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Making Theology Moral
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
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The relationship between theology and ethics has been largely determined in the modern era by the questions Immanuel Kant posed and the answers he gave. This contains a certain irony because in 1786 at Marburg Kant's philosophy was banned on the assumption that it threatened faith and morals. His demolition of the scholastic arguments for the existence of God were thought to be a threat to Christian faith. Many neo-kantians relished this challenge to theology and moved Kantianism in the very direction the orthodox authorities feared. By 1835 Heinrich Heine wrote an essay for French publication entitled, ‘On the history of religion in Germany'. He argued that Robespierre himself was unworthy of comparison with the revolutionary Kant. Robespierre may have lopped off a few royal heads but ‘Kant has stormed heaven, he has put the whole crew to the sword, the Supreme Lord of the world swims unproven in his own blood’. Perhaps Kant's ethics did not go as far as Heine asserted, but it did result in the marginalization of theology from ethics. Ethics was grounded in freedom alone. Theology could be consistent with ethics, but not determinative for it.
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References
page 306 note 1 Zammito, John H., The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) p. 242Google Scholar.
page 306 note 2 Schnadelbach, Philosophy in Germany, 1831–1933, p. 17.
page 306 note 3 Zammito, p. 241.
page 306 note 4 Ibid., p. 253, ‘The kind of God Kant required in his ethico-theology was the ‘living’ God of the Christian tradition, with a providential and personal character, who ‘created’ the world’.
page 308 note 5 To argue that Barth did not incorporate Thomas into his theology is not to assert that he could not be so incorporated within barthianism. In fact Eugene Rogers has argued that the way in which Barth re-read Anselm against the scholastics could also be done with Aquinas. For a discussion of this see Rogers', EugeneThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God (University of Notre Dame Press, 1995)Google Scholar. This would require, however, that Barth take more seriously than he did the role of virtue, the sacraments and the Church as a material and historical reality.
page 308 note 6 Milbank, The Word Made Strange (Basil Blackwell, 1997) p. 3Google Scholar.
page 308 note 7 As Milbank puts it, ‘Kant was metaphysically dogmatic in affirming that [the extrapolation of categories from our material, finite temporal experience] do not at all apply precisely because he believed (unlike Aquinas) that he had direct cognitive access in practical reason to what the immaterial and atemporal is like’ Ibid., p. 12.
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page 309 note 9 Ibid., pp. 150–187.
page 310 note 10 Milbank, John, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Basil Blackwell, 1990) p. 221Google Scholar. This does not imply that Milbank denies the gratuity of the Christ event. He simply refuses to separate creation from redemption. Both re-present the same gracious event. To put it in his own words, he ‘supernaturalizes the natural’.
page 310 note 11 Cone, Black Theology of Liberation 86 preface, xix.
page 311 note 12 von Balthasar, , The Theology of Karl Barth (Ignatius Press, 1951) p. 82, 91 and 103Google Scholar. Von Balthasar suggests that Barth's Christology bears elements of monophysitism.
page 311 note 13 For a helpful discussion of the political implications of the significance of Henri de Lubac's challenge to the scholastic nature/grace distinction see Komonchak's, Joseph A. ‘Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: the Example of Henri De Lubac’, Theological Studies 51 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 311 note 14 See Rogers', EugeneThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God pp. 73–75 and pp. 183–202Google Scholar.
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page 314 note 17 CPR p.
page 314 note 18 Critique of Practical Reason, (CPrR), p. 3.
page 315 note 19 CPrR, p. 130–138.
page 315 note 20 See for instance The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) p. 183Google Scholar where Kant states, ‘When a thoughtful man has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his often bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could well be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of soul in which virtue is its own reward’. See also the Lectures on Ethics, p. 11, where Kant discusses the summum bonum of the ancients and relates it to Christian notions of holiness. Both are unachievable ideals, yet nevertheless necessary for a complete moral system. For Kant, this state of blessedness can never be pure gift. ‘Man can hope to be happy only in so far as he makes himself worthy of being happy, for this is the condition of happiness which reason itself proposes’.
page 315 note 21 Lectures on Philosophical Theology trans, by Wood, Allen, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978) p. 110Google Scholar.
page 316 note 22 Ibid., p. 94,
page 317 note 23 CPrR, p. 4.
page 317 note 24 Critique of Judgment, (CJ) trans, by Meredith, James Creed (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) p. 140Google Scholar.
page 318 note 25 Ibid.
page 319 note 26 Baschab, p. 414.
page 319 note 27 Quoted in von Balthasar, , The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 399Google Scholar.
page 319 note 28 Pickstock, CatharineAfter Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, p. xvGoogle Scholar.
page 320 note 29 Bingemer, , ‘Women in the Future of the Theology of Liberation’, Expanding the View: Gustavo Gutiérrez and the Future of Liberation Theology (Orbis, 1988) p. 188Google Scholar and ‘A Post-Christian and Postmodern Christianism’, Liberation Theologies, Postmodernily, and the Americas (Routledge, 1997) p. 89–90Google Scholar.
page 321 note 30 Pinckaers, Servais, O.P., , The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. from the third edition by Noble, Mary Thomas Sr., O.P., (Catholic University Press, Washington, DC: 1995) p. 231Google Scholar. This obsession with legal obligations was mirrored by Protestant Moral Theology in its appropriation of Kantianism during the 19th century.
page 321 note 31 Ibid., p. 234.
page 322 note 32 I recognize that not all moral theologians make a firm distinction between Thomas and Kant here. For instance, Charles Curran stated, ‘Thomas Aquinas anticipated many moderns by basing his ethics on the human being who is an image of God precisely insofar as being endowed with intellect, free will, and the power of self-determination’ (Moral Theology: A Continuing Journey, p. 117). He bases this statement on a reading of the prologue to the prima secundae where Thomas states that human creatures are created in the image of God ‘quasi liberum arbitrium habens et suorum operum potestatem’. To interpret ‘habens suorum operum potestatem’ as self-determination seems to me a rather large leap — a leap in fact away from Thomas and to Kant. In fact, as I hope to show in the argument that follows, Thomas precisely denies this power as a power of self-determination which is why the theological virtues, gifts, fruits and beatitudes are necessary for the completion of the moral life. It seems to me that it is precisely because Curran has misread Thomas here and views him as consistent with a kantian account of moral agency that he can in fact make such statements as ‘I deny that on the level of material content (actions, virtues, attitudes and dispositions) there is anything distinctively Christian’ Ibid., p. 43.
page 322 note 33 ST Ia IIae q. 1.
page 323 note 34 In developing this point further in Q. 1, article 4 Thomas suggests that ‘if there would be no ultimate end there would be no appetite’. The reason for this is that if no end exists then there would be no desire elicited. Nor would there be the possibility of rest. Note the similarity here between Thomas and Bingemer when she states, ‘God can only be, in the beginning, the object of desire’ in Liberation Theologies, Postmodernity and the Americas, p. 178.
page 323 note 35 ST Ia IIae 2.6 ad. 2, my translation.
page 323 note 36 ST Ia IIae 2.6 ad 1.
page 324 note 37 De Lubac, , Mystery of the Supernatural, p. 123Google Scholar.
page 324 note 38 IIIa 1 art. 2. resp. Thomas then connects the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity with the incarnation and the possibility of‘well-doing’. The significance of the incarnation for the moral life is emphasized by quoting Augustine, ‘The human creature who might be seen was not to be followed; but God was to be followed, Who could not be seen. And therefore God was made human, that God Who might be seen by the human creature, and Whom the human creature might follow might be shown to the human creature’ III. a art 2 resp.
page 324 note 39 Critique of Judgment, para. 26, quoted in Zammito, , The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment p. 281Google Scholar.
page 325 note 40 ST Ia IIae 3.1 resp.
page 325 note 41 ST Iae IIae 3.1 ad 1.
page 325 note 42 Such a theological claim leads ineluctably to an important theological role for Mary. Bingemer, Maria and Gebara, Ivone have developed a theology of Mary along these lines in their Mary: Mother of God, Mother of the Poor (Orbis, 1987)Google Scholar where they note that ‘In the figure of the woman who gives birth to the Son of God the fullness of time eschatology and history, anthropology and theology converge’ pp. 55–56.
page 325 note 43 ST Ia IIae, q. 106, art. 1 rep. obj 2.
page 326 note 44 ST Ia2ae Q. 108, art. 1, resp.
page 326 note 45 ST IaIIae q. 106, art. 2, ad sec.
page 326 note 46 Pinckaers, Servais, O.P., , The Sources of Christian Ethics, trans. from the third edition by Noble, Mary Thomas, O.P., (Catholic University Press, Washington, DC: 1995)Google Scholar