Last week, Brian Sabol made the latest comments in a mild dispute which has been going on for some time in these very pages. Allow me to first quote him before throwing in my two cents.
“Furthermore, Mr. Lyrenmann’s comment that ‘atheists and agnostics are held to no moral code but the laws of the government’ is not only misguided and baseless, but completely wrong. Morality is not dependent on religion. The two are not mutually inclusive. Countless immoral acts have been committed in the name of religion, the Spanish Inquisition, for example.”
Mr. Sabol gives all appearances of being intelligent; nonetheless he stoops to hoist the ubiquitous canard that is the Spanish Inquisition. It is tiring to see how frequently this tactic is employed. Mr. Sabol is obviously unaware that the Inquisition was undertaken at the behest, not of the Church, but of the Spanish Crown; further, for all its perceived atrociousness, it resulted in a mere 2,000 casualties over a period of 349 years. It is a sure sign of the benevolence of Christianity that the most nefarious crime naysayers can point towards pales in comparison to the actions of any number of agnostics and atheists in the 20th century alone. This does not excuse the crimes of the Inquisition; nor does it propose to assert that Christians are, ipso facto, better than their pagan brethren. But it does serve to provide much needed perspective.
My point here is not to argue for the truth contained within Christianity, though I am wholly convinced of this and would gladly do thusly elsewhere. I concern myself instead with the utility thereof, which, though less important, is easier to gage.
But this is still somewhat difficult to do so. Agnostics will often note, as Mr. Sabol does, that they can be moral as well, and so long as he is guided by Plato I should think he would stand to do quite nicely. For paganism is not, as is commonly and completely inaccurately thought, wholly bad. Instead, paganism is the best man can do without Christ. Thus the Divine Comedy finds the noble pagans in Limbo, and Virgil is only allowed to accompany Dante through purgatory, symbolizing the limits of human reason.
Yet it is not, unfortunately, a choice between the goodness of paganism and the greater goodness of Christianity. Were that it were so! By utilizing human reason, the pagans have promulgated a system of ethics—also known as the natural law. This law has not been ignored by Christianity; instead, we find Augustine making countless references to Plotinus as well as Plato, especially in his “City of God.” Similarly, Thomas Aquinas uses Aristotle at great length in his equally monumental “Summa Theologica.”
In short, it is difficult to distinguish the natural law from the teachings of Christianity, and it is irresponsible to pretend that a rejection of the latter will lead to a more stringent regard to the former. Tearing down the walls of Christian discipline is one thing, but it is quite another to offer an alternative in its stead. Only time will tell if the gleeful revolutionaries halt rebellion long enough to consider this all-important point.
Partial rejection of the natural law aside, while it is quite possible for agnostics and atheists to be as moral as Christians, I consider the prospect somewhat dubious. All human beings, Christians and pagans alike, are bound by the same civil laws depending on their place of residence. Yet Christians are also called to task for their sins: those that did not love their neighbors as themselves risk eternal hellfire. Few people will be good simply for goodness’ sake. With all due respect to Mr. Sabol, removing the threat of damnation shall only prove disastrous.
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