The Role of Negative Absolutes in Moral Theology: A Note

THE ROLE OF NEGATIVE ABSOLUTES IN MORAL THEOLOGY: A NOTE THE DIFFICULT TASK of trying to comprehend man both in his being and in his becoming puts moral theology in a position not unlike that of the woman who confided to her grown daughter: " The two great problems of my life have been your father and the stove; every time I turned to watch one, the other went out." In our time man's being threatens to "go out" on moral theology. This can happen if moral theology looks away from negative absolutes. The necessity and origin of such absolutes is the subject of the following reflections. How is man aware of absoluteness at all? This question underlies the question of moral absolutes. Prominent in man's consciousness is a type of absoluteness that can be called logical absoluteness. To experience this the reader is invited to voice the proposition: The whole is greater than the part. He will recognize that his utterance has the ability to withstand contradiction always and everywhere. Its pure logical consistency is the bond of rational discourse among men. Logical absoluteness, however, is not moral absoluteness. The reason for saying this is that man does not experience moral propositions as having logical absoluteness. For example, consider this principle: It is never licit to kill directly an innocent person. If you state its opposite, you do not create the inherent contradiction which you do when you say: The whole is not greater than the part. Besides this direct recognition, there is another reason why logical absoluteness cannot be identified with moral absoluteness. Moral acts take place in the real order-Adolph Hitler was really a mass murderer, and Pope John was really a kind man-and to insist that the real order coincide with the logical order produces a philosophical Idealism. 306 THE ROLE OF NEGATIVE ABSOLUTES IN MORAL THEOLOGY 307 The failure of logical absoluteness to ground moral absolutes does not, however, necessarily doom the latter to irrelevancy. Man has a second type of consciousness of absoluteness. This is his awareness of absoluteness in the ontological order. While not so clear as his awareness of logical absoluteness, it is by no means an inferior type. Just the opposite. Logical absoluteness is not the model for ontological absoluteness, but rather is its servant. Man discovers this ontological absoluteness by reflecting not on his navel but rather on his identity as a person. In acknowledging his continuity in the process of becoming, man asserts that he is somehow the owner of the process rather than its property. Moreover, such ownership is seen as necessarily uncircumscribed by boundary lines. Were it not uncircumscribed, man could read the deed of his being and thus grasp himself as a fait accompli-an especially unpalatable conclusion for modern man. To say that man is aware of the absoluteness of being is to say that he recognizes that as a person he transcends time and space. It is not to say that he acknowledges pure absoluteness, though he may realize that it is possible for him to move in this direction. St. John expresses this when he writes," Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And every one who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure." (I John 3: ~-3) Precisely because man's absoluteness is not yet pure, its expression is a problem. If man tries formally to express the absoluteness of his being he will perforce crowd out the expression of his becoming. The result will be a trip down the road toward monism. On the other hand, if man does not effectively express the absoluteness of his being, he will be swept away in the flood of becoming. Negative moral absolutes solve this problem of expression and reflect, inasmuch as every negation must ultimately be based on an affirmation, the absoluteness (i.e., the achieved 308 JAMES W. DEADDER being) of man. Inasmuch as negative absolutes do not positively affirm the absoluteness of man, they avoid exposing such...