Article I: Definition of Moral Theology

Moral theology, or practical theology ¹, is defined by us as: The science which, from the articles of faith, regulates for man elevated and repaired his own human acts.

The definition is explained. a) "Science" signifies the systematic proposition and rational deduction of conclusions from principles known through themselves. But since the principles of theology are not known to us through themselves, but are divinely revealed, theological science is, under this respect, in us only imperfectly and defectively.

Does not this very science, of a diminished name, seem to be lacking in books which omit binding their conclusions to principles by an internal connection, and pursue almost this one thing: that, after various opinions have been cited, they may demonstrate by the enumeration itself which are common, which at least probable?

b) "Which, from the articles of Faith." Articles of Faith, strictly, "are divinely credible things, which both are explicitly revealed and cannot be deduced from others prior to them" ¹. Moreover, in the articles which are referred to use or practice, moral theology finds its first principles and hence its formal object.

The other articles of Faith, that is, the speculative ones, found dogmatic theology. But since each theology, speculative and practical, assumes the articles of Faith as revealed and believed, so that in each there is one ultimate motive of assent, each has the same formal object. Therefore dogmatic theology and moral theology are not to be proposed as two sciences specifically distinct and coming together into one genus, which would be Theology; rather they must be called two integral parts of one divine science.

The matter is otherwise in rational sciences, which are drawn out from first principles known through themselves. Then each set of principles possesses its own proper evidence; the habit of first speculative principles is not the same as the habit of operable principles; a man most apt for metaphysical matters can be found almost unfit for discerning moral matters; whereas all the articles of Faith are believed by acts of the same habit of faith with equal ease or difficulty. Wherefore ethics, or the natural science of morals, differs formally or specifically from theodicy, or the natural science of God.

Nevertheless, since in gathering conclusions we use our own reason, we by no means deny that it can happen, and that the matter is not infrequent, that one who is a distinguished expositor of dogmatic theology may stumble in moral theology.

c) "Regulates." By this word we assign to moral theology its proximate object, which is the scientific proposition of practical dictates or statements. But a practical dictate is a speculative-practical judgment ² by which pronouncement is made concerning some more general principle or concerning an application to a particular case: that principle is right or perverse; that action must be done, or can be done, or is forbidden.

Concerning a principle, I say, as when it is said that damage unjustly inflicted must be repaired; or when it is denied that dishonest means can be purified by the goodness of the end. Concerning an application, as when it is declared: a precept given in these circumstances is to be executed; such a walk or such a transaction is licit; the usurpation of such a temporal thing is to be marked with the vice of theft.

d) "For man elevated and repaired," that is, for man in his present condition, who, by the gratuitous benefit of God, was called to a supernatural order and end, was miserably cast down from that noble state by the sin of Adam, and finds in Christ, the new Adam, a new Father by whom he is regenerated and is reformed more wonderfully than he had been created. Contrary, therefore, to Ethics, which imagines man as he could have been but never was and never will be, moral theology considers man as he truly is in reality. Thus moral theology alone is the absolutely prior science of morals.

The definition, however, could have omitted express mention of the subject for whom the studies of moral theology were destined. For that subject's being man elevated and hence repaired was already established from the fact that the rules of moral theology were taken from the articles of faith. For articles of faith could have been revealed for no other man than man elevated; practical dictates can be gathered from the articles of faith for no other man than man elevated and repaired.

Our definition, as to the matter itself, is not different from others by which moral theology is said to be the science concerning human acts insofar as they have an order to a supernatural end. Cf., for example, Lehmkuhl, Theol. mor., Prolegomena.

e) "His own human acts," that is, acts which are sufficiently in man's power that practical dictates concerning them may usefully be sought, or, what is the same thing, that they can and ought to be regulated.

Human acts, therefore, are the remote material object of moral theology; human acts to be regulated, or their "regulation," are the proximate material object of the same science.

¹ The very word theology for a long time signified various things, for example, Sacred Scripture itself or the divine page. Sources are indicated by de Ghellinck, S.J., Le mouvement theologique du XIIe siecle, p. 66.

¹ Desan, S.J., De Deo, n. 7.

² It is called speculative-practical because it is remotely ordered to practice, and therefore is still speculative, insofar as it does not yet regard an action to be done here and now.