Trueblood, E. (1961, 1946). Foundations for reconstruction: How to build an enduring moral order; new interpretations of old commandments. Word.

OVERVIEW

Trueblood’s book gives rise to the following questions:

• To be strong must a society have a public or common morality?
• Can American church and state share a common morality?
• Has the U.S. been a strong society because of the legacy of the Judeo-Christian commandments?
• Do the Ten Commandments provide a basis for public morality in a secular, pluralistic society?
• Can the morality of the Ten Commandments be regained in our culture?

Elton Trueblood’s book does not answer all of these questions. But it does provide a foundation or first step for such discussion. His assumption is that there is moral decline in our society. His thesis is "that the recovery of the moral law, as represented in the Hebrew Decalogue, is one of the ways in which...an antidote to potential decline can be found..." (p. 6)

As the author assessed the social and moral state of America after World War II, he realized that "the ancient Commandments could be stated affirmatively and that they ought to be so stated." Their original negative expression was a vivid reminder of their importance and our negligence.

The author focused on the issue of trustworthiness as he contemplated the positive essence of the Decalogue. In a word that seems as appropriate for 1988 as 1946, "the reconstruction of our world is not primarily a problem in engineering and not primarily a problem in politics, important as they both are, but...to recover the sense of a moral order." (p. 100)

Talk of a moral order in society may sound "pious and conventional" until we consider the necessity of trust. "All the elaborate plans which we make about the control of the atomic bomb are bound to fail of their purpose unless those who agree to the controls are personally trustworthy." (p. 100)

Trueblood seems to predict that secular society will lose a sense of reverence for persons as it allows judgment by personal fulfillment. Relativistic and individualistic standards cannot produce reliable standards for public morality. The lack of a moral imperative for trustworthiness is "the Achilles’ heel of a merely secular society." (p. 100)

But if reverence for persons is seen as the essence of human morality, "truthtelling is of paramount importance...not because of loyalty to the things about which we tell, but because of the persons to whom we tell...the most practical form which the categorical imperative takes is this: thou shalt be trustworthy." (p. 99)

IMPLICATIONS

1. Do we need a public morality? Are we in danger of being a society in which everyone believes and does only what is right in his or her own eyes?
2. How do sexual activity and drug consumption wreak havoc on society as a whole?
3. Does a public morality need a transcendent or traditional basis?
4. Upon what kind of basis or what kind of standards can a pluralistic society build its ethics and everyday reliability?