MANY representatives of modern ethics describe Christian morals in general as a heteronomous system of compulsion and fear, since the law underlying it has its source not in man himself, but in God. They maintain that a real conscience only exists there where the inner voice that urges man to do good, and warns him against evil, is the dictate of his own nature and not that of a superior and external will. They charge that Catholic morals maintain that the real standard of morality is to be found in the will of the Church and in her commandments.{1} Protestant theologians go further and distinguish emphatically between Christian and Catholic conceptions of morals, and throw upon the latter the odium of being imposed by an external will.
According to O. Pfleiderer, "the idea of duty has in Catholicism again assumed the positivist form, it being conceived as the summary of all temporal and ecclesiastical legislation, which, being without internal unity and having but a limited extent, left wide scope for both subjective caprice and enlargement"; while Protestantism, on the other hand, maintained the inwardness of obligation as dictated by conscience.{2}
In Roman Catholic morals "the ethical obligation is found in an extraneous law; it is something imposed upon man from without."{3} For a Catholic "God's will and law are not written upon his heart and conscience"; they are something external to himself, imposed upon him in the commandments and the authority of the Church. The conscience of Roman Catholics is the Pope.{4}
Herrmann frankly sympathizes with "people of ethical culture, supposedly without religion," and expresses his contempt for Catholic morals in the words: "In them the thought that the moral law is God's law signifies that precisely for that reason it is not our law. The Church knows no longer the fact that a man acts morally only then when he unreservedly obeys a precept that he himself recognizes as absolutely right. What the Church calls moral obedience is the yielding to a power that can indeed constrain inwardly unstable natures, but cannot intelligently convince men."{5} It is characteristic of this kind of controversy that it never furnishes evidence in support of its preposterous accusations; it contents itself with drawing rash conclusions from isolated instances of casuistry and shuts its eyes to those principles of Catholic morals which are open to all.
According to Holy Scripture the moral law is God's law, and in this respect there is no difference between the Old Testament and the New. But as God is everywhere, His law is not inscribed in the heavens, nor beyond the confines of the sea, but it is "very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it."{6} The Son of God came, not to do His own will, but the will of His heavenly Father.{7} According to St. Paul, God is the lawgiver as well as the judge and saviour of mankind; His law is written in the hearts of the Gentiles in so far as their conscience bears witness to it, in so far as they are "a law to themselves."{8} The Christian consciousness has never experienced any contradiction between this kind of interior autonomy and man's entire dependence upon God. The Fathers of the Church did not hesitate to incorporate into their moral system the Stoic idea of the natural law, of the principles of justice inherent in human reason, because they recognized them as rays of light emanating from the Logos, from divine Reason itself. According to St. Augustine, moral good is both the highest and the most intimate good (bonum summum et intimum), and he says that "the soul evolves her own laws out of God's light by means of the process of rational thought."{9}
St. Thomas carefully distinguishes between the influence of external rules and the inward voice of conscience. He says: "Although many things are not evil because forbidden by an external law, they are nevertheless evil because forbidden by an interior law. For the interior law is the light of reason itself, by means of which we discern what we have to do. Any human action which is in keeping with this light is good; whatever is contrary to it is unnatural to man and evil, and is termed evil inasmuch as it is forbidden by the interior law."{10}
Continuing the thought in the words just quoted from St. Paul, St. Thomas teaches that man's dignity consists chiefly in the circumstance that "he is his own lawgiver, since he instructs himself and urges himself on to that which is good."{11} But just as in the theoretical recognition of truth reason has no creative activity, but has to conform itself to a reality infinitely higher than itself, so in its practical activity reason is not a creative and ultimate standard, but rather a means of making known a higher and infinitely perfect will. "The human will is subject to a twofold rule; the first is a proximate, homogeneous rule, viz., human reason itself; the other is that elemental rule, that eternal law, which is, as it were, the divine Reason itself."{12}
This fundamental conception, which meets us in hundreds of places in St. Thomas's works, leads to the clear definition that conscience is essentially identical with that practical reason which, by its nature, possesses the disposition to moral thinking (synteresis) and, which, when thought has been awakened, forms its real judgments as to what is good and what is evil.{13} And because conscience is for the individual the application and inward appropriation of the moral law, man may never act contrary to the dictates of his conscience. A heretic, for instance, who believes the taking of an oath to be sinful would really commit a sin by swearing.{14} St. Thomas frequently quotes St. Paul's words: "All that is not of faith is sin"; adding, after the fashion of a mediaeval gloss, "i.e., all that is contrary to conscience."{15}
Not only does the reason of the natural man tend towards the supernatural, the moral order, but his will, too, naturally strives after what is morally good, and is susceptible to the supra-personal, i.e., to the Divine. This striving differs from the egotistical striving after happiness; it may he weakened through sin, hut cannot be destroyed thereby. The response made by the will and mind to the voice of moral reason is inseparable from any complete idea of conscience. It is through it that moral perception becomes effective, agitating or inspiring. According to St. Bonaventure, the foundation of conscience lies in the "affective powers, in as far as it is naturally capable of good and strives after the good."{16} St. Thomas assigns the first place to the reason and the second to the will; the virtues, he says, "preexist in that natural predisposition to the highest good which resides in reason, recognizing the good, and then in the will, naturally striving to attain it. . . . Thus Cicero was right when he said that the germs of virtue are implanted in us by nature."{17}
This theory is the one that has always controlled Catholic moralists. At the time of the Reformation, when the commandments were said to be antagonistic to Christian liberty, particular stress was laid upon this theory in order to demonstrate the interior and divine authority which they possess. The Roman Catechism says explicitly:{18} "Although this law was given to the Jews on the mountain, it was a law which nature had long before planted in and engraved upon the souls of men." St. Alphonsus begins his "Moral Theology" with a sentence confirmatory of St. Thomas: "There is a twofold rule governing human action, one remote and the other proximate. The remote or material rule is the law of God; the proximate or formal rule is conscience. For although conscience must conform itself in all things to the law of God, the goodness and badness of human actions are known to us only in as far as conscience takes cognizance of them."{19}
Whence, then, does reason derive the contents of its moral perception? As the texts quoted show, it does so not only from the revealed law of God, but primarily from the natural law, which is a reflection of the Eternal Wisdom. The pith of the Ten Commandments and of all Christian duties belongs to the sphere of natural law. What this law enjoins is, "that the good is not good because commanded, but it is commanded because it is good." St. Thomas, as we have seen, makes the reason, and not the will, of God the fount and origin of the moral law; it is not arbitrary choice, but inward truth and necessity which decide what is morally good. He introduces into morals that conception of the "eternal law" which the ancient philosophers adopted in order to account for the harmony of the universe, and he does so in order to give vivid expression to the unity of all morality and its connection with the order of nature. In his opinion reason may and must investigate freely the very nature of man, his true needs and his sound inclinations, as well as those duties and achievements which the outer world imposes upon his discerning and practical activity, since just these considerations yield moral imperatives. According to Plato, too, law is "the expression of being."
All volition is the aiming at an end, the practical affirmation of what is good and perfect. The law enlightening the will "shows it what action is adapted to the highest aim." Its function is "to order things with reference to that aim, which in the sphere of the practical forms the first principle."{20} The building up of these aims of the will proceeds on the principle of individual human values, "In the various parts of the universe each creature exists for its proper activity and perfection; the less noble for the noble, the brute creatures for the sake of man, whilst each and every creature contributes to the perfection of the universe. Furthermore, the entire universe with all its parts is ordained towards God as its end, inasmuch as it is an image of the Divine Goodness made for the glory of God."{21}
Morality as such, the peculiar dignity and absolute obligation of what is morally good, can be explained only in the relation in which our actions stand to the ultimate, common object of life and of the world. The fact, however, whether, and in what way, an action stands in any relation to this aim, is not dependent upon chance or uncontrolled choice; it is determined by the manner in which the action operates upon immediate personal and social good. "The good is present in things in two ways; viz., in the ordering of one thing in its relation to another, and in the ordering of things in their relation to their ultimate end. . . . And as things are ordered to their ultimate end through the agency of their own particular end, their relation to their ultimate end varies according to the diversity of their own particular ends. We say, therefore: As the ultimate end of all beings is one, viz., God, so likewise the ultimate end of all volition is one, viz., God. This, however, does not touch the particular ends, and when, in accordance with these ends, the right relation of the will to the ultimate end is secured, the will is morally good; if not, it is morally perverse."{22}
Herrmann and others say that according to St. Thomas God could make exceptions to the moral law. -- The dictates of the natural law having an interior foundation, it cannot admit of any exceptions. God Himself cannot in any case dispense one from the fundamental direction of action or from attempting to attain the highest aim, since in doing so He would he denying Himself, who is absolute Goodness. But how do matters stand with regard to the natural law against murder, adultery, etc.? The exceptional instances recorded in the Old Testament, such as the sacrifice of Isaac, led the scholastic writers to discuss these points more fully. The relations of creatures to one another do not constitute the final and essential elements of morality. They were settled once for all by the laws of creation, so far as any human authority is concerned, whether of the Church or of the state. The Creator, however, who has devised them and impressed them on the world, can, according to St. Thomas, by a positive manifestation of His will, remove their binding character in cases where some higher purpose of His Goodness and power requires it. In such matters He does not act arbitrarily, but according to a real, though not always recognizable, purpose. Such isolated instances, which always appear as exceptional, do not affect the sanctions of morality any more than miracles, which resemble them in this respect, affect the laws of the physical order.{23}
The history of morals and civilization suggests another remark. In so far as human nature is elastic and capable of development, and the immediate range of its activity may vary, the natural law also must and does admit of various applications and interpretations. Its individual requirements are organically connected with life as a whole; they are not like the paragraphs of a written code, but parts of a living idea, essentially uniform and unalterably true. No contradiction is involved by the fact that Adam's children were allowed to intermarry, whilst such unions are invalid to-day by reason of the natural law. The very aim of securing the proper and befitting propagation of the race, which then necessitated marriages between brothers and sisters, now forbids them. The Church was not false to her mediaeval views on lending at interest when, in subsequent ages, she permitted the payment of interest for moneys loaned. As private exchange in kind gradually developed into a money basis of exchange, money as a means of exchange assumed the nature of capital, a working factor productive of gain; and what had been a loan for consumption became a loan for production. As St. Thomas points out, such material changes do not destroy the "formal" uniformity and permanence of the natural law; they are necessary owing to the "changeableness of human nature and the various conditions of men and things."{24}
A glance at our Catholic works on ethics and natural law, which have duly aroused the opposition of all positivist students of morals, suffices to show that these opinions are still alive in all Catholic schools, and that more, rather than less, emphasis is now laid upon the natural basis of the law. Most modern students of ethics and law regard moral and judicial aspects as merely the product of history, of national customs and of varying conditions of life, and they therefore subordinate the moral law to the influences of the time and of their arbitrary action; but Catholicism insists upon the inward necessity and sanctity of these principles. It thus incurs the charge of intellectualism in ethics; and, on the other hand, it is accused of having no reasonable insight into morality and of teaching a moral law that constrains, but does not convince, those who lack interior strength.{25}
If we are questioned as to our attitude towards heteronomy, the imposition of law by an external will, we must, as we have said, deny that it exists in the sense in which Kant used the word against Christianity. According to him, heteronomy is the antithesis of true rational autonomy; it is a dependence of the will upon natural sense impulses and "pathological laws." The odiousness of this declaration he turns upon the old teaching on morals, by declaring that all efforts to attain felicity were prompted by essentially sensual pathological tendencies, and he foisted upon the legislative will of God the imputation that "it could be a motive power only through our anticipation of the happiness to be won thereby."{26}
Both these assumptions are manifestly erroneous. Not with our senses only, but with our minds and our rational wills, must we value and strive to attain happiness as a great, all-embracing good. But God's will deserves our respect and obedience, not only because He can make us happy or punish us, but because, being our Creator and Master, He has a right to command us, and also because, being infinite Truth and Sanctity, He is the absolute law and end of all moral volition. In none of St. Thomas's statements above cited, on the foundation and nature of morality, is there any allusion to rewards and punishments. These ideas are of course most important in our ethics, but they are not the basis of the moral justification and binding nature of God's commandments. Christian morality has nothing to do with heteronomy in Kant's odious meaning of the word. By circuitous lines of argument Kant himself finally arrived at the point of recognizing all duties to be "also divine commands"; and he remarks further that those philosophers best expressed the idea of the true end of creation who ascribed it to "the glory of God." But he goes on to take from this thought all its meaning, by adding that we ought to regard the commands of our own reason as those of the Highest Being only because He alone can guarantee our possession of the highest good, -- a eudaimonistic conclusion, which shows plainly how far Kant's apparent rigorism is from the objective grandeur of the Christian thought of God and morality.{27}
When the Christian standpoint has once been properly understood, it is easy to see that it is possible to connect it with the idea of legislation from without only then if it were permissible to speak of God as something external to man, since it is in God that we live and move and have our being, and we recognize Him, by faith and reason, as the source of all our intellectual powers, the innermost foundation and support of all our natural and moral actions.
We are made in God's likeness; we see, as it were, with His eyes; we perceive in His light, and we read in His creation which path we must follow in order to attain to moral perfection. We are a law to ourselves in the inwardness of our moral thinking and willing, but we are not, as Kant assumes, our own supreme law"; all our moral thoughts and desires, like our whole being, refer back to God. A creature, that in its bodily and spiritual existence is so completely subject to higher laws, cannot possibly be autonomous in the matter of his duty and volition. Herrmann follows Kant in saying: "What ultimately determines true volition is not something beyond the conscious will, but is the conscious will itself."{28} The fundamental idea of morality is to him not the idea "that the law is God's commandment, but that the law is true."{29}
Purely formal truth has nothing to do with morality. The laws of grammar, aesthetics, and dietetics are true, and they have a Practical, normal effect upon human endeavour. Why do we not ascribe to them the binding force of the moral law? Because they serve only relative, finite purposes, the formal exchange of ideas, aesthetic enjoyment, and bodily health. We have to rise above these things and recognize one supreme end, common to all alike, if we are to account for the obligation of the moral law. As soon as this end is presented to us in God, we recognize also a law of unconditional validity and obligation, which bids us to do right and to reject all that is evil. We recognize that this law is inwardly true, but we do not make it. Herrmann exalts what he calls "the unconditional good," "the eternally valid," far above the thinking ego; but he ought also to see that what ultimately determines morality cannot reside in man, for matter and form, end and law, are inseparably connected in the principle of morality.{30}
Herrmann says emphatically that in the unconditionally good and eternally valid and necessary is seen what is moral. Yet he tries to discover in the moral thoughts of man, "the everlasting foundation of all moral life." He will not allow these thoughts to be dependent upon any other Being; viz., God. No power may intervene between the will and the good, so as to give the latter its binding force (p. 148). According to Herrmann, God is summoned only when man, struggling in vain after justice and tortured by sin, seeks help from above; he "experiences" God in Christ as a morally elevating force, inspiring him with confidence and strength; and so he learns to recognize the moral law as being also the law of God. In reply we may assert that our thoughts cannot possibly be the everlasting basis of moral life; this can be only the contents of our thoughts, the unconditional good, and this good is nothing apart from God, but His very being. God is not a binding force thrusting itself between the will and the good; He is the good, that alone can constitute an obligation upon a personal will, aiming at the infinite. Obligation is nothing but the respect and love due on the part of the will to the absolutely Good. Herrmann remarks (p. 14) that in my opinion the binding obligation results from the "assumption" of a divine legislator; I answer this statement thus: We are not here concerned with the psychological origin of the moral and religious consciousness, but with the question whether the moral law in our conscience possesses its binding force in itself and independently of God; and that I deny. With regard to the psychological question I had remarked briefly that man's ability to conceive and honour the absolute Good, was a preparation for and foreshadowing of an explicit recognition of God. As soon as a man, even without Christian education, recognizes the existence of a fixed law, an absolute Good, worthy of his veneration and transcending all that is expedient and necessary in this world, he occupies a position in the moral order and grasps at least one aspect of the Godhead, In the idea of law and obligation, God appears to him as a Will, as a Lawgiver, not only as an end and as a good. This knowledge of God is still incomplete; in the case of Christian children it gains clearness and vividness through their religious instruction. It is the task of Christian philosophers to expound and develop, in the light of the Christian idea of God, this rudimentary perception of the relation between morality and religion; it should not be obscured by false conclusions as to autonomy.
The rejection of the divine life of the spirit, as the Alpha and Omega of the moral spontaneity of man, has had the result of bringing upon morals the evil that it sought to avert, and of subjecting it to the foreign dominion of impersonal laws and impulses. Kant desires reason to be autonomous, but he obliges the reason of each individual to ask, before coming to any conclusion, whether its maxim could be regarded as a principle of universal legislation; in other words, whether the imitation by people in general of this individual line of action would result in contradictions or not. This is about the opposite of what later advocates of autonomy have understood by personal morality. It leads to an apotheosis of generality, of a "form" which must inevitably be distasteful to modern individualism. But even from a serious, ethical point of view, it seems to limit the moral judgment too much and to regard it only from one aspect, which is more dangerous to the vigorous independence of moral action than the Christian principle of morality can be. There are heroic deeds performed in the cause of freedom and deserving the gratitude of mankind, which cannot conceivably be made the subject of a universal maxim.
What view is taken of the liberty and inwardness of the law by those writers on ethics who pay attention only to the contents of volition and not to the form of the "universal"? They separate into two camps; some declare the highest law of life to be the development and satisfaction of one's own existence; others the welfare of the community. The latter, which may be called the social view, makes society everything and the individual nothing in appreciating the moral value of our actions; and here there is obviously a fundamentally external legislation. How can one, who is in no way a moral end to himself, be a lawgiver to himself? The former view admits of an apparently consistent carrying out of the idea of moral independence, but it destroys the moral law itself; for autonomy becomes anomy and merely egotistical license. As soon as any standard higher than that of the individual disappears, the intellectual ideal is obscured and, as experience shows, the sensual, the natural desire to enjoy life, becomes predominant; and this is precisely what Kant first branded as heteronomy.
A man, brought up as a Christian, regards the moral laws as the expression of God's will, revealed to mankind, and so he respects and obeys them for the sake of their divine origin. He finds among them laws which are not interiorly necessary, but enacted as helpful, such as the duty of receiving the sacraments. But on the whole, what we call morality is identically the same both in nature and revelation. St. Thomas points out that Christ greatly amplified our knowledge of dogma, but He did not add to the moral law; "our natural reason leads us to practise virtue, since reason is, as it were, the standard for human activity."{31}
Even the positive rules, added by Christ, are not mere arbitrary requirements; they fit into the natural law, primarily by never contradicting it, and then also (as with the law about receiving the sacraments) by stimulating us in the practice of virtue and by raising the whole tone of our life. It is, in fact, the aim of revelation to raise the inner state of life by disclosing supernatural objects, but to do it in such a way that what is natural may be absorbed into the higher life, not cast aside as worthless. The natural moral law was insisted upon by Moses, the prophets, and in the Sermon on the Mount, and this was necessary, because human reason had lost sight of its truth, in consequence of intellectual aberration or of immoral habits and customs. Even to the present day, as Kant admits, the natural moral law would not be known in its purity and perfection had not Christian revelation come to the aid of reason.
Not only children, but many grown-up people, if they are to be preserved from immorality, require to have their moral obligations deeply impressed upon them from without; they cannot perceive them for themselves. Secular teachers of ethics recognize this necessity; but whilst they speak of a "heterogony of aims" and of class differences as affecting the views taken of morals, so that the lower classes do not grasp at all the true basis and aim of morality, Christianity possesses in the obedience to God a motive that takes the place, for the masses, of a full comprehension of many of the commandments, because it virtually includes them. For whoever recognizes God as supreme Wisdom and Sanctity, as the Christian does, accepts His law as the outcome of these perfections, and also accepts his own subordination to it, as an act of reverence due to his Creator. As man is essentially a creature, called into existence by God and for God, such obedience is nothing outward and foreign to him, but the natural expression of his own being. Does not the strictest follower of Kant perceive that moral autonomy is possible only for such as have reached an advanced stage of education, and that obedience to authority and tradition gradually leads up to this moral maturity? How can any one demand such obedience if it is strange and even antagonistic to the true nature of morality? Is not this very advance towards maturity, this inward grasp of what is good, facilitated infinitely more by our placing ourselves in God's presence, when difficulties occur, than by "generalizing" our own maxims and inclinations? Do not passionate emotions, petty sophistries and doubts vanish more readily when considered in the light of God than in that of practical reason? If we are reminded of the inward struggles in which a conscience aiming at freedom is sometimes involved when it feels itself fettered by traditions, are there not equally painful conflicts between the moral sense, as a personal impulse, on the one hand, and the categorical imperative, as a general demand made by reason, on the other?
Enough has been said to make it unnecessary to discuss the statement that morality is for Catholics nothing but a collection of rules laid down by the Church. The position of the Church as the preacher of God's word is not discussed here; whoever honours her in this position submits, not to her legislation, but to the objective, divine truth which she received the authority to make known to men. We shall refer later to the necessity of legislation and order in the Church.{32} For the present it is enough to establish the fact that, in issuing her commands, the Church is absolutely guided by the divine law, both natural and positive. All the doctors of the Church are unanimous in saying that nothing contrary to natural morality can be ordered by human authority. "Every law made by men has the character of law only in as far as it is derived from the natural law. If it is in conflict with the natural law on one single point, it ceases to be a law, and becomes a mere perversion of law."{33}
In the life of a Catholic, as in the teaching of morals, a very small space is occupied by the duties imposed by the Church, in comparison with those affecting his general behaviour as a man and a Christian. In St. Thomas's "Summa" there is no article at all on the commandments of the Church, and we might read a thousand pages on the subject of ethical instruction without finding more than five on which these commandments are mentioned. In the section devoted to morals in the Roman Catechism only the Ten Commandments are discussed; in later editions reference is made to the commandments of the Church, but only as a short appendix to those of God. The Latin textbooks of morals commonly in use seem to diverge from this tradition, but do so only seemingly. In their second volume they deal with morals, not as far as they affect Christians generally, but in their demands upon the clergy, and naturally go into detail on points connected with the Church, her liturgy, and the pastoral office. In spite of all this, unless a miracle occurs, our learned critics will probably continue to overlook this obvious fact, and, adhering to the "authority" of their tradition, will assert that Catholics put in the place of moral law and conscience the Church and the Pope.{34}
Luther's hatred of the rules of the Church was not the outcome of a deep and sympathetic appreciation of the abstract character of the moral law. He was a real autonomist whenever there was any question of casting aside inconvenient doctrines and authorities. Into his theory of law and the redemption he introduced a view of the authority of divine rules and decrees which leaves less scope for a man's own insight and free action than the Catholic doctrine. He condemns the law as a "jailer," "a most cruel taskmaster and hangman, the worst of all tyrants"; and he declared its function to be to drive a sinner into fear, anxiety, and despair.{35}
How violently did he attack Moses, who promulgated the law, and whose admonitions and severe rebukes frighten the conscience! Moses was to Luther an object of greater suspicion than the worst of heretics, more offensive than the Pope and the devil! In his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans Luther says: "The will is always at variance with the law, and if it were able, would always act in another way, although outwardly it does what the law requires." W. Braun acknowledges that, in the natural man, Luther expands the absence of free will to do right to the degree of "real hatred of good"; we delight in doing evil, but "no one does right because it pleases him, or because he finds joy in the law, but because he fears present or future punishment, or hopes for some reward." This antagonism to morality is explained by the fact that human nature is radically corrupt in consequence of original sin, and has lost the elements that made it like to God. Braun is right in saying that Luther laid much stress upon what he asserted to be St. Paul's teaching, and maintained that "the whole nature of man is in rebellion, not only his body, but his intellect and will are in constant opposition to God's law, and therefore in his very being, man is sinful; moreover, the still dormant tendencies to do what is forbidden, even though they are not active, are sinful, and the beast, even when asleep, remains a beast."{36}
This is a true description of Luther's doctrine; but how is it possible to speak, in the face of such a view, of subjective morality, or to hope that a creature so essentially alienated from all geod can ever be reconciled with the law! On isolated, theoretical points also Luther abandoned the natural idea of what is fundamentally good and the interior autonomy of the human intellect, which scholasticism had taught. In his earlier works he still gives a prominent place to synteresis, the inborn foundation of conscience, and believes that there is in the will also a desire for good. Both these good qualities are remnants of man's original kinship with God, and they can be reawakened by grace. In his later writings, however, the idea of synteresis disappeared,{37} and the whole of man, including the highest apex of the soul, is described as carnal, turned away from God. Hence the noblest virtues displayed by pagans are diabolical and sacrilegious.{38} Reason, not recognizing God, despises Him; "but how can a reason that is blind and ignorant command what is good? . . . and at what shall a will aim, to which reason prescribes nothing except the darkness of its blindness and ignorance?"{39}
For all that follows, Köstlin's statement is to the point: "According to Luther's constant assertions, the truth contained in the word of God is always hidden from the reason of natural, sinful, unredeemed man, with its capacity for thinking, understanding, and drawing inferences; such truth remains alien, a subject of contradiction, just as the exertions of a man, sunk in sin and worldliness, are always opposed to it. His reason deals with worldly affairs, it recognizes them and is practically concerned with them, and it establishes outward ordinances adapted to the needs of human social life, but it has nothing to do with higher matters, with the perception of the divine, the raising of mankind to intercourse with God, the way of salvation, or "the things affecting our eternal welfare." "Reason," says Luther, "deals with what is beneath us (inferiora), and not with what is above us (superiora)."{40}
Luther absolutely denies the freedom of the will, at least in the sense of being able to make a moral decision. He always attached great importance to his work "De servo arbitrio," and he was influenced not only by the consideration that God's omnipotence and infallible foreknowledge precluded all possibility of free choice in man, but he regarded the will as fettered in itself, being under the dominion of stronger motives supplied by the senses or intellect. He thought that we can no more contribute to our moral conversion than to our creation; liberum arbitrium exists merely in name.{41} A man is good or bad according as he is dominated by God or the devil; whatever he may do, his will is "purely passive." But in order that our consciousness may be influenced by the moral law, a distinction must be made between freedom to do what is divine and subjectively moral, and freedom to use earthly possessions and to dispose of cattle and horses, money and estates. All receptivity and power in the will with regard to the highest aim in life and fundamental morality is absolutely dead; but a certain ability to do right with regard to what is exterior and lower still remains.{42}
Apart from his denial of free will, Luther's opinions did much to lower and weaken the conception of the moral law and of morality itself. All susceptibility to what is supersensual and absolutely valuable and sacred is denied; in fact the spiritual life of man is deprived of precisely the thing that raises it above the turmoil of sensual and external interests. Man understands and practically values only what is beneath him; there are no ideals left capable of morally uplifting him; his sight is darkened and his heart is corrupt. He still perceives that it is his duty to uphold the domestic, economic, and social order, as it exists for the mutual advantage of men in this world, but it has lost for him the consecration that St. Thomas gives it by representing God as the final end of all morality.
The moral harm caused by Luther's views is not only disastrous but irremediable, since it goes so far as to distort the very essence of humanity. From anthropology he passes on to the doctrine of justification, and teaches that not even grace can really remove the corruption of nature. I will only point out here that the chasm between what is higher and what is lower in life, between the divine and the human, the eternal and the temporal, remains even in the case of those who are pardoned, and the moral law in its practical working and significance is still banished to the lower sphere. Faith has to establish our relation with God by laying hold of the consolation of the Gospel, and thus quieting the conscience with regard to sin. The law is concerned only with the flesh and with matters affecting public peace. The justice of the Gospel must be distinguished from God's justice as carefully and precisely as "God Himself separated heaven from earth, light from darkness, and day from night. . . Now thou art on earth, therefore let the lazy ass toil and serve, and continue to bear the burden laid upon him. That is to say, let the body with its members be still subject to the law. But when thou risest to heaven, leave the ass with his load and burden down here upon earth. For the conscience can have nothing whatever to do with the law, with works, or with earthly justice. . . . In worldly government, however, we must most strictly insist upon and pay obedience to the law, . . . but when the law and sin enter heaven, i.e., the conscience, they must both be driven out without delay."{43}
In his sermons, too, Luther frequently insists upon the necessity of distinguishing the moral law from the relation of man to religion, so that the law thus is degraded to the rank of a secondary factor, belonging only to what is temporal. Energy in good works is to be shown only for the geod of one's neighbour; it is not "pious," but "useful." Even adultery is not contrary to "a right understanding of the faith" and God's honour; it is only an injury to man.{44}
According to the fundamental principles of theism, the highest good and its binding force pervade all lower moral undertakings; but according to Luther, they stand far beyond all earthly relations and duties, which, being thus stripped of their truly moral quality, are directed by a reason that is worldly, not divine. Kings are not kings before God; their laws "do not bind the conscience," their government is "something external."{45}
Practical reason is only an inferior kind of conscience, capable only of judging temporal matters; in all other respects it is darkness and deception; and if it professes "to lead to God," it is no better than if it "leads away from Him."{46}
{1} V. Hartmann, Phaenomenologie des sitti. Bewusstseins, p. 80; Ziegler, Gesch. der Ethik, II, 300.
{2} O. Pfleiderer, Grundriss der christi. Glaubens und Sittenlehre, p. 256.
{3} Stange, Einleitung in die Ethik, 1901, II, 95.
{4} G. Schulze, Der Unterschied zwischen der kath. mid evang. Sittlichkeit, 1888, p. 4, etc.
{5} Rom. und evang. Sittlichkeit, 3d ed., pp. 16, 29.
{6} Deut. xxx. 14.
{7} John vi. 38.
{8} Rom. ii. 14.
{9} Mausbach, Die Ethik des hl. Augustinus, I, 99, 102.
{10} In 1. 2 sent. dist. 42, q. 1, a. 4 ad 3.
{11} In ep. ad Rom., c. 2.
{12} S. theol., I, II, q. 71, a. 6c.
{13} Ibid., I, q. 79, a. 12, 13; cf. St. Bonaventure, In II dist. 39, a. 1, qu. 2: Conscientia nominat habitum directivum NOSTRI INDICII respectu operabilium.
{14} St. Thomas, In II sent. dist. 39, q. 3, a. 2 c.
{15} S. theol., I, II, q. 19, a. 5 Contra.
{16} III, 1, 7.
{17} In II sent. dist. 39, a. 2, q. 1 ad 5.
{18} In III sent. dist. 33, q. 1, a. 2 c.
{19} Theol. moral, I, 1.
{20} In II dist. 41, q. 1, a. 1 ad 4; S. theol., I, II, q. 90, a. 1.
{21} S. theol., I, q. 65, a. 2.
{22} In II sent. dist. 38, q. 1, a. 1 c.
{23} St. Thomas, In I sent. dist. 47, q. 1, a. 4; S. theol., I, II, q. 94, a. 5 ad 2; q. 100, a. 8. In another passage he lays still greater stress upon the fact that the duties imposed by the natural law admit of no exceptions. Cf. W. Stockums, Die Unveränderlichkeit des natürl. Sittengesetzes in der scholastischen Ethik, 1911; F. Wagner, Das natürl. Sittengesetz nach der Lehre des hl. Thomas v. Aquin, 1911.
{24} De malo, q. 2, a. 4 ad 13.
{25} In the Catholic schools the only debated point is whether the real idea of good and evil involves reference to God, as the highest end of life, or whether it is held to be peculiar to the nature of man as a reasonable being. The latter view is held by Vasquez and Suarez, although in different ways, and more recently V. Cathrein has contributed greatly to its diffusion. The chief difficulty connected with it lies in the fact that it sets up one rule for distinguishing good and evil -- that is to say, for the essence of morality -- and another for the obligation attached to the moral order (cf. Cat hrein, Moralphilosophie, 5th ed., I, 395, etc.). The Thomistic school, on the other hand, has always connected the essence of morality with the idea of "the eternal law," and many Very eminent teachers, belonging to other schools of thought, agree with the Thomists on this point. The objections raised by the opposite side appear Weak, if we maintain that the idea of the law itself is included in the ordinatio ad finem ultimum and assumes the existence of an actual order of that which is good culminating in the highest Good. St. Thomas explains the nature of morality in this way. The complete essence of the good is, in his opinion, more than things convenientia cum natura humana, or in fact any ordo unius finis creati ad alterum; it consists in agreement with the highest aims of life and of the universe (cf. supra, p. 136). Cathrein admits (p. 395, note 1) that reasonable human nature cannot go beyond an obligatio imperfecte, and we may say that it cannot go beyond a moralitas imperfecta. Cf. on this subject Mausbach, Compte rendu du 4; congrès international des Catholiques, Fribourg, 1898, III, 360, seq., and Philos. Jahrbuch, 1899, 303, seq.; 1901, 90, seq.
{26} Kritik der prakt. Vernunft (ed. K. Kehrbach), p. 50; cf. p. 40, seq.
{27} Kritik der prakt. Vernunft (ed. K. Kehrbach), pp. 155 -- 157; cf. also Kneib, Die "Heteronomie" der Christl. Moral, Vienna, 1903.
{28} Ethik, p. 36.
{29} Röm. und evang. Sittlichkeit, p. 16.
{30} As already remarked, Catholic ethical teachers by no means maintain that a positive law of God, an explicit declaration of His will, must be antecedent to morality. That idea is excluded by the expression lex aeterna as well as by the Thomist definition of law as an ordinatio rationis (not voluntatis), and by the statement that the basis of morality lies in the essence of God, etc. The original law of morality is not properly speaking being given to man, but it exists, and for this reason its origin is to be sought not in man, but in God.
{31} S. theol., I, II, q. 108, a. 2 ad 1.
{32} See Chap. IX.
{33} S. theol., I, II, q. 95, a. 2.
{34} What has been said serves to refute Herrmann's retort (Röm. u. evangel. Sitti., 3d ed., p. 157) that, according to St. Thomas, the action of the will is plainly different with regard to positive commands from what it is under the natural law. No, St. Thomas expressly derives the obligatory character of all laws from the natural law: Omnes leges, inquantum participant de ratione recta, intantum derivantur a lege aeterna (I, II, q. 93, a. 3). Omnis lex humanitus posita intantum habet de ratione legis, inquantum a lege naturae derivatur. (I, II, q. 95, a. 2).
{35} Luther's, works: Walch (Halle, 1740), VI, pp. 161, 218, 1160.
{36} W. Braun, Die Bedeutung der Concupiscenz in Luther's Leben und Lebre, 1908, p. 105, seq.
{37} Köstlin, Luther's Theologie, 2d ed., I, p. 52, seq.
{38} De servo arbitrio, Weimar, 18th ed., p. 742, seq.
{39} Ibid., p. 762; cf. 710: ita fit, ad (impias) PERPETUO ET NECE5SARIO peccet et erret, ut jam alieno imperio Satanae pressus.
{40} Köstlin, II, 48. This contempt of reason was carried so far by Luther that he even calls it the beast which must be killed; a "whore of the devil," etc. Even in his last sermon, on January 17, 1546, he speaks of reason as a "beautiful prostitute," "the stateliest whore possessed by the devil" (Erlangen ed., XVI, p. 142).
{41} De servo arbitrio, Weimar ed., pp. 718, 719, 754; cf. also the following note.
{42} De servo arbitrio, p. 638. Si omnino vocem eam (lib. arbitrium) omittere nolumus, quod esset tutissimum et religiosissimum, bona fide tamen eatenus uti doceamus, ut homini arbitrium liberum non respectu SUPERIORIS sed tantum inferioris se rei concedatur, hoc est, ut sciat sese in suis facultatibus et possessionibus habere ius utendi, faciendi, omittendi. . . . Ceterum erga Deum vel in rebus quae pertinent ad salutem vel damnationem, non habet liberum arbitrium, sed captivus, subjectus et servus est vel voluntatis Dei vel voluntatis Satanae. It appears from the last sentence that Luther did not regard the will as fettered because of God's omnipotence and causality, for a dominion of this kind over the will could not be ascribed to the devil. Cf. Köstlin, I, 216, 355; II, 124, etc.
{43} Walch, VIII, 1789; cf. pp. 1555, 1884.
{44} Weimar ed., XII, 647, 652, 683, seq.
{45} Weimar ed., XII, pp. 318, 319, 331, 335, seq.
{46} Ibid., pp. 319, 548, 689.