By Kathleen Curran Sweeney | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
St. Thomas Aquinas gave primacy to the natural reason as formative in our free choices—the use of reason ordered to truth, and the will ordered to the good, uniting to make a choice.
“Jesus didn’t come to give us a bunch of rules.” Perhaps you have heard this kind of complaint. Some people seem to think that expressing a clearly defined morality is locking them up in some kind of invisible prison that is constricting their freedom. They may equate moral standards with self-righteous hypocrisy. They don’t want to be “moral machines” following a “hard cold legalism.”
Where does this view of Christian morality come from? Is it really true that one has to choose between moral standards and personal freedom? Do we need to choose between either obeying rules imposed on us from the outside or going with the deepest longings of our own heart? Is there actually a dichotomy between moral righteousness and the desires of our heart?
The first Christians were full of joy to learn that the man, Jesus Christ, is not only the Truth but is its Way, as well. They were full of love for the Person, the Lord Jesus, who had died to free them from their sins. They understood that the purpose of life is to seek happiness, but also that this happiness is grounded in knowing the good and avoiding evil. The connection between happiness and knowing the good was very close. Moral standards were guides to keep one on the road to final happiness with God. When did Christians lose sight of the relationship between morality and happiness?
It is important for Christians today to understand that the source of many contemporary attitudes toward the moral life lies in the theology of voluntarism, closely associated with the philosophy of nominalism, which developed in the early 14th century, contributing to a rigid moralism widely practiced since the 1600s. Voluntarism stressed that the only content of morality is obedience to commandments coming from authority outside of oneself. Voluntaristic nominalism was most extensively developed and proposed by William of Ockham (c.1285–1349), who set out to oppose St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on freedom. Ockham’s teaching was controversial from the start, and continues to be. Nevertheless, the influence of voluntaristic and nominalistic thinking has been deep, widespread and perduring.
Everyone of a certain age is familiar with "cartoon physics": The Coyote runs off a cliff and doesn't begin to fall until he realizes where he is; the Road Runner runs off a cliff and doesn't fall at all, because he "never studied law".
It's a joke when it deals with physics, but it's a remarkably widespread idea when it comes to rightly ordering our lives.
Posted by: Howard | Friday, January 20, 2012 at 03:55 AM