Sources of Christian Morality
The ultimate source of Christian Morality is God who is absolutely the last end of every human person. The last end of man/woman is God. Man/woman should make God as his/her object in life. This requires that all his/her action must be subordinated to that object. In it all his/her desire must rest. For all things in the world except God are contingents or unnecessary but they exist only because God gives them being. Hence God has the perfect dominion over all things and over everything in all creatures. He has therefore all the right to determine what is good and to tend or direct all that is good to Himself as the last end and the source of all good (summum bonum). Can human being be good without God? Absolutely we can be good without believing in God. But if there is no God, what basis remains for objective good or bad, right or wrong? If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Without some objective reference point, we have no way of saying that something is really up or down. God’s nature provides an objective reference point for moral values – it is the standard against which all actions and decisions are measured.
If there is no God, there is no objective reference point. All we are left with is one person’s viewpoint – which is no more valid than anyone else’s viewpoint. This kind of morality is subjective, not objective. It is like a preference for strawberry ice cream – the preference is in the subject, not the object. So it does not apply to other people. In the same way, subjective morality applies only to the subject; it is not valid or binding for anyone else. So, in a world without God, there can be “… no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[1] God has expressed his moral nature to us as commands. These provide the basis for moral duties. For example, in Luke 10: 27, God’s essential attribute of love is expressed in his command to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This command provides a foundation upon which we can affirm the objective goodness of generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality. And we can condemn as objectively evil greed, abuse, and discrimination. Is something good just because God wills it, or does God will something because it is good? The answer is: neither one. Rather, God wills something because He is good. God is the standard of moral values just as a live musical performance is the standard for a high-fidelity recording. The more a recording sounds like the original, the better it is. Likewise, the more closely a moral action conforms to God’s nature, the better it is. But if atheism is true, there is no ultimate standard so there can be no moral obligations or duties. Who or what lays such duties upon us? No one. We should remember that for the atheist, humans are just accidents of nature – highly evolved animals. But animals have no moral obligations to one another. When a cat kills a mouse, it has not done anything morally wrong. If God does not exist, then we should view human behavior in the same way. No action should be considered morally right or wrong. But the problem is – good and bad, right and wrong do exist! Just as our sense experience convinces us that the physical world is objectively real, our moral experience convinces us that moral values are objectively real. Every time we say, “Hey, that’s not fair! That’s wrong! That’s an injustice!” we affirm our belief in the existence of objective morals. We are well aware that child abuse, racial discrimination, and terrorism are wrong . . . for everybody . . . always. Is this just a personal preference or opinion? No. “The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says 2+2=5.”[2] All this would amount to a moral argument for the existence of God: 1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist; 2. But objective moral values and duties do exist. 3. Therefore, God exists. The existence of objective morality points us directly to the existence of God. Jesus Christ is the revelation par excellence of God who is the objective source of morality. He Himself attested to this when the rich young man asked Him in the gospel of Matthew, “Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life? And He said to him: “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good”.[3] In the versions of the Evangelists Mark and Luke the question is phrased in this way: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone”.[4] The question of the rich young man, according to Saint Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, is “ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man’s life”.[5] The Lord Jesus and the Pope are reminding us that in answering the question about morality in our contemporary time we need to turn towards God, the fullness of goodness and source of man’s happiness. The starting point of Christian morality is Jesus Christ – his very person and teachings. Christian morality flows from Him. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” How seriously we take his message depends much on what we think of him. Certainly, the more we understand the person of Jesus Christ and the closer we get to him, the more we will be able to understand His teaching. His message was real. By dying on the cross, He put into action the message He had spent for three years in preaching. The moral teaching of Jesus revolves around the concept of love. For Jesus, love must incarnate in concrete human deeds like pardoning, lending money without expecting repayment, showing compassion and refraining from judging and condemning others.[6] We find the moral teaching of Jesus best summarized in Matthew’s Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon is addressed to those who wish to aspire to follow Jesus; it captures the joyfulness of the person who makes a basic decision for Christ. Our hunger and thirst will be satisfied and quenched through Jesus. So Jesus concludes his beatitudes with this joyful note: “Be glad and rejoice …”[7] One who accepts Jesus and his moral teaching has every right to rejoice for having found the truth. A common Catholic interpretation of the Sermon current among moral theologians is that the teachings in the Sermon are “directional norms,” norms which point to the kind of life we Christians must live if we wish to be identified with Jesus.[8] He is the concrete categorical imperative, in the sense that he is not only a formal and universal norm of Christian moral life, which can be applied to everyone, but also a concrete and personal norm. We know about the teaching and person of Jesus Christ from the Sacred Scriptures. The Scriptures should be the ultimate moral norm for people especially the Christians. Christian morality is founded on the Sacred Scripture most importantly on the Ten Commandments, the beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount. God gave the Ten Commandments to his people as a clear code of conduct, which would bring prosperity if obeyed and suffering if disobeyed. As Christians we are also bound to obey the Ten Commandments as amplified in the Beatitudes and perfected by the attitude of Christ, who came not to abolish the Law but to perfect it. The law must be interpreted in light of his own person. Thus, seen in the light of the paschal mystery and “remembered” in the Spirit,[9] these words constitute the ultimate norm for the moral conduct of believers.[10] Because the Beatitudes perfect the moral law, their practice brings about a profound union with Christ and the ability to reflect his light and joy. The Beatitudes are a portrait of Christ and also of the follower who conforms himself or herself to him. It is a picture of detachment, pity for sinners, humility, idealism and magnanimity, mercy, purity of heart, peace, and joy in suffering. Aside from the Scriptures, we have also the law and conscience[11] as sources of Christian morality. According to St. Paul, even the Gentiles find the requirements of morality, which conscience discerns, written in their hearts. Although Gentiles do not have the law divinely revealed to the Jews, they naturally do have this given standard of conduct.[12] The Church calls these naturally known principles “natural law.” They are natural in the sense that they are not humanly enacted but are objective principles which originate in human nature.[13] The Catholic teaching on natural law refers much to the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.[14] Vatican II continues to commend him as a guide for theologians.[15] It is therefore legitimate to examine his treatment of natural law, in order to find out how the Church views this subject. St. Thomas begins from what he calls the “eternal law”.[16] This simply is God’s plan, according to which he carries out his whole work of creating and redeeming. In current English, “law” refers mainly to rules and commands of people in authority; God’s plan of action is not a law in this sense.[17] But Thomas thinks of law primarily as a reasonable plan of action.[18] Since God knows well what he is doing, he must be acting according to a law. And since no one forms God’s plan of action for him, the law of his creative and redemptive work must be his own wisdom, by which he directs everything to the fulfillment he has in mind.[19] Since eternal law embraces the whole of creation, any other law – any other reasonable plan of action – must somehow derive from it.[20] People can plan their lives reasonably only because, in one way or another, they share in the universal plan perfectly present in God’s eternal law.[21] If they try to follow a plan not somehow derived from eternal law, their lives will be unrealistic, as would be the behavior of workers on a large project who departed from the project’s master plan in order to follow some other plan. According to Thomas, people are naturally disposed to understand some basic practical principles. He calls these the “primary principles of natural law.” Since everyone knows them naturally, no one can make a mistake about them. They are the law written in one’s heart of which St. Paul speaks – the law whose voice is conscience, according to Vatican II. Interpreting the text, he had of Psalm 4 (“who will show us any good? Lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us, O Lord”), Thomas says natural law is a “light of reason which is in us, inasmuch as it can show us goods and direct our will, because it is the light of God’s countenance – that is, a light which derives from his countenance.”[22] Vatican II teaches that human persons find in their conscience a law they do not impose on themselves which demands their obedience: “For man has in his heart a law written by God.” This law not only calls the person to do good and avoid evil, but it also when necessary speaks “to his heart more specifically: do this, shun that.”[23] The Council makes its own the explanation of St. Thomas, that this natural law is the human participation in the eternal law: “… the highest norm of human life is the divine law – eternal, objective, and universal - whereby God orders, directs, and governs the whole world and the ways of the human community according to the plan of his wisdom and love. God makes man a sharer in this his law, so that, by divine providence’s sweet disposing, man can recognize more and more the unchanging truth.”[24] The “unchanging truth” refers to the eternal law itself, as is clear from one of the texts of St. Thomas to which Vatican II refers: “The eternal law is unchanging truth … and everyone somehow learns the truth, at least the general principles of the natural law, even though in other matters some people share more and some less in the knowledge of the truth.”[25] The Council makes it clear that this unchanging truth serves as the principle for judgments of conscience: On his part, man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of conscience. In all his activity a man is bound to follow his conscience faithfully, in order that he may come to God, for whom he was created.”[26] Consciences must be free of any coercive imposition by public authority; in their liberty they are supported by the Church’s teaching: “The Church is, by the will of Christ, the teacher of the truth. It is her duty to give utterance to, and authoritatively to teach, that Truth which is Christ himself, and also to declare and conform by her authority those principles of the moral order which have their origin in human nature itself.”[27] For further Reading, please read the following: 1. Catechism for Filipino Catholics nos. 796-829 (Christ, moral norm; law in scripture; law in the Church) 2. Catechism for Filipino Catholics nos. 701-711 (Conscience) [1] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), p. 133. [2] Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982), p. 275 [3] Mt. 19:16-21 [4] Mk. 10:18; Lk. 18:19 [5] Veritatis Splendor, no. 7 [6] Lk. 6: 27-38 [7] Mt. 5:12 [8] Finley & Pennock, Christian Morality and You, Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1976, page 59 [9] Jn. 14:26 [10] 1 Cor. 7:10-25 [11] http://www.twotlj.org/G-1-7-A.html [12] Rom. 2:14-16 [13] see GS 16; DH 14; Pacem in Terris no. 55 [14] see Dignitatis Humanae 3, note 3 [15] see Optatam Totius, 16 [16] see St. Thomas, 1-2, q. 91, a. 1; q. 93, a. 1 [17] St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1-2, q. 96, a. 4, makes it clear that much we call “law” is not law at all for him; he considers rules and commands laws only if they conform to morality, and so to God’s law [18] see St. Thomas 1-2, q. 90, aa. 1.3 [19] see St. Thomas 1, q. 21, a. 1; q. 22, a. 1 [20] St. Thomas 1-2, q. 19, a. 4 [21] ST 1-2, q. 91, a.2 [22] ST. 1-2, Q. 19, A. 4 [23] Gaudium et Spes, 16 [24] Dignitatis Humane, 3 [25] S.T 1-2, q. 93, a. 2; Pacem in Terris no. 55 [26] Dignitatis Humanae, 3 [27] Ibid., 14 |
|