​Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, CUA press,1995.

                                                                                             by Brother Dominicus  

                                    Love and do what you will
                                                              -St. Augustine

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking;
he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he
might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more
than a dog.
                                                                  -GK Chesterton

These days, if people profess a belief in moral truth at all, they tend to
proclaim a belief in freedom and equality. Very general and abstract
principles. However, even on this level of generality, we do not all agree on
what these concepts mean. Take freedom. Some people see it as
licentiousness. To be truly free is to be able to do what you want. Not to be
restricted by confining petty rules. Another common interpretation of
freedom is more limited: everybody should be free to live in a way that
makes them happy, as long as you don't hurt anybody else. However,
ironically, many that profess this interpretation think that a baker who does
not want to bake a special cake for a gay wedding should not be allowed
the freedom to do so (see Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado). Differences
of opinion on what freedom is and what it entails are not limited to the
secular world. We can observe them vividly in some of the enthusiastic
debates in our own Catholic Church. Even there, the faithful in the different
local churches and many participating in intra-church debates seem to
have divergent ideas about freedom.

The noted Belgian moral theologian Fr. Servais Pinckaers, O.P.
(1925 - 2008 Fribourg) has written extremely insightfully about this
confusion in his magnum opus "Sources of Christian Ethics."  For those that
are somewhat put off by the substantial heft of this book, a much more
manageable version of his argument was published in 2001 under the title
"Morality: the Catholic View."  He has weeded through the myriad of
opinions on freedom throughout history and formulated a good model to
create some clarity in the debate in the Christian context. It is hard to
summarize his full argument. However, it is possible to begin to give some
impression of his thought.

Central to Fr. Pinckaers' argument is that we can distinguish two
fundamental ideas in the debates about freedom. On the one hand, what
he calls freedom of indifference and, on the other, freedom for excellence.
Both concepts have a long history. Both play an important role in our
current discussions. He tries to show that the latter is the most proper
Catholic one.

The genesis of the notion of freedom of indifference lies in a debate
between the Dominicans and the Franciscans in the Middle Ages about the
nature of knowledge. Thomas Aquinas O.P. fervently argued for
philosophical realism, while the Franciscan William of Ockham OFM
proposed nominalism. What does that mean? Well, Ockham believed that
individual realities are the only things that really exist. There is only this
rock or this dog. There is not something that makes a rock or dog, a rock or
a dog. The word "dog" is just that, just a word. When he applied this theory
of knowledge to morality, he concluded that "reality only lies in the
individual decision of the free will." (1) And therefore, he came to see the
human will as a completely sovereign moment of absolute undetermined
freedom to choose between different options. For Ockham, "the free act
springs forth instantaneously from a decision that has no other cause than
the power of self-determination enjoyed by the will."  Freedom is completely
undetermined. "[F]reedom does not proceed from reason and will [..], but
precedes them and moves them to act; a person can choose whether or
not to know and to will." (2)
The far-reaching import of this understanding of freedom becomes
clearer by applying it to God and divine omnipotence. After all, we can best
try to understand absolute freedom by thinking about Him who is the most
absolute. What does that intellectual exercise teach us about freedom? The
moral law, the good, is only good because God wills it to be so. "God
transcends the moral law and the moral order he established for man.
Morality was for man's sake, not God's. He could freely modify the moral
order and even command what was diametrically opposed to his precepts.
[..] God could even command the contrary of the first commandment: that a
human being should hate him:(3) Whatever God decreed at some moment
to be good, humans would have to obey: "hatred of our neighbor, theft, and
adultery could become meritorious if God commanded them"  Freedom and ethics
become the domain of law and obligation—ultimately, in the Christian
context, obedience to a possibly fickle and capricious God.

As the atheist philosopher Nietzsche noted, "To will is to command obedience, or at least
apparent obedience." (4) Willingness is no longer characterized by love but by
the relationship of command and obey. Obedience to law has the priority
over love. “With the advent of nominalism, we witness the formation of the
first morality of obligation: the moral life will henceforth be circumscribed by
obligations. The desire for happiness will systematically be set aside." (5)

This way of thinking emphasizes three elements: freedom of
indifference, the moral law as the expression of the divine will, and isolated
human actions carried out under the aegis of obligation. (6)  (A model that
helped “Thus, human conduct became a succession of individual actions,
drawn as it were with perforated lines, the dots being the unrelated moral
atoms. Any connection between them would remain outside the sphere of
freedom and dependent upon its decision.” (7) Life is nothing more than a
series of decisions in relation to perceived obligations. Atomized decisions
that need to be judged in isolation. “Ockham and his followers could no
longer understand that in the human person there was a higher natural
spontaneity, of a spiritual order, inspiring freedom itself.” (8)

Pinckaers opposes freedom of indifference with freedom for
excellence. The latter concept has deep roots in Greek philosophy and the
Church fathers and is very much part of Thomistic virtue ethics.
For St. Thomas the natural inclinations to goodness, happiness,
being and truth were the source of freedom. they formed the
will and intellect whose union produced free will. According to
him we are free not in spite of our natural inclinations, but
because of them. For Ockham, on the contrary, freedom
dominated the natural inclinations and preceded them, because of its radical
indetermination and its ability to choose contraries
in their regard. (9)

This way of thinking is deeply rooted in a physical creation that has
meaning and is good. God created man with a body and soul. He did not
merely create a disembodied free mind in an obstinate body. Not only that,
God is not some distant cold lawgiver who only demands obedience and is
free to change his mind on what is good and evil on the whim of the day.
No, good and evil are unchangeable and permanent.

In contrast to Ockham, Aquinas says that free choice proceeds from
both reason and will. We don't have a sovereign will that makes decisions
in a vacuum. As a human being, we have a deep, created and incarnated,
desire for happiness. In an important way, that desire for happiness is
related to our desire to be good. “According to St. Thomas, freedom was
rooted in the soul’s spontaneous inclinations to the true and the good. His
entire moral doctrine was based on the natural human disposition toward
beatitude and the perfection of good, to an ultimate end.” (10) And therefore,
we can only be satisfied if we seek to understand the good. We grow in
"goodness" if we undertake the continuous process of ordering our life in
accordance with the virtues, which is only possible in a supportive
community. When we start to ingrain habits that form a good character and
try to live an integrated life, when we engage in a lifelong process of
conversion, metanoia.

To live an integrated life, we have to (re)discover our spiritual nature
“in its spontaneous yearning for truth, goodness, and happiness flowing
from a single primal dynamism. We refer here to ‘nature’ in its original
meaning, signifying ‘from birth.’ Yet his nature is spiritual, being the image
of God's own life.” (11)

How do we do that? How do we seek happiness? Through seeking
pleasure? Pinckaers follows Augustine here. Joy is the key to start finding
an answer to this question. “The happy life is joy born of the truth.”
Freedom, true freedom, freedom for excellence requires much more from
us than obedience to a diktat of the sovereign will:

     It is only attainable through the experience of personal action
     that is true and good; through a humble and patient reflection
     on this action, as well as through the grace of a quiet light that
     one must learn to await. It is here, under this intimate flash
     where the good shies forth, that the desire for happiness is
     revealed in its best light. By excluding this desire from morality,
     we have deformed it and painted a false picture of it because
     the desire for happiness is itself a spark of the divine image
     within us. How can we restore the desire for happiness to its
     primal nature, a nature that was so deeply united to the good
     that it was itself a sign of moral excellence? (12)

To live a good life, we need virtues. In Greek, the word for virtue is
arete (αρετή) and refers to excellence. For a person, they are the qualities
we need to fully realize our potential, the habits we need for our flourishing.
Our freedom is best understood and fulfilled as freedom to cultivate these
excellences. Why? Because understanding the virtues and living them
integrates our natural and spiritual desires and aspirations. It is part of our
quest for happiness.
​
     We can compare freedom for excellence with an acquired skill
     in an art of a profession; it is the capacity to produce our acts
     when and how we wish, like high-quality words that are perfect
     in their domain. From our birth we have received moral freedom
     as a talent to be developed, as seed containing the knowledge
     of truth and the inclination toward goodness and happiness, an
     inclination diversified to what the Ancients called the semina
     virtutum, the seeds of virtue. (13)

Fr. Pinckaers O.P. and one of his prominent collaborators, Fr.
Michael Sherwin O.P., have devoted much of their work to reinvigorating
the richness of the tradition that sees happiness and virtue (both natural
and infused) as the core of the moral life. There is an enormous wealth of
wisdom in this thought, of which most people these days are entirely
unaware. Without an appreciation of that thought, Pinckaers' cum suis
argument might seem sterile. The reality is that because few of us still think
about virtues, virtue talk will fall on deaf ears. Or, at best, be very
superficially understood in terms of useful habits for successful people.
However, in my opinion, the line of thinking they set out is the best account
of a belief in a God who has created a man with satisfiable desires for
happiness and “excellence.” However, we can see the idea of freedom as
indifference, freedom ultimately based on the will, in its many religious (and
non-religious versions) everywhere in our time. One can see both in
fundamentalist circles and in liberal ones. What Pinckaers shows is that in
the true Catholic understanding, we are not creatures who live in a dark
universe subject to the awesome will of a capricious God. Neither,
however, are we put in a world where only our own autonomous will
matters.

On the contrary, God put us in a universe where we can gain insight
in truth and goodness. A universe in which we are created as beings
thirsting for joy. Ultimately, joy in God. Part of the tragedy of our time is that
rediscovering the treasures of the tradition of freedom for excellence is
almost impossible for those steeped in the thinking of freedom of
indifference.


1 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 242
2 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 243
3 Source of Christian Ethics, p. 344
4 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 332
5 Morality the Catholic View, p. 72
6 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 345 and p. 243
7 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 243
8 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 245
9 Source of Christian Ethics, p. 245
10 Sources of Christian Ethics, p. 332
11 Morality the Catholic View, p. 76
12 Ibid
13 Morality the Catholic View, p. 69

Reading Suggestions:
Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Sources of Christian Ethics, CUA Press, 1995
Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Morality The Catholic View, St. Augustine Press,
2001
Servais Pinckaers, O.P., Passion & Virtue, The Catholic University of
America Press; Reprint edition, June 15, 2017
Servais Pinckaers, O.P., The Pinckaers Reader, Renewing Thomsitic Moral
Theology, The Catholic University of America Press; Illustrated edition, August
18, 2005
Servais Pinckaers, O.P., ,The Pursuit of Happiness - God's Way,Wipf and Stock;
Reprint edition, July 18, 2011

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