Theodore of Mopsuestia, who died around 428 A.D. and who was a friend of John Chrysostom, wrestled with theological abstractions, and yet did so in the concrete practice of his monastic life. John of Damascus wrote his abstract work, The Source of Knowledge, but wrote a concrete text, Sacred Parallels as a companion text to it; he died in 749. Peter Lombard wrote a medieval classic called the Sentences; in it, propositions of theological doctrine stand next to propositions of practical ethics; he died in 1164.
Despite impressive intellectual horsepower being devoted to integrating doctrine and ethics, strong forces were at work to separate them. The history of ideas, or the history of thought, is a tangled web; one interpretation sees humanism as a force which worked to separate doctrine from ethics. While this assertion is controversial, it has at least some plausibility. A scholar named Christian Callisen argues that Georg Calixtus (also known as George Calixtus) was in some sense an extension of humanism as it arose in the forms of Petrarch and Angelo Poliziano. Calixtus lived in Germany and died in 1656. According to Callisen,
The movement was characterized by the rediscovery and reconsideration of ancient texts - Latin, Greek, and Hebrew - within which was sought "the answer to all social, political, artistic, and ethical problems."
The quote marks indicate that Callisen used a phrase from a book by S. Harrison Thomson.
While Callisen's characterization of Renaissance humanism is a bit naive - he appears to accept uncritically the propaganda put forth by the Renaissance writers themselves, propaganda in which they claim to have "rediscovered" the heritage of Greco-Roman classicism, even though medieval thinkers had access to these texts - he nonetheless properly notes that some humanists hoped to offer solutions to a wide variety of questions, including ethical questions, but notably not listing doctrinal questions. If Calixtus is part of this Renaissance humanist movement, his theology may be one of the forces separating doctrine from ethics. Jaroslav Pelikan writes:
Already in the early centuries, Christian thinkers began to distinguish between that instruction which was intended “to make known the word concerning Christ, and the mystery regarding him” and that instruction which was intended “to point to the corrections of habits.” At least in part, the distinction was suggested by the procedure of the New Testament itself. Theodore of Mopsuestia noted that both in the Epistle to the Romans, and in that to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul first set forth “dogmatic sermons,” defined as “sermons which contain the account of the coming of Christ, and indicate the blessing which he has conferred upon us by His coming,” and then went onto “ethical exhortation.” The great commission in Matthew 28:19 likewise was seen as a division of Christian discipline into two parts, “the ethical part and the precision of dogmas,” the former being contained in the commandments of Jesus, and the latter in the “tradition of baptism.” This meant that “the method of Godliness consists of these two things, pious doctrines and virtuous practice,” neither of which was acceptable to God without the other. Both forms of instruction belonged in the pulpit and in books about Christian teaching. The standard manual of doctrine in Greek Christianity, the Orthodox Faith of John of Damascus, discussed not only the Trinity and Christology, but also such matters as fear, anger, and the imagination. Its later counterpart in the Latin church, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, included in its third book a treatment of the virtues created by Grace. The two branches of theology were not permanently separated until the work of the seventeenth-century Protestant theologian, George Calixtus, but the distinction between doctrine and life had been in force long before that division of labor was effected.
The Christian faith certainly cannot be reduced, or seen as equivalent to, a moral code. Indeed, moral questions are secondary or peripheral to the core of faith. Yet Christianity does demand some ethic - and not merely any ethic. Jesus devoted effort to the discussion of ethical matters - even as He reminded His listeners that moral laws were not the core of His message. Christian doctrine may be seen as meta-ethical: setting not detailed moral precepts, but establishing a broader framework in which possibly several competing moral systems might be constructed, yet which also rules out other possible moral systems.
Beyond the 'what' of ethics, Jesus also addresses the 'why' - not merely what I ought to do, but what will motivate me to do it. Perhaps this is closer to the core of Christ's message - striving to be moral is, by itself, a nearly worthless activity. Human efforts at morality are useless and vain, and when most convincing are most dangerous. But divine inspiration to morality - when the effort is not a human one, but one driven by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit - is simultaneously a manifestation of God at work and an expression of gratitude toward God.
If a truly ethical act can only be the result of the Holy Spirit at work inside a human being, and can never be the result of a purely human effort, and if the only possible motive for such an act is the response of gratitude from a human being who has received unearned and unmerited grace as a freely-given gift, then we might begin to see how Hegel saw the universe as the process of God's self-knowledge.
