@It Aint Necessarily So many thanks again for your replies to my posts (which, I know, are
long due to the very real complexity of this topic, spanning intellectual history over the course of 2,000 years, so double thank you for bearing with me).
That sounds like rational ethics, not divine command theory.
I think you equated natural law with the conscience, or internal moral compass. If so, I agree. My moral direction comes from only that source.
In the history of Catholic philosophy, the dominant theory of ethics is not the so-called "
Divine Command Theory", which seems to be popular among contemporary American Evangelicals.
That honour goes to Natural Law. We are a natural law faith tradition.
God’s commandments, through the revealed Divine Law, were considered by Thomist Catholics to be a means of illuminating what is morally true and not what
determines what is morally true. They are meant as guide to conscience, should we find ourselves struggling to work out some vexing moral problem on our own - in accordance with intuition and right reason - but never as a substitute for conscience.
The traditional Catholic '
Thomist' approach from the High Middle Ages thus was, in point of fact, closer to rational ethics than it is to divine command, with the proviso being that
'conscience' - the internal moral compass as you call it - is given 'primacy'. And what precisely does this moral compass involve?
Scholastic theologians worked out a differentiation between two Latin terms involved in the process of conscientious moral decision-making:
synderesis and
conscientia.
As explained by one scholar, Lyons (2009): “
conscience is the whole internal conscious process by which first principles of moral right and wrong, learnt intuitively by synderesis [a functional intuitive capacity], are applied to some action now contemplated in order to produce a moral verdict on that action, known as conscientia." (p.479).
That said, I don't really want to get too bogged down in Catholic philosophy since it would take a dissertation-sized epic work of scholarly research to properly explain it all -
which I definitely do not want to do! That's well beyond my pay-grade
I'm surprised that you would allow conscience to trump a biblical commandment. Are Christians permitted to turn "Thou shalt" into "Thou shalt unless you feel morally conflicted"?
It's more complicated than that:
CHRISTIAN MORAL PRINCIPLES : Chapter 3: Conscience: Knowledge of Moral Truth
According to common Catholic teaching, one must follow one’s conscience even when it is [objectively from a Christian standpoint] mistaken. St. Thomas explains this as follows. Conscience is one’s last and best judgment as to the choice one ought to make. If this judgment is mistaken, one does not know it at the time. One will follow one’s conscience if one is choosing reasonably...So if one acts against one’s conscience, one is certainly in the wrong (see S.t., 1–2, q. 19, aa. 5–6).11
Thomas drives home his point. If a superior gives one an order which cannot be obeyed without violating one’s conscience, one must not obey. To obey the superior in this case would be to disobey what one believes...(see S.t., 1–2, q. 19, a. 5, ad 2; 2–2, q. 104, a. 5). Indeed, to believe in Jesus is in itself good and essential for salvation; but one can only believe in him rightly if one judges that one ought to. Therefore, one whose conscience is that it is wrong to believe in Jesus would be morally guilty if he or she chose against this judgment
That's the traditional Thomist Catholic understanding. It doesn't apply to those who, "
care but little for truth and goodness, and conscience by degrees grows practically sightless” (GS 16; translation supplied). This is because:
"Conscience entails moral responsibility. One’s first responsibility is to form conscience rightly". Rather, the above assumes a sincere person who is seeking to live a moral life according to the dictates of their conscience.
To give you an example, read this from the book
Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church (2015) by Alexander Murray, a Professor at University College, Oxford:
Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church
"...It is in a letter of Innocent III, written in 1201...A woman called Guleilma had left her husband, alleging consanguinity, recently discovered. To outsider with partial knowledge of the facts, the true motive of the wife must seem doubtful. Was hr desertion really due to her discovery of an impediment? Or vice versa?...This was the question that came to Pope Innocent III...
None the less, Innocent's wisdom insisted, she must obey her conscience...
Innocent III's letter would be duly preserved in Gregory IX's Decretals where it would calmly declare to every student of the subject, without ant special warning of the time-bomb it actually contained, the ultimate supremacy of conscience. Hostiensis himself, the most zealous apostle of the pope's fullness of power, expressly acknowledged that the authority of conscience was in the last resort even greater..."
Here are Pope Innocent III's (1198-1216) actual words in the letter to that woman
:
"...No one ought to act against his own conscience and he should follow his conscience rather than the judgement of the church when he is certain...one ought to suffer any evil rather than sin against conscience..."
Some commentary on this:
Defending American Religious Neutrality
"...The basic idea of the supreme authority of conscience had already been endorsed, in stronger terms [than ever before], by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216)...Here one sees the beginnings of the idea that conscience can trump even the objective law.
Noah Feldman observes that the idea of freedom of conscience is already being suggested here: 'If it was sinful to act against conscience, there might be reason to avoid requiring anyone to act against conscience'..."
Here you have a medieval Pope telling a woman that her individual conscience on this matter is ultimately supreme at the last recourse even over the authority of the Pope or Church.
The traditional teaching has a high regard for the internal process of individual discernment of truth.
It should said also, that in John Locke's
Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) he reiterated but radicalized and developed this same doctrine of the individual having an obligation to obey his conscience, painting it in religious terms: "
No way whatsoever that I shall walk in, against the Dictates of my Conscience, will ever bring me to the Mansions of the Blessed", he wrote. See:
Amendment I (Religion): John Locke, A Letter concerning Toleration
Compare John Locke saying here in 1689:
No private person has any right in any manner to prejudice another person in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church or religion. All the rights and franchises that belong to him as a man, or as a denizen, are inviolably to be preserved to him. These are not the business of religion. No violence nor injury is to be offered him, whether he be Christian or Pagan.
This the Gospel enjoins, this reason directs, and this that natural fellowship we are born into requires of us. If any man err from the right way, it is his own misfortune, no injury to thee; nor therefore art thou to punish him in the things of this life because thou supposest he will be miserable in that which is to come.
With Pope Nicholas I almost a thousand years before in his A.D. 886 letter to the Bulgars,
Ad Consulta Vestra:
Chapter XLI.
Concerning those who refuse to receive the good of Christianity and sacrifice and bend their knees to idols, we can write nothing else to you than that you move them towards the right faith by warnings, exhortations, and reason rather than by force...
Violence should by no means be inflicted upon them to make them believe. For everything which is not voluntary, cannot be good; for it is written: Willingly shall I sacrifice to you,[Ps. 53:8] and again: Make all the commands of my mouth your will,[Ps. 118:108] and again, And by my own will I shall confess to Him.[Ps. 27:7] Indeed, God commands that willing service be performed only by the willing. Listen to the apostle Paul who, when he wrote to the Corinthians, says: Why indeed is it my business to judge concerning those who are outside? Do you not judge concerning those who are inside? God will judge those who are outside. Remove the evil from yourselves.[I Cor. 5:12-13] It is as if he said: Concerning those who are outside our religion, I shall judge nothing.
Chapter CII.
We have taught above that violence should not be inflicted upon the pagan in order to make him become a Christian.
There is a clear development of ideas here over time, rather than rupture.