CHRISTIAN LIFE: FAITH AND MORALS
A friend on the journey of life asks me to describe for her the relationship between faith and morals in Christian faith. I try to answer in this column.
Theology is God talk, the knowledge of God, the science of God: the science of Christian revelation, “the science which seeks to understand and forever rearticulate the life-giving Good News of God in Christ Jesus” (Timothy E. O’Connell). Theology has spiritual, pastoral and even “political” dimensions and ought to be always a contextualized, lived and prayerful theology. Theology is orthodoxy and orthopraxis
Theology is one science: God is One. It takes up everything within God’s horizon. Theology speaks of God and the things that have relationship with God, either as principle or as end. Theology has no subjective or specific parts. It has, however, different integral parts – different treatises -, and is mainly divided, according to content, into dogmatic and moral theology, both parts of one theology: dogmatic theology has moral consequences, and moral theology, dogmatic premises. Dogmatic Theology guides people on the contemplation of the truth about God One and Triune and his Creation: it is orthodoxy. Moral Theology points to women and men how to do the truth in love: it is orthopraxis.
Christian faith is faith and morals. Indeed, faith is not a morality, but radically an experience of the paschal mystery, a personal encounter with the Crucified and Risen Lord in the community of faith. However, faith implies necessarily a morality, a singular way of being and acting. Once a person believes in Christ, she or he will inevitably face this moral question: “What should we do” (Acts 2:37), or “Who must I be and become.”
The human person is fundamentally a moral or ethical being, that is, he and she are radically free and responsible. People talk of moral, immoral and amoral people. A person is moral, we say, when he or she knows what is good and usually does it, and what is evil and ordinarily does not do it. We call immoral a person who knowing what he should do does not do it, or does the opposite. Finally, we call a person amoral when he does not have a moral sense, that is, he is blind to some moral values and principles. Pascal defines ethics o morals as the art of living well as human beings.
A person, a Christian is moral if he or she is good and does good actions. A morally good person has good, loving options, attitudes and actions, good loving thoughts, words and deeds (Cf. Veritatis Splendor, 110). Hence, a good moral life has nothing to do with the so-called moralism, which is a preferred critical target of some charismatics and other “spiritualists”, who only want to talk about gratuitousness, grace: traditional moral theology is moral and spiritual theology. Certainly, without God’s grace we can do nothing. Humans, however, have freedom and may say “yes” or “no” to God, that is, the human person may and is asked to cooperate (always with divine grace and love, of course) to attain salvation. Bonhoeffer spoke of “cheap grace” (God does everything) and “expensive grace” (God still does everything, but with the human person’s cooperation). St. Augustine put it well: “God who created thee without thee will not save thee without thee.” As Jesus told the young man - who wanted to attain salvation and asked him what he had to do -, “If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments” (Mt 19:17). On another occasion Jesus said: “Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Mt 7:24). St. John speaks to us: “Whoever says ‘I have come to know him,’ but does not obey his commandment, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist” (1 Jn 2:4).
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, moral theology studies the human person as the image of God. The human person is the image of God, and moral theology points out to him or her the way to be a good image of God, that is, a good creature and child of God, and a brother or sister of all others, and a creature in the universe, our common house. Moral Theology points out to all the way to follow Jesus Christ, the road to his disciples, who acknowledge the equal dignity of all human beings and their equal inalienable human rights. The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins its treatise of Christian Ethics or Moral Theology, entitled Life in Christ, with a marvelous text of St. Leo the Great: “Christian, acknowledge your dignity” (CCC, III, no. 1691).
The Angelic Doctor gives a second definition of Moral Theology: Moral Theology studies the movement of the rational creature towards God. This second definition stresses the fact that life is a movement towards personal, communitarian and ecological realization. It is becoming more what one is by the ascending journey to God by the path of love, and towards happiness, perfection, holiness, and to eternal life with God.
Theological ethics is the science of Christian praxis, “the science of what man ought to be reason of what he is” (A. G. Sertillanges). Indeed, Moral Theology is a science, a normative science: the science of what man ought to be (man is a project, a becoming), by reason of what s/he is (a creature and child of God, a sister/brother to all, and a creature of the universe). As it is usually said, the human person is reality (what he or she is) and possibility (what he or she can become). The task of Moral Theology, a practical science, is to guide men and women of good will and particularly Christians – starting with those who teach it - to become authentic human beings, that is, free and responsible, and good Christians, that is, true followers of Christ.
When classical theologians speak of morality in fundamental moral theology, they refer to an essential characteristic of the human acts as good or evil. In this case, morality is a quality of the human actions in relation to their norms (God, right reason and authentic conscience). Human acts are good if they are in conformity with the basic moral norms, and evil if not in conformity with these norms: radically, in conformity or nonconformity with natural law, or the law of being human, with human nature and God’s will. In Christian perspective, the perspective of faith, ethics – Christian ethics - is grounded on loving God, who first loved us (1 Jn 4:19), and neighbor (cf. Matt 22:37-39). Christian morality is the morality of the imitation and following of Christ, of communion with him in life and love, of ascending identification with him. Moral theology, morality is clearly grounded on spirituality, on God’s grace and love, and leads to deeper experience of the presence of God and loving union with the Blessed Trinity – always perfectible -, and ultimately to eternal life.
Christian morality goes beyond human ethics: “What makes it religious and Christian is our belief that the One to whom we are ultimately responding in and through all the relationships of our life is God, revealed in Jesus as the love we ultimately desire… In this sense, the moral life is like worship. It is a response to the experience of God, and so it is spiritual in its roots” (Richard Gula).
Like to the first Christian communities, to Christians today their faith in God asks them, above all, to witness Jesus in the world, to be “yeast” in our societies. Christian faith is theory and practice, dogmatic and moral theology, spiritual and ethical life, teaching and witnessing. The most necessary and urgent in the Church today are not the growing speculative discussions, neither the empty dialogues, nor the sterile confrontations between conservatives and progressives, but more personal and communitarian witnessing of Jesus: living prayerful, respectful, responsible, and compassionate lives. “Only authentic witnesses can credibly speak the saving word” (St. John Paul II). (FGB)
