could be because they separate the knowledge of the good from its true end, God, and find themselves self-sufficient.… Seeking the good through non-participation in God, through the ‘virtue of what was in themselves’ makes disobedience possible. (D. S. Long, 2001, 128) 

This important concept is what Long refers to as the blasphemy of the a priori, that is, the philosophical preoccupation that assumes one can determine the conditions for knowledge of the good a priori, without engaging the good at its best in God. This is a working assumption in Foucault’s moral self-making and in so many who follow in his steps. If the individual is the origin of the moral life, ethics would tend to be reduced to anthropology (what a tribe does) or autobiography (what I decide for myself). That is quite a reductionistic stance.

Another conclusion that can be drawn from the premise of transcendent goodness is that this goodness is beyond human control and manipulation, manufacture or manipulation. In the human world it is no mere social, legal or governmental construction of the good. Human attempts to articulate the good, construct the good, or to be good, are only vague, finite and inadequate facsimiles of God’s goodness. These articulations are also vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation, conflict of interpretations, and power interest, as Foucault saw so clearly. Thus people become dismayed and cynical about the very idea of the good or claims to commitment to the good. Some human standards are historically contingent, or a product of self-interest by those in power, employed in coercive or abusive ways, or employed arbitrarily by the leadership. Human claims and social constructions of the good are necessary, but not final. They are accountable to a higher (transcendent) standard. Humans needs a transcendent divine goodness to arbitrate and critique their various human claims to the good, arbitrate between human social constructions of the good. 

In the next post, I will show that there is a trinitarian aspect of divine goodness. I also discuss this at more length in chapter five of my book, Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture. This transcendent goodness is relational, a personal goodness of a tri-personal God. This transcendent goodness begins in God and then flows to creation as gift. This transcendence automatically has a relationship to the immanent human world as we see in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. It is communicable, but the understanding and experience of goodness involves a humble journey towards the triune God. At the same time, it involves a revealing of this goodness in the world by God: Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist. 

Application: How Does this Help with Current Moral-Spiritual-Identity Crisis Indicators?

— I am feeling morally ambivalent; it is hard adjusting from campus hedonism to a responsible lifestyle in society. This can be a form of reckoning.

— I am restless with the present employer: It is tough to adapt to an impersonal corporate culture with its never ending demands. Will I be replaced by Deepseek RI or some other form of AI?

— I am afraid of marital commitment: There is so much that could go wrong–adulting is hard work with many uncertainties.

— I am a bit ashamed about returning to live with my parents: The cost of housing combined with my accumulated student debt is formidable. The economic cards seem stacked against my generation.

— I am suffering from the numbing syndrome of narcissism, cancel culture, and emotional turmoil on social media. It really is an addiction as powerful as crack cocaine as Jerone Lanier says.

— I cannot help myself; I am constantly in search of the new, the more exciting, of the best ways to be outstanding, original, unique. It is exhausting. When do I arrive somewhere satisfying?

— I feel valued only for my productive capacity and efficiency, not as a human being with worth. Matthew Crawford is right about our loss of ethics or broader human values in the workplace—I see all around me workaholism, performance-enhancement drug abuse.

—Psychological wellbeing is the only way my generation understands human flourishing: Therefore, any challenge to our mental health is taken as a personal attack–> “You are trying to erase me.”

—My generation is cut off from traditional sources of meaning-making (Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self). Expressive individualism that dominates today tends to fragment key relationships—it leads us to become more sociopathic.

Dr. Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Meta-Educator with UBC postgraduate students and faculty, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinars and Scholarly Lectures on Christianity and Culture.

Hardy, D.W. (2001). Finding the Church: The dynamic of Anglicanism. London: SCM Press. 

Long, D.S. (2001). The Goodness of God. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press. 

Schwöbel, C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Schwöbel, C. (1995). Imago Libertatis: Human and Divine Freedom. In C. Gunton (Ed.) God & Freedom: Essays in historical and systematic theology (pp. 57-81). Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. 

Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age, Harvard University Press.

Gordon will give a live workshop at Apologetics Canada’s 2025 Conference in Abbotsford, BC on March 8. https://apologeticscanada.com/conference25-bc/

Physician Ethicist Providence Health Care

Emergency Physician St. Paul’s Hospital

    Rethinking Medical Ethics in Light of the Good

Tuesday, March 4 @ 12:00 PM

UBC GFCF is inviting you to its March 4 Zoom Lecture.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88565585788?pwd=TfS3VRkeFlIojQe9ovKSo3yuEFA431.1

Abstract 

What features define human life and the value of the individual? How do individuals and communities understand and withstand suffering and pain? What is good dying? In our time, the essential human questions are often viewed primarily as bioethics issues. In reality, these are not exclusively medical or bioethical inquiries. Rather they are complicated and challenging ethical questions with which all human beings and societies must grapple. How does Christian philosophy and theology inform these life and death questions at deeper, more foundational levels?

Biography 

Dr. Quentin Genuis MD is an Emergency Physician at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and the Physician Ethicist for Providence Health Care. He holds a Master of Letters in Ethics from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He teaches in academic, clinical, professional, and lay settings on a variety of issues related to bioethics. His research and writing interests include the autonomy debates, end-of-life care, compassion, human dignity, addictions, and theological anthropology.

See also the new Routledge Handbook on Christianity & Culture https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Christianity-and-Culture/Ariel-Thuswaldner-Zimmermann/p/book/9780367202590?srsltid=AfmBOorfmXlbleBFgf-1MEVzQZexWKc4aLFSfTZ-EFWGefDA46d0zsTW