I've actually been very interested in the human potential movement. Do you think that is something Lutherans could dialogue with? What are our duties where humanity is at each others throats on board the Titanic: we are all arguing whether there is an iceberg ahead at all, and we've divided up into tribes that see the world in very different ways? Isn't there a virtue or duty in finding a way to transcend the morass?
Also, if Luther wasn't allergic to virtue, why are Lutheran ethics typically expressed in terms of abstract, universal moral duties? This is not how virtue ethics works, generally speaking. I am particularly interested in the concept of "ethics of care", as I believe it closely matches many of the great teachers of human history, such as Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus.... as well as many contemporary feminist ethicists.
The issue, as I see it, is avoiding the pitfalls of homo incurvatus, the inwardly-curved man with its me-centered sense of false righteousness, "I do good and thus I become good", wherein this is sin. And instead take a deeply Christocentric and Incarnational view: God was in Christ reconciling the world. Thus the role of virtue, the role of good works, of active righteousness (as opposed to the imputed righteousness of faith) can never be understood in the vertical dynamic of ourselves before God; but rather ourselves in the midst of the world, ourselves in relation to our neighbors.
In Christ we behold God and God's understanding of Himself (a phrase I am borrowing from Catholic writer Herbert McCabe) as the Word become flesh. So what is God's disposition toward creation, it's love. What then is to be the Christian's way of living? Well what does St. Paul say? "To live is Christ and to die is gain", we are called to be imitators of Christ, imitators of God. Here the language of kenosis and real kenotic theology matters (as opposed to false kenoticism): Kenosis, emptying, the willing embrace of humility by God the Son in taking upon Himself our impoverished humanity in its weakness and mortality and fragility tells us something about God: God is the One who gives Himself away, who empties Himself, who "though being God by nature did not exploit His equality with God". God doesn't exploit, but gives Himself away.
So the Christian life too is supposed to be kenotic, "Have this same disposition/attitude/mindset that was in Christ Jesus" is how Paul begins his statement in Philippians 2. He did not exploit His glory, but came in weakness and humility, as the Servant of servants ("the Son of Man did not come to be served, but rather to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many" Mark 10:45).
"Take up your cross and follow Me" is Christ's command and charge to all who would be His disciples. To take up cross is to live in this world, to "live as Christ", to live a cruciform life as a servant of the Servant, a follower of the Master who gave His life away freely in love and humility.
As I see it and understand it, this is simply sanctification, the continued work of God by the power of the Spirit to conform us to Christ's image. To be conformed to Christ is not about glory, but the cross. The cross is what marks our lives as Christians, and paradoxically the cross becomes a joy to us. I think of Bonhoeffer here who said, "To endure the cross is not a tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ."
By joy I don't mean sunshine, rainbows, and happy feelings. But rather we learn to treasure the cross, as God continues the good work in us we are being changed; not in the sense of progressing toward glory; but in that we learn as Paul did, that Christ's "power is made evident in weakness". Our world is being turned upside-down. The kingdom of God is where the least is called greatest after all.
That is, the role of ethics, the role of virtue, the role of good works--all of these things--are in the cross-centered life which Christ says we are to come and have as His disciples. At no point in this am I becoming "the good", I am not rising upward in glory; but rather I am descending downward toward humility, lowliness, i.e. the cross. And yet it is precisely this downwardness, this lowliness, this weakness, this cross that God has said He Himself identifies with and as in the Person of Jesus Christ our Lord.
God does not say, "I am up here in glory, come and find Me", but "Here I am, in brokenness and suffering, I have found you." So that the life we have received from God as a gift through faith, continues to be that gift even as we learn to give ourselves away. Grace suffuses the Christian life toward love.
-CryptoLutheran