Making Moral Decisions: A Comparison of Marcus Tullius Cicero (De Officiis) and the Apostle Paul (Letter to the Romans) on Social Instincts
How do we know what is the better choice between two morally right proposals? Ethics is not just about what is or is not morally right. It is also about how to choose between two right actions. I will here compare Marcus Tullius Cicero’s answer to this question to what Paul says in his letter to the Romans, focussing specifically on one of his points: having the right social instincts about God and fellow humans.
In discussing how to choose between two moral actions, Cicero says that we must weigh matters according to four sources (De Officiis 1.152):
prudence
social
instincts
courage
temperance
Note that these correspond to the four Greek cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. Cicero is offering a Roman correction to these by emphasising what is practical. He defines prudence as ‘practical knowledge of things to be sought for and of things to be avoided’ (1.153). He corrects the idea that wisdom is the highest virtue by saying that pure knowledge leads to isolation, even a person’s ‘death’ (knowing without living). Thus, instead of wisdom, he has the related virtue of prudence, practical wisdom that has to do with right and wrong actions.
The second cardinal virtue of justice is a virtue that has to do with the right ‘balance’ and proper ‘order’ of the individual’s life and of society. Greek philosophers would speak about the right balance in the soul and the state. Cicero makes this more clearly a practical virtue by terming this ‘social instincts’ about relationships, that is, our relationships to God (for Cicero, the ‘gods’) and to our fellow man (men and women). The foremost wisdom, he says, is ‘knowledge of things human and divine’ (1.153).[1] We need to know what are ‘the bonds of union between gods and men and the relations of man to man’ (153). Instead of simply having (theoretical) knowledge, we need to understand these social instincts that, Cicero says, are ‘closer to Nature’ (1.153). ‘Nature’ is the way things should be because they are so in fact, such as genders (male and female), family, etc. People should not live against Nature--a statement most philosophers maintained, but especially the Stoics (and cf. Paul in Romans 1.26-27). The soul should be internally ordered, philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero maintained, with right reason over the passions and desires or appetites. A disordered soul was one living against nature with, for example, the appetite for food (gluttony) or for sex (licentiousness) ruling the soul instead. Using the language of Cicero and philosophy of his day, Paul argues that the descent into a chaos of the soul ended in a depraved mind with the wrong 'social instincts' (Romans 1.28). This condition was the result of turning away from God to idolatry and turning away from natural sex between a man and a woman to homosexuality (so Romans 1.18-28). If we do not know our relationship to God or to others, our lives will be internally disordered, unbalanced, and unjust.
The third and fourth virtues, courage, and temperance, complete the reasoning required to choose between one moral action and another. The right action sometimes—often—requires courage to act and not go the way of the crowd. Temperance is the virtue that keeps us from acting on our emotions, passions, desires, and appetites. Paul says little about courage per se, yet one might consider a passage such as Ephesians 6.10-18 about equipping the believer and church for spiritual warfare. Paul lists temperance or self-control as one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5 and then says, 'And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires' (5.24). If the philosophers offered wisdom or prudence as the solution to controlling the passions and desires, Paul offers Christ crucified, through whom and by which we overcome the flesh.
I would like to focus on Cicero’s discussion of the second of the four virtues he lists to help us decide between moral options, ‘social instincts’. Cicero says that duties of social instinct are closer to Nature than knowledge (153). (Consider some examples: a mother suckling her young, flight from danger, a father's protection of his family, worship of God, and so forth. Apart from the last, animals do not need reason to guide them but are instinctual, and for humans, the last is as well.) Cicero means that duties related to social life are closer to Nature than pure knowledge with no social dimension or application. Justice, then, is about proper social bonds in the vertical (to God) and horizontal (toward others) directions.
Cicero assumes humans can exercise prudence in making moral decisions. However, Paul raises a challenge to this in Romans 1.18-32: what if people’s wisdom is so distorted that they cannot choose what is right in the first place? The human condition is fallen to such an extent that humans do not know right from wrong or claim that what is actually wrong is right. Neither wisdom nor prudence can set the balance aright. Paul especially addresses the problem of 'wisdom' in 1 Corinthians 1-2, where he says that Christ Jesus 'became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption' (1.30). Paul turns the matter around: instead of prudence exercised to bring right judgements (justice) about and a right balance of our relationship to God and humanity, we need God's righteousness to bring right understanding. We need Christ our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Like Cicero, Paul is interested in justice, dikaiosunē—a word that might also be translated ‘righteousness’ and that carries both connotations. His argument, however, is that we need and have received a righteousness from God, not ourselves (Romans 18.16-17; 3.21). Thus, we are incapable of making right moral decisions even if we know what is right to do. Our reason is distorted about what God's will is, and our internal 'justice' or righteousness is devastatingly compromised by sin.
Paul's argument progresses as follows. He explains that all humans (i.e., both Gentiles with a Natural Law from God in their consciences and Jews with the written Law of Moses) are sinful in Romans 1.18-3.20 (restated as 'in Adam' in 5.12ff). Having a Law does not make a sinful person righteous. In 3.21-5.21, he explains that Christ has fulfilled justice (justification) for us and that we are justified before God in Him and through Him. In 6.1-8.39, he explains that those in Christ are now in right relationship with God and others, and therefore they are able to live righteous lives, not internally at war with themselves (7.7-25). The are now able to walk in the newness of life in the Holy Spirit (8.1-17).
As Paul argues in Romans, when our social instincts are distorted, the result is sinful acts of many sorts. His two examples of living against Creation or Nature are the distorted social instincts of idolatry (Romans 1.18-23) and homosexuality (1.24-27). These examples stand at the head of internal disorder in our relationship to God and fellow human beings. Each is against God's purposes in Creation. Other disorders follow:
And since they
did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do
what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all
manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers,
haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to
parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless
(3.28-31).
Also, others with a distorted understanding will not correct them but approve of their disordered relationships (v. 32). (We see this now in statements in the last few decades by mainline Protestant denominations that affirm homosexuality.) Cicero hopes simply to identify these relationships so that humans might pursue what is right but does not entertain, as Paul does, the idea that precisely these two relationships with God and humanity have been twisted away from Nature/Creation into something created by human foolishness and distorted desires.
Thus, the problem of deciding between two moral actions in Cicero’s De Officiis needs correction by Paul’s discussion of the problem of decision-making itself. How can we decide what is morally good at all when our relationships with God and with one another are distorted away from Creation/Nature? Paul works this problem out in Romans 1-8 by showing how, despite the immense obstacle of sin stemming from our own foolishness, the amazing wisdom of God has brought restoration (cf. 11.33). Paul's despairing picture of humanity's depraved mind (1.28) is overcome in Christ, for those in Him are no longer conformed to this fallen world but transformed 'by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect' (Romans 12.2).
[1] M. Tullius Cicero. De Officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1913).
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