My overly broad quick response
to this (who wants to read my detailed analysis of a semi-detached analysis of questions of morality posed by two philosophy professors in a shortened interview on a general issue website? Yeah, me neither.) is that the questions of morality raised by Kant and Aristotle and existentialism and utilitarianism fit neatly into that quote in the middle of my quotes above (I can't see it from this screen and I'm not going to stop and change tabs right now.) Or Wittgenstein's metaphor of the fly in the bottle, buzzing around trying to get back out. For Wittgenstein that was the position of most of philosophy, trapped in a bottle of its own making (if you've seen "The Good Place," you know that's a perfect description of the philosophy teacher Chidi). He wanted to smash the bottle. Some days, I agree with him.
I don't say that from a sense of deep frustration, but from a sense of seminary teaching me the point of the Gospel teachings was not how to follow the rules and walk the straight path to heaven (reward! You did all the arbitrarily right things and won your prize!), but how to live as decently as possible and be in the world that is the
basiliea thou theou. Here's an example of that concept, from the watered down version of "pay it forward":
This can be simple. If a person’s trying to get into traffic and you let them in, it’s amazing how often the person behind you will let the next person in. And if you don’t let that person in, they won’t. If we think of morality as paying it forward, I think that can give us a sense of the kinds of effects we can have in the world.
Of course, the difference between that and being a follower of the Christ is (wait for it! The difference is NOT "salvation," whatever that is) is that the concept of the
basiliea tou theo is not something you create with your efforts, or not even "being the change you want to see in the world." It IS the world, but we don't live in it that way. It's an issue of shifting from scarcity thinking (there isn't enough to go around, "good" is too costly in such circumstances) to seeing there is always enough oil (Elijah) and enough bread and fish to go around (that one should be obvious). And overcoming scarcity in this way of thinking is not just deciding "Don't worry, be happy!," it's actually concrete trust in God. Although again, to throw up a disclaimer, that's not the same thing as sitting around the kitchen table praying until God makes somebody knock on the door and offer you the money it just so happens you need to pay the electric bill that month (yes, I've encountered that in real life, too). There is, frankly, so much misunderstanding in popular culture/understanding of what the Gospels teach (according to me, that is; let's be honest here) that you can spend all your time explaining by explaining why that other stuff (up to and including metaphysical notions of salvation) is wrong. Both philosophers in that article, for example, eschew an after-life, one of the fundamental tenets of the TV show they worked on as advisors. That's all right, I do, too. At least I'm more attuned to the sleep of death from which we wake version that is basic to Donne's
Holy Sonnet X . I have my assurances, but they aren't the Big Rock Candy Mountain or laying around on clouds all day doing whatever you like to do, forever. In fact, there's a classic Twilight Zone episode where a gangster dies and thinks he's in the "good place." He gambles and never loses, robs banks and gets away with it, has all the drinks and women he wants; all the pleasures he thinks he desires in life, only forever and ever in death. When he grows bored and complains about the dull nature of the afterlife, he finds out he's in Hell after all. Which, honestly, is what it would be. Who among us has an idea of heaven that isn't ultimately boring and stultifying?
Fundamentally, what I learned to discard is the idea that "morality" has any purpose, beyond forcing us to make up rules we can't live up to (the "trolley problem") and paradoxes that only make us feel like trying to figure out the "right thing to do" is pointless. And it is, pretty much. Read the parable of the lost sheep or lost coin, or the pearl of great price, or even the Prodigal Son, and try to discern from that what the
basiliea tou theou is like. You'll get no more clarity than Chidi does. Now realize the starting point is setting aside concerns of scarcity and casting your bread upon the waters for real, and that the only sound rule for living, the ethic (which is not morality; I really need to distinguish those two more clearly, but now is not the time) we should all live by, is that the first of all will be last and servant of all. That and, do to others what you would have done to you. And love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.
It's really a lot simpler than Kantian categorical imperatives or existential burdens of choosing for all humankind.
