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.
Thanks for reading this, Bill. I knew we’d disagree on much of this, me being a Jerusalem sort of thinker, but that’s what keeps the wheels turning, right? More shortly…
Bill,
I am not entirely sure what position to take on this matter, but in his Commentary on the Gospel of John, Aquinas interestingly interprets Jesus’ words in Matt. 5:39 in light of his reaction to being struck in Jn 18: 22 (“When he had said this, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand, saying, “Is that how you answer the high priest?” 23 Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken wrongly, bear witness to the wrong; but if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”). He writes:
“A difficulty arises here for in Matthew our Lord commanded his disciples, ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also’ (Mt 5:39). … So, Christ ought to have done himself what he had taught others to do. But he did not do this. Indeed, he did the contrary and defended himself.
I say to this, with Augustine, that the statements and commands found in sacred scripture can be interpreted and understood from the actions of the saints, since it is the same Holy Spirit who inspired the prophets and the other sacred authors and who inspires the actions of the saints. … Thus, sacred scripture should be understood according to the way Christ and other holy persons followed it. Now, Christ did not turn his other cheek here; and Paul did not do so either (Acts 16:22). Accordingly, we should not think that Christ has commanded us to actually turn our physical cheek to one who has struck the other. We should understand it to mean that we should be ready to do this if it turned out to be necessary to do so. That is, our attitude should be such that we would not be inwardly stirred up against the one striking us, but be ready or disposed to endure the same or even more. This is how out Lord observed it, for he offered his body to be killed. So, our Lord’s defense is useful for our instruction” (Commentary on the Gospel of John, Jn 18, Lecture 4).*
Vito
* https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/John18.htm
“We should understand it to mean that we should be ready to do this if it turned out to be necessary to do so.” So the injunction “Turn the other cheek” admits of exceptions depending on the situation? Makes sense, but smacks of situation ethics.
And similarly with the tunic and cloak. Suppose I have two coats but you are coatless and you wrest one of my coats away from me. Should I resist you? No, if you are freezing to death. Yes, if you just want swag to sell for drugs.
The problem with the Bible is that it does not interpret itself. We interpret it and we do so in different ways. So much for sola scriptura and Biblical inerrancy.
Hi Bill,
As you’re no doubt discovering in my article, I take the position that the ethic Christ presents in Matthew 5.21-43 is the transcendental ethic of the Kingdom of Heaven that is foreign to fallen, sinful man. It isn’t a social ethic useful in accommodating sinful men to the devil’s world. It’s revelation and therefore must be understood literally; attempts to readjust it or reimagine it in terms of social realities or human limitations just distort it. I try to explore the difficulties of following this ethic through the example of Bonhoeffer’s life, who looked at Christ’s ethic in very similar terms, made every effort to follow Christ, but in the end participated in a very political conspiracy to end Hitler’s reign. But difficult as Christ’s ethic may be, Christ told his followers to live it out and warned them that it would place them at odds with their families and other social collectives. This is a very brief nutshell; the article is long and develops these and related themes at length.
As to thoughts and deeds, I haven’t looked at your linked article yet but I will. Nevertheless Christ does make an evil thought to be every bit as bad as an evil deed so I assume on the basis of faith that it’s true even if I don’t understand the full depth of it. What I think do understand is that Christ’s equivalency of thought and deed relates to our vertical relationship to God, not to the relations of men to men . In other words, a sinful thought stands between me and God as much as a sinful deed and in this they are equivalent. This is why the Christian must be very attentive to his thought, and keep very close accounts with God by identifying and confessing sinful thoughts they as they arise so as not to grieve the Holy Spirit for long. Some days this can be exhausting. Beyond this I do think that considering them equivalent goes a long way towards explaining how evil may suddenly appear to erupt in surprising ways, much as it did during the rise of Naziism, as I tried to describe in the article.
As to your example of the monk not turning the other cheek so as to prevent a fellow man from committing murder, I don’t agree. As I ‘ve tried to describe in the article, turning the other cheek is an act that is initiated by an event in the profane world, but it is addressed to God. It’s an act made on behalf of God in which I do not avoid or escape the consequences of evil, but rather sacrificially remove myself as its agent. In this respect it has nothing further to do with my attacker. As to having what seems to be an unlimited sort of responsibility for my attacker–that sounds like a Levinas formulation, over which I endlessly and fruitlessly argued with David Meyer when he was alive, on the old Phil-Lit listserv. I suppose we could take it up again but I’ll have to give it a little more thought.
Ed,
Here again is 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.
You write, >>It’s revelation and therefore must be understood literally . . .<<
I grant that it's revelation. But surely if a Biblical passage is revelation it does not follow that it must be taken literally. That's a non sequitur. But let that pass. The passage in question presupposes a difference between the thought of committing adultery and the physical act itself. Do you deny that difference? Yes or No? If you say Yes, then our discussion ends right here, since for me such a denial is preposterous, and the difference is non-negotiable.
The plain meaning of the verse is that not only the commission of adultery is morally wrong (sinful, an offense against God) but that the thought (intention) to commit adultery is also morally wrong, whether or not the thought is expressed in words or in deed.
Note that you cannot validly infer from that passage that they are equally wrong.
Bill,
The thought of committing adultery and the physical act of it are clearly different. So no, I don’t deny that they are different.
That said, Christ tells his disciples that if you even look at a woman in lust you’ve committed adultery with her in your heart. The way he puts this is startling; first he places it within the context of Mosaic law (“You shall not commit adultery”) and then appears to give equal weight to the thought and the act. Why does it appear this way? Because he refers to each of them as adultery! He doesn’t say that lusting after a woman is immoral in a similar but lesser way than adultery. He says if you lust after a woman you have already committed adultery with her. So I guess the question is, what can he mean by this preposterousness? There are at least two approaches to deciding this.
The first, which I understand to be your approach, is to reflect that the thought and the act Christ refers to are so clearly different that he cannot possibly be speaking literally. So you work out what seems to be the most reasonable non-literal interpretation of his words. In this case, shorn of what can only be hyperbole, you get the language you offered: “…not only the commission of adultery is morally wrong (sinful, an offense against God) but that the thought (intention) to commit adultery is also morally wrong, whether or not the thought is expressed in words or in deed,” with the caveat that they’re not equally wrong.
This is good advice but I really don’t need Jesus Christ to tell me that. My agnostic parents drummed it into me a kid in various contexts, mostly as a guard against prejudice and bigotry which by themselves are just bad attitudes but can lead to unfair treatment of people which is worse.
The second approach, which is my approach, is to treat Christ’s words as they’re found and take them literally when they are not clearly presented as metaphor or given as parable. Given this, I am to understand that in Matt. 5:27-28, as far as God is concerned, the thought and the act carry the same moral weight and are equally culpable under God. And this tells me something about God that I could never have arrived at outside of revelation because to me it seems preposterous and irrational. But I’m not God and Christ is so I accept the red pill.
Christ obviously does not always speak literally; he frequently uses metaphors and parables and when he does it’s pretty clear that that’s what they are. But that’s not the language of Matthew 5:21-43. Though I do use bible tools that render the biblical texts in the original languages to help guide my understanding of the English translations, I’m not fluent in Koine Greek so if my understanding of the literal sense of original text is wrong I will happily stand corrected by an expert. Well, maybe not happily but that would be pride!
Ed writes, >>and then appears to give equal weight to the thought and the act. Why does it appear this way? Because he refers to each of them as adultery!<>He says if you lust after a woman you have already committed adultery with her.<< That makes no sense. Besides, that is not what Jesus says. What he says is: "anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart." You cannot ignore the 'in his heart' qualification. Adultery-in-the-heart is not a physical action but a mere thought/intention. I grant that the intention is morally objectionable. (On this point we agree.) I also think the verse is an improvement over the Judaic code, although there is an anticipation in the Decalogue: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." To covet my neighbor's wife is not to steal her from my neighbor. Similarly with my neighbor's goods. I can covet without stealing, though not vice versa.
As for your agnostic parents, they were raised in a Christian culture; so it is no surprise that they would willy-nilly transmit Christ's message to you.
In your penultimate paragraph, you say you take Christ's words literally. You seem to be suggesting that I am taking them figuratively or metaphorically. I don't see that the literal-figurative distinction comes into play here. Perhaps you should tell us what you think 'literally' means. I suspect your understanding of the word is idiosyncratic.
I say that the literal meaning of the words is that both the intention to commit adultery and adultery are morally wrong.
Since we agree that the intention and the deed are morally wrong (sinful, culpable in the eyes of God), the issue in dispute is whether they are equally culpable, i.e., culpable to the same degree. Note that 'both culpable' does not entail 'equally culpable.'
My challenge to you is this: show how you arrived at the conclusion that the intention and deed are EQUALLY culpable on the basis of passage in question. You cannot show this from the fact that 'adultery' occurs in 'adultery in the heart.'
Bill,
Your challenge: show how I arrived at the conclusion that the intention and deed are EQUALLY culpable on the basis of passage in question. I cannot show this from the fact that ‘adultery’ occurs in ‘adultery in the heart.’
We’re going around and around with this. I can’t demonstrate to you that the intention and deed are equally culpable; common sense tells us they’re different. Period. Christ doesn’t DEMONSTRATE that they’re equally culpable either: he simple declares that they are by placing them both under the prohibition of adultery in the Mosaic law, making “in the heart” an irrelevant distinction. But you don’t agree that Christ is making a declaration here in the way I’ve characterized, which is to be accepted on faith since he’s also God; you instead interpret the words so that they conform to common sense and thus deny that intention and deed are equally culpable. Of course, you can do this if you want. So was my use of the term “literal” idiosyncratic? Maybe, since we both claim a literal interpretation but don’t agree on the meaning of it! I’ll give you that if you like.
Not that this will persuade, but I am certainly not alone in me reading of Matthew. I’ll pick one source relatively close to Aquinas. Here’s a brief snip from Homily 20 of the Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, an anonymous 5th century commentary on Matthew that was often cited by Aquinas and others (quoted from the English Translation in “Ancient Commentary on Scripture: New Testament, Volume 1a,” InterVarsity Press (2001)).
“Every act of adultery arises from lust. Therefore how can adultery be restrained under the commandment of the law, unless the force of lust has been nipped in the bud under Christ’s commandment? For just as anger is the mother of murder, lust is the mother of adultery. Consequently one who gets angry at his brother without cause kills him in his heart, even though he does not actually kill him. It is still murder in the sight of God, who does not regard the action more than the disposition.
“So too the man who lusts after a woman who belongs to another has already committed adultery with her in his heart, though he has not had relations with her for whatever restraining reason. He is still an adulterer before God, who looks more at the will than the act. For the overt act of adultery may have been lacking, but not the will. Even those who are unaware of the deeper mystery of human nature can agree on this much: Every carnal nature is subject to these passions. No one, not even a saint, can possibly detach himself from the temptation to anger or lust. Yet they go on to imagine that Christ, as though commanding an impossible thing, is setting up a trap to make people culpable.”
I think we can leave it here and move on!
Hey Vito,
You should weigh in on this. Di you agree with me, with Ed, or with neither of us?
Ed,
You should respond to Vito’s comment above in which he references Aquinas.
Bill,
I agree with you that “to commit adultery ‘in the flesh’ is far worse morally speaking than to entertain the thought of so doing ‘in the heart.’” And I think that the reasons for believing this are rather obvious, for adultery “in the heart” is an offense— “sin” if you like—against chastity and interior purity, but “adultery in the flesh” involves a further moral disorder, “a special deformity of lust,” in the words of Aquinas (ST, II-II, q.154, a.8, sc.). Aquinas offers several reasons for this position: First, adultery in the flesh” “break[s] the marriage faith”; second, it violates the marital rights of the spouse of female adulterer, “by making it uncertain that…children are his”; third, it undermines the stability of the family and thus the welfare of the children of both guilty parties. Even if we assume perfect contraception and, hence, little chance today of illegitimate children, Aquinas’ first and second points remain as valid now as in his time. To actually commit the act introduces an existential poison into a marriage, “faith” is broken because solemn vows are violated and deception and deceit replace honesty and rectitude. The potential or actual harm done to children, either through parental discord or divorce, is too obvious to require comment.
Vito
Vito,
What you say is completely reasonable: a bad thought may lead to a bad act, but if adultery only remains a bad thought, no “existential poison” is released into a marriage, along with all the other consequential fallout to children, etc. Or so it would seem at least, but I don’t find any fault in the logic of the position you quote from Aquinas, at least as far as it goes. But does it really go far enough? For instance, if you have adulterous longings for another woman you can’t easily dispense with and to save your marriage you hide them from your wife, you’re being deceitful aren’t you? You’re protecting the fidelity of your marriage, but your heart is with another woman. And such deceit is not easy to maintain on all fronts and your wife may get the sense that your heart is elsewhere and even suspect that you’re having an affair. But you’re not having an affair! Should you come clean with your wife or insist that it’s all in her head? You’re on rocky ground either way. Once the doubt is lodged in her mind she won’t easily agree that it’s all in her head and trust will be compromised. But if you reveal you had adulterous thoughts about another woman, even though you never acted on them, mark my words: she’ll treat you as if you had acted on them and trust will be broken.
Ed
Ed,
Thank you for your thoughtful response to my comment.
In response, all I can say is that we appear to be at an impasse regarding the gravity of the moral fault in question, adultery in thought versus adultery in the flesh. Although I do not follow Aquinas in all things, I think that what he says on this matter makes sense, so let me just quote once more from another section of the ST (I-II, q. 20, a. 4) where he makes some important distinctions on the effects internal and external goodness and evil:
“If we speak of the goodness which the external action derives from the will tending to the end, then the external action adds nothing to this goodness, unless it happens that the will in itself is made better in good things, or worse in evil things. This, seemingly, may happen in three ways. First in point of number; if, for instance, a man wishes to do something with a good or an evil end in view, and does not do it then, but afterwards wills and does it, the act of his will is doubled and a double good, or a double evil is the result. Secondly, in point of extension: when, for instance, a man wishes to do something for a good or an evil end, and is hindered by some obstacle, whereas another man perseveres in the movement of the will until he accomplish it in deed; it is evident that the will of the latter is more lasting in good or evil, and in this respect, is better or worse. Thirdly, in point of intensity: for these are certain external actions, which, in so far as they are pleasurable, or painful, are such as naturally to make the will more intense or more remiss; and it is evident that the more intensely the will tends to good or evil, the better or worse it is.”
Vito
Thanks for this passage, Vito. I will ponder it–there’s a lot going on there and I’ll do my best to think it through!
Vito,
We agree. As a personal aside, before I was married I had sex with a married woman. I told myself that while she was committing adultery, I was not — since I was unmarried. Self-serving self-deception on my part: while I was not breaking a marital vow, I was party to her breaking of a marital vow. This prompts the question of what adultery is. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia:
>>Adultery is defined as carnal connection between a married person and one unmarried, or between a married person and the spouse of another. It is seen to differ from fornication in that it supposes the marriage of one or both of the agents. Nor is it necessary that this marriage be already consummated; it need only be what theologians call matrimonium ratum.<>Sexual commerce with one engaged to another does not, it is most generally held, constitute adultery. Again, adultery, as the definition declares, is committed in carnal intercourse. Nevertheless immodest actions indulged in between a married person and another not the lawful spouse, while not of the same degree of guilt, are of the same character of malice as adultery (Sanchez, De Mat., L. IX. Disp. XLVI, n. 17). It must be added, however, that St. Alphonsus Liguori, with most theologians, declares that even between lawful man and wife adultery is committed when their intercourse takes the form of sodomy (S. Liguori L. III, n. 446).<<
So if you sodomize your wife, even with her consent, you commit adultery! Not evident to me that that act should be booked under adultery.
Vito,
Another thought. Matt 5:28 “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” I would interpret this as having a broader meaning than is initially apparent. The word should not be ‘adultery,’ but ‘fornication.’ Do you see what I mean?
Bill,
Yes, I see what you mean in understanding “adultery in the heart” more broadly, as fornication, since it causes none of the actual harms of adultery in flesh of which I spoke of in my earlier comment.
Vito
Bill,
It is also not “evident to me.” Perhaps, Liguori means that sodomy in marriage adulterates the marriage act, vaginal copulation, itself. Is he using the term in that sense?
Today, most Catholic natural law theologians speak of the permissibility of one form of sodomy, oral-genital stimulation, in marriage as long as it is restricted to foreplay, with ejaculation taking place in the vagina. I appears, however, that very few view anal-genital contact as foreplay in the same way. I am not sure of the reason for the distinction, since neither would impede the natural function of the genitals. But I know little about these matters, and I have all sorts of hesitations about natural law and sex.
Vito
Vito,
Clarify something for me. Are you suggesting that fellatio and cunnilingus, which are forms of oral-genital stimulation, are types of sodomy? I always thought that sodomy meant the penetration of the anal cavity by the penis or a dildo. What went on in Sodom?
Bill,
Yes, In ancient, medieval, and modern times up the late 19th century, the term was restricted to the penetration of the anal cavity, but from then on, the criminal codes of many states were broadened its definition to include fellatio and cunnilingus, and I was using the term in the latter sense.
Thus, the American Mirriam Webster Dictionary, for instance, defines sodomy as
“1 : anal or oral copulation with another person
especially : anal or oral copulation with a member of the same sex
2: copulation with an animal : bestiality sense”
In contrast, in the UK, the traditional meaning of sodomy, anal intercourse, especially between males (“buggery”) is used.
Vito,
Very interesting. I should point out, though, that we are discussing morality, not legality. Do you agree with me that the positive law is subject to moral evaluation? It seems to me that while no law is illegal (in a given jurisdiction) some laws are immoral, the Nuremberg laws in Nazi Germany for example. And if I understand legal positivism, it is the view that the distinction I am making, that between legality and morality, is bogus.
To call someone a ‘little bugger, ‘ then, is a nasty thing to say.
Bestiality is a species of sodomy? That’s strange. What if a human has vaginal as opposed to anal intercourse with an animal?
Bill,
“Do you agree with me that the positive law is subject to moral evaluation? ”
Yes, I do. My use of the current American definition of the term should not be read as an endorsement of the moral reasoning that stands behind it.
Yes, bestiality seems a quite different sort of vice.
Vito