Posts

I’d like to challenge your first answerer, Rugbyidiot, although certainly not uncharitably. I don’t know if that person will return the check this question, so I’ll try to e-mail them privately as well.

I’d like to forward for consideration this passage by Leo XIII:

“This supernatural revelation, according to the belief of the universal Church, is contained both in unwritten Tradition, and in written Books, which are therefore called sacred and canonical because, “being written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author and as such have been delivered to the Church.” This belief has been perpetually held and professed by the Church in regard to the Books of both Testaments; and there are well-known documents of the gravest kind, coming down to us from the earliest times, which proclaim that God, Who spoke first by the Prophets, then by His own mouth, and lastly by the Apostles, composed also the Canonical Scriptures, and that these are His own oracles and words – a Letter, written by our heavenly Father, and transmitted by the sacred writers to the human race in its pilgrimage so far from its heavenly country… [S]uch and so great is the excellence and the dignity of the Scriptures, that God Himself has composed them.”

Since God is goodness itself, and can do no evil, how is it possible to hold that any law composed by God Himself is evil? I certainly don’t mean to imply that Rugbyidiot actually believes such a thing; I am only pointing out what his/her statement necessarily implies.

I don’t know the answer to your question off the top of my head, Bruce, but it might be helpful if we understand the Torah as something in certain ways similar to our own Codes of Canon Law. Now the Torah has the advantage of divine inspiration, but the similarity is what is most important.

Let’s say that our Sui Juris Churches, like the Byzantine Rite, were tragically destroyed. If that happened, the Codes that governed them, as well as the immediate authorities that enforced those Codes, would be void. Something like this happened with the Torah; the body of priests that held jurisprudence over them was first rendered superfluous by Christ, and the destroyed by Rome. That is why nothing of the old law has any remaining legal authority, except for those few parts which are incorporated by the Church into her own laws (such as the Ten Commandments).

Of course, is goes without saying that anything in the old law that codified something already present in natural law (e.g., the prohibition of homosexual activity) is binding upon all people of all time. This is because God Himself gives the natural law its force. Pax!

+JMJ

*edit*

*what you are talking about is the divine command theory. Does God command something because it is good, or is this something good because God commands it? This can be applied in other ways: Is something true because God says so or does God say something is true because it is?*

That’s a bit like the question, “Can God make a rock so big, etc.” It also places the two ideas in unnecessary contradiction. Philosophically, we need to bring in a third idea to answer this question. This idea is implicit in your next statement: “I believe that God IS the truth.”

Ontologically, God is the truth itself. It is who He is. That is why He can neither deceive, nor be deceived, as the old dictum goes. This places the goodness and truth of God’s action within the context of His own immutable being. Since God is pure act, with no shadow of potentiality, His commands and actions could never be any different than what they are.

*This does not mean that we reject our bassic reason in favor of a “divine command”. If it were written in the bible that God thinks abortion is ok, would that make abortion ok?*

This is another instance of a question like the “big rock” one I mentioned above. By even posing it, we give it more than its due; it is quite like asking, “If there was a square that was also a circle, would that make the square a circle?” This is really a non-question, because any attempt to directly answer it is nonsensical; no possible answer will any way describe reality as it actually is.

*No, abortion would still be wrong because it violates the basic principle of the sanctity of innocent life.*

As per the Lord’s command, which is drawn from His own simplicity, immutability, and perfect goodness. Nevertheless, God is not obligated to grant anyone life, nor is He obligated to sustain it.

*God is beyond our reason, this does not mean that we reject our basic reason in favor of something unreasonable because it is what the bible says to do.*

Our reason is a beautiful gift, and it is reason that makes us the highest of earthly creatures. Nevertheless, our reason has been darkened by sin, both original and personal. Our ability to fully use our reason is greatly hindered by this. The sheer amount of mental work it takes to tackle even the most elementary moral problems is due to this corruption in our nature. For that very reason, we must defer to God when what He says run contrary to what we thought was reason.

*God truly is the way the truth and the life, He does not will us to reject the faculties that He himself gave us.*

Absolutely. We mustn’t despair of using any good gift rightly. Nor ought we presume too much on our immediate abilities to do so.

*Therefore, I submit that we use our reason to figure out what is right at all times. Submission to God’s infinite wisdom does not require a rejection of our basic understanding of right and wrong.*

Sure. Into this equation, however, we must add the identity of the origin of reason. The person Jesus is the Logos, the transcendent principle of rationality in the universe. He Himself is God, who is, according to Catholic doctrine, the primary author of the Sacred Scriptures. He cannot lie, who is truth itself.

I suppose one could assert that some laws in the text as we now have it are abominable. One would have to do that from a moral, rather than from a textual-critical standpoint. Still, it would liberate one from needing to reconcile biblical laws which, from our perspective, come off as evil, with Christian morality.

On the other hand, I don’t think this is necessary; many of the commandments of the Torah are privative rather than positive. In the instance of slavery, God merely refrained from forbidding it. We may see this as Him allowing one evil to prevent a greater evil (e.g., a definitive apostasy of His people), or to make way for a greater good (e.g., the preservation of a people who would remain loyal to him for long enough to give birth to Mary, who would open her heart and her womb to God’s promise). Of course, there is still room to debate the objective morality of slavery in se, apart from the abuses that so often follow from it.

Anyway, I’d be happy to discuss this in more depth if you want request my e-mail address from Yahoo! Answers. Pax!

+JMJ