The Argument from Conscience
Since
man is possessed of intelligence, he recognizes that certain actions conform to his rational nature and that others don't. He
sees, for example, that gluttony, cruelty, lust, and the infringement
of the rights of others, are contrary to the order of reason: that
when he allows the lower part of his nature (inherited depravity),
his passions, to dominate him, or if he disregards the law of justice
which compels him give to each his due, he is doing violence to that
element in him which makes him a rational man. In other words, these
actions are evil, and, the opposite characteristics-temperance,
kindness, continence, and justice-are good. This distinction between
good and evil has regard purely to our nature as moral agents. It is
entirely irrespective of any question as to whether the act results
in a balance of pleasure or of pain. Those acts are good which befit
us as rational beings: those are evil which are repugnant to our
nature in this respect. The supreme rule of conduct is to do what is
morally good and avoid all that is morally evil. The ethical standard
thus imposed is clear enough with regard to its broad outline. Everyone instinctively comprehends for the general direction of life which acts conform to reason and which don't.
The
primary precepts of the moral law don't allow for mistakes in their
general principles. Of course, on points of detail there will be
numerous differences of opinion. Problems of this kind are bound to
arise, since it often isn't an easy matter to judge the application
of a general principle to a particular case. Most of us agree that
obedience to lawful authority is ethically right. But the precise
limits within which obedience is due can be difficult. For example,
the obedience due the state when it conflicts with the demands of the
Gospel may be an extremely delicate point to settle. Sometimes what was once a right action ceases to be so owing to a
change of circumstances. Thus it is that what was universally
recognized as a duty is at a later date viewed as a breach of the moral
law. For example, if a criminal (say a thief) hides in our home, and the police come knocking, asking if he is hiding there, we have a moral obligation to expose his hiding place. But in the case of Jews hiding from Nazi authorities, our moral obligation changes.
Occasionally the force of custom is so strong that the prevailing culture forms an erroneous judgment on some matter which to the
unprejudiced mind is plain enough. The woman who has an abortion may
do so without realizing that the act is evil due to the prevailing
culture of Post-Modern feminism. However, difficulties and discrepancies
such as these don't alter the fact that everyone without
exception can distinguish between moral good and moral evil. If
someone was incapable of distinguishing these, he would be considered mentally deficient, since he would be destitute of that light
of reason that sets man apart from the animals. It is a fact
that we naturally feel the moral law to be obligatory as an internal
reality. We recognize it as a force which binds us. Its
prescriptions aren't a mere norm for the realization of life at its
best in any given culture. They come as authoritative internal
commands; and to ignore those commands is to fail in a duty which we
owe. If we do ignore them, we are conscious of the fact that justice
pronounces us deserving of punishment.
Necessity
is a primary characteristic of the moral law. The meaning of 'necessary' should be understood. The necessary is that which must
be. We sometimes speak of physical laws as necessary. Yet it can be
questioned whether we're justified in using the term in their regard.
The mind doesn't recognize any reason in the nature of things why an
antecedent must be followed by a consequent. Experience shows us that
the fact is so, not that it must be so. On the other hand,
mathematical relations are necessary. Two plus two must equal four.
But the necessity we're concerned with isn't mathematical, it is
moral. It signifies that our will is bound by an obligation which
isn't conditional but absolute; that we have no choice in the matter;
that no alternative course is open, which we're free to adopt if we
will. It declares that we're face to face, not with a suggestion, but
with a command. This sense of moral obligation can't be resolved into
a perception of expediency, even though many Materialists have tried to
explain it away as such. Post-Modernism tells us that the sole basis
of morality is expediency, and that the moral law is simply the
generalized result of what experience has shown to be conducive to
public utility. Goodness, morality, and ethics aren't absolute, but
relative. They're determined by the needs of the people and culture,
and no action can be affirmed as essentially and unalterably evil or
good. Such an explanation of the moral law is obviously fallacious,
since it completely fails to account for that binding internal force
which is its essential characteristic. Obligation and expediency
aren't at all the same; the one cannot be reduced to the other. That
an act will in the long run contributes to the material welfare of
the community is certainly a reasonable motive of action. It isn't,
and never can be, an obligation—an absolute imperative with the power
to bind my will. Expediency doesn't account for the internal sense
that we “should” or “ought” to pursue a moral action. The
conviction expressed when we acknowledge that we ought to do something, could never spring from a purely subjective source. It can't
impose that sense of obligation, since it doesn't even stand on a
principle of obligation.
Moral
law implies a lawgiver. We can't have a command without a superior
who issues the command. It is true that Kant declared reason to be
autonomous, and maintained that its precepts must be self-imposed. He
contended that unless they were regarded in this light, they lacked
the essential quality of moral laws, and that to treat them as
commands coming from an external source was to deprive them of their
moral character. But, though many Materialists have adopted his views
on this point unquestioningly, the position is altogether untenable.
There can be no obligation where there aren't two persons concerned—
a superior having authority and a subject who owes obedience to his
commands. No man can impose a law upon himself. Law binds the will;
and as long as no superior authority commands us, we remain at
liberty to choose any course of action we like. I can't owe a debt to
myself. If the moral law binds us, as we know that it does, this can
only be because it comes to us from someone who can claim the duty of
obedience from us. An essential point of morality is lacking unless
we recognize that the internal command is imposed by an external
authority, and yield obedience to it as such. This is not to say that
the moral law is arbitrary. We've seen that it isn't- that it is
revealed to us by reason as the rule of life involved in our rational
nature. It is natural law. But only if an external authority who
commands me to observe the natural order, does it acquire the
character of law. If, then, we ask who it is who commands us
internally, there can be only one answer. The moral law, as we have
seen, has the character of necessity. The authority who imposes it
must then be final. Only when a command issues from the supreme and
ultimate authority is it in any strict sense necessary. The lawgiver
who commands me is, then, the source and fountain of morality, the
supreme arbiter of right and wrong. The only being who possesses
these attributes is God.
There is a principle of reflection or
conscience in every man, which distinguishes between the internal
principle of his heart, and his external actions; which passes
judgment upon himself and them; pronounces some actions to be in
themselves just, right, and good, and others to be in themselves
evil, wrong, and unjust; which without being consulted, without being
advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and approves or condemns
us accordingly. It is sometimes argued that it is impossible to feel
the sense of obligation before we're aware of a lawgiver, and that no
man can recognize that he owes the duty of obedience, unless he
already knows for certain that someone makes this claim upon him.
They conclude that our evidence for the existence of God is
fallacious as a result. This argument amounts to no more than a contention that it
isn't easy to see how the sense of obligation can arise, and that it
is wholly a priori. On the other hand, we can appeal to our own
experience to demonstrate that, in point of fact, the sense of
obligation arises spontaneously in the mind (which we've discussed)
so as to demonstrate a logical basis for the existence of a lawgiver.
When faced with the alternatives of right and wrong, we're
immediately aware that we ought to choose the right. This
consciousness of duty owed is attested to unmistakably by the
character of the feelings that are consequent to our actions. A
breach of the moral law arouses in us certain affections of the mind
such as shame, self-reproach, and remorse. All of which necessarily involve the
presence of obligation. The existence of a law, rooted in the very
nature of man, immutable, universal in its obligation, and
independent of all human authority is quite real. No earthly ruler
has the power to change or override what this law prescribes, because
it is divine in origin, and is imposed upon us by God Himself. The
Church Father, Lactantius, has preserved for us a passage from Cicero's
lost work, De Republica, which is worth citing.
“There
is a true law, right reason, consonant to nature, coextensive with
the race of man, unchanging and eternal. ... It is not allowed us to
make any alteration in that law: we may not take away any least
portion of it: nor can we repeal it as a whole. Neither senate nor
people have power to release us from our obligation in its regard. We
need not search for some one to explain or interpret it. We shall not
find one law at Rome, another at Athens: one now, another hereafter;
but that law, one, everlasting and immutable, is binding on all races
and at all times : and there is one common Master and Lord of all,
God. He it is who drew up this law, determined its provisions, and
promulgated it.”-Johannes
Quasten, Patrology, Vol. 2, Thomas More (1986)
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