An Introduction To Moral Theology, 2nd Edition. William May
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way of life, their fulfillment is not a condition for entering the covenant with God but rather a demand arising from the relationship with God freely accepted by the people. As Germain Grisez points out, “God provides a law so that his people can cooperate freely in their valued personal relationship with him. Law is not a burden but a blessing and a real necessity for developing an orderly life in common, especially for people recently freed from slavery and used to arbitrary treatment.”17 Continuing, Grisez makes a most important observation, central to understanding what the moral life, as understood in Scripture, is like. He writes:
The reason why the requirements of life within the covenant are not impositions is that they follow from what God’s people are. Humankind is made in God’s image and shares in responsibility for creation (see Gn 1.26-29). Even after sin, the children of Man share in God’s glory and enjoy an almost godlike status (see Ps 8.5-10). Under the covenant, the challenge of being like God persists and is heightened for his people: “You shall be holy; for I, the Lord your God am holy” (Lv 19.2). Created in God’s image and recalled from sin to his friendship, human persons are expected to be as pure and holy in their lives as God is in his. God’s people are expected to follow him.18
Yes, God’s people are to be “holy.” The God of Israel, utterly unlike the “no-gods” of their pagan neighbors, is a holy God, and he wills that his people be, like him, holy. John G. Gammie has provided a comprehensive presentation of the holiness theme in his book Holiness in Israel, a volume in the “Overtures to Biblical Theology” series.19 “Holiness in Israel,” Gammie says, “was not first and foremost something for human beings to achieve, but rather that characteristic of ineffability possessed only by God, the Lord of Hosts, the Holy One of Israel.” But this all-holy God summoned the people Israel to be holy, and this vocation was a call to aspire to the justice and compassion of Yahweh himself so that his glory could be made manifest. This noble mission given to the people obliged Israel to a “social conduct and individual morality befitting the majesty and dignity of the Most High.” The kind of purity or cleanness it required varied according to different authors. The prophets demanded cleanness of social justice; the priests, a cleanness of proper ritual and maintenance of separation; the sages, a cleanness of inner integrity and individual moral acts.20
The major idea common to all the Old Testament sources — given God’s sovereign holiness and the vocation of his people to be holy so that his glory could be made manifest — is that holiness requires morally upright conduct: justice and mercy, concern for the poor and the weak, personal integrity and fidelity.
The covenant relationship between God and his people in the Old Testament deepens and transforms morality. Grisez well summarizes what this entails:
All human life is drawn into its context.… The [covenantal] relationship causes God’s people to share in his qualities, including those which are more than human. Moral insights are deepened, and the richness of human goods [which are indeed God’s gifts to his creature man] is unfolded. A fresh perspective is provided for criticizing all conventional morality.21
Nonetheless, the covenant between God and the Chosen People was but the preparation for the new and definitive covenant to be made between God and humankind in and through the redemptive work of his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. God simply could not complete his redemptive work all at once, but through this covenant he prepared the way for the fulfillment of his promises in Jesus.22 The new covenant initiated by Jesus “fulfills” and “perfects” the old covenant. As St. Paul makes clear (cf. Rom 7), the old law could not justify sinful mankind. God indeed could save by his grace not only Abraham and the patriarchs but also the Israelites subject to the old law. Nonetheless, the old law did not empower those under it to live good and holy lives. As St. Paul so poignantly reminds us (see Rom 7), the law made the people aware of their moral responsibilities, but it did not give them the power to fulfill them. By contrast, the new covenant in Jesus, true God and true man, does empower the people of the new covenant not only to know but to do what God wants them to do if they are to be the beings they are meant to be, i.e., other Christs, co-redeemers with the Son of God made man. How the new covenant does this will be taken up in depth in Chapter Six of this work, where we will examine the way in which the new “law,” the new “covenant,” fulfills and perfects the old. But it is important here to reflect briefly on this central teaching of the Bible and its relevance to the moral life.
The New Testament shows us that Jesus of Nazareth, born of a woman and like us in all things save sin, is indeed the only-begotten Son of God made man, the eternally begotten “Word” of God become man, become flesh (sarx) (cf. Jn 1:14). In Jesus of Nazareth, God comes personally to visit his people, to become one with them by sharing their human nature, and to redeem them by his saving death and resurrection. Jesus invites us to become one with him, to share in his saving death and resurrection, and to become new creatures through the gift of his Spirit. The epistle to the Ephesians begins by summarizing God’s plan for our salvation:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us [Eph 1:3-8].
Indeed, through baptism we “put on” Christ and become new creatures, God’s very own children, members of the divine family, living Christ’s very own life — a truth developed marvelously and in different ways by various New Testament authors, e.g., by St. Paul, with his teaching on the Church as the “body” of Christ with its many members, and by St. John, with his teaching on the vine and the branches.
As God’s adopted children — and so we are by virtue of our union with his only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2), we are given a new commandment: to love even as Jesus loves us. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). And we can love in this way only if we keep Jesus’ commandments and seek, like him, to do only what is pleasing to the Father, who calls us to be holy.
In short, the moral life as understood by the people of the new and eternal covenant is a living imitation or following of Jesus Christ. He is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6), and if we abide in his love he will abide in us. Our moral task is to complete the work God has begun in us by making us the very brothers and sisters of Christ. By reason of our baptism, we have, as St. Paul tells us, “put on” Christ, and our sublime mission and the meaning of our moral lives as Christians is to keep putting Christ on until we are fully one with him. In Chapter Six, we will develop these key themes of the New Testament understanding of our lives as moral beings. We need remember, too, that a life lived in union with Christ is possible because he is with us and for us. Thus, with St. Paul we can be “sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).23
Conclusion
This chapter has given a concise description/definition of moral theology; its nature, function, and purpose; the kind of renewal of moral theology called for by Vatican Council II and Pope John Paul II; and its relationship to Sacred Scripture. In concluding, it is important to keep in mind the words of Vatican Council II regarding the relationship between the sources of the truths of faith (Scripture and Tradition) and the magisterium. In its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) the Council declared:
The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. Yet this magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant.