A long-time friend of MavPhil, Ed Farrell, refers us to his Substack article On Turning the Other Cheek, where we read:
The general reaction to turning the other cheek, even in the church, goes something like this: Christ often spoke in hyperboles. He certainly doesn’t mean that this can, or even should, be universally applied in the private and public spheres. This goes for the whole list of Christ’s admonishments in the sermon on the mount, where he also reveals that sins of the flesh are no worse before God than the sins of the mind that preceded them.
- To be angry and callous with your brother is the same as murdering him
- To lust after a person is the same as committing adultery.
- To make any oath or vow is idolatrous since you presume you have the power to fulfill it.
- To resist your enemy is to dishonor God, whose grace extends to friend and enemy alike.
It’s true that sometimes Christ speaks figuratively or even in parables. But not here. As impossible as this teaching may seem, Christ is speaking literally. He is revealing to his disciples the true nature of the Kingdom of Heaven and its ethic. This is the ethical standard for which God created man, but which became moot with man’s fall. That this ethic has at all times appeared so absurdly radical to fallen man makes it abundantly clear that the barrier of sin that separates our world from Heaven is insurmountable. No matter what good deeds you may think you do, they will never be good enough to allow you entry to God’s kingdom.
Ed’s article challenges what I maintain in my Substack article, Morality Private and Public: On Not Confusing Them. While this is not the time for a full-on Auseinandersetzung of our respective positions, I do want to comment on the above bullet points.
Consider the second point, the NT source of which is presumably Matthew 5: 27-28:
27 You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Farrell thinks that “the sins of the flesh are no worse before God than the sins of the mind that preceded them,” that “to lust after a person is the same as committing adultery.” But surely there is a distinction between thoughts, words, and actions. As I like to say, “Thoughts and words are the seeds of deeds.” The aphorism underscores an obvious tripartite distinction but also makes clear that words ‘out of the mouth’ and deeds ‘in the flesh’ have their source in thoughts ‘in the heart.’ Surely it is obvious that to entertain lustful adulterous thoughts about my neighbor’s wife is not to commit adultery with her, contrary to Farrell’s second bullet point. It should also be clear that to commit adultery ‘in the flesh’ is far worse morally speaking than to entertain the thought of so doing ‘in the heart.’
One thing Farrell and I will agree on is that merely thinking about (entertaining with hospitality the thought of) committing adultery is morally wrong, even if the deed is never done. Surprisingly (to me anyway) there are people who deny this. They hold that there is nothing at all morally wrong with thinking in detail about how one might bring about an adulterous sexual liaison or even a rape if one does not actually do the deed. These people think that overt actions are morally evaluable but mere thoughts are not. I deny this. If I hit you over the head with a lead pipe just for the fun of it, I do something morally wrong; but my planning to hit you over head for fun is also morally wrong, but much less wrong than the actual physical deed.
There is a further distinction that needs to be made. Suppose the thought occurs to one: I could overpower this girl and rape her. I’m not maintaining that the mere arisal or occurrence of the thought is morally wrong; I am maintaining that the elaboration and entertaining of the thought, the forming of an intention to act on it, is what is morally wrong – – even if I do not act on it. The difference is that the mere arisal is involuntary: the thought just popped into my head, unbidden. But the elaboration and entertaining of the thought is voluntary. And the more hospitable the entertainment, the more morally evil it is. What one must do when an evil thought arises is to suppress it by exercising moral self-censorship.
For a deeper elaboration of these ideas see my article, Can Mere Thoughts be Morally Wrong?
If you agree with my critique of the second of Farrell’s bullet points, you should be able to see that a similar critique applies to the first.
I reject the third as well, but to explain what I would have to present my view of idolatry, a task for another occasion.
As for resisting the enemy, Farrell tells us that to do so is “to dishonor God, whose grace extends to friend and enemy alike.” But here is a weighty counter-consideration. A while back I had a conversation with a hermit monk at a remote Benedictine monastery in the high desert of New Mexico. I pointed out to him that the monastery was wide open to jihadis or any group bent on invasion and slaughter. (There was a Muslim center down the road a piece.) He told me that if someone came to kill him, he would let himself be slaughtered. A clear case of “Resist not the evil-doer.” Matthew 5:39: “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.”
The counter-consideration is that if the monk allows himself to be slaughtered, then he is party to the assailant’s commission of a mortal sin! What the monk should do is elude the assailant or otherwise prevent him from committing the mortal sin of murder. Making this point, I presuppose that there is a difference between the mere intention to murder and its actual accomplishment. Since Farrell denies this obvious distinction, mistakenly in my view, he might accuse me of begging the question against him.