Chapter I — The Moral Concept of God

The Moral Concept of God

Since morality is inseparably connected with religion through its dependence on religion, as we saw in §§ 9, 10, 11, the concept of God is therefore the necessary presupposition and condition of morality, and true morality is possible only where there is also the true concept of God, that is, where God is believed as infinite Spirit. The true concept of God is found in the teaching of the Holy Gospel. “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Therefore, where the moral idea has its absolutely perfect reality in the personal holy God, there morality also has its firm foundation, its true content, and its absolute end.

God is the foundation of morality. 1) because He is the only good One: “No one is good except God alone.” (Mark 10:18) and because the good belongs to God alone. and 2) because the good is the eternal and enduring content of His will; “For with God there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (James chapter 1:17) and because God remains in goodness always the same as Himself and always in the same way and in the same state, since His will does not fall away from His eternal essence, because goodness does not exist outside of God, but He Himself in His essence is good.

Proofs of the Goodness of God

The goodness of God is demonstrated.

1) From the creation of all things, because the goodness of God acting freely is the beginning and the cause of all things, created through His all-wisdom and omnipotence.

2) From the revelation of God, because God reveals Himself in His own world as the only holy one and presents Himself to human beings for imitation as the only living holy archetype, and the human being, recognizing God as the archetype of the good, views morality as likeness to God and himself in his true moral worth as the image of God. (1 Pet. 1:14–15: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.” And Eph. 5:1: “Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children.” And Matt. 5:48: “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” cf. Lev. 11:44; 1 Thess. 4:7.)

3) From the omnipresence of God. Because God, present everywhere in the world, guides the moral life of the human being toward its eternal end with wisdom, love, and righteousness, and supports the human being without removing his moral freedom, such an idea of God inspires in the one who lives morally complete confidence and joy in the fulfillment of the divine will, as one who feels himself to be a co-worker with God, but anxiety and shame with fear in the rejection of the divine will, as one who feels that in some way he is destroying the plan of God.

From the revelation of the divine will: Because God as holy lawgiver reveals in time His eternal and holy will, according to which the human being ought to live in harmony with God, and the will of God is His law, which presents itself to the rational and free being as a moral commandment and obligation.

And 5. From the work of redemption, because Christian ethics recognizes the supreme goodness and eternal love of God above all in the redemption of the human race, in which the one good God is worshiped in three hypostases: the Father, who provides for us and conceived the good counsel of the salvation of the human race; the Son, who became incarnate and carried out the good counsel; and the All-Holy Spirit, who works in us, gives life, and consequently applies this good counsel to human beings.

Concerning the Human Being Created in the Image of God

What did God intend through the creation of the human being?

In the creation of the world, God purposed to establish a kingdom of moral freedom and love. He established this kingdom through the creation of the human being, forming him in His own image and likeness. This is also expressed by what is said in Acts, that the human being is of divine lineage: “For we are indeed His offspring” (¹) (Acts ch. 17. 28). And truly the human being had to be such, because only in such free beings can God be well pleased to establish a kingdom of freedom and love. For it would be impossible to achieve the desired purpose if the human being were not a personal, free, and self-conscious being, but a mere creature and part of nature, and like the other creatures moved in the vicious circle of instinctive development of virtues appearing periodically and then perishing again, in which no progress, no spiritual development, and no perfection is manifested in their own life. The human being is truly a most excellent being; he alone has a history, he alone does not live only in the present, but extending his gaze to the past as far as the first beginning of beings and to the future as far as the most distant point of what lies furthest away, where the final and highest purpose is, he lives also for the future. The human being alone is a rational being.

That the destiny of the human being is to contribute to the restoration of the kingdom of God on earth

Since the concept of personhood is inseparably connected with the concept of communion and love,

(¹) A saying of the apostle and philosopher from Cilicia, Paul.

The human being is destined to advance the kingdom of love and freedom and to contribute to the restoration of the kingdom of God; and the kingdom of God exists where creatures acknowledge Him, obey Him, and love Him, and these creatures love one another mutually in God, and God reigns in them through His holiness and love. For this purpose the human being created in the image of God is by nature capable, having both a spirit endowed with various powers and a body endowed with various advantages and perfect dexterity. Through his spirit, the human being is joined to the world of spirits and converses with God himself, and through this spiritual communion with the supreme good he becomes a moral being called to accomplish the will of God on earth. Through his spirit the human being becomes king of creation and governs the creatures on earth. The spirit becomes capable of every work through the dexterity of the body, because the body is a suitable instrument for the fulfillment of every requirement of the body, since through the senses it enters into active relation with the external world and through the dexterity and assistance of the body it masters nature for the good of its moral end. From this appears the lofty destiny of the human being, by which he surpasses all other creatures, namely his moral destiny, which is manifest not only in his spirit but also in his body.

Besides his upright gait, the very face of the human being proclaims him master of nature, having a divine mission to fulfill on earth. Only in the union of the rational soul with such a body could the human being employ speech, that marvelous gift of the Creator, for the expression of his own thoughts and of the inspirations given to him by the Holy Spirit. Among the organs of the body, the hand especially proclaims its high destiny, being suited for varied free activity. Through the hand the human being, shaping, forming, and ordering, places his own seal upon nature and establishes the kingdom of civilization by working various arts.

That the destiny of the human being is evident from his impulses.

Where is the destiny of the human being manifested?

The destiny of the human being is manifested in his impulses, and an impulse is the nature of each human being tending toward development, that is, life itself in relation to its own end.

The impulse is aroused initially in the human being as a blind will tending to be elevated into an understanding and conscious will. In impulse there exists a lack seeking fulfillment and satisfaction. Therefore, impulse expresses the human being’s inclination toward development and perfection. Impulses can be divided qualitatively according to the goods toward which they tend; consequently, since human life is life in the world and life in God, the deepest and most fundamental impulses of the human being are represented under both aspects: the impulse toward life in the world encompasses all its relative goods, while the impulse toward life in God encompasses the highest good. God and the world, therefore, are two powerful forces that make the human being their own instrument through the corresponding impulse. The impulse toward the world seeks a harmonious life with it, which is characterized as happiness encompassing not only the goods of the body and social relations, but also ideas, as occurs in the impulse toward knowledge. Such an impulse often drives the human being to dedicate his entire life to a particular idea, as both political history and the history of art, discoveries, and inventions testify.

But the impulse toward God aims not at happiness, but at blessedness and the full and perfect life in God and His kingdom, of which life in this world is only a preparatory foundation and condition. The impulse toward the kingdom of God carries the human being beyond this earthly realm and drives him not in himself and the world, but in God, in whom he seeks the fulfillment of his longings, because only in Him, in the highest good, can the human being have rest and satisfaction, and the spirit its proper spiritual and immortal nourishment. By virtue of this impulse the human being strives to sanctify the world, to make the human an instrument of the divine, and to consecrate humanity as a dwelling place of God and His Spirit. In this impulse the human being desires to become worthy of the blessings of God, sacrificing the earthly things toward which he hastens, and longs to be wholly consecrated.

The impulses have dominion over moral life.

The impulse in the human being is neither absolutely independent!

it does not push irresistibly, as in the case of an animal, so as to deprive the human being of moral freedom; for the human being possesses the gift of self-determination and self-activity, being able to weigh and examine his impulses and to learn their true meaning and value by comparing them with the holy law of God, both written and unwritten, whose essence is the good, and to decide which of the impulses ought to prevail. This gift of self-determination and the power of self-activity make the human being responsible for his actions, and the accountability for his actions makes him responsible, accountable, and obligated to give an account of the stewardship of his life not only before human beings and before the tribunal of his own conscience, but also before the impartial Judge, God (Luke 16:2), because in acting he has worked independently, as he himself willed, driven or compelled by no irresistible necessity.

The Reason for the Predominance of the Worldly Impulse.

The reason for the predominance of the worldly impulse is the irregular and abnormal development of the spirit of the human race, because if it had proceeded normally and regularly, then the worldly impulse would have been subordinated to the impulse toward the kingdom of God, and life in the world would have been in harmony with the divine law and would have become a suitable and obedient instrument preparing for life in God. The disordered and irregular development of the spirit of the human race made life in the world also unsuited to the law of God and an unsuitable and disobedient instrument for attaining life in God; thus the impulse toward the world prevailed, while the impulse toward the kingdom of God was restrained and so strongly bound that only through redemption could the proper relation and harmony between life in the world and life in God be restored again.

Concerning the Freedom of the Human Being, That It Is Not Absolute from God.

The human being as a self-sufficient person fashioned in the image of God possesses the noetic and the self-determining and consequently the free, but his freedom is not absolute from God, but relative, unable to act outside the conditions established for it by God, because on the one hand it depends on the holy law of God, and on the other hand it is limited by individuality both bodily and spiritual, which is given to each one as a personal being and can be shaped by the will, but cannot be completely altered. The relative character of human freedom is also evident in the gradual development of the spiritual essence, in which the will also has as its presupposition the impulses and desires. This relative freedom contains the destiny of the human being; being at first a potential power, it becomes actual when the human being comes to consciousness of his own essential nature and is not carried toward his goal driven by external force, but choosing it by a decision of his own will, and consequently is free in his will.

How Freedom Is Characterized.

According to what has been said, freedom is characterized first of all as the power of choosing (liberum arbitrium), that is, the capacity to choose between two principles, the principle of good and evil, and through such power of choosing the will must be tested and proved. The human being, then, as a free being, can and ought to choose the good as that which leads to his goal, but he can also do what he ought not to do—that is, turn away from his end. Such freedom, called freedom in a specific sense, lacking its true content, is not full and perfect freedom, but only one element of it; it is an indication of the capacity for transition to true and real freedom, whose content is truth. If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32) Therefore, according to the sacred Augustine: “Deo servire est summa libertas,” the most inward and essential law of the human spirit is truly its relation to God. True freedom, then, is the human being’s conformity with the will of God through the continual development of the spirit of God, so that he no longer chooses by preference between good and evil, but only the good, because his freedom coincides with his destiny and becomes an inner moral necessity.

the freedom of the children of God “as free, and not using your freedom as a covering for evil, but as servants of God.” (1 Pet. 2:16) “Likewise, the one called as a free person is a slave of Christ.”[1] (1 Cor. 7:22).[2] The one who is raised to such a freedom full of love and devotion does not have the moral commandment as something external imposed and alien to his essence, but as something internal and indwelling, not as a yoke and burden, but as a living power identified with the inner man.

Is the human will driven by motives in its operations?

Admittedly, the human will is often driven in its activities, on the one hand by incentives—that is, pleasing representations that move the will to action—and on the other hand by obstacles, that is, representations not pleasing to it, which calm and quiet the will. But neither the one nor the other is in itself the cause of our will; these representations, whether they impel the will to action or keep it at rest, in both cases acquire this power from the will, because the will approves and appropriates them, and the will receives its movement from the innate ideas of the beautiful, the good, and the true.

The human being, adorned by God with both freedom according to kind and true freedom, what use did he make of them?

The human being, adorned by God with both freedom according to kind and true freedom, misused the first and was found weakened also in the second, yet he can again attain it through the grace and redemption in Christ Jesus and through self-denial and moral struggle.

In contrast to this sound Orthodox teaching concerning freedom, which walks the middle way, there have appeared from the most ancient times two other teachings and theories holding the extremes and consequently diametrically opposed: the teaching of Augustine on moral unfreedom (determinismus = determinism) and the teaching of Pelagius (indeterminism).

The first teaches that human freedom is nothing other than concealed (respectable) necessity. The will of the human being became, through the transgression of the first-formed and the general and hereditary punishment of sin that flowed from it, once and for all unfree (servum arbitrium); consequently, it can only sin through grace and salvation in Christ, and only through the creative action of divine grace, toward which the human being is disposed as a passive vessel, can moral freedom become free again.[3] We all sinned together with Adam and are branches of the corrupted tree of the human race, which can be transformed only through a new creation, and the guilt of Adam is reckoned to all of us. The second teaching, which is vigorously opposed by the first, maintains that humanity suffered nothing from the transgression of the first-formed, remaining entirely unchangeable and healthy; consequently, the human being always continues in his normal and harmonious state, having full freedom to accomplish the good at every moment.

The delusion of the first teaching lies in this: that it does not recognize the remaining freedom within the unfreedom. In the sin of the individual it sees only the inherited sin of the race, and consequently removes all personal accountability. Certainly no human being is entirely isolated, but constitutes a member of the organism of humanity and society and participates in its (the organism’s) sin, which as hereditary is innate in him; but on the other hand, each human being is not only a member of the race, but in relative independence from it possesses within himself the center of his own life (in addition to the universal center of humanity), because although sin as a fated inheritance (that is, apart from the will) dwells in us, nevertheless this fated element is transformed into guilt of the will, because the human being willingly accepts sin and voluntarily commits others. It is true that a human being conceived in sins is unable to remain completely free from sin (since sin dwells within), but it is false that we cannot either accept or reject the salvation offered to us by the Gospel of Christ, and that this acceptance or rejection should not be personally attributed to us. But although a human being is unable to remain free from sin, is he therefore compelled to commit such and so many sins as he sometimes still commits?

Who bears witness concerning this?

The conscience of the human being bears witness that in his past, when he was strongly able to resist evil, such as pride, sensuality, and other vices, the flesh, laziness, and similar things, he either resisted or resisted to the extent that he did.

Only thus is the psychological phenomenon of remorse explained; and that freedom has not been completely extinguished or deadened in the human being through sin is witnessed by the history of various men in the pagan world whom humanity honors and admires—for example, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Socrates, Epaminondas, and others who, through their sincere striving toward self-knowledge (know yourself) and the activity of their will, strongly resisted evil and through self-denial fought against many evil impulses and inclinations. Or the honor due to such men is critically undermined if we insist that for them it was not a question of moral struggle concerning freedom, but of natural action by necessity. But whoever denies this admits that there exists a real relative freedom, and consequently one can justly speak of personal accountability.

Where the Delusion of the Second Teaching Lies

In this: that it removes every relation of the individual to the species, to the organism of humanity, and regards the individual as free from every influence and effect. This teaching is more superficial than the first: first, because it is incompatible with the voice of man’s conscience, with experience, and with the true life of humanity, where it is evident that man does not have full and absolute freedom at every moment, because his will is determined in many ways by innate inclinations, previous actions, and various habits; and second, because it indirectly denies the necessity of divine grace and redemption and ascribes to the work of the Lord (as do the modern rationalists) a certain pedagogical and exemplary significance.

Besides these teachings, which bear a religious character and arose from a misinterpretation of the Church’s teaching concerning sin and grace, are there others?

Yes, there are two philosophical and psychological theories diametrically opposed, just like the preceding religious ones. First, determinismus, that is, the system of the complete lack of freedom of the human being, whose representative and champion is the well-known pessimistic German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1787–1860). Second, indeterminismus or indifferendismus—the system of the absolute freedom or indifference of the will. The first system does not differ in essence from the pantheistic and materialistic theory.

According to this system, no decision is made without a corresponding motive, and when many motives exist, the will necessarily serves the strongest; consequently, the human being always does what he must necessarily do, because he could not have acted otherwise than he did. For example, a person who goes out on the street at the sixth hour and says: I am free to go for a walk or to the theater, or to church, or to visit a friend, or to kill myself, or to return to my house, says Schopenhauer, is not free, considering this a defect, but will act by necessity according to whatever is stronger—for example, to return to his house—just as water by necessity undergoes such direction and change. Here we observe first that the will is presented as inert, and second that these motives, which he presents as indifferent, appear indifferent because we do not know the character of those individuals, whereas if we knew it, we would see that they are significant. But he should rather have given an example in which the motives had an immediately moral character, such as doing good, acting justly, and speaking the truth.

But what do we know?

But we know that a human being, by virtue of his freedom, can either approve or reject these motives, because they are only stimulating and prompting, but not compelling and irresistible, and our conscience and moral experience testify that the will of human beings in the struggle between spirit and matter, between duty and inclination, can exert its powers and grant to the motive of duty the dominion to resist evil and escape temptation. If, however, even after all the most severe reproaches of conscience, a person yields to the impulse of evil, this shows that in the past he did not resist evil and did not strengthen his will, but on the contrary continually committed evil and became habituated to it, so that he became a servant of sin, with the result that no choice between good and evil remains to him any longer, but he does evil as if by necessity, having become callous through the hardening of his heart and having lost all feeling (which Saint John of Damascus calls petrification). Often, however, such a tendency was normal, or rather natural; and conversely, even these people often feel a tendency toward the world.

Where do those who hold the opposite view take refuge to support their theory?

Those who hold the opposite view usually take refuge, to support their theory, in the individuality of each human being, in the characters of persons in dramas, and in statistical tables. But we know that individuality is not given to us in a finished state, but is susceptible to formation and transformation, and that moral character is above any such natural predetermination. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. for the tree is known by its fruit. (Matthew 12:33). Certainly, “they do not gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles” (Matt. 7:16), and yet the quality of the moral tree depends on the final decision and action of the person. “Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.” (Matt. 26:41). “Let the one who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:12) and elsewhere. Thus individuality is receptive to formation and shaping.

The characters of persons in dramas are presented as consistent with themselves, but at the same time dependent on the past and on their conduct up to that point, and the development of character is not a necessary natural course, but freedom having various decisions. Hence the poetic difference and the concept of guilt and accountability, because the one following the unfolding of actions understands that the actor could have acted otherwise than he did act; that it was a critical moment in which it depended on him either to carry out his will or not.

And finally, moral statistics that annually determine the number of marriages and divorces, legitimate and illegitimate births, crimes, murders, suicides, and the like do not prove the existence of eternal, unchangeable, and necessary laws excluding freedom and necessarily presenting the same results annually, but simply a certain temporary regularity.

Where does this come from?

This comes partly from certain sinful and vicious inclinations that prevail for a time in persons whose freedom has been so bound by the passions that their actions acquire a necessary regularity like that of natural forces;

and partly from external relations and various circumstances that the human being cannot resist because of the weakness of the will. No one can deny that a society that today presents the same moral phenomena socially can, after the passage of some time, be changed through the energies of the human will—for instance, that the number of crimes and many moral ills can be reduced and prevented through governmental measures, through religious and moral influence, through improvement of legislation and of the educational and pedagogical system. The repeated moral energies of Christian brotherhoods, taking the results of moral statistics, have succeeded in many places in strengthening the moral springs among the people and in gradually producing a different moral condition, which irrefutably testifies that what is at issue here is not a matter of eternal laws and unchangeable fate, but of a relative regularity resting on transient relations and circumstances. It should be noted that these calculations of moral statistics are probably accurate; Great instability is observed among them, and from year to year the Exaltation or the decline changes.

What is the second system or the philosophical theory that is mistaken concerning the freedom of the human being?

The second system is indeterminism or indifferentism, the indeterminate or indefinite character of the will. This teaches that the human being possesses at every moment absolute and unlimited authority to choose. According to this view, the will is in no way predisposed, but stands indifferent above all motives (libertas indifferentiae). At every moment the human being is able to act otherwise than he acts and independently of his past, as soon as it seems good to him to make a new beginning of his life. From this it follows that the virtuous person at any moment can abandon virtue and enter the path of vice, and the evildoer can break every relation with vice and be raised to the heights of self-denial and holiness.

This theory of the rationalists is both superficial and naive, utterly overturned by the life of humanity, and must yield before the divine truth that is attested by experience and confirmed by Scripture.