On Bad Actions, Good Intentions, and Loving God: Three Much-Misunderstood Issues About the Happy Life that St. Thomas Aquinas Clarifies For Us

Romanus Cessario, O.P. On Bad Actions, Good Intentions, and Loving God: Three MuchMisunderstood Issues About the Happy Life that St.Thomas Aquinas Clarifies For Us INTRODUCTION: "HEAVEN ON EARTH, HEAVEN IN FAITH" The expression, "Heaven on earth, Heaven in faith" comes from the pen of Blessed Elizabeth of theTrinity (1880-1906). The words describe the overall theme ofa ten-day retreat diat she composed shortly before her death for die benefit ofher younger sister, Marguerite, known as Guite (1883-?), who was a housewife and mother of two children.1 It might seem odd to begin a talk about Aquinas's teaching on the happy life by turning back to a cloistered nun ofCarmel who died an early deatii at the beginning ofthe present century. Still, Elizabeth oftheTrinity, I believe, illumines what Christians believe about the ultimate happiness of the human person . That is, she reminds us about our true goal or end. Her message is simple: Heaven is our goal. For Elizabeth, a woman who dedicated her adult life to prayer and sacrifice in union with Christ, the happy life is one that rests only in God. Logos 1:2 1997 On Bad Actions, Good Intentions, and Loving Godjgj In my view, Elizabeth's spiritual writings can help our contemporaries better realize what makes for a happy human life. And they must understand tiiis. For without taking account of what makes us happy, no one is able to provide a compelling account of the Christian moral life. Again, Elizabeth's message is a simple one: God makes us happy. But there's more. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is enormously generous to his adopted children. To die extent that the Christian believer lives the truth here and now, he or she does not have to wait until deatii in order to experience die happiness of God. Rather, through faith, heaven begins right here on earth. We see, then, that Elizabeth's final retreat prepares us for the already and die not-yet: "Heaven on Earth, Heaven in Faith." Since God's own knowledge about himself grounds die truth about the moral life, moral theology is an exercise closely associated widi the tiieological virtue offaith. I sometimes tell my students that the study ofmoral theology enables one to discover "how God knows the world to be." Of course, I mean by "world" die properly human world of our beliefs and desires, our intentions and actions. You may recognize a particularly Dominican emphasis in this way of expressing what moral theology is about. We are looking for the truth about God's creative knowledge ofdie world. For, as the English DominicanThomas Gilby once said, "the ratio which measures moral action is the manifestation of God's mind in revelation , the Logos, not just a rule that can be discovered by rational reflection on experience."2 Good moral theology, then, describes a happy life tiiat God himselfmakes happy, and so a life that conforms fully to the requirements ofthe Gospel. This explains why Aquinas refers to the "nova lex Evangelo"—the new law ofthe Gospel, a term that Luther, we are told, avoided.3 We can express Aquinas's position another way. Moral theology defines the "truth oflife." Since truth is known only by the intellect , the moral theologian should be less occupied widi discerning, let alone looking for ways to enforce, the dictates ofthe divine will, 102 Logos and more concerned to discover the rule and measure for human actions that have their origin in the divine intelligence.4 Our own experience affirms this: die truth persuades; tiireats paralyze. Studying the history oftheology reveals, moreover, that voluntarist ethics are notoriously unsuccessful. Much, for instance, that Luther objected to in late medieval scholasticism stems from the truncated andiropology of the nominalist theologians. To the extent, however, that the divine rule and measure (regula et mensura ), which is properly associated with the Eternal Logos, governs human actions, our lives reflect the truth or rectitude that is common in all the virtues and to which die Gospel commits us. The question ofhow one achieves this rectitude oflife—rechtfertigung or justification—should not be confused widi what actually constitutes this state as one...