HOW IS ONE TO BEST UNDERSTAND WHAT THE CHURCH TEACHES AND WHAT CHRISTIANS BELIEVE?

• CHRIST
  personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ
  
• CANON
  authentic teaching: Sacred Scripture & Sacred Tradition
  
• COMMUNITY
  intimate relationship with other Christian believers

DRAMATIS PERSONA: The person as an actor in the drama of life

Adapted from Introduction to the 1993 Ignatius Press edition of

Love & Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla [p 13]

One work by the Author of quite exceptional importance . . . . is ‘Person and Act’ [The Acting Person], the work in which the Author has given the fullest account of his views on the subject of the human person. The subject matter of that work is connected [very closely] with the question of responsible love, which is the main theme of Love and Responsibility.

The person,

through its own action

and the action of another person,

becomes the object and subject of responsible love.

The person is an actor in the drama – dramatis persona – in which it writes ‘its truest history’, the history of love or of its negation.

The text of Love and Responsibility would be impoverished at its very core if some way were not found of making the necessary connections with ‘Person and Act’ and putting it in the context of K. Wojtyla’s ‘Treatise on Man’.

from Chapter 2, “The Person and Love” [p114 of Love & Responsibility]
Looked at in terms of psychology, love can be seen as a specific situation. . . . whether we think of its internal or its external aspect it is a concrete situation, and therefore unique and unreproducible. The external concreteness and uniqueness of the situation which we call love is closely connected with its internal aspect, with what is within each of the persons, who are as it were actors in the drama of their own love. Love is certainly a drama in the sense that it is made up of happenings and of action (to do, to act is the meaning of the Greek word ‘drao’, from which ‘drama’ comes).

Thus, the ‘dramatis personae’ discover the plot of this drama in themselves, perceive their love as a psychological situation unique of its kind, and one of great and absorbing importance in their inner lives. A person is of course, among all the varied objects of the visible world, that unusual one which is endowed with an inner self of it own, and is capable of an inner life.

FREEDOM & RESPONSIBILITY

"... freedom characterizes properly human acts.
It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach."

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church,

there is a section which discusses Freedom and Responsibility.

The following excerpt is adapted from that section (1731-1738):

Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will,

to act or not to act, to do this or that,

and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility.
By free will one shapes one's own life.
Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity

in truth and goodness;

it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively

to its ultimate good which is God,

there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil,
and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning.
This freedom characterizes properly human acts.
It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes.
There is no true freedom

except in the service of what is good and just.

The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom

and leads to "the slavery of sin."

Freedom makes man responsible for his acts

to the extent that they are voluntary.

Progress in virtue,
knowledge of the good,
and ascesis [rigorous self-denial & active self-restraint]
enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.

Imputability and responsibility for an action

can be diminished or even nullified

by ignorance,
inadvertence,
duress,
fear,
habit,
inordinate attachments,
and other psychological or social factors.

Every act directly willed is imputable to its author:
Thus the Lord asked Eve after the sin in the garden:

"What is this that you have done?"

He asked Cain the same question.
The prophet Nathan questioned David in the same way

after he committed adultery with the wife of Uriah

and had him murdered.

An action can be indirectly voluntary

when it results from negligence

regarding something one should have known or done:

for example, an accident arising from ignorance of traffic laws.

An effect can be tolerated without being willed by its agent;

for instance, a mother's exhaustion from tending her sick child.

A bad effect is not imputable if it was not willed

either as an end or as a means of an action,

e.g., a death a person incurs in aiding someone in danger.

For a bad effect to be imputable it must be foreseeable

and the agent must have the possibility of avoiding it,

as in the case of manslaughter caused by a drunken driver.

Freedom is exercised in relationships between human beings.
Every human person, created in the image of God,

has the natural right to be recognized

as a free and responsible being.

All owe to each other this duty of respect.

The right to the exercise of freedom,

especially in moral and religious matters,

is an inalienable requirement

of the dignity of the human person.

This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority

within the limits of the common good and public order.

THE PROPER PRIORITY OF THE OTHER

In reading Matthew 5-6, one may well note how
Jesus emphasizes giving God priority in all things:

"Seek first the kingdom of God ..."

Consider this in relation to his teaching elsewhere
that
the greatest (or the first) commandment is to
love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength;
following this is to as well love one's neighbor as oneself.

Christians,

confident in being loved by God,

give priority to others over themselves.

Christian ethics is founded on such proper priority

– God, others, self.

FAITHFUL IMAGINATION

“…reason is the natural organ of truth;
but imagination is the organ of meaning.
Imagination,

producing new metaphors or revivifying old,
is not the cause of truth, but its condition.”

(from C.S. Lewis’ essay “Bluspels and Flalansferes” in Rehabilitations;

quoted by Corbin Scott Carnel in Bright Shadow of Reality: C.S. Lewis & the Feeling Intellect, p. 72)

“Faith begins in one’s imagination.”

I learned this from my father, Dr. Nicholas John Tavani, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at George Mason University and final District Superintendent of the Italian District of the Assemblies of God.

I first heard this statement in a sermon my father preached in a series of lectures he gave while visiting the college where I was an undergraduate student. He was exploring the difference between two of Jesus Christ’s disciples: Thomas whose doubt ended in faithful belief, and Judas, whose doubt led to cynical betrayal.

The point was that, although both doubted, the actions that proceeded from that doubt differed greatly because of how each imagined the outcome of what Jesus chose to do in setting his face like flint toward Jerusalem and death. Thomas willingly followed, even while acknowledging that it might very well lead to the death of them all; Judas, faced with what Jesus explicitly interpreted as preparation for his death when the woman extravagantly poured perfume as an anointing on him, cynically complained as though concerned about the alternative of using the perfume to feed the poor instead.

In these two responses were revealed the imaginative milieu of these two disciples’ thought life. Judas, imagining naught but what was seemly for himself, was blind to the Way of Truth revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ; Thomas, imagining the possibility of God’s coming Kingdom, saw in following Jesus his only hope of that possibility coming true.

Imagination is more than some mere mental mechanism that uses the raw material of abstract ideas to produce concrete words. Imagination is the very environment in which ideas may be formed – meaning first floats free in one’s oceanic imagination.

Liquid thought
flows from the boundless fanta-sea
into channels of focused concentration
that feed wells of categorization
from which one may draw one’s words
to express meaning particularly.
Yet
that formal expression of meaning
initially flowed from the formless fountain of fantasy.

The negative connotation that is often associated with fantasy has tainted the consideration of what positive possibilities lie in the realm of imagination. If one is accused of flights of fancy, that one’s ideas are not taken seriously. If one is said to fantasize, one may be thought to indulge in perverse sexuality. If something is called fantastic, then that thing may very well be considered beyond the realm of possibility. And this all may be very well true – one’s fantasy may be the fruit of folly or be derived from a darkened imagination. But this is not necessarily so.

Imagination is one’s access to the universal, the transcendent aspect of life that lies beyond one’s immanent fact of individual being. One person alone is faced with the reality of one’s finitude.
Fantasy, however, is not finite. The manifestly finite limits of physical existence are unbound in one’s apparently infinite imagination. In such immensity one approaches, though never reaches, the infinite realm inhabited by God, the source of Truth itself.

God, then, is the One from Whom Truth begins to flow.

That flow is always unidirectional,

from God toward universal creation.

“All truth is God’s truth.” This quote is attributed to the late Arthur Holmes, a professor at Wheaton University. One’s apprehension of Truth is wholly dependent on one’s relationship to God. That which is true is that which corresponds with Truth. Truth is greater than any particular true expression. Apprehending Truth all at once is like attempting to drink in the whole ocean – one is not able to do so, physically, mentally or spiritually.

Through one’s imagination, however, Truth may be absorbed into one’s system of thought. One might be overwhelmed by a glorious vision, one might splash about in a dream, one may drink deep in meditation, one may slurp up sloppy fantasy, or one may sip away at conversation. One’s imagination is a wonderful plumbing system through which Truth flows into meaning; through imagination one finds means of expression that plumb the depths of Truth.

Truth not only transcends any expression of truth, but also any conception of truth. One must always remember that Truth is greater than one’s imagination, else one will fall prey to self-deception, seeing lies to be true because one’s imagination makes it seem to be so.

This submissive attitude, this constant realization of One greater than oneself, is the humility that is the beginning of wisdom. Such humility is the posture that makes faith possible, faith that recognizes oneself by looking at the face of God, a fearful thing indeed.

Fear of God is not some mere matter of being afraid of possible consequences but more about being aware of actual circumstances. Anyone who forgets that God is always greater is someone who finally becomes a fool. It is those flights of foolish fancy that fail to reflect Truth; the flow of meaning becomes obstructed by the sediment of selfish suppositions. This process of erosion leads to lying as the only means of expression possible.

What then is needed is a holy baptism of one’s imagination in which all such silly sediment is washed away, clearing the channels so that one is able to see and speak the truth.

"Do not conform yourself to this age

but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,

that you may discern what is the will of God,

what is good and pleasing and perfect."

Romans 12:2

COVENANTAL CREATION

Covenant is relationship between Creator & creation: the Creator proves responsibility by promising to sustain all creation and enabling creatures with the freedom to respond as well; the creature is free to respond by doing that which is consistent with the purposes of the Creator .

• God initiated the relationship by creating all that is, forming the earth itself in such a way as to support life.
• God created mankind in his own image; each human is created to carry the character of the Creator’s image.
• God planted a garden as the place where the creature carrying God’s character could live.
• God lay on this human creature the responsibility to care for the well-being of all other created things.
• God lightened life for the lone man by creating as well a woman to be a help meet for him.
• God created man and woman with the command to continue creation through their mutual physical relations.
• God, being a Divine Community in Himself, commanded humans to create community as well.
• God, in His Divine Community as Father and Son and Spirit,
  created man so that he could become father to sons and daughters through the woman
  and created woman so that she could become mother of those daughters and sons,
  making the family foundational for community

God’s face/favor
God found all that He created to be good and called His creation, “Good.” This favor God showed His creation continued especially in the creation of the man and woman, created in God’s own image. To see the face of one another was to see the face of God.

The man and woman looked upon their nakedness without shame; they did not turn their faces away at first. Then came the command of God regarding one of two trees planted in the middle of the Garden where they lived. The fruit of this particular tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad, was forbidden to the man & woman. Then came the clever serpent, by way of devious word, to distract the woman from attending to God’s command: “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden?”

Rather than recognizing the devilish doubt darkening the glorious truth of God’s own Word, the woman considered the contradiction without alarm, poorly remembering what God actually said. The serpent, hearing how she deviated from God’s Word, drove deeper his wicked wedge and said, “ You will not surely die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

The Forbidden Fruit then took on an appearance devilishly different than the other trees in one devious way: Like the other trees, the tree on which the woman found the Forbidden Fruit was good for food and a delight to the eyes, but it was as well desirable to make one wise. Not only did the woman take and eat from the fruit of this Forbidden Tree, but she also gave some to her husband.

While this was happening, the man whom God created had been with the woman whom God created for him. Not only did he fail to recognize the deception, he deliberately chose to eat as well what God had forbidden him to eat. The consequence of contradicting God’s command came immediately. “Then the eyes of both of them were opened …” They now knew that they were naked, a new kind of knowing that caused them shame. Now knowing this new thing, this bad thing, so different from knowing only what is good, they covered themselves, or at least attempted to do so by making loin covering with sewn-together fig leaves.

The LORD God found them just like that, shivering shamefully in the crazy costumes they had made themselves. The sound of God’s coming caused the two to try to hide from the presence of the LORD God. However, their hiding place, among the trees of the Garden where God walked in the cool of the day, hideously failed to keep them from having face the LORD.

The human creature found himself fallen out of favor with his own Creator. For the first time ever, Creator God turned his face away from His creation. Hope remained in the covenantal promise of God to overcome the curse Himself someday in the woman’s seed.

"The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Bad"

Although the serpent perverted the purpose of the Tree of the Knowlege of Good and Bad toward Satanic ends, the Tree itself was part of God's good creation. This is typical of all evil. All that God has created is good; evil is the consequence of willful human choices to use what is good toward ends that are not consistent with the good "ordered to God."

Jesus did come "in the flesh" but did not act "according to the flesh." Rather, he acted "according to the Spirit." I emphasize this to caution against dualistic thinking that disassociates body and spirit in a way that completely discounts bodily actions. Humans are free to act otherwise than according what bodily functions (flesh) demand.

The body is not bad, but one's life encompasses more than just one's body; thus life decisions must consider more than just one's body as well. Of course, one's decisions must be wise in carefully considering the wellness of one's body, or else one's life will not be very well sustained.

Things I do are evidence that I am willing to be someone who does those things. If I am not willing to be a robber, than I must not rob. If I am not a robber, robbing must have no part in anything I do. If I am a Christian, I do what Christ calls Christians to do – love God with all my heart, mind, soul and strength, love others as myself, love as God in Christ Jesus loved me. If I do not love like this, I cannot call myself a Christian until I confess and repent of such contrary behavior.

It is impossible, however, to do this completely on my own and that is why I must rely on the grace of God to completely do it for me. Having had this already done for me in Christ, I can call on God to empower me to go on and do whatever is consistent with the Christian gospel.

I am powerless otherwise; do what I may, I cannot be strong enough to overcome my sinful weakness, and thus cannot BE more than a sinner without the Spirit of Christ DOING through me what God requires me to DO.

THEATRETHICS
ENSEMBLE ACTING BEFORE AN AUDIENCE OF ONE
The idea of theatre
is to put on a performance
produced before an audience.
.
The idea of ethics
is to conduct oneself in accordance
with the context of a greater community.
.
The idea of theatrethics
is to act with others
in full consideration of one God
who sees us,
comes before us,
and remains beyond us,
while being with us.
.
Created in God's image,
we have been called
to become imitators of God.
To imitate God is to act like God,
to be godly in our relationships with others.
All human action
takes place in the context of some relationship
and every human act
is held to the standard
of loving others as one loves oneself.
Prior to loving others, of course,
is the imperative that one loves God wholly.
Love never happens in isolation;
in fact, isolation is a rejection of love.
Even the One God
is a Trinity of Persons
in perfect relationship with one another.
Thus is the imitation of God
a matter of acting in careful consideration
of one's relationship with others.
.
What is God like?
God is revealed
through
face-to-face interaction,
faithful following,
and
textual reading.
.
Meeting God face-to-face is impossible
unless God allows such a meeting;
otherwise we follow Jacob's example
and see in our meeting with others
a reflection of God's presence,
seeing in the face of the other
"the face of God."

THE CLAIM OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS

The claim of Christian ethics is that
all action takes place within the context of the truth that

God is, has always been and will continue to be LORD.

Moral action must be consistent with this truth.

An act is morally determined
by the freedom of the human actor to choose what to do.

The action taken determines morality;
actions are judged by what is done.

However, just "doing things" doesn't make a person Christ-like.
The end toward which humans have been created is to

become conformed to the character of Jesus Christ.

"Teleology" refers to ends
in a way that entails the idea of completion or ultimate purpose.
To understand how "teleogism" is not properly "teleological,"
consider the difference between "temporal" and "eternal" ends.

The phrase "ends justify the means"
usually refers to consequences within a human time frame;
however, Christian ethics makes the claim that

humans must consider their actions

within the eternal time frame of God's perspective.

God's ultimate judgment overrules everything,
determining what is to considered bad or good.

Covenant, as understood in the context of Christian ethics, involves

a relationship between Creator & creation:

the Creator proves responsibility by

promising to sustain all creation

and

enabling creatures with the freedom to respond as they are able;

the human creature is free to respond by
doing that which is consistent with the purposes of the Creator.

It matters that a person freely chooses to do things.
Doing things matter morally because

humans are conscientiously free to choose what things they do.

Animals do things, but they are not morally responsible

for what they can only do instinctively;

humans are morally responsible

because we can reason out our behavior rather than

just foolishly follow what Scripture refers to as "fleshly desires."

What we freely choose do matters morally

because we are then responsible for our decisions.

Becoming Christ-like is an act of grace
granted through what Jesus Christ, God incarnate, did
by living righteously, dying innocently on the cross,

then being resurrected as proof of God's favor.

As the model for Christian behavior,

Jesus Christ must remain the norm

for every believer in the Body of Christ.

Having accepted this in faith,
a person goes on to do things disciplined by the decision to

follow Christ's example

in wholly loving God and loving others as oneself.

Continually choosing to do things in this way

AND

joining together with like-minded others who do the same

conforms one more and more to the character of Christ

(consider Romans 12:1-2).

The Last Judgment

will review how well we lived our lives like this.

The reason for blogging on symEthics

I am presently teaching a Christian Ethics course at Immaculata University.
By beginning a weblog,
I hope to make available some of the material I will be using to teach the class.

Comments are welcome from others.