Introduction to Moral Theology

Romanus Cessario

• Publisher: The Catholic University of America Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780813220376
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

The comprehensive introduction to Catholic moral theology by the leading theologian and author of The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics. In Introduction to Moral Theology, Father Romanus Cessario, O.P. presents and expounds on the basic and central elements of Catholic moral theology written in the light of Veritatis splendor. Since its publication in 2001, this first book in the Catholic Moral Thought series has been widely recognized as an authoritative resource on such topics as moral theology and the good of the human person created in God's image; natural law; principles of human action; determination of the moral good through objects, ends, and circumstances; and the virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Beatitudes. The Catholic Moral Thought series is designed to provide students with a comprehensive presentation of both the principles of Christian conduct and the specific teachings and precepts for fulfilling the requirements of the Christian life. Soundly based in the teaching of the Church, the volumes set out the basic principles of Catholic moral thought and the application of those principles within areas of ethical concern that are of paramount importance today.

CHAPTER ONE

The Starting Point for Christian Moral Theology

Introduction to Moral Theology proceeds on the view that the best introduction to a theological understanding of the moral life proclaimed in the name of Christ by the Catholic Church is one rooted in the moral realism developed, among others, by Saint Thomas Aquinas.¹ This text presents moral theology as integrally united with dogmatic and spiritual theology, as the systematically ordered study of the journey of a human person, made in the image and likeness of God, back to the Father. It is held that the moral realism identified with the Thomist tradition and found in the ethical writings of Pope John Paul II not only represents what is best in the Catholic moral tradition, but also provides the most promising way to overcome the confusions and some of the vacuity characteristic of much of Christian ethics today. In particular, the following pages point out emphatically the resemblances between the moral realism of Aquinas and the encyclical letter Veritatis splendor. Creation and eschatology inform the broad vision within which practitioners of moral realism situate their ethical investigations. In order properly to treat ethical issues, however, it is first necessary to provide a view of theology, of the human person, and of the human person's final end.

Sacra Doctrina and Moral Theology

In order better to serve the nearby papal administration, the Dominican authorities shortly before the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in 1261 sent Friar Thomas Aquinas to the Italian city of Orvieto, where he took up residence and teaching responsibilities in the local Dominican convent.² At that time, Pope Urban IV was especially concerned to restore full ecclesial union between the Roman See and the separated churches of the East.³ Because the development of common theological understandings between the Latins and the Greeks would further this objective, the study of oriental theology held a high place on the agenda of theologians in the service of the papal curia.⁴ But for many of these scholars, including Thomas Aquinas, this sort of work meant that they had to employ Latin translations of Greek philosophical and theological texts.⁵ While the efforts of the thirteenth-century popes failed to heal the schism which had begun formally in 1054 under the Constantinople Patriarch Michael Cerularius, the Latin Church nevertheless gained some advantage from the research and translations which Pope Urban IV had initiated and supported.

A Scheme: Exitus-Reditus

The intellectual development of Thomas Aquinas particularly benefitted from his exposure to the texts of classical Greek authors. In fact, as a result of the translations provided in all likelihood by his Dominican confrère William of Moerbeke, Aquinas for the first time came into immediate contact with early Greek religious and philosophical literature.⁶ There are reasons to suppose that Aquinas uncovered the Neoplatonist theme of the exitus-reditus while studying certain works of the Athenian syncretist Proclus (410–485).⁷ This construct, which envisions a movement composed of both downward “procession” and upward “return,” proves useful in at least three different areas of philosophical and theological inquiry. Exitus-reditus can be used, first, to account for the production and final end of all reality; second, to support a logic of affirmation and negation about the highest realities; third, to describe a process in the human person of spiritual purification and union with the divine.⁸ In each of these three areas of enquiry Aquinas significantly adapts the received exitus-reditus model to fit the specific requirements of authentic Christian theology.⁹

First, the exitus-reditus illuminates the doctrine of creation. As a theological realist, Aquinas of course recognizes the need to supply a corrective for the undifferentiated emanationism that this model could suggest as much as it postulates a going-out from God and a coming-back to God. Since he uses the model to illustrate a specifically Christian doctrine of creation, Aquinas situates the exitus-reditus theme within a causal scheme of explanation that acknowledges the finitude of creatures and safeguards the transcendence of God.¹⁰ Thus he preserves the fundamental Christian view about God's agency in the world which the early Roman theologian Hippolytus summarizes in the following way: “The divine will in moving all things is itself without motion.”¹¹ This distinction foreshadows the much later, and more philosophically sophisticated, appeal, at least among Thomists, to the diverse relationships between essence and existence which exist in God and the creature as a way of explaining the divine transcendence in theological discourse.¹²

Second, as regards theological language (a logic of affirmation and negation), Aquinas adapts the exitus-reditus model to take full account of the definitive character of the revelation made in Jesus Christ. Because the Christian faith bases itself on the revealed word of God, the Church implicitly trusts the capacity of human words adequately to communicate divine truth. The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) expressly states: “By this revelation the truth, both about God and about the salvation of humankind, inwardly dawns on us in Christ, who is in himself both the mediator and the fullness of revelation.”¹³ The historical fact of the Incarnation illustrates the ability of created reality to manifest or carry a divine meaning in the world. As a divine Person who comes forth from the Father, Christ substantiates and verifies the created words which truly express, without exhausting, the meaning of God's truth. The Church of Christ now possesses the authority and the obligation to safeguard these truths about doctrine and morals, even though human language remains unable to communicate fully the divine mysteries to the believer. This incommensurateness invites the believer neither to speculate idly about God nor to abandon any thought of him; rather, the darkness of faith urges one to yearn for a communion with God that surpasses the ordinary modes of human understanding. It forms part of the divine plan to grant these graces to Christ's members.

Third, since it supposes that human existence takes on a new meaning when interpreted as a journeying back to God, the exitus-reditus model bears immediately on issues in moral theology. Because the human person is set between God as both Origin and Goal, the moral theologian needs to point out the way that leads to God. Though congenial to the modern spirit of evolutionary development, the metaphor of a journey alone does not suffice to communicate fully what Aquinas understands by the moral life as a way back to God. An adequate presentation of Christian moral theology also requires that some account be given of what constitutes the proper steps along the way. Aquinas discovers the dramatic conflicts of human existence in prudential decision and free choice. He also insists that rendering an accurate account of what makes up the everyday good and complete human life ranks among the highest obligations of the moral theologian. Pope John Paul II takes up this theme in Veritatis splendor: “Moral theology is a reflection concerned with ‘morality,’ with the good and the evil of human acts and of the person who performs them…. It acknowledges that the origin and end of moral action are found in the One who ‘alone is good’ and who, by giving himself to man in Christ, offers him the happiness of divine life.”¹⁴

To sum up: Christian moral theology proposes specific views about the place that the created order holds in moral reasoning, about the nature of theological doctrine, and about the ultimate destiny that belongs to each human person. For these reasons, sound moral theology always points to Christ. The doctrine of the Incarnation stipulates that the individual human nature of the incarnate Logos remains the principal agent of divine action in the world. In the hypostatic union, Christ's human nature provides a real, living principle for his human activity. When he acts, Christ restores creation to the pattern of its divinely established constitution. When he teaches, Christ himself illustrates that human language can communicate divine truth. When he dies on the cross, Christ restores the human race to its supernatural destiny and provides for each human being the means to obtain it.

Christian theology is synonymous with Christian realism. As the sacrament of God's presence in the world, the Church came into being when the Word became flesh in the womb of the blessed Virgin Mary. As the Spotless Bride washed clean by the blood of Christ, the Church returns to God in the Lord's resurrection and ascension. If it would fulfill its charter to serve as an authentic instrument of God's truth about salvation, Christian ethical discourse must remain rooted in the Incarnation of the Word. This means that moral theologians are required, first, to recognize that doctrines properly formulated in propositions are capable of communicating authentic knowledge about the divine mysteries; secondly, to acknowledge that since human reason is able to discover theological sense in created realities, human nature is to be accorded its full standing in discussions about the harmonies between nature and grace; and thirdly, to point out the relationship between those charity-infused good actions performed here and now and the beatitude that both awaits in heaven and yet now satisfies those who love the members of Christ's Body and, in so doing, him (see Mt 25:40).

It happened that Aquinas's exposure to oriental theology took place during the same decade, the 1260s, when he began work on his comprehensive Summa theologiae. If one accepts the hypothesis that Aquinas gained an original insight from his reading of authors such as Proclus, M.-D. Chenu's supposition that the principal divisions of the Summa theologiae reflect an adaptation of the exitus-reditus theme to the distinctive requirements of revealed doctrine seems plausible.¹⁵ Father Chenu asserts that in the prologue to the body of the Summa theologiae, one uncovers the hermeneutical key both to the work's guiding objective as well as to its chief sections. There Aquinas describes his theological project as follows:

So because…the fundamental aim of divine teaching (sacra doctrina) is to make God known, not only as he is in himself, but as the beginning and end of all things and of reasoning creatures especially, we now intend to set forth this divine teaching by treating, first, of God, second, of the journey to God of reasoning creatures, third, of Christ, who, as man, remains our road to God.¹⁶

We learn from this outline that Aquinas places moral theology, his analysis “of the journey to God of reasoning creatures,” between an account of the Trinitarian God, who though infinitely perfect and happy in himself created humankind to share in his happiness, and an account of the redemptive mission of the incarnate Son, who, through the action of the Holy Spirit, calls every man and woman to participate in divine beatitude. His conception, it should be noted, affords no support to those who want to distinguish strongly between theocentric and Christocentric moral theology. In continuity with his teacher, Albert the Great, Aquinas offers an account of the moral life that both reflects and conforms to Christ's own prayer for his disciples: “And this is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (Jn 17:3).¹⁷

Integrality of Divine Teaching

Since the present volume deals with the general principles of moral theology, the following chapters mainly treat topics that fall under Aquinas's second heading in the text above, namely, the human person's journey back to God. It is important to recall, however, that Aquinas consciously elaborates the basic elements of his moral theology as an integral part of the entire “divine teaching.”¹⁸ The placement of moral theology within the sacra doctrina accomplishes more than giving a religious tone to what otherwise would be an unadorned, bare-boned moral discourse. Rather Aquinas's method aims to situate every question related to our achieving perfect happiness within a full theological context, with the result that only pedagogical considerations warrant distinguishing between moral and dogmatic theology. In his commentary on the Apostles' Creed, Aquinas puts succinctly the superintending article of faith that directs his elaboration of moral theology: “only God satisfies us.”¹⁹

So much does an explicitly evangelical purpose control Aquinas's method in the Summa theologiae, that one author contends that Aquinas's original purpose in composing this handbook “for beginners” developed out of his recognition of the need for a primer that would assist young Dominicans to prepare for confessional practice. And while there already existed in his day a number of vademecums and other confessional aids, none of these compositions, as far as is known, consciously located moral theology within the broader perspectives of the sacra doctrina.²⁰ In the Summa theologiae, Aquinas tells us that he will proceed “according to the order of learning,”²¹ but this experiment in teaching the sacra doctrina presupposes an order of being and intelligibility based on the reconciliation that God has achieved through Christ; “that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them” (2 Cor 5:19). The Second Vatican Council expresses a complementary truth when it affirms that “all have been created in the image of God who ‘made from one every nation of humankind to live on the whole face of the earth’ (Acts 17:26), and all have been called to one and the same end, God himself.”²² It is characteristic of Catholic theology, and a condition of the integrality of divine teaching, to welcome metaphysics as a friendly companion, and to shun theories that assume a dialectical opposition between the orders of creation and redemption.

Being and Truth of Sacra Doctrina

Aquinas's theological method is built on the foundational truth that the principles of the being and of the truth of anything are the same.²³ So before one approaches Aquinas's moral theology (which constitutes his effort to express the truth about human behavior), it is wise to consider the being and truth of two overarching areas of theological enquiry. The first area inquires about the nature of divine teaching itself, which we refer to as sacra doctrina, while the second area (which is considered below, in the second section [2] of this chapter) elaborates the biblical doctrine that God created the reasoning creature after his own image and likeness (Gn 1:27), which we refer to as the doctrine of the imago Dei.

As a sermo de Deo, a word about God, Christian theology embodies a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Starting Point for Christian Moral Theology
• 2. Moral Realism and the Natural Law
• 3. The Origin and Structure of Virtuous Behavior
• 4. The Form of a Good Moral Action
• 5. The Life of Christian Virtue and Freedom
• Appendix
• Select Bibliography
• Index