Abstract
Ethical leadership is strengthened when it observes and serves the appropriate purpose and end. Biblical theology unfolds the direction of God’s good creation and casts the horizon of activity that is truly meaningful. This aim helps to distinguish between leadership that seeks right and good ends themselves and leadership that seeks to supply the means to good ends in a good way. Both forms of leadership are ethical provided the means of achieving ends are not mistaken for being ends in themselves. Biblical theology, through eschatology, helps to maintain the proper distinction and arrangement for ethical leadership.
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Notes
- 1.
Ancient historian Josephus in his writings, Antiquities of the Jews, says the following of the Sadducees: that they deny fate (13.5.9) and that they influence the wealthy but not the wider population (13.10.6).
- 2.
I direct courageous and determined readers to C. Otto Scharmer’s (2009) massive text , Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges. Scharmer’s conviction is that the best leaders do not simply learn from the past, but from the future . There is a future which desires to emerge; this is our “highest future possibility” (5). Scharmer’s theory is grounded in extensive qualitative research, utilizing phenomenological study, interview dialogue , and collaborative action research. Through the process of research, Scharmer discovered a means of accessing the emerging future , which he calls “Theory U,” a process of downloading information, suspending judgment, seeing freshly, sensing the field’s nature, connecting with one’s self and work , then crystallizing the emerging vision, creating its initial prototype, and then performing the vision to achieve its results (2009, 45). This process then repeats itself as the emerging future continues to become clearer and intersects with the leader. The key aspect of the U is the bottom portion, where there is an intersection of the present moment and the emerging future called “presencing.” Presencing means to “connect with the Source of the highest future possibility and to bring it into the now” (2009, 163). Readers will pick up Scharmer’s spiritual, though not Christian, language, helping to affirm that leaders have eschatologies—even if they are not rooted in a confession of faith .
- 3.
The phrase “when Jesus returns” is an eschatological claim that often includes a bodily, visible return of Jesus which signals the end of the world as we know it, an ushering in of God ’s final kingdom.
- 4.
O’Donovan (2014) writes, “The future , because it is indeterminate, is a beckoning space into which our imagination quite naturally expands. There are a thousand futures which imagination can conjure up, and though they can sometimes be alarming, they can also be delightful to play with” (146).
- 5.
I am intentionally using the language of Ellen Bradshaw Aitken (2009). She writes, “Inherent in the word ‘leadership ’ is the metaphor of travel or intentional and directed movement. We may then be attentive to those aspects of gathering and cultivating a community that are directed toward what is not yet, of ‘leading’ a community toward a yet unrealized horizon. In all of the texts of the New Testament, an eschatological horizon is apparent, although in many different ways and variously held in tension with concern for the present. Such interest in ‘what is about to be’ as the horizon of faithful living underscores our attention to the future as a dimension of leadership ” (34).
- 6.
While the book is a classic and brilliant, Senge’s (2006) The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization comes close to saying this very thing: “In building a learning organization there is no ultimate destination or end state, only a lifelong journey” (xviii). It should be noted that the line above is in the introduction to the revised edition. I take Senge to go against his claim just a few pages later when he writes, “If any one idea about leadership has inspired organizations for thousands of years, it’s the capacity to hold a shared picture of the future we seek to create ” (9). If the picture of the future can be created, then it has a kind of completion—a kind of destination to it.
- 7.
In what follows, it should be clear that I am not unfolding a comprehensive Christian eschatology . Instead, I am developing a theology for ethical leadership from the foundations of Christian eschatology . Rather than laying a foundation on which I will build an entire eschatological house, I am trying to develop secure footing and then spring in the direction of leadership .
- 8.
Oliver O’Donovan (1994) describes the foundation of ethical reflection that the resurrection affords. The resurrection of Jesus , as it opens the way for the resurrection of humanity, is the initial act of God in the new reality of the redemption of Christ. Because of the incarnation of Jesus , the resurrection of this same fully human Jesus is the redemption of humanity. The resurrection of the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (affirmed by the incarnation) is the drawing of humanity into the life of God , overcoming death . As the resurrection is the conquest of death , and thereby draws humanity into its reality , it remakes the human race into the image of the risen Christ. This is the objective reality of Christ. However, the ethical reflector is not encompassed totally in this reality in the present and so finds their own context as separate from the objective reality in Christ. O’Donovan calls these subjective realities. O’Donovan’s argument, however, is that the totality of the redemption of the world in the action of God in Christ is so overarching that all subjective realities are ultimately drawn into the objective reality of Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit in the eschaton. Indeed, along with Werpehowski (2007), so does O’Donovan (1994) affirm that there is ultimately one reality . As the ethical reflector engages the objective reality of Christ established in the resurrection from within their own subjective realities, there is proper moral discernment of the given situation and a concrete expression is provided given the location of the reflector.
Because the action is grounded in the reality of the resurrected Christ, we can consider it an authorized act. To the extent that the moral action is in accordance with the objective reality of Christ, so is it an authorized act because the objective reality is the reality of God (O’Donovan 1994). One can see, then, the necessity of the priority of theological reflection as it is the resurrection itself that creates this new reality , which forms the authorizing base and ground of moral reflection for right action. Without theological reflection one is left without a base for ethical reflection and, subsequently, for ethical reflection on leadership .
- 9.
The arguments for and against bodily resurrection are important. N.T. Wright and Marcus Borg (2000) spell out versions of bodily and non-bodily resurrection in The Meaning of Jesus : Two Visions. Craffert (2008) argues that we can answer whether or not Jesus rose from the dead in bodily form by answering “Yes” and “No.” The answer, he argues, depends on one’s culturally sensitive viewpoint. The experience of the resurrected Jesus was not objectively real but it was culturally real. Craffert argues that the belief and cultural system created a neurologically real seeing of Jesus for those who believed. The experience, for Craffert, is grounded as an alternate state of consciousness event: real for some; not real, in a different way, for others. The split experiences do not reflect a bifurcated answer to the question, “Did Jesus rise from the dead?” Instead, they reveal two realities. So, Yes! Jesus was raised from the dead bodily in a cultural reality . But, No, Jesus was not raised bodily in the objective reality of time and space. The meaningfulness of Jesus ’ resurrection is not to be found as a miraculous event, but in the experience of “otherness and the seriousness of human expressions of meaning” (151). Here Craffert offers a not-so-subtle jab at orthodox scholarship: “While miraculous events satisfy the appetite of orthodox scholarship, a culture -sensitive approach is satisfied by dialogue and understanding” (151). Of course, Craffert’s readers might wonder if Craffert’s own critical work is grounded in his own cultural reality , as opposed to the objective reality from which he describes all cultures so as to have something meaningful and contributing to say.
Against Craffert (2008), the traditional framing of the debate is most appropriate. That is, there are two approaches to the resurrection : Either Jesus did or did not rise bodily from the dead. Bodies are objective realities in all cultures; they are real. If there is not a bodily resurrection , then there is not an objective resurrection . If there is another type of resurrection , say, a spiritual resurrection , then there might be considered a subjective experience of Jesus , but not an objective resurrection . These are the lines of argument and debate must take place within them.
- 10.
Earlier we used the language of horizon to describe the future . Ramachandra (2008) also uses the language of horizon and combines it with this affirmation of humility: “The eschatological horizon should also keep Christians from presumption: we do not yet know which particular aspects of any cultural or religious tradition, including our own, will contribute to the heavenly polis and which will be judged” (147).
- 11.
Britton (2009) writes, “Theologically based leadership is fundamentally a form of questioning, derived from the pattern of asking questions that is at the heart of the divine-human interaction” (95). Our continued sensing and feeling our way into the future of God is marked by asking questions not just of the future , but of God . Eschatology invites our questions and our questions are ones that seek answers, but we remain humble in our answers, even while leading with conviction in directions formed by answers that have resonated with us.
- 12.
While he was speaking of St. Augustine’s pattern of loving, O’Donovan’s (2014) words might pertain to our whole consideration of ethics from the future : “Though the pattern invites elaboration, we are not to forget that such thinking is exploratory, and that beyond that elemental framework we have no privilege of holding this or that scientific or metaphysical construction of the world to be irreplaceable” (112). That resurrection is a defensible event in the past does not mean that it has become common in the present. As it is unique in the past but points to the future, resurrection reminds us that our firmly footed spring remains a leap of faith in the future that, from our perspective, is not yet.
- 13.
O’Donovan (2013) has a lengthy and helpful discussion of the order of this triad, which is more famously faith , hope , and love but more commonly faith , love , and hope (97–103). The order and coherence does matter for purposes of ethical thinking and leadership , which I hope will be evident in what follows in the main text .
- 14.
O’Donovan (2014) writes, “The Gospel offers a central and normative focus of joy, the resurrection of Christ, which becomes a torch to illuminate the goods of the world, a vantage point from which we can explore, discover, and appreciate all other objects of joy. And when false imaginations of the world are overcome from this vantage point, the world that God made is made new for us, and offers itself to new adventures of love and knowledge” (112).
- 15.
Jürgen Moltmann (1993), writes that Christian faith “strains after the future ” (19).
- 16.
“In the resurrection of the crucified, God has spoken a mighty and irrevocable yes to Jesus and in him to all the world, altering the human situation once and for all” (Migliore 2014, 200).
- 17.
O’Donovan (2014) writes, “For Ethics the important thing is that a coherent future is, implicitly if not explicitly, essential to coherent action. We need a future to which the future of our action is open, a future that will not simply swallow the action up as if it had never been” (150).
- 18.
The view that God has brought Jesus into God ’s life is included in the Christian teaching of the ascension, which includes Jesus ’ enthronement over all of creation and also Jesus ’ hiddenness and safety within God .
- 19.
Migliore (2014) uses these words to describe the community that would follow Jesus (257).
- 20.
The order of loves is an important discussion in Christian history. Augustine’s order , which influences me, of love God , neighbor, self, and world, is a fine example of appropriate orders of love . See O’Donovan (2013) for further consideration of Augustine and the order of loves (93). There becomes further delineation of order of neighbor, as well.
- 21.
O’Donovan (2014) writes, “Cooperation itself is a goal, which explains how we find satisfaction in cooperating even with those whose immediate goals are different from our own. Individual freedom shrinks if it lacks the capacity to imagine itself as part of a wider common agency. It must look for the Kingdom of God ” (60).
- 22.
The next three paragraphs are developed from a blog I wrote and previously published here (Perry 2015).
- 23.
O’Donovan (2017) writes, “Love is not ‘self-forgetfulness,’ as was cried up by the moralists of a century ago, for self-recollection is indispensable to agency, and so to self-restraint, too. But together with our agency we may hold in view the coagency of those who live and act alongside us, and as we learn to recognize the role our acts may have in cooperating with theirs, we find our occasions of action situated within the wider scope of a common action. To act that another may act well: that is to seek an end which carries the assurance of God ’s Kingdom within it” (5).
- 24.
In the 1990 edition of The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge has a fascinating line on love : love is committing oneself to “another’s completion, to another being all that she or he can and wants to be” (285, italics mine). Yet I simply cannot find this line in the 2006 edition. If a keen-eyed reader has found it, I would be delighted to hear from you. I am trying to use something close to Senge’s language and concept of love , but without getting rid of the community . Community is a gift of God before it is an agreement of humans. Humans that agree to join up to help one another achieve their own desires as individuals are not strictly in a community . Community presupposes something beyond the convenience of others; a purpose for the community that comes from without, not strictly from within.
- 25.
Migliore’s (2014) reflection on sin easily translates into dynamics of leadership : “sin…takes the form of domination and servility, self-exaltation and self-destruction” (156).
- 26.
Moltmann (1993) says that creative action springs from hope (35).
- 27.
Remember that this discussion of hope is in the context of eschatology , specifically a resurrection eschatology . Moltmann writes, “Theological concepts do not give a fixed form to reality , but they are expanded by hope and anticipate future being. They do not limp after reality and gaze on it…but they illuminate reality by displaying its future . Their knowledge is grounded not in the will to dominate, but in love to the future of things” (36).
- 28.
Mendonca and Kanungo (2007) argue extensively for a kind of altruism in ethical leadership (see especially Chapter 4). Ciulla (2005) points out various weaknesses of altruism, including how it may lead to harm, not lead to a greater amount of happiness, and could be construed to cause violence. Mendonca and Kanungo’s discussion avoids simplistic uses of altruism, where the concern for the other’s well-being is always in place. Mendonca draw a distinction between what they call mutual altruism where the benefit for the other (altruism) is combined with helping the self (mutual altruism) or at cost to the self (moral altruism) (24). An altruism that seeks the benefit of the other may still be an altruism that comes at benefit to me or at less cost. For example, suppose my wife wants a sweater. The same sweater is available at Good Clothing Store for $50 and it is on sale at Better Clothing Store for $30. Is my action more altruistic if I have a greater cost? Suppose my wife’s happiness at receiving the sweater is increased by my saving of $20 because she takes joy in a bargain. Would my action be more altruistic with the greater cost even if it brought about less benefit to my wife? Or, perhaps I find Best Clothing Store, which matches competitor’s pricing and has a buy one sweater, get another sweater free sale. So, I purchase myself a sweater for $30 and get the same $30 sweater for my wife. In this case, her gift had no cost to me, yet might bring her even more happiness because it is the best deal of all. Likewise for hope : we can pursue situations that maximize the benefit for others without undo cost to ourselves without in any way limiting the benefit others would experience if our hope comes to be.
- 29.
So, O’Donovan (2017) concludes his ethics as theology series with love . He writes, “An Ethics concluded in hope would be apophatic, gesturing towards a goal of which it could not speak” (3).
- 30.
The dating of Polycarp’s death is disputed, with Eusebius differing from other ancient sources.
- 31.
“The church anticipates and serves the coming reign of God but does not fully realize it” (Migliore 2014, 263).
- 32.
“[I]n the struggle for justice , equality, and human rights, Christians will always insist on ‘more’—on a different, greater future than what is ever achievable by human effort and ingenuity, a hope beyond hope . Utopian hope finds in humanity itself the resources and capacities to remove all suffering , established universal justice , and complete history. A Christian theology of hope , by contrast, knows that the fulfillment we seek is an incalculable gift of God ” (Migliore 2014, 359).
- 33.
I am leaning on Rutledge (2015) here: “The words ‘eschatology ’ and ‘apocalyptic ,’ though future -oriented, are not interchangeable. The key apocalyptic idea…is the sovereign intervention of God , with a corresponding displacement of the capacity of human beings to bring that intervention about” (222).
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Perry, A. (2018). Climax: Eschatology and the Aim of Leadership. In: Biblical Theology for Ethical Leadership. Christian Faith Perspectives in Leadership and Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75043-9_7
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