(LifeSiteNews) — In a previous article we saw that religion is a fact of life, and cannot be escaped under the pretense of “being spiritual, not religious,” nor in the sense of “following Christ, not religion.”
On the contrary, religion is the sum of truths to be believed about God, and the sum of the duties which we owe to him as rational created beings. As creatures with intellects and will, religion is what inclines our minds towards God as the perfect truth, and our wills towards him as the perfect goodness.
As a subjective virtue, religion is the habit that orders our relations with God, including believing these truths and fulfilling these duties.
Some believe, as suggested above, that the extent of our duty to God is to trust in him and follow him. Even if this were true, it would still fall under this concept of “religion,” as it is classically defined.
In this piece, we will see that religion is not only a fact of life, but obligatory and necessary for man, as it is rooted in his nature and in justice.
The necessity of religion – Justice
As rational creatures, we have an obligation to profess and practice some form of religion.
“Justice” refers to the direction of all our relations with others.[1] Specifically, it is the virtue which has us give to others what is their due – what they are owed.[2]
Certain qualities or attributes are owed a response from us – and it is a matter of justice that we render such a response. For example, we owe honor to what is honorable or excellent. We owe love to what is good and lovable. We owe obedience to the legitimate authorities constituted above us. We owe gratitude to those who are our benefactors. We owe assent to what is true. And so on.
Through unaided human reason, we know that God exists, and we know some of his key attributes – including that he is supremely perfect, truthful and powerful; that he created, sustains and governs all things; and that he is supremely good and loving.
Therefore, in light of what we have just seen, honor is due to God’s perfection and excellence. Obedience is due to his authority as the creator and supreme authority of creation. Love is due to him, because he is the supreme good (goodness itself) and supremely lovable. Gratitude is due to him, because he has made us and blesses us with everything we have and are.
Again, let’s be clear that these are all attributes and duties which we can know through the natural light of reason alone. The responses due are acts of justice and rendering them is an obligation rooted in our nature. It is just to fulfil these duties to God; it is unjust to refuse to do so.
Further, in each of these attributes, God is the supreme and highest perfection, ruler, good or benefactor. As such, he is owed the highest honor, obedience, love and gratitude which man can give. God alone is owed these highest degrees of honor, etc., because (as reason tells us) there is only one God, and only he can have these attributes in this way – and therefore only he can be owed these highest degrees of honor, etc. He is owed this highest degree above everything and everyone else in existence.
All this can be summed up in a very simple phrase: We must worship (or adore) God. This is what constitutes religion.
Notice that there is nothing sentimental here, nor along the lines of “wishful feelings” – nor even, really, anything about the sort of “belief” which appears in films such as Peter Pan, or about Santa Claus. We are not even in the realms of faith at all, but rather in the realms of knowledge and our objective natural duty to recognize and worship the Supreme Being.
Religion, justice and piety
Reason takes us further still in our understanding of these relations between man and God.
St. Thomas Aquinas treats religion specifically as “subordinated” to the cardinal virtue of justice. Josef Pieper points out that, once we have recognized God’s infinite perfection and other attributes, it also becomes clear that there is an infinite disparity between him and ourselves. He writes:
There are some obligations which, by their very nature, cannot be acquitted in full, much as the one who is thus indebted may be willing to do so.
And as justice means to give a person what is due to him, debitum reddere, this signifies that there exist relations of indebtedness beyond the scope of the realization of justice.
On the other hand, the very relationships which are characterized by this disparity are also the ones fundamental for human existence.[3]
He adds that “the just man” is the one “who will experience that incontrovertible disparity with special acuteness.”
This disparity in relations certainly exists between man and God, and it creates a sort of “debt” which “simply cannot be obliterated” or repaid by any natural actions or efforts of our own.[4]
We cannot do anything for God, or offer anything to him, which he has not first made possible for us. This is illustrated by the parable Our Lord tells:
Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’?
Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’?
Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded?
So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy [unprofitable] servants; we have only done what was our duty.’ (Luke 17.7-10)[5]
Pieper pithily sums this up:
Man can never say to God: We are even.[6]
It is with this in mind that the virtue of religion directs our relations with God.
This is illustrated by the related virtue of piety, which is also subordinated to justice for similar reasons.
Piety is the virtue which inclines us towards the duties owed to our parents and to our nation. When we think about what we have received from our parents (life, care, education) and from the nation (language, culture, protection, law, the common good), we can understand the analogy with God, as explained by Pieper:
Piety, too, depends on something being due a person which of its very nature cannot be fully repaid.
Piety, likewise, is a tendency of the soul which can be fully realized only if man sees himself as the partner in an obligation which can never be truly and fully acquitted, no matter how great the counter-service rendered.[7]
In our day, the word “pious” might seem almost like an insult, and recall all manner of sentimentality – but once again, this discussion are very far from sentimentality. Everything here is rooted in an objective order of justice, knowable through the light of human reason.
Sacrifice as an act of religion
However, there is an extent to which religion leans towards a kind of necessary “excess,” which we can perhaps see in the act of sacrifice.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that “the offering of sacrifices,” defined as the offering of external things to God, whatever they may be, “is of the natural law.”
Our nature as rational animals – i.e., physical, material beings – requires the use of physical, material and visible signs in nearly every aspect of life. For this reason, St. Thomas says:
[I]t is a dictate of natural reason that man should use certain sensibles, by offering them to God in sign of the subjection and honor due to Him, like those who make certain offerings to their lord in recognition of his authority.[8]
Sacrifice typically involves the setting aside of what is sacrificed – sometimes for destruction. Pieper suggests that this tendency towards destruction is a kind of “extravagance” or “excess.” This “excess” must be understood in light of our recognition that we have debts to God that cannot be paid. This tendency towards “excess” is, in itself, right and proper (St. Thomas particularly refers to penance and contrition here). Pieper writes:
[B]ecause it is impossible to do what “properly” ought to be done, an effort beyond the bounds of reason, as it were, tries to compensate for the insufficiency.[9]
Through a rational recognition of the disparity and unpayable debt owed to the Supreme Being, the virtue of religion inclines us, to the utmost of our ability (and thus with some excess), to attempt to render adequately the honor, love, and worship which is owed to God, whilst recognizing that all such attempts will always still be inadequate because of this disparity.
This summed up in St. Thomas Aquinas’ great hymn for Corpus Christ says:
All thou canst, do thou endeavour:
Yet thy praise can equal never
Such as merits thy great King.
However, we could recall the Pharisee’s distorted idea in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. The idea that we can achieve justice or equality with God through our own means, or even make him indebted to us, seems to be the basis for the hostility which some Evangelical Protestants show towards “religion,” which they may distinguish from “following Christ.” While they are correct in criticizing such a concept of religion, it is a distortion of the true concept, rather than religion itself.
Further, as we have already seen, if “following Christ” is a duty to God, then it falls under the title of religion. There is absolutely no escaping this without redefining the word and “changing the goalposts” of the discussion.
Conclusion and questions
Monsignor Paul Glenn says:
[R]eligion is a duty to be rendered to God; it rests upon man as an obligation of his nature. It is not merely something to satisfy tender sensibilities or emotions; nor is it a matter of utility to man, as contributing to his earthly peace, prosperity, security, and comfort.
It is a matter of plain justice, and a man who will not accept, recognize and practice religion, is a debtor who will not pay his debts.[10]
But all this leaves us with further questions:
- Is there a right or wrong religion?
- Is mankind doomed never to be able to render God what he is due?
- To put it another way, is God truly never to be given perfect worship on the part of man – or could God somehow dignify us such that our race could indeed give him fitting and perfect worship?
- Are we to be content with being God’s servants, exalted an honor though this is – or could we hope to be supernaturally elevated to friendship with God, on a level of quasi-equality, by grace?
Christians should know the answers to these questions already.
In due course, we will explore them further and show how they can be proved.
Below are the first two parts in this series on the fundamental arguments for the claims of the Catholic Church:
Christians have a strict duty to develop their understanding of the faith
Religion is a fact of life. Here’s why
See also for the ongoing series on natural theology made simple:
God exists. But is His existence self-evident?
Is it possible to prove the existence of God?
God’s existence can be known by the light of natural reason
Without God nothing else could exist
Created beings cannot be the source of creation. Only God can be
The Catholic Church teaches that men can know God exists through reason alone
False philosophies can’t solve man’s problems. Only the true philosophy can
Nietzsche and Kant won’t lead you to truth. Scholastic philosophy will
How the wonders of creation lead us to God
How God helped get Catholic philosophy started
References
| ↑1 | St Thomas, II-II Q57 A.1 |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Ibid. Q58 A1. |
| ↑3 | Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, 104. |
| ↑4 | Pieper 105. |
| ↑5 | We are, at this time, prescinding from the fact that Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice on the Cross (and its representation in Holy Mass) is the means by which the human race is indeed empowered to render God what he is due – as well as the role grace and a participation in this sacrifice allows us our acts to be meritorious. |
| ↑6 | Pieper 105. |
| ↑7 | Pieper 107. |
| ↑8 | St Thomas, Ibid., Q85 A1 |
| ↑9 | Pieper 106 |
| ↑10 | Glenn 113 |