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 love-based argument for an afterlife

Start with these observations:

1. Love is the most important aspect of the moral life.
2. If love is the most important aspect of one's moral life, it is wrong to perform a non-obligatory action that terminates all one's loves.
3. Wrong actions are not praiseworthy.
4. Some non-obligatory instances of sacrifice of one's life for another are praiseworthy.
5. If there is no life after death, then sacrificing one's life terminates all one's loves.

So we conclude:

6. Some instances of sacricifing one's life are neither wrong nor obligatory. (3 and 4)
7. If there is no life after death, then all non-obligatory sacrifice of one's life is wrong. (1, 2 and 5)
8. So there is life after death. (6 and 7)

Penal substitution theories of the atonement

According to the penal substitution theory of the atonement, Christ's sufferings satisfy justice in place of our being punished. That is, basically, the theory as found in Anselm's Cur Deus Homo.

Some contemporary Christians, mainly Protestant, add the claim that Christ was punished by the Father, and his punishment substitutes for our punishment. We can call the resulting theory punishment by punishment substitution (PBPS). PBPS isn't Anselm's theory, and as Mark Murphy has pointed out it may even be incoherent, since a part of punishing is the showing of disapproval at the person being punished, while God cannot show disapproval at an innocent person.

The Heidelberg Catechism explicitly only says that Christ satisfies for us. But it says in the answer to Question 14 that no mere creature can satisfy for us because "God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man has committed", which may implicate that satisfaction involves being punished. Still, it does not say that it does so in the case of Christ.

In any case, it seems to me that the biblical theory is not that the punishment of Christ substitutes for our punishment, but that the sacrifice of Christ substitutes for our punishment. Old Testament sacrifices for our sins were not punishments of the animals, except in the extended sense of the word as when we speak of "the punishing heat of Texas summer." It is central to the idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament that it is the best that is sacrificed. To sacrifice something is to treat it as the best that is available. But when someone is being punished, then he is far from being treated as the best—he is being treated as one of the worst. Thus, the biblical picture of Christ as sacrificed is in serious tension with PBPS.

That the sacrifice of Christ substitutes for our punishment isn't yet a theory of the atonement. To make it a theory of the atonement one would have to say how it does so.

An asymmetry between good and evil, and an argument against utilitarianism

Here is an asymmetry between good and evil actions. It is very easy to generate cases of infinitely morally bad actions. You just need to imagine an agent who has the belief that if she raises her right hand, she will cause torment to an infinite number of people. And she raises her right hand in order to do so. But there doesn't seem to be a corresponding easy way to generate infinitely morally good actions. Take the case of an agent who thinks that if she raises her right hand, she will save infinitely many people from misery. Her raising her right hand will be a good action, but it will not be an infinitely morally good action. In fact, it will not be morally better than raising her right hand in a case where she believes that doing so will relieve finitely many from misery.

To make the point clearer, observe that it is a morally great thing to sacrifice one's life to save ten people. But it is a morally more impressive thing to sacrifice one's life to save one person. Compare St Paul's sentiment in Romans 5:7, that it is more impressive to die for an unrighteous than a righteous person.

Chris Tweedt, when I mentioned some of these ideas, noted that they provide an argument against utilitarianism: utilitarianism cannot explain why it would be better to save one life than to save ten lives.

Now of course if the choice is between saving one life and saving ten lives with the sacrifice, then saving ten lives is normally the better action. In fact, if the one life is that of a person among the ten, to save only that one life would normally[note 1] be irrational, and we morally ought not be irrational. But that's because choices should be considered contrastively. Previously, when I said that giving one's life for one is better than giving one's life for ten, I meant that

1. choosing to save one other's life over saving one's own life

was a better choice than

2. choosing to save ten others' lives over saving one's own life.

But the present judgment was, instead, that:

3. choosing to save one other's life over saving one's own life or saving ten others' lives

is normally rationally and morally inferior to

4. choosing to save ten others' lives over saving one's own life or saving one other's life.

Cases (1) and (2) were comparisons between choices made in different choice situations, while cases (3) and (4) were comparisons between choices made in the same choice situation. The moral value of a choice depends not just on what one is choosing but on what one is choosing over (this is obvious).

But even after taking this into account, it's hard to see how a utilitarian can make sense of the judgment that (1) is morally superior to (2). In fact, from the utilitarian's point of view, if everything relevant is equal, (1) is morally neutral—it makes no net difference—while (2) is morally positive.

Perhaps, though, we need a distinction between moral impressiveness and moral goodness? So maybe (1) is more morally impressive than (2), but (2) is still morally better. This distinction would be analogous to that between moral repugnance and moral badness. Pulling wings off flies for fun is perhaps more morally repugnant than killing someone in a fair fight to defend one's reputation, but the latter is a morally worse act.

But I do not think the difference between (1) and (2) is just that of moral impressiveness. Here's one way to see this. It is plausible that as one increases the number of people whose lives are saved, or starts to include among them people one has special duties of care towards, one will reach the point where the sacrifice of one's life is morally obligatory. But to sacrifice one's life to save one stranger is morally supererogatory. And while I don't want to say that every supererogatory action is better than every obligatory action, this seems to be a case where the supererogatory action is better than the obligatory one.

On reflection, however, it is quite possible to increase the moral value of a good act. Just imagine, for instance, that you believe that you will suffer forever unless you murder an innocent person. Then refraining from the immoral action will be infinitely good (or just infinitely impressive?). So we can increase the badness of an action apparently without bound by making the intended result worse, and we can increase the goodness of an action by making the expected cost to self worse (as long as one does not by doing so render the action irrational--cases need to be chosen carefully).

Time and sacrifice

Suppose that I am now undergoing suffering S on account of a greater good G. If there was no way of gaining G or something comparable without S or something comparable, and if G obtains, then I would rationally say: "It was worth it."

Notice that for the "It was worth it" judgments, it does not matter whether G is past, present or future. All that matters is that G be actual. You may wonder briefly how one can undergo suffering on account of a greater good. Time travel is the exotic case—I can get a tetanus shot in order to avoid getting tetanus in the Cretaceous. But the humdrum case is where S is a cost of the good G: perhaps I worked really hard to gain G yesterday, and today I am suffering exhaustion.

Suppose, on the other hand, I now undergo suffering S in account of a greater good G that occurs in some other possible world. For instance, I endure penury because I have spent my money building a robot that digs in my backyard looking for diamonds. I fully know that there are no diamonds in Texas, but there is a possible, though I am quite sure non-actual, situation where tomorrow someone will bury a treasure trove of diamonds in my backyard. In that possible situation, I will get very rich. But it is silly to endure actual penury for the sake of merely possible riches.

So for a good G to make a sacrifice S worthwhile, it matters a great deal that the good occur in the actual world. But it does not matter whether G occurs in the past, present or future.

This is unsurprising to eternalists. But it should be puzzling to presentists and growing blockers who think that present goods really exist while future ones do not.

Christ's sacrifice and presentism

After it took place, Christ's sacrifice had never ceased to be a part of reality. But Christ's sacrifice did not continue to be always a part of the present. (Christ's sacrifice is present during the Mass, but there have been times, since Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, during which no Mass was being celebrated.) Hence, the present and reality are not coextensive.

Whether this contradicts presentism depends on what one makes of the imprecise predicates "is a part of reality" and "is a part of the present".

Desiderata for a theory of atonement

My previous post on atonement implicitly identified one constraint ("must") and one desideratum ("should") for a theory of atonement:

1. The theory must be able to apply in cases where the person saved lacks personal sin.
2. The theory should not require explicit beliefs on the part of the person saved.

There is another desideratum that I think is important but somewhat vague:

3. At least one of the facts that Jesus Christ actually lived among us, died on the cross and rose again should in every case be central to the mechanism of salvation.

This condition rules out theories on which the mechanism of atonement is that we are transformed by the example of Jesus Christ (this will be a subset of what my previous post calls "epistemic theories"). For in those theories, the central part of the mechanism of atonement is not that Jesus Christ actually lived, died and rose again, but that we believe that Jesus Christ actually lived, died and rose again. The reason Jesus Christ had to actually live, die and rise again is not for the mechanism of salvation to work, but only because God is not a deceiver and so God could not teach us that Jesus Christ lived, died and rose again unless this was actually true. But the soteriologically important thing on such theories is the belief that this happened, not that this happened. And hence such theories are unsatisfactory.

Epistemic theories of the atonement

Every orthodox Christian agrees that:

1. Salvation occurs at least in part because of Christ's death on the cross.

The "at least in part" is because Christ's earlier life and subsequent resurrection no doubt play a role. It is also uncontroversial that this has something to do with atonement and sin, but there are many theories here. Epistemic theories say:

2. The explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and the salvation of an individual always involves the individual's epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

For instance, it may be that Christ's death expresses to the sinner the weight of the sinner's sin and seeing the free acceptance of the penalty transforms the sinner. Epistemic theories as I defined them need not hold that the epistemic encounter is the whole story. Someone could, for instance, hold that there are two essential components to atonement, one of them an epistemic component and the other a penal substitution component. Such a theorist would count as an epistemic theorist.

But there is a plausible argument against this:

3. Nobody is saved except because of Christ's death on the cross.
4. Some are saved who have no epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.
5. Hence, the explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and salvation does not always involve an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

And so, it seems, epistemic theories of atonement are false.

I think (3) is a central part of Christian orthodoxy, assuming that by "nobody" we mean no human beings other than Christ (contextually restricted quantifiers!). One way to see this is to consider the debate over Mary's Immaculate Conception. The doctrine says that Mary was conceived without original sin. Probably the deepest theological objection to the doctrine has centered on arguments that the doctrine is incompatible with (3). If rejecting (3) were an option for a Christian, the defenders of the doctrine would have had ample motivation to reject (3). But they didn't—instead, they offered theories that attempted to reconcile (3) with the Immaculate Conception. It is not my point to evaluate the arguments for or against the Immaculate Conception (though of course I do accept the Immaculate Conception) but simply to note that both sides admitted that (3) is non-negotiable.

Now, it may seem that (4) directly contradicts the epistemic view (2), and hence begs the question. That's not quite right. Claim (2) is that whenever there is an explanatory connection between Christ's sacrifice and salvation, that connection is at least in part epistemically mediated. As far as that goes, this is compatible with the possibility, denied by (3), that some are saved without any such explanatory connection.

Why accept (4)? Because of the following three classes of persons:

• Jews and gentiles who were saved prior to the time of Christ.
• Those who are saved without ever hearing about Christ's death.
• Those (e.g., at least baptized infants) who are saved despite dying prior to having developed an ability to have an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

In each of these types of cases, it certainly seems that we have (4).

I want to consider now one kind of reply. We could modify (2) by restricting the quantifiers. For instance, we could apply (2) only to those who have achieved the age of reason and positing that all who die prior to the age of reason are saved, thereby ruling out the third class of cases as offering an argument for (4). This would be an unacceptable variant of Pelagianism. The person who died in infancy would be saved not by Christ, but by natural causes—namely, the causes of death. If some who die in infancy are saved—and certainly at least those baptized people who die in infancy are saved—even they had better be saved only by Christ.

Or we could, if we were willing to bite the bullet on the case of infants in some way, restrict the quantifiers in (2) not to apply to those who died prior to Christ's death, thereby ruling out the first class of examples as offering an argument for (4). I think this, too, is a kind of Pelagianism. Moreover, consider the weirdness of supposing that an Inuit who died at 2:59 pm on Good Friday could be saved not by the cross, while an Inuit who died two minutes later needed to be saved by the cross.

Another move one might make would be to deny that, at least since the time of Christ's death, anyone is saved without ever hearing the Gospel. This is a hard-line response to my argument. For sociological reasons, I suspect this response to my argument is not going to be that popular. I suspect that most of the people who take a hard-line on those who die without hearing about Christ's death take some substitutionary sacrifice theory of the atonement. This is not because there is a good logical connection between these two views—indeed, substitutionary sacrifice theories of the atonement appear to me to be our best bet for explaining how one can be saved without expressly hearing the Gospel—but simply because the kind of tough-mindedness that inclines one to a hard-line on salvation outside the apparent boundaries of the Church is apt to incline one to a substitutionary sacrifice theory.

A different response is that a transformative epistemic encounter with the crucifixion occurs after death for those who are saved despite having died without hearing about Christ's death. Such a view would not only be committed to post-death purgation—i.e., to purgatory. That is not a problem. But it would, further, require the thesis that baptized infants who die prior to hearing about Christ's sacrifice go to purgatory, if only for an instant, and that view simply seems wrong. For one, it downplays the effects of baptism.

One might, however, suppose a miraculous epistemic encounter prior to death. God can miraculously make it possible for an infant, or even embryo, to understand the central doctrines of Christianity, whether explicitly or more vaguely. That this view posits a miracle is no objection. Salvation always involves a miracle. I do not know how plausible this way out will be for particular epistemic theorists. But I think in the end this is the only satisfactory account available to them.

So, unless one wants to posit a miraculous raising of intellectual abilities—and I do not reject this option—epistemic theories of atonement should be rejected.

But I don't think the substitutionary sacrifice theorist is off the hook either. For the above argument gives us a necessary condition for a theory of atonement: it must explain the connection between Christ's sacrifice and the salvation of an infant. If the theory is that Christ is paying the penalty for the individual's sin, then that theory will not be sufficient to account for the salvation of infants who have never committed any sins.

There are two separate issues here, I think. One is the issue of overcoming personal sin. That issue does not come up for the infant, as far as we know (I am inclined to some epistemic caution on this point). The other is the issue of attaining salvation. Many Catholic theologians have said that lack of personal sin is insufficient for salvation. A supernatural love is necessary and sufficient for salvation, a love that can only come from grace. Atonement is not only atonement for sin. It is, as its corny but apparently genuine "at-one-ment" etymology indicates, a matter of uniting us with God. While sin keeps us from union with God, union with God is not constituted by the absence of sin. It requires something more than absence of sin. And for fallen humanity, even in the case of non-sinful members such as infants, this "something" more must be held to come from the Cross. A puzzle or maybe even mystery, then, is how it is that the "something else", the supernatural agapê, comes from Christ's sacrifice. I am inclined to think that a crucial component here is that by our membership in the Body of Christ, Christ's sacrifice is our sacrifice, and the agapê of his sacrifice is our agapê.

The sacrifice of Isaac

None of us are called to sacrifice our children on Mount Moriah. But some of us are called to forgive horrendous evils done to our children. It is interesting that the two kinds of acts have important features in common. In both cases, the actions are difficult precisely because of the agent's virtue, and if they are not difficult, then that is evidence that the agent is morally corrupt. There is a significant way in which forgiving the evil done to one's child is a way of sacrificing the child—of letting go.

We do have the intuition that an obligatory or supererogatory action is the more valuable the more difficult it is. But a further thing seems to be true: the obligatory or supererogatory action is even more valuable when the difficulty derives (in the right way) from one's virtue. Thus, if Abraham had a friend who was asked to sacrifice her car, and it was just as difficult for her to sacrifice her car as for Abraham to sacrifice his son, nonetheless Abraham's sacrifice would be the more valuable one, though the sacrifice of his friend would have significant value, too. Likewise, it may be just as difficult for someone to forgive damage to her property as it is for another to forgive harm to her child, but the latter forgiveness has the greater value.

I think a partial theodicy focusing on exercises of virtue which are incredibly difficult precisely because of the agent's virtue has promise. It has been suggested that God could have, say, created a world of utterly non-violent inquirers where the main virtues are things like perseverance and intellectual integrity, which do not require horrendous evils. But I am not sure such a world would have much of the kind of exercises of virtue I am talking about. In fact, it is plausible that cases where virtuous action is made very difficult precisely by virtue are going to have to be cases where one is facing grave evil.

(I am also reminded of Aristotle's remark that the virtuous man fears death more, for the death of a virtuous man is a greater evil. This point might be relevant, also, to the death of Christ.)

The `Aqedah and the male-only priesthood

It seems to me it would have been less appropriate for God to ask Sarah to sacrifice a daughter than to ask Abraham to sacrifice a son. I don't have an argument for this—that's just how it seems to me. But if this is right, then it is not an accident that in the `Aqedah (the binding of Isaac) the two persons involved are male. But the `Aqedah is a foreshadowing of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. While with respect to the Incarnation as such, Christ's maleness might be reasonably argued to be incidental, if my intuition about the `Aqedah is right, then it is plausible that with respect to the sacrifice of Christ, the maleness is not incidental. And if so, then since what is central to the priesthood is the offering, in persona Christi and in an unbloody way, of the one sacrifice of the Cross[note 1], it seems quite appropriate that the priest be male, since he represents one whose maleness is not accidental in this context, and participates in Christ's sacrificial activity to which activity Christ's maleness is not accidental.

Is this sexist? Here is a way of thinking about this. Suppose that part of the reason God asked Abraham to sacrifice a son rather than asking Sarah to sacrifice a daughter had to do with Abraham and Isaac's maleness (leave aside the accidental fact that Sarah perhaps didn't have a daughter, since God could easily have fixed that). Would it follow that God discriminated against Sarah in asking Abraham to make the sacrifice? Surely not: one can at least equally well say that it was Abraham who was discriminated against by being asked to make the sacrifice.[note 2] The restriction of conscription to males does not discriminate against women, but against men, since it is upon men that it imposes a duty that it does not impose on women. Similarly, if God restricted who he requires to become priests to men, it is not obvious that this would be a form of discrimination against women.

Love and benevolence

There are two fairly standard claims about love:

1. benevolence--willing the good--towards the beloved is an essential component of love, and
2. love gives one the reason par excellence to benefit the beloved.

Now this may be obvious to some readers, who will simply reflect on my ignorance when reading this, but it is only today has it occurred to me that the two claims stand in some tension. Nothing can cause either itself or an essential part of itself (my body can cause my teeth to grow, because teeth are not essential parts of the body). Likewise, how can an attitude justify an essential part of itself?

As usual in the case of such a tension, there are four options available. Discarding both (1) and (2) is implausible.

Frankfurt in effect discards (1)--it is care, but not benevolence, that is an essential part of love on his view, and this care justifies the benevolence. But this is implausible, as it seems to imply that one could love someone and at the same time will the worst evils for one's beloved. Even if one adds a claim that justice towards the beloved is a component of love, still the idea that one could fail to will anything for one's beloved, despite the opportunity to do so, and still count as loving is implausible. Also, such a view is incompatible with the Christian idea that love fulfills the law--a love that does not imply some benevolence does not fulfill the moral law.

One could discard (2) but keep (1). On this view, I think one will end up saying that it is not love that justifies benevolence, but whatever it is that justifies the love likewise justifies the benevolence that is a part of this love. Another attractive feature of this view is that if one explains why one made some sacrifice for Bobby, and one says: "Bobby is my son and I love him", the "and I love him" is one thought too much--it is the sonship that justifies both the love and the sacrifice that is a part of the love. If one hates Bobby, one still has reason to make that sacrifice. I like this view a lot.

One could just be careful and hold on to both (1) and (2). Thus, some benevolence will be an essential part of love, and the love will then justify further benevolence. But what justifies the bit of benevolence that forms an essential part of love, and why does it not also justify all the benevolence by itself? Suppose our proposal is that the initial bit of benevolence is justified by the fact that we're all children of God, or that if something is good for x then it is good and hence it is worth promoting, or some other general claim like that. But such a fact seems to equally give one a reason for unlimited benevolence. Moreover, let "love*" be the aspects of love beyond the bit of benevolence that is an essential part of love (maybe love* is appreciation and/or a desire for union). Then, ex hypothesi, love* plus the little bit of benevolence justifies more benevolence. But it is not clear how a little bit of benevolence can help justify more benevolence. So, then, it seems it is love* that justifies the extra benevolence. But if so, then it is not love, properly speaking, that justifies the extra benevolence, but love*.

Perhaps one can combine the best of the last two views. Whatever it is that justifies the love justifies all the benevolence involved in the love. However, the love creates an additional reason for continued benevolence, and after the initial moment of love, the benevolence is rationally overdetermined. Thus, "Bobby is my son and I love him" correctly states two distinct reasons for making a sacrifice for Bobby, but is felt to be one thought too many because of an implicature that if one did not love Bobby, one wouldn't have the reason. This seems to be the best view.