S
sw85
Guest
I know there’s some been some recent confusion re: natural law morality. I hope to clarify this by explaining what it means to be morally “good” and showing how there is no other conception of goodness which can be coherent.
We know that to speak of the “goodness” of a thing depends on the object. A meal is good insofar as it is tasty and nutritious, while a knife is good insofar as it is sharp and can cut things. I wouldn’t assess the goodness of a meal by trying to stab something with it, or the goodness of a knife by licking it or chewing it; meals aren’t meant for stabbing nor knifes for being eaten.
But this should not be taken as meaning that there is no objective standard of good – merely that the objective standard in question underlies the various respective goods which all things serve. For in each case the “goodness” of a thing can be understood as the degree to which it instantiates its nature, that is, the degree to which it participates in the act of being.
So “goodness” at the most abstract level is simply the act of being. This jives with the ancients’ intuition that God is, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, actus purus – that is, pure being. If being and goodness are the same things, then God is not only pure being, but also purely good.
(What does it mean for God to be “pure being”? It’s impossible to imagine, but not impossible to conceive of. What it means is that God’s essence is simply existence. Thus whatever can be said to be true of God, God is. To say that sw85 is loving is simply to say that sw85 is a being who happens to love (that is, sw85 would still be what he is even if were not loving). But to say that God is loving is to say that God is love itself, that His lovingness cannot be distinguished from Him, and that He loves as a matter of metaphysical necessity).
This is why, when God first created the world, He “saw that it was good.” It was good simply because it was – because it existed.
It also means that “evilness” or “badness” as such has no ontological existence of its own. The badness of a thing consists in the extent to which it does not participate in the act of being, to the extent to which it does not instantiate its essence, so that a “bad” meal is not tasty or not nutritious, a “bad” knife is dull and useless, and so on. Therefore, even “bad” things are still good to the extent that they exist; their existence is simply imperfect, and their badness is the degree of their imperfection. This means that “pure evil” as such is a non sequitur: for a thing to be pure evil, it would have to be pure non-being, pure nothingness; but if it were nothing, then there would be nothing to describe as pure evil.
This is why evil and sin such as it is is represented not by an “evil God” as was posited by the Manichaeans and Gnostics and various other heretics throughout history, but by a fallen angel – an ontological subordinate to God and a being wholly good in and of himself. And it also explains what it is that makes him evil, for Satan acts in every moment in a manner contrary to his angelic and divine nature. (If he were a “pure evil” being, and assuming for a moment such were not a logical absurdity, then he would actually be good to the extent he were evil – which is another absurdity!)
Morality is the application of these principles to behavior: for humans alone in the world have moral agency, reason, and will. Unlike knives or meals, we have the ability to choose whether or not to live in accordance with our natures. It makes no sense to say that a meal is morally bad because it is tasteless and not nutritious, because the meal cannot help to be what it is. It does make sense, however, to say that a person has acted badly for lying (i.e., misusing his faculty of communication) or masturbating (i.e., misusing his faculty of reproduction), because he or she can choose to do otherwise.
The only way to deny the divine, transcendent ground of goodness is to deny that God is God: that is, to argue that goodness exists before and above Him. But God, Anselm tells us, is that than which no greater thing can be conceived of. If goodness is greater than God, than God is not God – goodness is. In this case, “God” would still be good. Conversely, one can deny that God is necessarily good, arguing instead that God is only accidentally good. But this would imply that God is capable of doing evil – and this much is belied by Scriptures when it is said in James 1:13 that God “cannot be tempted with evil.” The implication here is that God is necessarily good. But if God is not necessarily good, then Scriptures are lying – and if lying is evil, then God is not only not necessarily good, He is not even accidentally good, as He would be lying with full knowledge of its evilness (given His omniscience) and full consent (given His omnipotence). Thus, either possibility is self-refuting or we are forced to return again to the premise that (a) goodness and being are convertible, and (b) moral goodness consists in choosing to act in accordance with one’s nature, the mode of being which God has ordained for it. And this leads us, invariably, to natural law.
We know that to speak of the “goodness” of a thing depends on the object. A meal is good insofar as it is tasty and nutritious, while a knife is good insofar as it is sharp and can cut things. I wouldn’t assess the goodness of a meal by trying to stab something with it, or the goodness of a knife by licking it or chewing it; meals aren’t meant for stabbing nor knifes for being eaten.
But this should not be taken as meaning that there is no objective standard of good – merely that the objective standard in question underlies the various respective goods which all things serve. For in each case the “goodness” of a thing can be understood as the degree to which it instantiates its nature, that is, the degree to which it participates in the act of being.
So “goodness” at the most abstract level is simply the act of being. This jives with the ancients’ intuition that God is, as a matter of metaphysical necessity, actus purus – that is, pure being. If being and goodness are the same things, then God is not only pure being, but also purely good.
(What does it mean for God to be “pure being”? It’s impossible to imagine, but not impossible to conceive of. What it means is that God’s essence is simply existence. Thus whatever can be said to be true of God, God is. To say that sw85 is loving is simply to say that sw85 is a being who happens to love (that is, sw85 would still be what he is even if were not loving). But to say that God is loving is to say that God is love itself, that His lovingness cannot be distinguished from Him, and that He loves as a matter of metaphysical necessity).
This is why, when God first created the world, He “saw that it was good.” It was good simply because it was – because it existed.
It also means that “evilness” or “badness” as such has no ontological existence of its own. The badness of a thing consists in the extent to which it does not participate in the act of being, to the extent to which it does not instantiate its essence, so that a “bad” meal is not tasty or not nutritious, a “bad” knife is dull and useless, and so on. Therefore, even “bad” things are still good to the extent that they exist; their existence is simply imperfect, and their badness is the degree of their imperfection. This means that “pure evil” as such is a non sequitur: for a thing to be pure evil, it would have to be pure non-being, pure nothingness; but if it were nothing, then there would be nothing to describe as pure evil.
This is why evil and sin such as it is is represented not by an “evil God” as was posited by the Manichaeans and Gnostics and various other heretics throughout history, but by a fallen angel – an ontological subordinate to God and a being wholly good in and of himself. And it also explains what it is that makes him evil, for Satan acts in every moment in a manner contrary to his angelic and divine nature. (If he were a “pure evil” being, and assuming for a moment such were not a logical absurdity, then he would actually be good to the extent he were evil – which is another absurdity!)
Morality is the application of these principles to behavior: for humans alone in the world have moral agency, reason, and will. Unlike knives or meals, we have the ability to choose whether or not to live in accordance with our natures. It makes no sense to say that a meal is morally bad because it is tasteless and not nutritious, because the meal cannot help to be what it is. It does make sense, however, to say that a person has acted badly for lying (i.e., misusing his faculty of communication) or masturbating (i.e., misusing his faculty of reproduction), because he or she can choose to do otherwise.
The only way to deny the divine, transcendent ground of goodness is to deny that God is God: that is, to argue that goodness exists before and above Him. But God, Anselm tells us, is that than which no greater thing can be conceived of. If goodness is greater than God, than God is not God – goodness is. In this case, “God” would still be good. Conversely, one can deny that God is necessarily good, arguing instead that God is only accidentally good. But this would imply that God is capable of doing evil – and this much is belied by Scriptures when it is said in James 1:13 that God “cannot be tempted with evil.” The implication here is that God is necessarily good. But if God is not necessarily good, then Scriptures are lying – and if lying is evil, then God is not only not necessarily good, He is not even accidentally good, as He would be lying with full knowledge of its evilness (given His omniscience) and full consent (given His omnipotence). Thus, either possibility is self-refuting or we are forced to return again to the premise that (a) goodness and being are convertible, and (b) moral goodness consists in choosing to act in accordance with one’s nature, the mode of being which God has ordained for it. And this leads us, invariably, to natural law.