Teleology, Utilitarianism, and Christian Ethics

T AIM of this essay is to clarify the models of moral thinking and doing called teleology and deontology, to gain understanding of utilitarianism as a subcategory of the former, and to explore the relation both to utilitarianism and to teleology in general of certain Christian "consequentialist" modes of moral argument. This purpose arises out of a general and considerable unclarity in recent ethical literature about the relation between the conceptual tools of moral philosophy and modes of argument in moral theology. More specifically, it represents a response to a lively controversy in Christian ethics about the appropriate way to discuss the role of good results in moral judgment. Neither philosophers nor theologians have been able to account conceptually for alternative roles, much less to define a normative one, in a manner which satisfies their discussion partners. The question to be pressed is whether and at what point the consideration of consequences makes a theory "utilitarian," and whether there are any distinctive features of Christian teleology in virtue of which, even when it assigns an important role to consequences in moral judgment, it can be distinguished from utilitarianism. Richard McCormick is pre-eminent among those American moral theologians who, proceeding with a reconsideration of the formal structure of moral norms which was begun on the Continent, have suggested that the Catholic tradition of ethics provides an Aristotehan-Thomistic teleological model of moral agency and moral law. McCormick's particular contribution is his refinement of the suggestion that exceptions to abstractly stated moral norms can be justified by reference to the special circumstances in which an act falling within the purview of a norm will be performed. The consequences of any concrete act are thus necessarily determinative of its moral character. As McCormick puts it, there must