Tolle Lege

Cultural and moral relativism dominate the moral beliefs of American, and in some ways global, culture, particularly the culture of the youth.  How often does one here such statements as “I wouldn’t do that, but it’s his decision and it’s not my place to judge” or “You shouldn’t impose your beliefs on other people.  Everyone should have the freedom to belief what they think is right” or “You shouldn’t be intolerant of other people’s beliefs.  Everyone has a right to believe what they want”?  Now sometimes these statements can be useful, insofar as tolerance can be a good thing and we must respect the integrity of other persons’ consciences; however, these statements easily slip into things like “There is no universal moral truth or capital “T” Truth (except for maybe science).  You have your opinion and I have mine.  Accept the fact that you don’t know the universal truth any more than I do.”

Now ironically, most people making these statements seem to be motivated by a desire to respect the “freedom” of other people, to protect their “rights,” and to ensure their right to their own “individuality.”  I say ironically because it is exactly this kind of cultural and moral relativism (i.e. a belief that there are no absolute values but that all depends upon cultural or personal beliefs about what is right and wrong) that, at its root, produces an absolute denial of human freedom and dignity.  Strangely, however, our culture, especially our younger generation, doesn’t seem to understand this at all.  Strangely, the only thing whose condemnation we can all get on board with (besides maybe some sexual crimes) is intolerance: nobody wants to judge anyone else’s behavior, unless they’re judging someone for being judgmental, for being intolerant.

“The truth will set you free.”  We, as a society, like this phrase.  And yet, we seem to have forgotten it when it comes to our cultural and moral relativism.  Blessed John Paul II writes, “Once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free.  Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery” (Fides et Ratio 90).  We, however, in our cultural and moral relativism deny absolute, universal moral truth.  And we do hold this relativism thinking that it will protect human rights, freedom, and individuality.  Nevertheless, this relativism, the relativism that dominates our culture of tolerance and “freedom,” at its root destroys what is at the heart of human dignity and freedom, the privilege of every human person to know the true, the good, and the beautiful.  We, instead, in our relativism deny the very possibility of there being a real, a true, a good, or a beautiful to know.  It should not come as a surprise that strands of modern philosophy have begun to seriously question the possibility of free will, that they have looked to use neuroscience research, by nature of the science metaphysically incomplete, to provide a reductionist account of human purpose, meaning, and will.  Nor should it come as a surprise that strands of modern philosophy, drawing on the similarly metaphysically incomplete evidence of evolutionary biology, have begun to question the uniqueness of being human and deny that there is any absolute dignity intrinsic to human personhood.  Truth is the foundation of human freedom and the heart of human dignity: when there is no truth to discover, freedom becomes unfreedom, dignity becomes pragmatic status, reality becomes illusion.Despite all this, we still all revile the kind of truthless society as described in Orwell’s 1984.  What exactly is it about Winston’s predicament that upsets us so much, that makes our very skin shiver in revulsion?  His life is a comfortable one, even a pleasurable one; his society provides for its citizens’ needs and wants and desires.  What is lacking, if not the truth?  Isn’t this why we sigh with relief when Neo chooses the blue pill in The Matrix?  Plato describes the same predicament with his allegory of the cave.  It really is an ancient thing, a thing written across our very being as human persons: we desire and crave truth, real purpose, real meaning.  Is it not only the truth which can free Winston?  which will allow Neo to truly live?  which lets Plato’s prisoner escape the shadows and his chains?

As modern young persons, we ought to consider much more carefully our commitment to cultural and moral relativism.  We hope to protect freedom and to champion individual dignity, and yet does not our relativism, our commitment to the single absolute of tolerance, the single absolute of a world without absolutes, destroy the very foundations of human freedom and dignity?  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  Knowledge, beauty, freedom, life cannot be had without truth.  Why then have we shut the doors to the very possibility of truth, of discovering an absolute purpose for human existence, the kind of purpose Christianity claims when it says that every single human person – living now, living in the past, living in the future – is made in the image and likeness of God and, as such, has been destined from the beginning to seek what is above, to seek God?

What does it mean for us to be called to seek and know the true, the good, and the beautiful?  St. Irenaeus’ answer was this: “The glory of God is man fully alive; and the life of man consists in beholding God.”  Christianity offers this in the person of Jesus: that we might behold God, that we might be adopted into the dynamism of the Triune family of the divine.

A few weeks ago, over a late night snack of waffles and hot chocolate, I had a brief conversation with a man who considered himself very spiritual. He based his spirituality off of a syncretic mix of religions, compiling his moral code and framework for understanding the world through the teachings of their various leaders. Among these, he held Jesus and the disciples in high regard. He said that he had a great respect for men who could maintain their beliefs in the face of great ridicule, persecution, and even threat of death. That some of these men did eventually die for their beliefs had taught him the importance of holding fast to his own convictions. In his words, Jesus thus served as “a great moral example.”

Shortly before Thanksgiving, I had a similar conversation with a different friend. I am a member of Christian Impact at Dartmouth College, and we were holding a large Thanksgiving dinner. I had encouraged this friend to attend, and, lured by the prospects of a free home-cooked meal, he had come. During the course of the dinner, he asked me, “What’s the purpose of Christian Impact—to spread Christian morality?”

This friend, like the first man I had talked with, saw Christianity as a means of moral instruction. While these two people both properly recognized Christianity’s moral aspect, they fell prey to the common misconception that Christianity is primarily concerned with teaching ethics, and they did not understand that Christianity lays greater emphasis on eternal salvation from sin.

In theological terms, Christians sometimes speak of Christianity’s emphasis on moral behavior in the terms of the “mortification of the flesh” (the process of renouncing a life of sin) or “sanctification” (the process of learning to live a pure, upright life). In the Old Testament, the Israelites abided by the Ten Commandments as well as rules regarding marriage, the treatment of the poor, the administration of justice, and much else.[i] In the New Testament, Jesus claims that he did not “come to abolish the Law or the Prophets…but to fulfill them,” and he commanded his followers to “love your neighbor as yourself” and to “do to others as you would have them do to you.”[ii] Likewise, the Apostle Peter writes that we must “be holy in all [we] do,” and the Apostle Paul writes that we must not live lives of “slavery to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness” but should live “in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”[iii]

Despite this, the New Testament writers saw Jesus as more than simply a teacher of morality. The Scriptures consistently teach that Jesus is the Son of God. In the Gospel of John, Jesus claims, “I and the Father are one” and, “the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”[iv] The Pharisees—the most learned religious leaders of the day—understood these words as claims of divinity and so sought to stone Jesus for blasphemy. Likewise, Paul recognized that Jesus was “in very nature God,” and the New Testament is full of verses equating Jesus with God the Father.[v] One of the names for Jesus, “Immanuel,” translates as “God with us.”[vi]

It is important that we understand that Jesus is God, because Jesus’ purpose on earth was to bring salvation to sinners, an action that only God can do. The Bible teaches that after the Fall, all people are inherently sinful and therefore deserve God’s wrath and condemnation.[vii] Jesus, because he was both fully human and fully divine, was able to live a perfect life. His death on the cross thus reconciled sinners to God, and his resurrection offers them the hope of eternal salvation. Romans 5:9-11 nicely summarizes this doctrine: “Since we have now been justified by his [Jesus’] blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

In salvation, God gives people a new nature in which they are able to begin to live the moral life that the Bible commands. No longer are people enslaved to their sinful nature and to a life of sin. Now they have a new nature and have the freedom to obey God’s commands, to mortify the flesh, and to begin the process of sanctification.[viii] This, however, only comes after salvation. A Christianity seen primarily as a means of moral education is no true Christianity but is an unjustified distortion of it. It disregards the claims of Jesus and his disciples that Jesus is more than a great example—that he is, in fact, God himself—and it disregards the central and essential teaching that Jesus’ primary purpose on earth was to bring salvation to sinners. Christ’s role as teacher cannot be separated from his role as Savior.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence, my own cognitive bias, or some sort of rotating societal zeitgeist, but every few months seems to bring a new set of criticisms against the Christian God that I end up hearing everywhere for the next several weeks.

The past month the two arguments I’ve found myself discussing most often are the problem of evil and what I’ll call the First World Problem. The problem of evil, for those unfamiliar with it, goes like this: the fact that there is evil in the world makes it impossible for there also to be an all-knowing, all-powerful, and good God, because he otherwise would have created the world without so much evil. The First World Problem seeks to explain the demographics of religion in the world, where we see those in less developed regions displaying more religious faith than those in wealthier areas, by claiming that religiosity of the developing world is due to their relative lack of education and scientific knowledge.

What’s interesting is that these two criticisms not only are answerable, but also their answers are very closely related.

To Christians, the problem of evil is a much different discussion than it is for others. What troubles people about the problem of evil is often not that “evil” exists on the part of an evildoer, but that innocent people are the recipients of that evil. To put it more specifically, many people are not troubled by hatred or vice in themselves, but are more bothered when an innocent person is on the receiving end of hatred or vice. And of course, the most troubling facts of all are the pain and hardship that result from things like natural disasters that don’t seem to arise out of the free will of an evil individual. Thus, for most people, the problem of evil is really the problem of innocent suffering.

But this ignores a crucial possibility of suffering, and of all evil: that things that are bad can be turned into something good. This is perhaps the most persistent and revolutionary theme in the Gospels—that suffering is regularly turned into goodness, into glory, into salvation by a God willing to take on its burden. There are certainly many historical examples of great love and charity arising out of suffering—the admirable actions of the Japanese people after last year’s tsunami is an example of this. We often see small-scale examples of how something bad can be turned into something good. I find my baby cousin’s constant giggling annoying, yet the annoyance is somehow endearing and as a result, her giggling is something that I’m actually quite thankful for. To take another example from philosopher Roderick Chisholm, we can imagine a painting with some ugly elements that, when we consider them, turn out to make the whole painting a much better work of art. (For me, Friedrich’s A Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog is such a work; its dark colors and severe landscape are unpleasant at first, but combine to make a truly profound piece of art.) Good things can arise out of bad ones. Charity can arise out of disaster, forgiveness out of sin, and love out of hatred. Given the reality of salvation, it’s not always clear that evil and suffering necessarily have the last word.[1]

We now have a new possibility. Is it possible that suffering might not always be the evil we think? Might suffering sometimes, somehow, be transformed into something else that is good? The great Georgetown Jesuit Fr. James V. Schall writes that we can have three attitudes toward evil and suffering and our experience with them. We can ignore what is evil and pretend that all is well; we can blame God, or society, or other people for the evil we see; or “we can seek to elevate our own disorder to some higher order in which what is wrong is rendered potentially salvific.”[2]

If God can remove suffering, then that act is quite possibly a good that extends beyond suffering itself. And if this is true, then the problem of evil is not what we thought it was. To bring it around to the First World Problem, it could be that those in the most dire circumstances are actually also the ones most open to God’s grace. Perhaps this is why we find such great faith amongst the least of God’s people: not because they lack education or enlightenment, but because they are in a position to be the most frequent receivers of his grace.

Finally, we arrive back where we started. The Problem of Evil is only a problem when evil is all that remains. When we have a salvific God, however, everything changes, and where there is the most evil we might very well end up with the most potential for good. Perhaps this is a better explanation of why we find Christianity so popular in the prisons, inner cities, and slums of the world. It is the only thing that is able to take an insurmountable Problem, and turn it into an inconceivable Opportunity.

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth – in a word, to know himself – so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (c.f. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).”1

Pope John Paul II thus begins his encyclical Fides et Ratio, an excellent exploration of the dual roles played by faith and reason in Man’s search for the truth, the truth about himself, about God, and about the world.  In particular, John Paul offers a fierce rebuke of much of modern philosophy for its neglecting of “the search for ultimate truth,”2  a desire and a journey towards knowing oneself and knowing God which defines, according to John Paul, mankind.  Indeed, he argues that modern philosophy has “forgotten that men and women are always called to direct their steps towards a truth which transcends them.”3   In other words, it has given up hope on seeking the highest things, the great metaphysical truths of being which tug on the human heart; “rather than make use of the human capacity to know the truth, modern philosophy has preferred to accentuate the ways in which this capacity is limited and conditioned.”4

How has this happened?  One important movement in this great shift in the aspirations of philosophy lies in the development of skepticism, a tendency to doubt traditional, common sense intuitions about the world and instead privilege detached, mechanistic, theoretically “objective”  inquiry.  Several important consequences follow from these modern assumptions about what constitutes true knowledge.  First, by defining knowledge as this kind of detached inquiry, modern philosophy immediately limits truth: its assumptions automatically rule out any kind of truth that is genuinely personal.  Hence, there has emerged in modern discourse a dichotomy between what is “objective” and what is “subjective,” a distinction that quickly invalidates “subjective” experience as fundamentally unreliable and thus untruthful.  Faith, a personal encounter with a personal God and his revelation, is thus similarly immediately defined as an inferior, less reliable kind of knowledge.  Second, these modern epistemological assumptions, assumptions about what constitutes valid modes of human knowing, in some ways depend upon or at least immediately entail a dualistic view of the human person: instead of understanding the human person to be a unity of body, spirit, and mind, modern philosophy entails (without much justification) a fundamental separation between mind and matter.  Knowledge becomes something entirely abstract, gained through detached, mechanistic reasoning; it becomes separated from our being, our existence, and our contact as living beings with a reality that surrounds us.

On the other hand, John Paul II, working with the Christian tradition, understands the human person to be an integrated composite of body and soul, opening up a way for a much broader, richer understanding of human knowledge and thus a much less confined notion of truth.  Instead of detached “objectivity,” the “fundamental elements of knowledge spring from the wonder awakened in them [e.g. humans] by the contemplation of creation: human beings are astonished to discover themselves as part of the world, in a relationship with others like them, all sharing a common destiny.  Here begins, then,” John Paul writes, “the journey which will lead them to discover ever new frontiers of knowledge.  Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.”5  Furthermore, just as the available sphere of reality, of truth, is widened by this view, human knowledge is given a new fullness, a new significance, a new depth: abstracted, rationalized knowledge, a kind of syllogistic understanding of reality, is not enough to satisfy the yearning of the human heart, that desire to know reality which John Paul thought of as a defining feature of humanity.  Instead, “Human perfection, then, consists not simply in acquiring an abstract knowledge of truth, but in a dynamic relationship of faithful self-giving with others.  It is in this faithful self-giving that a person finds a fullness of certainty and security.”6   Rather than immediately attempting to step outside of one’s own embodied existence because modern philosophy’s assumption that true knowledge can only be arrived at through detachment, John Paul II’s epistemology begins with our personal encounter with reality, with the wonder of discovering oneself to be a part of the world.  Thereupon knowledge becomes more fulfilling but also more radical, a kind of dangerous adventure: to know something is to have a relationship with it, for both the knower and the known belong to the same reality.

This then opens the way for an understanding of belief, of faith, that doesn’t immediately associate it with uncertainty or inferiority.  John Paul II writes of the relationship at the heart of belief, noting that “knowledge through belief, grounded as it is on trust between persons, is linked with truth: in the act of believing, men and women entrust themselves to the truth which the other declares to them.”7  Thus John Paul provides a definition of knowledge that is fundamentally relational, opening wide the possibility for an integration of reason and faith as parallel and sometimes intertwined ways of relating to the world, to other people, and to God.  In doing so, he draws out the underlying metaphysical foundations of Christianity: as Christianity is rooted the metaphysical claim of the Trinity, the mysterious relationship of three persons of the Godhead, knowledge of truth is rooted in the human person’s relationship with himself, with the world, and with God.  Just as the Christian God is not simply a stagnant, abstract absolute maximum but a dynamic, unfolding relationship of love amongst the persons of the Trinity, to know is not assent to linguistic propositions with one’s mind but to love, to live, to encounter reality as person in unity of body, mind, and soul.

1)Fides et Ratio

2)Fides et Ratio 5

3)Fides et Ratio 5

4)Fides et Ratio 5

5)Fides et Ratio 5

6)Fides et Ratio 5

7)Fides et Ratio 5

In Plato’s Euthyphro, the characters Socrates and Euthyphro discuss the relationship between piety and the gods. Socrates approaches Euthyphro, who claims to have knowledge of the nature of what is pious or, more broadly, of what is good. Euthyphro proposes that the pious or good is that which the gods love. As Socrates interrogates Euthyphro and examines his definition of the good, he forces Euthyphro into a philosophical corner in which he must choose between two undesirable alternatives, both of which appear to disprove the existence of the gods. Euthyphro’s Dilemma is often used as a defense of atheism. As we shall see, however, Christianity offers a simple solution.

Euthyphro’s Dilemma says that either the good is good because it is willed by God or the good is willed by God because it is good. Let us assume that the first position is true. If something were to be good because God wills it, then it would appear that all sense of good and bad, of right and wrong, and indeed of morality itself is arbitrary. God may have said that cold-blooded murder is bad, but he could also have said that cold-blooded murder is good. This concept of arbitrariness is unattractive to many. Indeed, its result is that we cannot affirm that God is good, as Christian theologians do. If the standard of good is arbitrary and changeable, then to say that God is good is to say that his nature can change. This contradicts the Christian belief that God is immutable.

Let us assume, then, that the second proposition is true—that the good is willed by God because it is good. If this were to be true, then the standard of good would exist independently of God, and God would be submissive to this other, higher authority. This, however, contradicts both our understanding of God as the creator and our understanding of him as the highest authority. If the standard of good is independent of God, he could not have created it, and if God is the highest authority, he cannot be submissive to another independent standard. Therefore, this second proposition must be false. Since both propositions are false, God cannot exist.

Bertrand Russell summarizes this discussion succinctly:

If it [goodness] is due to God’s fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not good independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.[i]

A Christian understanding of Euthyphro’s Dilemma, however, argues that it is not a dilemma because it presents a false dichotomy. According to Christianity, a third alternative exists, which says that goodness is a part of God’s nature. This position affirms that goodness is not arbitrary because it is subject to an objective, unchangeable standard. That standard, however, is not external to God, but is a part of his divine nature. That which God wills and declares as good is a part of his nature. The standard of good is not based on God’s command, but on his character.

To help us understand this concept, consider truth, another characteristic of God’s nature. The Bible says that God “cannot lie.” It is impossible for God to lie, for his nature does not allow it.[ii] It is on this basis that God reveals to us that lying is wrong—not because of a divine decision or a standard external to God but because God, acting according to the internal standard of his Good character, does not and cannot lie. In the same way, the standard of goodness lies in God’s nature. Whatever God commands is good because God’s nature is good. It is from those commands, then, that we can know what is good or bad. This understanding of the nature of goodness as an essential part of God’s character provides the Christian with a philosophically sound third proposition that avoids the problems presented by the two propositions in Euthyphro’s Dilemma.  For a more complete discussion of Euthyphro’s Dilemma, see Brendan Woods’s article in Apologia, Volume 5, Issue 1: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~apologia/ApologiaW11.pdf