freedom of excellence
A friend of mine asked me what I was learning in seminary. I explained to him what I was learning in Christian Morality. I think it sums up my class pretty well. So, I'm going to share it with y'all.
Cheers and God Bless
-Todd
ok so now what I've been learning let me know if you like it:
My Christian morality class has been really opening my eyes lately to
how we usually see morals as what we ought to do and as rules that
must be followed. In this view, freedom opposes a moral life. In order
to be free, we must be able to be fully able to choose an evil or a
good, so going in either direction just makes you less free. But,
that's not how the scholastic nor ancient traditions saw it.
According to them, we are free to be excellent. If you were learning
to play the piano, for instance, you might consider it freedom to be
able to bang what ever notes you want. But, this will most likely just
produce discord and just by repeating this, you'll never be free to
play music. Meanwhile, if you do something that seems to limit your
ability to do whatever you want like practice, you'll become even more
free in the end, like having the ability to play the right notes.
The former type of freedom is known as the freedom of indifference,
developed by William of Ockham, and it ended up really messing up how
ethics were taught throughout the whole modern era. Since, freedom of
indifference means that the only moral norms are those that are
imposed from above. Literally, what is evil is just evil because God
or Pope or Emperor says that is evil and nay of those could just
change and make evil good. This leads to a messed up metaphysics where
God is not primarily All Love or All Knowing, but All Free.
Now, the problem with this metaphysics is that it limits man's ability
to rationally know good from evil of any sort. We can only trust in
what has been ordered to us. Unfortunately, this is the exact moral
system most hold.
What do the scholastics promote instead? That there is such a thing as
a good that can be rationally known and we must freely assent to
pursuing it. By doing this, our actions can be whole hearted and we
can becoming better people who become more and more free. Appealing to
our intellect because it's something we know and appealing to our will
because it fulfills our desire.
That's the basics of it without getting to scholastically jargony on
you. I don't know if I'm fully getting across how much learning this
means to me. But, believe me, it's a big deal.
Cheers and God Bless
-Todd
ok so now what I've been learning let me know if you like it:
My Christian morality class has been really opening my eyes lately to
how we usually see morals as what we ought to do and as rules that
must be followed. In this view, freedom opposes a moral life. In order
to be free, we must be able to be fully able to choose an evil or a
good, so going in either direction just makes you less free. But,
that's not how the scholastic nor ancient traditions saw it.
According to them, we are free to be excellent. If you were learning
to play the piano, for instance, you might consider it freedom to be
able to bang what ever notes you want. But, this will most likely just
produce discord and just by repeating this, you'll never be free to
play music. Meanwhile, if you do something that seems to limit your
ability to do whatever you want like practice, you'll become even more
free in the end, like having the ability to play the right notes.
The former type of freedom is known as the freedom of indifference,
developed by William of Ockham, and it ended up really messing up how
ethics were taught throughout the whole modern era. Since, freedom of
indifference means that the only moral norms are those that are
imposed from above. Literally, what is evil is just evil because God
or Pope or Emperor says that is evil and nay of those could just
change and make evil good. This leads to a messed up metaphysics where
God is not primarily All Love or All Knowing, but All Free.
Now, the problem with this metaphysics is that it limits man's ability
to rationally know good from evil of any sort. We can only trust in
what has been ordered to us. Unfortunately, this is the exact moral
system most hold.
What do the scholastics promote instead? That there is such a thing as
a good that can be rationally known and we must freely assent to
pursuing it. By doing this, our actions can be whole hearted and we
can becoming better people who become more and more free. Appealing to
our intellect because it's something we know and appealing to our will
because it fulfills our desire.
That's the basics of it without getting to scholastically jargony on
you. I don't know if I'm fully getting across how much learning this
means to me. But, believe me, it's a big deal.