An Introduction To Moral Theology, 2nd Edition. William May
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as the Fathers of Vatican Council II have reminded us, “it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of man truly becomes clear.… Christ the new Adam,” they continue, “in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling” (Gaudium et spes, no. 22).
In other words, through faith we know that we are not only persons made in God’s image and likeness but, by reason of our intimate union with Christ, God’s only-begotten Son made man, truly children of God, members of the divine family, called to life eternal with Father, Son, and Spirit. To put matters another way, through faith we know that, if we fully become the beings God wants us to be, we will be, as it were, other Christs, for the Risen Jesus is now the being we are meant to be. The Council Fathers expressed this idea in some memorable passages immediately following their affirmation that Christ “fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling.” I cite them here because I believe that they provide us with Christian faith’s answer to the questions “Who are we?” and “Who are we called to be?”
He [Christ], who is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), is himself the perfect man who has restored in the children of Adam that likeness to God which had been disfigured ever since the first sin. Human nature, by the very fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised up in us also to a dignity beyond compare. For, by his incarnation, he, the Son of God, has in a certain way united himself with each man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.
As an innocent lamb, he merited life for us by his blood which he freely shed. In him God reconciled us to himself and to one another, freeing us from the bondage of the devil and of sin, so that each of us could say with the apostle: the Son of God “loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20). By suffering for us he not only gave us an example so that we might follow in his footsteps, but he also opened up a way. If we follow this path, life and death are made holy and acquire a new meaning.
Conformed to the image of the Son who is the firstborn of many brothers, the Christian man receives the “first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom 8:23) by which he is able to fulfill the new law of love. By this Spirit, who is the “pledge of our inheritance” (Eph 1:14), the whole man is inwardly renewed, right up to the “redemption of the body” (Rom 8:23).… The Christian is certainly bound both by need and by duty to struggle with evil through many afflictions and to suffer death; but, as one who has been made a partner in the paschal mystery, and as one who has been configured to the death of Christ, he will go forward, strengthened by hope, to the resurrection.
All this holds true not for Christians only but for all men of good will in whose hearts grace is active invisibly. For since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery [Gaudium et spes, no. 22].
Thus, in light of the Christian faith we can say that we are beings who are not only made in the image and likeness of God, but that we are also called, in Christ, to be his very own children, members of the divine family. And in being called to be fully the beings we are meant to be, we are called to be other Christs, i.e., faithful children of the Father, whose only will is, like Jesus’, to do what is pleasing to the Father, and in this way share in the glory of the Risen Christ in a life of unending beauty in the communion of persons who are the Holy Trinity. And what must we do to be pleasing to the Father and to become fully what God wants us to be, i.e., other Christs? The short answer is that we must love as Christ has loved us and shape our choices and actions in accordance with his loving commands.
2. Theology and Moral Theology
I have just said that through faith we know who we are and who we are called to be if we are to become fully the beings we are meant to be, for through faith we know ourselves to be children of God, called to a life of eternal happiness in union with the Triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit revealed to us in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our faith, however, is not opposed to reason but is in harmony with it.1 The desire of Christians to understand their faith has given birth to theology. Literally, theology means “talk about God,” and in the sense in which this word is used by Catholic Christians it means talk about God based on the truths of Catholic faith, whose sources are Scripture and Tradition and which is mediated to us through the teaching of the magisterium of the Church.
It is customary today to divide theology into distinct areas of study, e.g., dogmatic or systematic theology, moral theology, ascetical and mystical theology or spiritual theology. Dogmatic or systematic theology2 is concerned with truths of “faith” in the sense of revealed truths about God himself and his work of creation and redemption, e.g., the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, etc.; moral theology deals with human action; ascetical and mystical theology or spiritual theology focuses on our spiritual life, etc. Divisions of this kind, however, are legitimately made only for didactic or pedagogic purposes, and they cannot take away the radical unity of theology, nor can they be allowed to do so. The truths of salvation — which are ordinarily taken up in so-called “dogmatic” or “systematic” theology — are absolutely central to understanding the Christian moral life. Christian morality is an integral part of the doctrine of salvation and cannot be separated from the whole of divine revelation. Moreover, the Christian moral life, if lived fully, is a life of holiness or sanctity; hence, the notion that “spiritual” theology, or the theology of the spiritual life, is separate from moral theology is quite false.3
3. The Function and Purpose of Moral Theology
Moral theology is a systematic reflection on the Christian moral life. As Grisez says, it seeks “to make clear how faith should shape Christian life, both the lives of individuals and the life of the Church.”4 It seeks to help us come to know, through the exercise of reason enlightened by faith, what we are to do if we are to be faithful children of God and become fully the beings we are meant to be, i.e., other Christs, called to eternal life in and with him. It is thus concerned with human actions. It is so because, as we will see more clearly in the next chapter, we make ourselves to be the persons we are in and through the acts we freely choose to do. Indeed, as St. Gregory of Nyssa says in a memorable passage cited by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis splendor:
All things subject to change and to becoming never remain constant, but continually pass from one state to another, for better or worse.… Now, human life is always subject to change; it needs to be born ever anew.… But here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is the case with bodily beings …; it is the result of free choice. Thus we are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by our decisions.5
It thus follows that moral theology is occupied in great measure with human conduct and with the principles and norms or moral truths meant to help us make good moral choices about what we are to do if we are to become fully other Christs, the beings God wants us to be as members of the divine family, within the communion of persons centered on the Blessed Trinity. Moral theology, in other words, is greatly concerned with human acts, which are like “words”6 that we speak and in and through which we freely give to ourselves our identity.
To put it another way: We become fully the beings we are meant to be — i.e., other Christs — in and through the actions we freely choose to do. Thus, moral theology is preeminently concerned with helping us come to know, through the use of reason enlightened by faith, the truths that will enable us to make true moral judgments and good moral choices; it is likewise concerned with those factors that help (e.g., God’s divine grace, virtues) or hinder us (e.g., sin, vices) to do so.
From this we can see that the ultimate purpose of moral theology is to be of service to the Christian faithful in their struggle, with the help of God’s never-failing grace, to become holy, to become saints, to become fully