Attitude and morality.

I said that before going any further I would look at the foundation of the moral life, since morality is also something which flows from anthropology and spirituality.

The foundations of Christian morality and attitude parallel each other; the Christian moral life then flows out of these foundations, the moral life being shaped by Christian attitude. What I want to do here is to briefly compare Christian and secular morality. In order to do this I need first to describe classical morality; the moral life which was handed on to the Western world by Classical antiquity and embraced by Christianity.

Morality concerns that which will lead to my good (and avoidance of evil). Morality then, involves movement, change, growth, from where I am now, to where I should be. Thus, morality envisages the good that I should seek, the attainment of that good, and the means to achieving that good. Classical antiquity identified the good that I should seek as happiness, the attainment of that happiness as fulfilment, and the means to achieving it as virtue (with law as a pointer or guide).

The Christian life is a radical renewal of morality; the good that one should seek is friendship with God, which one discovers through an encounter with Christ. The attainment of this good is salvation (communion with God and one another), and the means to achieving the good is grace. 

Compared with Classical morality, the Christian life represents a radical renewal of humanity. Objective morality for our forbears, which was the good which I should seek, is now Christ. Subjective morality, which was understood as the growth of my humanity, is now my transformation by Christ. And the means to me achieving the good, which was virtue and the guiding hand of the law - human resourcefulness, is now in grace. Christ is the unique means to human flourishing.

The essential ingredient for the Christian moral life is the encounter with Jesus Christ, who sets a new life process is motion; life in the Spirit. Moral endeavour does not now spring from the Christian, but from Christ. Goodness – the person becoming good – is not the fruit of human effort, but is the fruit of grace.

Secular morality is a misnomer; it merely looks like morality but is, in fact, not a moral system at all. Secularism replaces morality with law. Secularism, which insists on ideological relativism, refuses to acknowledge objective truth. So, it is unable to consider the good that the person should seeks. To do this would align the person with objective truth. Instead, secularism asks, what do you desire? This seems to indicate that one's desires are attainable. But, says secularism, you must remain within the law; do whatever is legal but don't disturb the public order. Or, if need be, we can change the law so that your desires can be acknowledged - so long as public order is maintained. Law then, is presented as the arbiter of morality. In fact, in secular culture law replaces morality. However, this is not all, for secularism has set the human spirit on a quest, a quest governed by law, which now acts as a constraint on my desires. What "secular morality" amounts to is actually a struggle for self-affirmation. "Secular morality" presents an extremely demanding way of life in which I am expected to take control of every situation, and in which life presents an unremitting series of choices. The whole burden of life falls on me. 

Moreover, the secular ethic, which cannot/refuses to see Christ, says that the Christian life is just a set of rules. This understanding of Christian morality - a rule book without grace - has become the popular understanding of Christian morality for many of the baptised also. This tells us that we have much to do in order to re-establish baptised people on the foundation of Christian morality. This foundation is the encounter of the person with Christ, and that which takes place in that encounter - the radical transformation of the person in grace, out of which the Christian moral life flows; a life lived on the basis of the reality of God's love revealed and given in Christ.

It is the transformation of the person by Christ, which is essentially the gift of a new life - life in Christ, life in the Spirit - that shapes the way that the Christian person now undertakes his or her life; the way we live a formed Christian life.

Where are we up to with all this.

What I have been trying to do is to set Christian attitude (classically know as asceticism) in relief, and to show it in contrast with secular asceticism. Ascetical theology is a part of Dogmatic theology and has become somewhat forgotten in our age.

Two books really got me thinking about this subject: Dietricht von Hildebrand's magnum opus "Transformation in Christ"; it is he who refers to this dimension of the Christian life as "Christian attitude". And Karol Wojtyla's book, "Sources of Renewal".

Up to now I have been speaking about the nature and foundation of Christian attitude, which flows out of the Christian identity of the person - Christian anthropology, and which takes root in the person through their relationship with Christ - the Spiritual life. Anthropology and Spirituality then, are the foundations of Christian attitude.

It is obviously important for me to speak about the way in which Christian attitude is formed and grows, and about the concrete practical ways in which our Christian attitude is expressed and leads into our daily Christian living. I will get on to this soon, but before that I should post on the moral life, the foundation of which is also the foundation of the Christian attitude. After that I will get into the practical stuff.

To sum up what I have said so far in all these posts in which I have compared Christian attitude with secular asceticism, I would say this:

Western culture today has lost sight of the relationship which God wishes to have with us, and has placed material things and worldy endeavours in its stead. Our age seeks to live from self-enlightenment and says that the "Great Mystery" (God's plan for humanity to live in communion with Him) is not necessary today. The secular ascetic embraces self-focus as an unremitting and soulless struggle with my desires. Christian attitude is a yielding of self before a Mystery which is far greater than me, and which moves me by love.

What is that makes so many people see the secular life as so attractive, we might ask!

The undoing of the secular ascetic within us

Another way of looking at the importance of ‘Christian attitude’ is for the undoing of the secular mind in Christians and for the renewal of the Christian life. Without a lively appreciation of the Christian attitude it so easy for Christians to think with the secular mind: what obligation-driven purpose is calling me to respond, how is the culture calling me to think or act, how can I fit in with or what are my obligations to the secular culture?

Such an ascetic as this actually inhibits and seems to make redundant the Christian attitude of receiving, responding to and relating, immediately, here and now, with the presence of the Risen Christ. The Christian attitude seeks to be more aware of how great is the gift, how wonderful the way in which I am loved by Christ, how can I love Him?  It is an attitude that seeks to embrace the concrete reality of my life in the light of my relationship with Christ. Not to be led by the culture, but to discern my response to it in the light of Christ. That ability to receive Him, respond to Him, and embrace the relationship I have with Him, can so easily be occluded if I don’t have an appreciation of, and a desire for the formation of my Christian attitude. 

Why all these posts on asceticism or attitude?

Because asceticism or attitude refers to the way in which we personally engage with grace, or in default of that response, the way in which we embrace a life-style. It represents the way in which our interior life is formed and how it subsequently directs our concrete way of living.

In terms of the Christian life, we speak on the one hand of “the faith”, “the truths of faith”, the doctrine about Christ, the doctrine of Christ and His Church. And on the other hand, we speak about our actual Christian lives – what we do, the way in which we live out that faith.

These are the two expressed elements of Christianity yet there is a third element: that interior place where nature and grace meet, and in which my personal and unrepeatable subjectivity is formed.

Christian attitude looks at how the reality of Christ, the presence of the Father and the gift of the Holy Spirit actually make their encounter with me, and me with them; how I actually engage with grace. This engagement with grace, which takes place in my interior, my subjectivity; my consciousness and my conscience, comes to involve my heart, my mind, my will, so that my whole person, my whole life is involved.

Put it very simplistically: what you see is the Church presenting the Christian faith and then you see me trotting along to Mass on Sundays. But what has taken place within me, that the way in which I live my life, in some way, mirrors that presentation of the Gospel?

Asceticism is an essential element of Christianity – it is the human interface with the Divine, which I am calling in these posts “Christian attitude”. If we don’t have an appreciation of Christian attitude, then the Faith and the way we live it can come to seem disconnected; faith and life can appear as two separate entities. In some way, it is a failure to appreciate Christian attitude that has led many baptised people to live as practical pagans.

Secular asceticism is analogous to Christian attitude, only in this instance the interface is not so much with the Divine, but either with myself, or with those ‘representations of reality’ that I allow to impinge on me. This is the precise dynamic of secularism: the secular mind places the self as the enlightened and enlightening subject.   

Secular asceticism is aligned with solipsism, but since secular culture is so strong, its philosophical identity with solipsism is not adverted to. 

The human interface in secular asceticism has the same essential structure; that of the human person – that we are set up (by God) to receive, respond and relate, but the secular mind, instead of allowing that human structure to function, instead channels human energy either into self-fixation or into activity which is valued precisely because it provides a stimulus. Secular asceticism is then, aligned with the neurotic component of human life; it represents a deformation or wounding of human subjectivity. Everyone is neurotic, to a degree, but the secular mind inhabits this component of life more unselfconsciously. Christians generally live their neuroses more evidently, as they wrestle against them through the impact which grace has on their lives (eg. St Peter, St Paul, St Mary Magdalene, St Augustine, St Therese, St Teresa Benedicta), revealing the converting and transforming power of the Lord, who enables the person to receive grace, respond to grace, and inhabit the relationship (with Him).

So, to speak about “Christian attitude” is to shed light on the foundations of our Christian lives as we actually live them, and to point us to a fuller embracing of Christ and of the real possibility of our reaching full stature in Him.     

The radical nature of Christianity.

The Christian attitude is rooted not in a way of life, or in a philosophy, or in an idea, or in psychology, but in a person: Jesus Christ. The Christian identity or anthropology flows out of Him. The greatest statement by the Church about Christian anthropology is found in the Council’s document “Gaudium et Spes” paragraph 22: “Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.” The truth about our humanity does not then, lie in our own resourcefulness but in Christ, who is fully human and who makes a gift of himself, his life, to us. My real life then, is not what I make it to be, but is the fact that I exist in relationship with inner life of the Holy Trinity.

The Christian attitude then, flows out of the transformation of my life when I open myself to Christ. Human fullness, human flourishing, takes place exclusively through a relationship of friendship with Jesus Christ; that I allow myself to be transformed by the person who He is.

There is no dualism here; body and spirit are a unity, and what takes place in the Christian life is a passing from a fallen humanity to a redeemed one – my whole person is redeemed by Christ.

Neither is there anything Gnostic here. Indeed, Christianity is radically different from secularism; Christianity is not about seeking of a better way, it is being given a new life!

The radicality of the Christian life is precisely that its possibility and its realisation does not lie within me and my human resourcefulness, but lies in grace – it is the gift of a new life.

The essential element of the Christian life then, is the encounter with the person of Jesus Christ. Out of this encounter, uniquely, flows the possibility of the fullness of human life.

Take away Christ, which secular culture endeavours to do, and all that you are left with is frail and vulnerable humanity, subjected to its own pride. And when the Christian life is viewed through the lens of the secular ascetic it can indeed seem pointless; why should we not make the best we can out of such a state of affairs. The secular ascetic is precisely the failure to acknowledge Christ, whose riches are transformative of humanity, and whose fullness, peace and joy are not man-made. Undoing the secular mind, especially when it has entered into Christians, is the great work of the Holy Spirit; a shining of true light on that false light within. This work is the interior work of the New Evangelisation – the rebuilding of Christian personality, so that the Christian attitude can be formed anew.