Thank you, Freud and Nietzsche
One of these days I’ll write a post that won’t result in raised eyebrows from the ‘sphere’s self-appointed heresy examiners. Today probably won’t be one of those days. I’m of the opinion that religious thought and practice today needs to take seriously the criticisms of religion offered by Freud and Nietzsche. In his book The Conflict of Interpretations, Paul Ricoeur describes their criticism as follows:
For Nietzsche and Freud have created a kind of hermeneutics which is completely different from the critique of religion that is rooted in the tradition of Britism empericism and French positivism. The problem for them is not that of the so-called proofs for Gods existence, nor do they criticize the concept of God as something devoid of meaning. They have created a new kind of criticisn, a critique of cultural representations considered as disguised symptoms of desire and fear.
What Freud and Nietzsche show me, in their different ways, is that, at the very least, not all of what I call religious faith really is religious faith – really is a response to a God who reveals. What I classify as religious faith because it appears to be a response to a holy text, a sacred event, or another religious experience, may in fact be an expression of ressentiment, or a fiction created to comfort, or an inexpensive drug offering escape, or a cultural means of working out neurosis. It may be an illusion or an idol or a wish.
Their critique offers both a way forward for religious faith, but also a humbling anchor. On the one hand, I have at my disposal methods and instruments for analyzing my religious faith to see whether it is a particular cultural representation disguising symptoms of desire and fear. I can examine my psychology and sociology, my consciousness and, to a lesser extent, my unconsciousness. I can reflect or allow others to reflect on my desires and my fears and on the ways in which I deal with them. On the other hand, however, even if I can come to a strong conviction that my faith is really a response to an experienced divine presence, or at least even if some part of what I call my faith survives Freud’s and Nietzsche’s criticisms, I am left less than absolutely certain that I am really at all responding to a God who has revealed. It remains possible that I remain self-fooled, that, at the core of my being, one would find something non-religious or non-sacred motivating my religious disposition and beliefs. That’s a possibility I keep in mind often, and why I am prone to reject quickly and without apology conceptions of God and interpretations of revelation that clash with what I know via science, history, moral reasoning, and other rational pursuits.
Comments are closed.
Kyle, Right on!
Now that is a challenging post!
Kyle and Rodak, You probably already know the two general neurotic reactions to the death crisis as being a desire to seek a savior, in whatever symbol that may represent, and the second being the desire to be special.
These reactions avoid the feeling of emptiness and isolation internally and externally and can contaminate how faith is expressed. The analysts call this the basic fault and that occurs when there is a loss of a safe and rewarding attachment to one or both parents. This is quite common in western culture that emphasizes independence and individualism in the child’s early development. This leaves the child with that internal void which produces a fear that one is made wrong and the human identity is then structured on this misunderstood and false sense of self. The person grows under the influence of primitive defenses to protect self and others from seeing this horrible thing.
The false self then relates to self and others through these defenses. There is a lot of rage in there which leaks out at inappropriate times.
Thanks Kyle for opening this.
Thank you, Kyle:
This is a most excellent topic to start, one which is closely connected, I think, to the “pre-trans” fallacy described by followers of Wilber. When we notice daily experiences which don’t fit a “rational” world-view, are we able to distinguish pre-rational delusion “disguising symptoms of desire and fear” or even mental illness from genuine post-rational religious experience, something jenseits as Nietszche would call it?
Taking the first steps jenseits of the rational perspective demands thorough grounding in that perspective itself. A few steps more, and we face grave spiritual risks. A spiritual director once told me she was disappointed that among her clients nobody is willing to take such risks. Atheists seem to have an advantage here, having already given up their reliance on God.
Isn’t it ironic that religiosity itself can short-circuit the ability to fully explore rational thought, triggering fears of what we might find in its shadows and blinding us to what lies Jenseits von Gut und Böse?
I posted the following comment on this same topic over at Journeys in Alterity:
Is it possible that the human need to posit an external model of “the good” is only a wish fulfillment exercise; and one that is never actually borne out by experience?
Is it possible that the choices are material existence, which of necessity entails decay and death, or no existence separate from God at all? Is man’s “original sin” simply his self-awareness of himself as an individual?
If so, why is Catholicism so insistent on the survival of the personality, and even the physical body, after death? It would seem that these would be the last things one wanted to cling to, if the goal were eternal bliss and union with the Eternal.
I recall that John Paul II himself said that one cannot understand the modern religious sensibility without having read and digested Nietzsche.
Speaking as the one indirectly and wrongfully referred to as a “self-appointed heresy examiner,” I would say that anyone who denies that the God of Scripture commanded genocide is transforming religion into a pacifier, a plush toy, an opium.
Real faith does not twist and distort reality in order to make it more comforting.
I referred to a plurality of examiners, not one. And as I have, on my own initiative, examined the positions of Catholic bloggers in the ‘sphere and found some of them heretical, I fall under the title as well.
It’s good to know what Freud and Nietzsche thought.
It’s even better to know what the Church thinks, especially in response to them.
Real faith does not twist and distort reality in order to make it more comforting.
It might also be said that real faith in an all-good, loving God would motivate the believer to question his theories of inspiration and inerrancy when they lead to the conclusion that God ordered men to commit genocide. The logical conclusion that men may commit any act, no matter how evil, if if is God’s will nullifies all notions of Catholic morality and turns good and evil into arbitrary categories determined by God’s whims. It makes God into Nixon: “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
Kyle,
Hail fellow inquisitor!
David Nickol,
On “my” theory of inspiration, I have put nothing forward that isn’t directly quoted from the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic council Dei Verbum, no. 11. The sacred writers recorded nothing less and nothing more than precisely what God wanted consigned to writing for all generations as his own divine word. It would be easy to give Vatican II more credit than it deserves on this point. It’s saying nothing other than what the Church has taught regarding Scripture for 2000 years.
I’ve never asserted either that “men may commit any act, no matter how evil” or that “men may commit evil acts if it is God’s will.”
What I have asserted – and continue to assert – is 1) if one is faced with a closed set of evil alternatives, it is morally imperative to choose the alternative that is least evil, and 2) when an act is the least evil alternative, this conditition becomes constitutive to the morality of choosing the object, such as “marital conditions” are constitutive in distinguishing adultery from conjugality within marriage. In other words, when a choice is the least evil alternative, it does not merely affect culpability, but changes the nature of the act itself.
Precisely what Catholic doctrinal text do you believe these two assertions “nullify”?
It makes God into Nixon: “If the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.”
Yes. That’s what it comes down to. I think that Nietzsche said something along the lines of that which is considered valuable and/or moral among a given people are those things which are deemed valuable and/or good by their rulers–i.e. the power brokers. That’s the secular version of the same concept: might makes right.
I am not well versed in Nietzsche, but from what I have read, Carl’s preposterous claim that God commanded genocide appears straight out of Nietzsche and it’s exactly the kind of claim which destroys faith.
I for one refuse to worship or even follow any “god” who commands genocide, for such a “god” is merely the devil, always a liar and a killer.
God Bless
Chris Sullivan,
“You shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded” (Dt 20:16-17).
God either commanded genocide or the sacred writer misrepresented what he wrote. You can’t have it both ways.
Carl,
Deuteronomy is written in the form of an series of extended sermons from Moses.
If one reads Deuteronomy 20 and the preceding chapters it is obvious that the sacred author is not attributing these statements to God but to Moses.
Genre, my dear Carl, genre, as Pope Pius XII insists on.
The reason 1Sam20 is so troubling is because it is pretty much the only verse in the OT which appears (to those who misread the prophetic preamble formula phrase “thus says the Lord”) to attribute a command to genocide to God. Pretty much all the other troubling verses on genocide attribute the command to do so to man, not to God.
God Bless
Precisely what Catholic doctrinal text do you believe these two assertions “nullify”?
Carl,
First, I think you are denying God’s omnipotence by claiming there was (or could ever be) a situation in which his only alternative was to command human beings to commit genocide. It is preposterous to imagine God in a situation in which he has to choose the lesser of evils.
1) if one is faced with a closed set of evil alternatives, it is morally imperative to choose the alternative that is least evil, and 2) when an act is the least evil alternative, this conditition becomes constitutive to the morality of choosing the object . . .
I believe you are simply wrong. Pope Paul VI said the following in Humanae Vitae:
Deliberate killing of civilians in warfare — killing babies so that they do not grow up to become adult enemies — certainly is “something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order.” It is simply murder for a human being to do such a thing, and to maintain that God may command human beings to commit an act that is, and and of itself, evil is to do away with the concept of intrinsic evil. It is to say that — in theory — any evil is permissible under some circumstance, as long as it is to avoid a greater evil. That is simply not Catholic teaching.
Here is something interesting from one of the sacred writers:
How do we know, by the way, which of these commands — directly from God — are still in effect today?
Since we know the Father through the Son, as Jesus tells us, then the ancient writers only knew what they imagined God to be through the lens of their culture at the time. In other words they knew Him through the lens of political power and not the spiritual power of love. They may have had glimpses of love and what was to be revealed through Christ but they did not have the gift of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit who would give them the fullness of the truth of the Father.
Therefore, the ancient writers detailed what happened or happens without the fullness of the Truth. It becomes a perversion which must be sifted through bit by bit in order to discover what is God’s message and what is man’s message.
Ronald:
Shouldn’t we say that “we” still and always in this life only know what we imagine God to be through the lens of the culture of our own time? Even more so the language of our time, and its limitations. Reading scripture in translation compounds our own lens with that of the translator as well as that of the ancient prophets and their scribes.
Every time I read “You can’t have it both ways,” or that some “did” and some “did not have the gift of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit” or similar dualistic statements, I’m reminded that we humans unavoidably construct concepts and boundaries around them. And it’s a good thing that we continue to do so, since this is our species’ greatest selective advantage.
Though this critical ability to conceptualize is exactly what has made scripture and culture and Vox-Nova possible, this self-same ability erupts uncontrollably and stands squarely in our way if we attempt to encounter God as God is. I’m in a hurry, so don’t have time to Google for Augustine’s (??) statement that belongs in here someplace, and goes something like: “a god I can understand is not God.”
I totally agree Frank.
This is without question the most shocking post I have ever read on this blog.
There is, quite simply, nothing whatsoever positive to say about the public life of Nietzsche. By the grace of God I am able to hope that he repented of his error before it was too late.
I spent too many years of my life contaminated by the filth of his books. His philosophy can be summed up as the very anithesis of the 2 great commandments. Through Zarathustra Nietzsche teaches that the greatest hour is the hour of great contempt for both God and neighbor. The larger body of his work does nothing more than echo the words of the Serpent who corrupted our first father and mother telling that that they should not die be like gods and know for themselves good and evil.
That power and immortality, that lie of Satan, is what the eternal recurrence is really about. The laughter of Zarathustra as he bites the head off the serpent and becomes the transvaluator of values… What is that but the transcendence of good and evil?
No.
We should not be thankful for Nietzsche, at least not in his written words. He was the means by which a great and terrible evil was unleashed upon the world that has claimed many souls for the Enemy. And but by the grace of God one of them would have been mine.
On a side note….Questions about the ethics of God might be better addressed by Kierkegaard. While it’s not fully satisfying (and indeed likely not entireley correct, since it does not conform to the teachings of the Church Fathers), questions about the justice of God concerning his commands for genocide are at least somwhat accounted for by Kierkegaard’s concept of the teleological suspension of the ethical.
Chris, my dear Chris, the word “genre” never appears in Divino Afflante Spiritu. Not even once. Pius XII does divide “the immense matter contained in the Sacred Books” into four categories, namely, “legislative, historical, sapiential and prophetic” (DAS 47). The “genre” of Deuteronomy in general and this passage in particular is clearly “legislation.”
To the author of Deuteronomy, the word of Moses was the word of God. Please read Deuteronomy 5:22-33. You should also read Deuteronomy 31:24-26. If the author of Deuteronomy intended us to understand the book as merely contained a “collection of homilies” (which is ridiculous), he would not have Moses command the book to be put by the side of the ark of the covenant. This sacred action signifies the divine authority of the book.
Moreover, the specific passage in question explicitly uses the phase “Yahveh elohim tsavah.” The genre is divine law in the most formal sense of the word.
1 Sam 20 is about the covenental friendship of David and Jonathan and I’m not really sure what it is that you find troubling in this passage. I assume you are referring not to chapter 20 but to chapter 15, which together with the other former prophets represents part of a collection of “historical case studies” to help us understand and interpret Deuteronomic law. The genre of 1 Samuel is historical then, but it is also a kind of axiomatic law review.
Chris, I have a masters degree in theology and I am very familiar with the rules of Catholic interpretation. There is no hiding behind these rules in order to force the text to say the opposite of what it says. Either God commanded genocide, or the sacred writers falsely attributed to God a command that he did not issue. You can’t have it both ways.
David Nickol,
The necessity of ordering genocide in order to keep Israel from abandoning themselves to the abominable practices of these nations is expressly stated by God himself: “You shall utterly destroy them…as the Lord your God has commanded…that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices” (Dt 20:17-18).
You are forgetting if God is truly “Almighty” then he has the power to place limitations on himself. This is the very nature of the “covenant” of which the charam is an expression. Theologians and philosophers thus distinguish between the ‘potentia absoluta” and “potentia ordinata.”
The passage you provide from Humanae Vitae is consistent with my point. I am not speaking of “doing evil that good may come of it” (e.g. passing out condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS). I am also not speaking of “directly intending something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order,” since what God “directly intends” in commanding genocide is, in his own words, “that they may not teach you to do according to their abominable practices.”
I never asserted and do not believe that “any evil is permissible under some circumstance,” but that genocide was sometimes permissible and commanded in the Old Testament by a law that has been since rendered now and forever obsolete.
You ask: “How do we know, by the way, which of these commands — directly from God — are still in effect today?”
Excellent question. I will provide two different answers both of which I think are very good.
The first answer comes from St. Thomas Aquinas’ treatment of the Old Law in the Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae Partis, Questiones 98-105.
St. Thomas divides the Old Law into three categories: Moral Laws, Ceremonial Laws and Judicial Laws. (1) Moral Laws are clarifications of the law of nature and are indispensable (e.g. ten commandments, law of loving God, law of loving neighbor, etc). (2) Ceremonial laws are sacrifices, sacred things, sacraments and observances that pertain to divine worship. These laws are abrogated forever and cannot be performed in good conscience. (3) Judicial laws derive their binding force not from the dictate of reason but from divine institution and regulate man’s relations to other men. These laws were annulled by the coming of Christ but not in the same way as ceremonial laws. For practical reasons determined by the sovereign, he may order these laws to be observed.
The second answer comes from Dr. Scott Hahn. The authority is obvious less, but the quality of the answer more than makes up for it. I don’t know if he arrived at this from his own study of Scripture or whether he happened upon it in another author. I also don’t know if he’s published this, but he ought to.
Hahn also divides the Old Law into virtually the same three categories, but he distinguishes each type of law by an historical event that took place during the Exodus and he distinguishes each type by a mode of fulfillment that took place in the Gospel.
The Sinaic Law was given before the Golden Calf expresses God’s absolute will for Israel and is associated with the Book of Exodus. In fulfilling these laws, Christ leaves them entirely intact. The Levitical Law was given after the Golden Calf and is designed to purify Israel of its tendencies to idolatry and is associated with the Book of Leviticus. In fulfilling these laws, Christ gives sacraments which not only purify from sin but bestow sanctifying grace. The Deuteronomic Law was given after Israel worshipped the Baal of Peor at the very end of the forty years Exodus and is associated with the Book of Deuteronomy. The purpose of these laws is to limit the damage caused by the hardness of Israel’s heart until the coming of Christ and the replacement of the heart of stone for a heart of flesh. These laws are conditioned on man’s fallen state, therefore, in fulfilling these laws, Christ renders them strictly obsolete. It is worth noting that in doing this St. Matthew places Christ in the very same location where these laws were given: “the region of Judea beyond the Jordan … it was for the hardness of your hearts that Moses allowed … but from the beginning it was not so, and I say to you …” (19:1). In these words specifically applied to divorce, we can identify a far more sweeping annulment the concessionary laws, associated with the book of Deuteronomy.
One last note: Although these three types of laws – Sinaic, Levitical and Deuteronomic – can be respectively associated with Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, it is not possible to say that everything in Exodus is Sinaic or that everything in Deuteronomy is Deuteronomic. Likewise, Leviticus contains laws of different kinds. The relation between the law-type and the corresponding book is a useful generalization, not a hard and fast rule.
Ronald and Frank,
The question is not whether the Sacred Writers fully understood God – they neither did nor claimed to – but whether they erred in what limited understanding they had of God. Did they misrepresent the will and word of God?
The Catholic Church believes that God deliberately chose these men and made full use of their powers and faculties so that all that they affirm must be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit.
This is why I cannot agree that “they did not have the gift of the wisdom of the Holy Spirit” or “we still and always in this life only know what we imagine God to be through the lens of the culture of our own time.” These statements amount to a metaphysical restriction on God’s power to reveal himself or a concrete denial of God’s activity in revealing himself.
Carl,
Pius XII may not have used the word genre but he clearly referred to it.
I don’t think 1Sam15′s use of the phrase “thus says the Lord” means what you think it means.
It does not mean that God literally said this.
It’s rather a stock prophetic preamble phrase used to introduce the prophet’s statement.
It is then over to the community to interpret the prophets statement. In the end, the Hebrews interpreted it by giving up genocide.
The literal meaning here is not that God commanded genocide.
God Bless
I think if you’re worried about God commanding genocide in the Hebrew Bible, you are looking at the Bible basically like a fundamentalist Christian literalist.
As a Catholic I can believe that what I am reading in the cited passage, and elsewhere in the Bible too, is not necessarily literal history, while still believing that all scripture is divinely inspired.
What we read in the cited passage is: What someone wrote about what Moses said about what God said. That’s what is there in the text to understand and interpret, and it is very different than simply: What God said.
And another thing, this relevant to the post itself. I have to pretty much agree with Ben on Nietzsche, whom I also read as an impressionable youth. What Nietzsche preached is the abyss that I look into every time a have a doubt about my faith.
Regarding the general point about being religious for the wrong reasons, I for one freely admit that my faith is a crutch, which I need because both my legs are broken.
I read this really interesting Encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI wherein he cleared up a lot of these questions.
Freud and Neitzsche say that the desire for God is Eros.
We Catholics say Eros is the desire for God.
The direction of causality is critical.
Re-read Deus Caritas Est, please.
David Raber–
What message are we to take, then, from the passage that purports to be about genocide? What does “genocide” symbolize? And what good thing is symbolized by the slaughter of innocent children, along with their allegedly guilty parents? If it is permissable to kill children now to save them from sin later, then why is abortion proscribed? It would be 100% effective toward that end.
The passage you provide from Humanae Vitae is consistent with my point. I am not speaking of “doing evil that good may come of it” (e.g. passing out condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS). I am also not speaking of “directly intending something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order,” since what God “directly intends” in commanding genocide is, in his own words, “that they may not teach you to do according to their abominable practices.”
Carl,
Read this carefully. Here is a summary:
You are arguing that slaughtering children (the object) is good because the intention (they must be obliterated “that they may not teach you to do according to their abominable practices”) is good. You are arguing that human beings, if commanded by God, can commit intrinsically evil acts without doing evil. In fact, your argument allows men to do intrinsically evil acts on their own if their intentions are good, since you are ignoring object and focusing on intention.
Your reasoning would make abortion to save the life of the mother permissible. It could be argued that the intention is not to kill the unborn infant, but simply to remove it from the womb so that the mother may live. (Full disclosure: It doesn’t seem like a bad argument to me. But it is categorically rejected in Catholic moral theology.)
It is not so much the judging of God’s actions (if we take 1 Samuel 15 to be literal truth) that concerns me as it is the morality of those told to slaughter each and every one of the Amalekites. Their excuse for killing a baby would be, “I’m only following God’s orders.” But the direct killing of a baby is always wrong, no matter what. It is intrinsically evil. If someone believes they have received a message from God to kill a baby, they must conclude that they have misunderstood, because it is always immoral to directly kill a baby, no matter what your intentions or who ordered you to do it. Even if one accepts the argument that God himself may kill a baby because he is the author of all life, if he commands a human being to murder, he is commanding that human being to commit an intrinsic evil. God may not suspend moral law for humans for any reason.
Carl, Could God be teaching us through the sacred writers what happens without knowing Christ and the Holy Spirit. We can be inspired without the use of Wisdom. Is God teaching us what not to do in this story?
David Rabner:
I like your point about reading Nietzsche as an “impressionable youth.” At each stage of my life, I have a different readiness or even a different kind of readiness for God.
“What Nietzsche preached is the abyss that I look into every time a have a doubt about my faith.” Nietzsche was a philosopher, not a preacher telling people how to live life. If I understand your description correctly and the way it relates to my own life and experiences, the abyss is exactly where God’s presence is most obvious once we see it, for lack of other “stuff” in the way. This may be the best place of all for prayer. This does not, of course, mean that Nietzsche or the abyss itself are the “best” way for everyone to find God. I’m reminded of the way Thomas Moore writes about darkness in Dark Nights of the Soul.
Jeff, I’m not a big fan of Benedict XVI, but, if that’s what he said about eros, then maybe I DO need to read Deus Caritas Est, because that’s what I believe, too.
Unfortunately for the state of my “orthodoxy” however, I believe that “homo-eros” is ALSO the “desire for God.”
Chris Sullivan,
The Nicene Creed states, “He has spoken by the prophets.” The purpose of the “stock prophetic preamble” is to tell listeners that the teaching of the prophets is not really from the Prophets but from Yahveh. No Jew or Israelite would EVER use the divine name as lightly and meaninglessly as you suggest.
It is not a throw-away line. By using the name, the prophets were making a very, very serious claim: They were claiming that their words were not their own but from the Almighty. The word laid up in the prophet’s mouth had to be spoken because it was truly God’s own word (see Jer 20:9).
Likewise, Vatican II teaches “all that the inspired authors affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit” (DV 11). This means that even when the sacred writer does not say “thus says the Lord,” the words are still “literally said by God.” No word of Scripture can be treated as though it is merely the opinion of the human writer.
Chris, the literal meaning is DEFINITELY that God commanded genocide. He even explained why he was commanding it. The Hebrews did not “give up” genocide. Those seven nations no longer exist. The Assyrians and Chaldeans finished the job. Look around, Chris, where are the Hivites? Gone. Perizzites? Amorites? Gone. Gone. Amorites, Jebusites, Canaanites? Triple Gone. The biblical Hittites have been annhilated.
This is why St. Paul says God destroyed the seven nations in the land of Canaan (Acts 13:19) and why St. Augustine comments on Psalm 79:8 (“You have cast out the nations”), “It was done we know. how many nations were cast out? Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, Perizzites and Hivites: after whose expulsion and overthros, there was lead in the people delivered out of Egypt, into the land of Promise” (Exp. on Ps. 80, 5). This is why, in treating the Judicial Laws, St. Thomas Aquinas says, “in the neighboring cities which had been promised to them, all were ordered to be slain, on account of their former crimes, to punish which God sent the Israelites as executor of Divine justice” (S.T. I-II, 105, 3, ad. 4).
All of Scripture and Tradition are of one voice in affirming that God commanded the genocide of these nations.
David Nickol,
CCC 1756 gives no indication of what one should do if the only way to avoid a greater evil, which is not such by reason of its consequences but by reason of its nature, is to perform a lesser evil, which still evil by reason of its nature.
Quoting Humanae Vitae 14, “it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” John Paul II indicates that this is true “with regard to intrinsically evil acts” (Veritatis Splendor 80).
First, I am arguing that the slaughtering of children (lesser intrinsic evil) was commanded in order to avoid the complete dissolution of Israel (greater intrinsic evil).
Second, please read this carefully, I argue that the “least evil alternative” is constitutive to the nature of the object chosen. Such a condition does not belong to the realm of intentions or circumstances, but to the realm of the object chosen. Like “being married before God” fundamentally changes the moral nature of having sex with somebody, “being the least evil alternative” fundamentally changes the moral nature of the act being chosen.
My reasoning ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT make abortion to save the life of the mother permissible because causing someone’s death is a greater evil (a much greater evil) than allowing someone’s death. The argument you suggest is bad (very bad) because the good of saving the life of the mother is outweighed by the evil of causing the death of the child. One cannot justify a greater evil by seeking to avoid a lesser evil.
It would not be wrong to kill a baby in order to avoid a greater evil. Not a pretend greater evil, but a real one. If we are in war, for example, we will kill babies. If reasons justify going to war, such killing of babies is not wrong. Such is the world that sin gives us.
The Church understands the term “direct” as referring to how an object is willed as an end or a means to an end (e.g. CCC 2322) as opposed to the object being an indirect consequence of another act chosen. Imagine I killed an insane pregnant woman in defense of my family. Imagine I bombed a munitions factory that had a daycare center in it. The ‘charam’ of the Old Testament is not different.
Ronald King,
It seems to me that the point of the story is to show that God’s faithfulness to his covenant with Israel is the highest good motivating all of his actions. He orders the slaughter of these nations because it is the only way to preserve a faithful remnant.
On a deeper level, this shows us what happens without knowing Christ and the Holy Spirit. Absolutely. Without the “special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith” (read: Baptism, Pentecost, Confirmation), the only way to avoid falling into the abominable practices of our neighbor would be to kill them. The hopelessness of man’s condition before the coming of Christ is very sad. We too easily take for granted how fundamentally Christ changed the cosmos.
“He orders the slaughter of these nations because it is the only way to preserve a faithful remnant.”
The only way? Any reasonably intelligent television script writer could come up with a better rationale and plot-line than that.
Quoting Humanae Vitae 14, “it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” John Paul II indicates that this is true “with regard to intrinsically evil acts” (Veritatis Splendor 80).
Carl,
As I point out in another thread, there is a major difference between tolerating an evil and choosing or committing an evil. It is never morally licit to perform an intrinsically evil act, no matter what is at stake. If you are confronted with a choice between a greater intrinsic evil and a lesser intrinsic evil, it is not morally licit to choose the lesser intrinsic evil. You must not choose either. To choose between the lesser of two intrinsic evils is to choos an intrinsic evil, which is never permissible. If your only choices are two intrinsic evils, then you must not choose.
A classic example is being in a situation where you could save the entire country by killing one innocent man. According to Catholic teaching, you are not permitted to kill the innocent man, even though it means the death of the entire country. Another classic example is being in a situation where you could save the whole world with a lie. Lying is intrinsically evil, and you may not lie to save the world.
Rodak:
It should be obvious that God has more smarts than “Any reasonably intelligent television script writer.” God ordered the slaughter of these nations because it was the only way to ensure that Freud, Nietzsche, Dawkins, and Hitchens would emerge thousands of years later to criticize God’s behavior.
I see. And how long have you been writing for television, Mr. M?
David Nickol,
What support do you provide for your purported difference between “tolerating” and “choosing”? Do you think this difference is self-evident?
Your argument is terrible because there is no such thing as “not choosing” because “not choosing” is itself a choice, and potentially an intrinsically evil one. In the particular case in question, “not choosing” meant committing a greater evil than genocide precisely because not choosing to command genocide ipso facto meant choosing to be unfaithful to the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Israelites had to destroy these nations in order to take possession of the land promised to their fathers. Please read the Book of Deuteronomy.
As one who voted for John McCain because it represented the least evil of the only four possible alternatives (McCain, 3rd party, not voting, Obama), I assure you that I TOLERATED the evil of voting for a politician who supports ESCR in order to AVOID the greater evil of not directly opposing a candidate who would do grave and lasting damage to the common good by means of his judicial appointments.
I have issued a challenge that no one has taken up: Being the least evil alternative is a condition constitutive to the morality of the object chosen, such as “marital status” is a condition constitutive to “adultery.” Show me where this proposition has been condemned by Scripture, Tradition or the Magisterium of the Church. Don’t leave me a trail of crumbs by making vague and lazy references to an “ism.” Show me the text.