ETHICS has a special place in the Christian religion. Lactantius, writing under the Emperor Constantine, points out this fundamental difference between paganism and the true religion. Pagan religion, he says, is concerned only with external rites and ceremonies performed in honor of the gods; it gives no precepts of righteousness and virtue; it does not form and cultivate men's characters.{1} On the other hand, ethics forms an essential part of the Christian religion. Christ was called Jesus because He came among us to save us from our sins. This He did not only by atoning for them, but by His example, His teaching, and His grace He showed us how to lead good lives and enabled us to do it. He came to do and to teach, so that not only His words but His actions, too, were lessons to us in conduct. He proposed Himself to us as the Way by which we should walk; He bade us follow His example; He taught us to learn of Him meekness, humility, and all virtues. In Him God, our Creator and Lord, was revealed to us; He is our first beginning and last end. To Him we must refer and order our whole lives and our every action. We are His stewards, and when life comes to an end each of us will be called upon to render a strict account to Him, as our judge, of every thought, word, and action of our lives. Heaven will be the reward of the faithful servant, eternal suffering in hell will be the just punishment of the wicked.
Before finally quitting the earth Our Lord founded His Church, a hierarchical society of men, to continue the work which He had begun for the sanctification and salvation of the whole human race. His last solemn commission to His apostles was a command to teach men to observe all that He had commanded; certain truths had been revealed to them concerning God, as well as moral rules for their guidance, but even the truths concerning God were not merely speculative; they, too, were revealed for the sanctification and salvation of men. A duty of submission of the intellect, under pain of eternal damnation, was laid on all who heard the Gospel preached. The basis of Christian morality thus rests firmly established on the word of God, requiring unwavering faith, not on the uncertain and shifting sands of human opinion. That Gospel contained not only moral precepts which are obligatory on all, but Counsels also of great perfection which those who had the moral strength were encouraged to adopt as rules for the conduct of their lives. The perfect holiness of God Himself was held up as the model which they were to imitate and the lofty ideal at which they were ever to aim.
This revelation of Christ was committed to the Church as a sacred deposit to be faithfully kept, guarded from all admixture of error, and diligently preached to men for their instruction, guidance, sanctification, and salvation. The Catholic Church has always understood that this was the object of her foundation by Jesus Christ. That was her mission, to preach the Gospel, to keep the deposit of faith, to teach what Christ had revealed, and not to allow it to be changed or corrupted even by an angel from heaven. It is the boast of the Catholic Church that by the assistance which Christ promised her, through the constant guidance of the indwelling Spirit of Truth which He sent down upon her, she has faithfully accomplished her task. In spite of enemies within and without, in defiance of the hostile powers of hell and of the unbelieving world, she has persisted through the ages in preaching in season and out of season the divine revelation which was committed to her faithful keeping. At first sight it might seem that no history of such a system of doctrine is possible. History is the scientific narration of the varying fortunes and changes which befall the subject of it. What history can there be of a system of doctrine which has always been the same?
The Christian revelation as taught by the Catholic Church does indeed always remain the same in itself, objectively, as it was completed when the last of the apostles died. This revelation, and nothing else, the Church was commissioned to keep and to preach to the end of time for the salvation of men. It is the Church's greatest boast, as it is her highest claim to our gratitude, that she has ever preserved unsullied through the ages the divine teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. No man ever taught like Him. The moral doctrine which He inculcated by word and by deed is the loftiest ideal of conduct which has ever been manifested to the world. It cannot be improved upon, and it is impious to attempt to change it. The Catholic denies that it has been changed in the Catholic Church. Non-Catholic historians of Christian morals profess to discover instances of change, but this is due to their own philosophical or religious presuppositions. Thus when the Lutheran Dr. Luthardt discovers in the "Didaché," written as he acknowledges at the end of the first century, "the beginnings of a false view of works,"{2} we reply that the same view of works appears in the documents that make up the New Testament, and that it is not false. Lecky discovered a change of view as to the lawfulness of taking human life when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.{3} In proof of this he quotes Lactantius and one or two other Fathers who held that it is never lawful to take human life. It would not be difficult to quote instances of Christian writers up to our own days who have held the same doctrine, and one might deduce therefrom an argument to show either that Christian morality had progressed, or deteriorated, or had remained stagnant for nineteen centuries, according to the exigencies of one's philosophical system. Harnack discovers the sources of Catholic monachism in the writings of St. Methodius.{4} The Catholic sees them writ large in the Gospel of St. Matthew.
These instances will show why the Catholic cannot accept the accounts of growth, change, and decay which are given in many so-called histories of Christian morals. Nevertheless, he allows that there is a progress and development which admits of being traced historically. The Catholic Church has always been explicit on this point. After teaching that the revealed doctrines of the Faith were not proposed by God to man's intellect to be improved upon like some philosophical system, but were committed to the Church as a divine deposit to be faithfully kept and infallibly explained, the Council of the Vatican could find no better terms in which to describe true development of that doctrine than those which had been used by St. Vincent of Lens in the fifth century.
"Therefore," it says, "let the understanding, knowledge, and wisdom of each and of all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, increase and make much and great progress through the ages and the centuries; but only in its own line, that is, in the same truth, in the same sense, and in the same thought."{5} Change in Christian dogma and moral we refuse to accept or to acknowledge; we readily admit that there has been and ought to be development. The precepts of Christian morality have not always been equaliy well understood; what was obscure and uncertain has been made more clear and certain. The existence of different conditions, circumstances, and wants, in different ages and countries, necessitated some change in the adjustment of the teaching to the varying surroundings. New duties arose from new positive legislation. Besides, the science of Christian morals is not a mere exposition of the moral precepts of the Gospel and of the positive legislation of the Church. Books have been written containing such an exposition in the very words of Scripture, like the "Speculum" of St. Augustine, and the "Scintillae" attributed to Venerable Bede,{6} but such as these are not works of moral theology. The science of moral theology arranges its subject-matter in an orderly and logical way; it shows the grounds and the reasons of the doctrine, it harmonizes part with part so as to form a compact and systematic body of doctrine. All this is the work of time and of many minds, and it admits of historical treatment. In the brief space at our disposal we propose to trace at any rate the chief stages in the development of Catholic moral theology. Our history may conveniently be divided into three periods; the first will embrace the age of the Fathers, the second that of the scholastics, the third will be the modern period.
{1} De Divinis Instit., iv, c. 3.
{2} History of Christian Ethics, p. 117.
{3} History of European Morals, ii, p. 42.
{4} History of Dogma, iii, p. 110.
{5} Vatican, sess. iii, c. 4.
{6} Migne, P. L. 88, 598.