Love and obedience

“This is the love of God: that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3)

But what is the connection between love and commands? Indeed, why would a loving God issue us commands?

Many things can be said about this. But here is one more that has occurred to me. God is unchanging and has complete beatitude. Yet love seems to fit particularly well with vulnerability. And by commanding one becomes vulnerable to the person one has commanded. For it detracts from one’s “extrinsic wellbeing” if one’s commands are broken.

Thus while one might think of the issuance of commands as the mark of dignity and greatness, and it is that, it also turns the tables, by making the commander be at the mercy of the commanded, at least with respect to the fulfillment of this particular aspect of the commander’s will.

Aristotle thought that love between gods and humans was impossible because of the inequality, since love involves a kind of equality. Kierkegaard wrote much about the difficulty of a love relationship between the infinite and the finite. But commanding us, paradoxically, is a way of introducing a kind of equality.

Of course, our disobedience does not change God, or impact his intrinsic beatitude. But it does impact his external wellbeing, and detracts his extrinsic honor.

And this is a different kind of vulnerability from that which the second person of the Trinity acquires by the Incarnation. It is a vulnerability of God as God.

Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom

The Catholic Church teaches that celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom is better than marriage. Until recently, I assumed that this was celibacy which was chosen by the person as a sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom. On this interpretation, celibacy which was not chosen by the person—say, because some internal or external factor precludes marriage—does not have that superiority.

But now it has occurred to me that there are two senses in which celibacy can be for the sake of the Kingdom. First, the celibate person may choose it for the sake of the Kingdom. But the second way is that God may choose it for the person for the sake of the Kingdom. Understood in the second way, an involuntary celibacy can still count as for the sake of the Kingdom.

The same point would apply to such things as poverty and obedience. Some choose poverty and obedience to better witness to the Kingdom of God. But for some, God chooses it. And the poverty and obedience can still be for the sake of the Kingdom.

The above is especially true if the calling is embraced with gratitude and love. In that case, we can have a genuine sacrifice of something that, paradoxically, may not even have been available to one. Think here of two early followers of St Francis who joyfully embrace the poverty that he preached: one came from a rich family, and sold all he had, and the other was very poor, and had nothing to give away. It would be problematic if the formerly-rich Franciscan had a permanent superiority in his poverty. Instead, I think, we can say that the always-poor Franciscan is still making a sacrifice by embracing the poverty, by renouncing griping, by rejoicing in God’s gift. The same can be true of a eunuch who embraces celibacy.

A divine intentional promotion account of duty

In my previous post, I argued against divine desire versions of divine command theory. Reflecting on that post, I saw that there is a simple variant of divine desire that helps with some of the problems in that post. Instead of saying that we ought to do what God desires us to do, the divine command theorist can say that:

1. We have a duty to ϕ (respectively, not to ϕ) if and only if God is intentionally trying to get us to ϕ (respectively, not to ϕ).

On this picture, God doesn’t just “sit around” and wish for our actions: God intentionally promotes some of our actions and obstructs others. He does this in a multitude of ways: by commanding, by creating us with a human nature that inclines us towards some actions and against others, by inspiring us with his grace, and more generally by intentionally putting us in an environment that encourage or discourages certain actions. An advantage of this view is that it allows for divine commands to be constituted by a plausibly broad variety of divine actions.

One of the problems I raised in the previous post for divine desire theories of duty was the problem of conflicting divine desires. Even a perfectly rational being can have conflicting desires. It is perfectly rational to desire a medical procedure one knows to be painful while desiring not to have pain. Thus there is a serious possibility of conflicting desires on the part of God. This possibility is raised to the level of likelihood when we reflect on the fact that God is said to bring greater goods out of the evils we do, which makes for a likely conflict between God’s desire for these goods and God’s desire that we not perform the evils.

But while a perfectly rational being can have conflicting desires, it is plausible that a perfectly rational being does not have conflicting intentions. A perfectly rational being may desire A and not-A, but he won’t be intentionally promoting both. (Of course, a perfectly rational being may intentionally promote both A and B despite the fact that promoting A makes B less likely. But that doesn’t seem to raise particular difficulties for the intentional promotion account of duty, though I could be missing something.)

My second worry about divine desire theories was cases where our action goes against God’s desires but leads to God’s desires being on the whole better satisfied, such as when our succumbing to temptation keeps a large number of people untempted. I suggested that it is a loving thing to go against someone’s desires when doing so better promotes their desires on the whole. Here, I think there are subtle and difficult issues, but I think the same worry does not apply to the intentional promotion view. Suppose that Bob is intentionally trying to produce A and B. Alice, however, correctly judges that B is more important than A to Bob, and that intentionally acting directly against A will better get Bob what she wants. So she opposes Bob with respect to A in order to produce B. There are cases where this is perfectly appropriate. But I think these are all cases where Alice has a certain kind of superiority to Bob, say because she is Bob’s parent and hence has authority over him, or because she is much smarter than Bob. When Alice and Bob are equals, for Alice to intentionally act against A is not a proper act of love. It is either an act of enmity or at best an act of improper paternalism. (One might think something similar is true in the case of desires, but I doubt it. See the gift example in my previous post.) And this is much more so the case when Bob is Alice’s superior, as God is ours in every respect.

Love seeks union. To oppose oneself to one’s beloved’s intentions is innately contrary to that union. Sometimes love will make such opposition appropriate when the person we love is confused in some way (while love seeks union, union is only one of multiple aspects of love, and sometimes the other aspects may take precedence). But God is superior to us in every respect. Thus it seems plausible that love for God will never require us to oppose God’s intentions. But it may well require us to oppose some of God’s desires, because God’s desires themselves oppose one another, since an all-good being desires all goods, and the goods conflict (thus, God’s desire to exhibit forgiveness to creatures conflicts with God’s desire that creatures not do anything that needs to be forgiven).

Indeed, I think if we have a divine intentional promotion account of duty, there is hope that we may be able to ground moral duty in something virtue-theoretic, like Evans’ account that the virtue of gratitude calls on us to obey God—for it is fairly plausible that gratitude to a being superior in all respects calls on us to further that being’s intentions—or a love account.

Here are some interesting and nice corollaries of the view:

2. There are no true moral dilemmas, because God’s intentions do not conflict.

3. If to tempt someone is to try to get them to do the wrong thing, then God cannot tempt anyone (James 1:13), since if God were to try to get someone to do something, that would ipso facto be the right thing to do.

4. God cannot intentionally unconditionally predestine anyone to damnation. For he who intends the end intends the means, and the means to damnation is sin, and God cannot intend sin.

5. Abraham did not have a duty to sacrifice Isaac, but only a duty to prepare to sacrifice Isaac. For God has no intention that he sacrifice Isaac.

On the other hand, here is an uncomfortable consequence:

6. God cannot intentionally promote a supererogatory action. For any action intentionally promoted by God becomes not supererogatory but a duty.

Perhaps we can say that sometimes God’s promotion of an action doesn’t come with the intention that one do the action but that one be more likely to do it, and that’s what happens in the case of supererogation? If that subtle distinction works, then we can turn a disadvantage of the theory into a significant advantage—for being able to account for supererogation is a serious challenge to many theories of morality.

Finally what about God’s duties? We have two options. First, we could say that (1) is limited to creatures, and God has no duties. Second, we could say that (1) applies to God as well. In that case, every time God intentionally does anything, God is fulfilling his duty, since if God intentionally ϕs, God is thereby intentionally (and in a very strong way) promoting his ϕing. Neither option is appealing. Perhaps the first one is better. In any case, questions about divine duties are always going to be tricky for a divine command theory.

All that said, I don’t endorse the theory. I much prefer a love theory or a natural law theory.

Obedience to God out of gratitude

Some philosophers want to ground our duty to obey God’s commands in the need to show gratitude to God for all the goods God has done for us. I think there is something to that, but I want to point out a complication.

When someone has done something good for us, that generates moral reasons to do something good for them. But that is different from generating moral reasons to obey their commands. After all, being obeyed need not be good for the person issuing the commands. Imagine that you are on a ship along with someone who has already done many good things for you and your family. The ship is sinking. There is one last space left in a lifeboat. You start to push your benefactor into that space. Your benefactor interrupts: “Don’t! Get into it yourself!” In this case, it would be bad for your benefactor for you to obey their commmand, and obedience to this command would not, I think, be a right expression of gratitude. You might have other moral reasons to obey the command, such as that if someone is offering to make the ultimate sacrifice, you should not deprive them of that choice. But gratitude for past benefits is not a reason to obey your benefactor when your benefactor would not in fact benefit from your obedience.

So the mere fact that you are commanded something by your benefactor does not generate a gratitude-based reason for obedience. It is only when your benefactor would benefit from your obedience that such a reason is generated.

Now things get a little complicated in the case of God. It seems we cannot benefit God, as God has perfect beatitude. But as we learn from Aquinas’ discussion of love for God, it’s more complicated than that. There are internal and external benefits and harms a person might receive. Internal benefits and harms affect the person’s intrinsic properties in a positive way—think here of pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, etc. But there are external benefits and harms: when people speak badly about you behind your back, the loss of reputation is an external harm, even if you never find out about it and it never affects any intrinsic property of yours. Similarly, because friends are other selves, if x loves y, then benefits and harms to y are benefits and harms to x, albeit perhaps only external ones. Thus, we can benefit God by benefiting those that God loves, namely everyone.

So, when God commands us—as in fact he does—to love our neighbor, then our obedience to that command does benefit God, albeit externally. So it seems we do have a gratitude-based moral reason to do what God says. But notice that as far as the argument goes right now, that is not a reason to love our neighbor out of obedience to God. The reason to love our neighbor out of gratitude to God would remain even if God did not command us to love our neighbor.

But this isn’t the whole story. For, first, when we show gratitude to a benefactor by bestowing some internal or external benefits on them, gratitude seems to call on us to have a preference for bestowing those benefits that the benefactor asks us to bestow. Thus, the fact that some benefit to the benefactor is requested by the benefactor adds to the gratitude-based reasons for bestowing that benefit. And, second, it seems plausible that having one’s commands be obeyed is itself an external benefit—it is a way of being honored.

Thus, that God has commanded us to love our neighbor intensifies our reasons based on gratitude to God to love our neighbor. And even if God were to command something seemingly arbitrary and not in itself beneficial, like abstinence from pork, we externally benefit God insofar as we obey him. But in the latter case something stronger is needed than that: for the obedience to be a form of gratitude, it needs to be the case that on balance we benefit God through the obedience. That being obeyed is good as far as it goes does not show that being obeyed is on balance good. It is good as far as it goes for our benefactor to be obeyed when they say to go into the lifeboat, but it might actually on balance be better for them to be pushed into the lifeboat.

Thus there is a limit to how far this justification of divine authority goes. If we obey God out of gratitude, our reason for obedience cannot simply consist in the facts that God has commanded us and that God has bestowed great benefits on us. Our reason would also need to include the fact that on balance it bestows a benefit—an external one, to be sure—on God if we obey.

Is it the case that whenever God commands something, it always bestows a benefit on balance on God that we obey him? That initially sounds like a reasonable thesis, but we can easily imagine cases where it is not so. Consider cases where my disobedience to God would prevent massive disobedience by others. For instance, a malefactor offers me a strong temptation to disobey God, and tells me that if I refuse the temptation, then a thousand other people will be offered the same temptation, but if I give in, I will be the only one. Looking at how strong the temptation is, I conclude that if it’s offered to a thousand people, about 500 of them will succumb to it. Thus, if I obey God, there will be much less obedience of God in the world. Hence, my obedience to God actually leads to God being less honored and receiving less external benefit. But nonetheless I need to obey. Hence, the duty of obedience is not grounded in gratitude.

In summary: Normally, gratitude does give us moral reason to obey God. But if I am right, then the moral reason to obey God that comes from gratitude needs to include the assumption that it is good for God to be obeyed. And we can imagine cases where that assumption is false and yet obedience is still required.

Followership

Over time, it has come to be the case that while I tell a significant number of people—my students and children—what to do, there are few people who tell me what to do. My Department Chair rarely tells senior faculty what to do—though he does make suggestions. The higher administration may pass policies, but rarely do they tell tenured senior faculty what to do, in the way I tell my students. My parents advise but don't command.

All this is an unfortunate state of affairs. One of the human virtues is that of obedience, a virtue particularly well suited to teaching humility and guarding from pride and arrogance. I confess to finding the exercise of authority to have a fair amount of pleasure about it, and to enjoying not having much authority exercised over me. And while there are genuine goods here, and goods are to be enjoyed, my enjoyment is nourished by and nourishes vices as well.

It is not uncommon for this to happen as one ages. As one gains seniority, the ratio of authority exercised over one to authority one exercises often shrinks. But the greatest of the vices is pride, and obedience is a genuine virtue. It is important to fight the authority imbalance.

Being a religious superior who had few people to tell him what to do, St Philip Neri talked of the value of at least having his doctor to obey. Those of us in the envied but aretaically unenviable position of commanding much more than we are commanded need to make an effort to come to be under various authorities, to seek out activities where one will be under the authority of others, however much that may grate the old Adam. Join a club or fraternal organization but don't be an officer. (Particularly valuable might be a setting where much younger people get to tell one what to do.) Get a personal trainer. Serve in one's parish while avoiding positions (official or unofficial) of authority, except when one's parish really needs one.

Perhaps such things can help develop a habit of wanting to obey rather than be obeyed, a habit that will make one's exercise of authority always be appropriately reluctant.

This has snuck up on me.

Orate pro me.

Hierarchy and unity

Vatican II gives a very hierarchical account of unity in the Church:

This collegial union is apparent also in the mutual relations of the individual bishops with particular churches and with the universal Church. The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation [principium et fundamentum] of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful. The individual bishops, however, are the visible principle and foundation of unity in their particular churches, fashioned after the model of the universal Church, in and from which churches comes into being the one and only Catholic Church. For this reason the individual bishops represent each his own church, but all of them together and with the Pope represent the entire Church in the bond of peace, love and unity.(Lumen Gentium 23)

The unity of each local Church is grounded in the one local bishop, and the unity of the bishops is grounded in the one pope. Unity at each level comes not from mutual agreement, but from a subordination to a single individual who serves as the principle (principium; recall the archai of Greek thought) of unity. This principle of unity has authority, as the preceding section of the text tells us. In the case of the bishops, this is an authority dependent on union with the pope. (The Council is speaking synchronically. One might also add a diachronic element whereby the popes are unified by Christ, whose vicars they are.)

A hierarchical model of unity is perhaps not fashionable, but it neatly avoids circularity problems. Suppose, for instance, we talk of the unity of a non-hierarchical group in terms of the mutual agreement of the members on some goals. But for this to be a genuine unity, the agreement of the members cannot simply be coincidental. Many people have discovered for themselves that cutting across a corner can save walking time (a consequence of Pythagoras' theorem and the inequality a²+b²<(a+b)² for positive a and b), but their agreement is merely coincidental and they do not form a genuine unified group. For mutual agreement to constitute people into a genuine group, people must agree in pursuing the group's goals at least in part because they are the goals of the group. But that, obviously, presents a vicious regress: for the group must already eist for people to pursue its goals.

The problem is alleviated in the case of a hierarchical unity. A simple case is where one person offers to be an authority, and others agree to be under her authority. They are united not by their mutual agreement, but by all subordinating themselves to the authority of the founder. A somewhat more complex case is where several people come together and agree to select a leader by some procedure. In that case, they are still united, but now by a potential subordination rather than an actual one. This is like the case of the Church after a pope has died and another has yet to be elected. And of course one may have more complex hierarchies, with multiple persons owed obedience, either collectively or in different respects.

This, I think, helps shed some light on Paul's need to add a call for a special asymmetrical submission in the family—"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord" (Eph. 5:22)—right after his call for symmetrical submission among Christians: "Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph. 5:21). Symmetrical submission is insufficient for genuine group unity. And while, of course, everyone in a family is subject to Christ, that subjection does not suffice to unite the family as a family, since subjection to Christ equally unites two members of one Christian family as it does members of different Christian families. The need for asymmetrical authority is not just there for the sake of practical coordination, but helps unite the family as one.

In these kinds of cases, it is not that those under authority are there for the benefit of the one in authority. That is the pagan model of authority that Jesus condemns in Matthew 20:25. Rather, the principle of unity fulfills a need for unity among those who are unified, serves by unifying.

There is a variety of patterns here. In some cases, the individual in authority is replaceable. In others, there is no such replaceability. In most of the cases I can think of there is in some important respect an equality between the one in authority and those falling under the authority—this is true even in the case of Christ's lordship over the Church, since Christ did indeed become one of us. But in all cases there is an asymmetry.

Here is an interesting case. The "standard view" among orthodox Catholic bioethicists (and I think among most pro-life bioethicists in general) is that:

1. Humans begin to live significantly before their brains come into existence.
2. Humans no longer live when their brains have ceased all function (though their souls continue to exist).

There is an apparent tension between these two claims. Claim (2) suggests that brains are central to our identity as living animals. Claim (1) suggests otherwise. But there is a way of seeing the rest of the human body as hierarchically subject to the brain that allows one to defend both (1) and (2). For there is a crucial difference between the state of the embryonic body prior to the brain's formation and the state of the adult body after the brain's destruction. In the embryonic case, there is a developmental striving for the production of a brain to be subject to. This is like a group that has come together to select a leader, and they are already unified by their disposition to be subject to the leader once selected. In the case of an adult all of whose brain function has ceased, even if there is heartbeat and respiration (say, because the news that the brain has ceased to function hasn't reached the rest of the body, or because of electrical stimulation), there is no striving towards the production of a brain to be subject to. This is like a bunch of people whose leader has died and where there is neither disposition nor obligation to select another: the social group has effectively been dissolved.

Spock

Spock's "logic" has a theoretical and practical component. The practical component appears to be a utilitarianism to some extent constrained by deontological rules, in particular the duty not to kill the innocent and the duty to be faithful to commitments expressly undertaken, such as to the Federation. The other characters criticize him for lack of "emotion". In the theoretical context, this largely refers to the inability to predict the behavior of others (and occasionally maybe of self) due to a lack of emotional imagination (I am sceptical whether emotional imagination is needed to predict the behavior of others, and I think a psychopath could be very effective at predicting others' behavior). In the practical context, this seems to refer to a failure (and not a total one, since he is part human) to be moved by certain kinds of reasons, in particular reasons of friendship that go beyond commitments expressly undertaken.

What does a duty to love imply?

Suppose x has a duty to love y. Suppose A is an action such that if x loves y, then x is obligated to A. Does it logically follow x is obligated to A from the fact that x ought to love y?

In general not (this is a basic pattern of argument in Mark Murphy's divine authority book). After all, "x ought to G; if x Gs, then x ought to H; therefore x ought to H" is logically invalid. Besides, if x loves y, then x ought to say that x loves y when asked about it by y. But it is false that if merely ought to love y, then x ought to say that x loves y when asked about it by y; x should only say that if it is true.

But there may be particular cases where the inference is valid. For instance, it may be that if x has a duty to G, and H* is incompatible with and opposed to G, then x ought not to H*. Getting clear on the idea of how actions or attitudes can be opposed to one another is a non-trivial task, but there seem to be clear cases. Willing a basic evil to someone (say, death or stupidity or vice) seems to be opposed to love. So if x has a duty to love y, then x ought not to will a basic evil to y.

Are there some positive duties that logically follow from x's being obliged to love y? Consider the notion of a strongly loving action as a loving action that entails the presence of at least some love and that is such that whenever it is done, it is at least partially constitutive of love. The motivation is going to be essential to a strongly loving action (e.g., giving someone a glass of water can be a strongly loving action if guided by some motives, but not if it is guided by other motives). It seems that if x is obliged to love y, then because love is tied to action, x is obliged to engage in some strongly loving actions (what if x can't? but x always can--we can always at least wish well to people, and wishing is a kind of action, too).

Switching around quantifiers to get a stronger claim: Are there maybe some strongly loving actions that x is obliged to engage in? Presumably, yes--those actions refraining from which would be opposed to the love which is obligatory. What are those? It may depend on the kind of love that is obligatory between x and y. If y is God, and x is not God, obedience might be like that.