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Good Samaritanism Versus Citizens' Welfare Rights. A Rejoinder to Alec Pemberton

Alec Pemberton's paper 'Rescuing the Good Samaritan: an exposition and a defence of the Samaritan principle in the welfare state' is a welcome attempt to 'rescue' the Good Samaritan and more generally to revive an interest in the ethical imperatives to welfare. It is overdue. While there have been many important criticisms of state welfare over the last 20 years, they have been criticisms of its efficiency or functional desirability on a more or less utilitarian basis. It is indeed time to examine the supposed ethical foundations of state welfare. Initial thoughts, following the paper's emphasis on Christian injunctions, might include that other revived interest, 'citizenship'. Gospel teaching on welfare is a curious mixture of the universal and the particularistic. The tendency of those who would tie Christianity to socialism is to emphasise the universalistic themes—which certainly exist. Every human is made in the image and after the likeness of God and is therefore of infinite value. The overall Gospel imperative is to preach to and baptise all people and this must involve care for all. The new dispensation overrides boundaries of Jew and Gentile. There is one universal church of 'brotherhood'. The Samaritan parable has its universal theme, of course, in the overriding of race and traditional ties when need beckons. So far so good. But the parable is not completely universalistic, or rather it is potentially universalistic but in an organic rather than a systematic sense. Its other grand themes are accident and proximity. The moral is to show mercy not to everyone but to anyone whom you happen to encounter, when you encounter them, when need beckons not when the helper chooses. It is wrong to stretch a parable into a theory. But, if it implies a universalism, it would seem to be that all in need will be cared for if each person cares for those immediately about him or her. The image is one of widening circles spontaneously rippling out to cover all. Much discussion can, to be sure, centre on what proximity means: it