FAITH &

MORALITY

Part One

Basic Suppositions

• A life accrdng to Christ teachings

• Act of doing right or wrong

• Set of morals/principles

• Norms for Christians

• Doctrines accdng to faith

• Application of Xtian values

• Our attitudes to others

• Actions of a believer

• Conduct of a christian

• A good behaviour

• The right thing to have

• Values taught by Christ

• Christlike in attitude

• Ways to deal w/ the world

• Reflection of our faith in God

• God’s standard

• Response to God

• Values patterned after Jesus’

• Growing in love and holiness.

• Process of becoming fully human

• Path leading to life

• Values of truth and love

• A way of life

• Guidelines for follower

• Living like Jesus

• Traits

• The commandment to love God and neighbour

• Values

• People’s behaviour

• Rules to live our lives

• Learned from experience

• Deals w/ good and bad

• A careful discernment on things

• Living life in Christ

• Set of truths to believe in

• Traits Christian should have

Chapter Objective

To show a way of relating faith & morality so that religious convictions

might play an integral role in moral reflection.

The Good & the Moral Life

Convictions about the “good” have long influenced

moral dispositions & actions.

ARISTOTLE: the good is what brings happiness

HEDONISTS: the good is what gives pleasure

UTILITARIANS: the good is what is most useful

SCHOLASTICS: the good is what contributes to the realization of one's potential.

GOD – the Center of Value

CHRISTIANS: God, the fullness of being, is good. All other forms of goodness are always derived goodness. They are good only because they are reflections or mediations of God.

God is the center of value; to establish another center is idolatrous.

JESUS is God's Full Revelation

We come to know God's goodness primarily in Jesus Christ.

We also gain such knowledge in the interpretation of our

human experience in the

light of Jesus & the Scripture.

Why be Moral?

Belief in God as center of value gives Christians a

motivation for being moral.

“Like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior. For it is written, 'Be holy for I am holy'” (1 Pet 1:15).

Moral Demand in Light of Faith

We do good because we would like to respond to God's goodness and God's own good activity.

Question: What is God enabling and requiring us to be and to do? The answer to this

requires ongoing discernment.

Knowledge & Experience of God

How one experiences God and what beliefs one holds about God will have a pervasive, though not exclusive, effect on the sort of person one is and what one does.

Thus, for the Christian, morality is closely related to experiences of God and beliefs about God.

Morality Apart from God

Sin becomes the violation of a rule rather than the turning

away from God.

Moral actions become “works” of moral rightness

rather than grateful responses to the goodness of God.

Moral deliberation becomes like mere problem-

solving rather than a thoughtful, prayerful discernment of what God enables & requires.

Morality for a Believer

Actions are bad not primarily because of harms they

cause to self or others but because they are not properly responsive to what God enables & requires.

This theological dimension distinguishes the morality of believers from those who are not.

Faith Informs, Not Replaces, Reason

To say that knowledge & experience of God is closely related to morality is not to say that faith

is the only source of moral knowledge or the only justification of moral actions.

In fact, one doesn't have to be a believer in order to know what is right and to live morally.

Faith & reason are two sources of moral

knowledge.

VAT 2 Challenge

To maintain the proper relationship of faith & reason for determining what makes up good moral

character & right moral behavior.

The kind of dependence

that morality has upon faith

Experience would tell us that faith makes a difference:

“A Christian would not think that way.”

“That was certainly unchristian.”

BUT what kind of dependence morality has on faith?

How are we going to explain link between morality &

faith?

Linking Morality to Faith

• Philosophy of Language: belief statements

are not like scientific statements, which are flat &

testable.

• For example: “God is Creator”

• When we declare that “God is Creator”, we are not

simply stating a fact but somehow we give our

commitment to something.

The Moral-Faith Logic

Donald Evans: The link between morality & faith is

not by way of a strict inference of Syllogistic

Logic but by the Logic of Self Involvement.

SL is concerned with the relation between propositions;

LSI is concerned with the ways in which language may

involve something more than merely making a

statement of fact.

The Moral-Faith Logic

• The self-involving faith statement is a commitment

to a certain way of living and to possessing certain

attitudes and feelings.

• E.g. corporal works of mercy

The Moral-Faith Logic

Syllogistic Logic Logic of Self-Involvement

God is Omnipotent Jesus is God Therefore, Jesus is Omnipotent

God is Omnipotent. I believe in God Therefore, I'll consider God as my Lord; I'll remain in Him for without Him I am nothing; I'll continue to marvel in His power; I'll depend on Him in every endeavor, etc.

“Onlook”

• Moreover, religious beliefs are connected with a

worldview which, in turn, influences the way the

believer perceives the situation in which a moral decision

has to be done.

• The religious statement or belief is a perspective on the

situation, or as Evans calls it, an “onlook”, expressed

by the linguistic form “I look on x as y”.

“Onlook”

• Evans explains that when we look on x as y, “we

assume that there is an appropriate way of thinking

and behaving in relation to y, so that we are

committing ourselves to a similar way of behaving

and thinking in relation to x.”

e.g. The Good Samaritan looked on the victim of

robbers as himself and so took care of him as he

would take care of himself.

The Influence of “Onlooks”

to Character & Action

• “Onlooks” affect the imagination and lead people to

view situations differently and move them to behave in

certain ways.

• Because “onlooks” influence the way we view and

evaluate circumstances in favor of certain judgments, the

use of religious symbols in the moral life eliminates the

chance of ever judging and acting on a situation neutrally.

“Onlooks” in Scripture & Tradition

PARABLES SYMBOLS CREED

Last Judgment (Christ' presence in the poor) Lost Sheep Prodigal Son

Cross Sacred Heart Boat Dove

Triune God Communion of Saints

The Influence of “Onlooks”

to Character & Action

• People who have Christian religious symbols in

their imagination will look on the world quite

differently than those whose imagination are not

influenced by Christian beliefs. As a consequence,

they would respond to moral situations differently.

The Influence of “Onlooks”

to Character & Action

As supported by sociology, religious beliefs affect

the way people understand:

What it means to be human

How one ought to behave in life

The reasons why people have to act in certain

ways

How to interpret morally relevant factors of a

situation

Role of the Church in the Moral Life

• The Christian community plays an important part

in qualifying the meaning of religious symbols in

the moral life of people.

Prayer & Spiritual Exercises in the

Moral Life

• Developing a personal rapport with God would

have a strong impact on the way people understand

symbols and expressions of their faith.

• Prayer & other spiritual disciplines would expand

people's capacity to perceive meaning by directing

one's sensibilities and imagination to “onlooks”.

Limitations

• The logic of self-involvement does not guarantee

that believers will be existentially involved in their

professed belief. How people live morally is not

necessarily predicted by their religious

convictions.

• More than logic is involved in living morally.

Other Factors Affecting Moral Life

• Biological, psychological and social-cultural

conditioning.

• Some people are psychologically incapable, or too

turned in on themselves, to be morally sensitive.

Other Factors Affecting Moral Life

• Depth of sincerity of one's commitment to faith.

• As J. Gustafson says, “Proper doctrine without a

passionate relationship to the God whom the

doctrine seeks to delineate hardly leads to

Christian moral intentions and actions.”

Part Two

3 examples of how morality is linked, at least intellectually, to

religious beliefs

God as Creator

RELIGIOUS BELIEF MORAL INSPIRATION

All that exist comes from God and are dependent on Him.

• To express one's allegiance to the One who provides all things. • To put one's trust in God's goodness • To foster interdependence on one another and with all creation To be a good steward of creation. To be conscious of the limited resources, and to be critical with what we produce.

God as Beneficent

RELIGIOUS BELIEF MORAL INSPIRATION

God gives freely and in love. We don't need to earn God's love; we only have to appropriate and participate in what He gives freely. God wills the good of everyone.

To be grateful every time To use God's gift responsibly and for the common good. • Because we have received freely, we are to give freely, justly and lovingly.

God as End of All Creation

RELIGIOUS BELIEF MORAL INSPIRATION

Just as God is the beginning of all, He also is the final destination of human beings and of all creation (Alpha & Omega). The ultimate end of humankind is happiness/ beatific vision/ or communion with God.

To have a sense of direction in the moral life. To always act in accord with the final end, oneness with God. To direct one's moral life toward what benefits the well-being of persons and the interdependence of all creation.

Faith & the Content of Morality

• The content of morality includes all that pertains to

the morality of being (character), and to the

morality of doing (action and decision-making).

Christian faith informs both aspects.

Faith & the Formation of Character

• Character is important because it shapes a person's

decisions and actions.

• The Christian mysteries, symbols, or stories

influence one's moral imagination and the gradual

formation of one's character.

Faith & the Formation of Character

• Because of a person's religious stance, he may make a

different moral choice than a non-believer, or he may have

the same choice but for different reasons.

• e.g. a terminal patient may be influenced by the paschal mystery of

Jesus and the symbols of the cross & resurrection. And for this, he

may allow only a minimal amount of pain-reliever to share the

sufferings of Christ. He may refuse futile treatments and accept

courageously inevitable death because of his belief in another life.

Faith & Action

• Christians share with other people the same

process of rational deliberations and discernment

in deciding what to do or what not to do. However,

Christian faith could assist the believer in

discerning by helping to order a plurality of values,

to remain focussed on basic human values, and to

rank moral options.

Faith & Action

Christian beliefs also influence decision making and action at

the level of specific obligations which arise because one

is a Christian. This would include:

• Acts directed to God such as prayer and worship

• Acts which are proper to Christian membership such providing

religious education

• Acts inspired by Jesus' teachings such as doing penance, seeking the

good of others, and loving one's enemies.

Critical-Dialogical Relationship

• Faith qualifies morality; but it is not all one way.

• James Walter: Faith and morality must keep a

critical-dialogical relationship. They continuously

interact to shape and reshape the understanding of

one another.

Critical-Dialogical Relationship

• Religious symbols used to express people's

experiences of God and to interpret their moral

experiences are the ones which “ring true” to

their experience.

• If the symbols used to express the nature and actions of God do not

find confirmation in the real life-experiences of people, there would

be problems. The reasons for being moral, the principles and values

inferred from these symbols, and the actions required by them will

have no persuasive power over people's lives.

Critical-Dialogical Relationship

• But, if the symbols do make sense to people's

lives, then we can expect that their moral life will

be truly qualified by religious beliefs and will

receive content from them.