Action

Is an adulterous one-night stand the same action as a night of marital love with one’s wife?

If we say Yes, what have we assumed? We have assumed that the determinative dimensions of actions are the physical actions of sex. To an outsider who didn’t know that one woman is a mistress and the other a wife, the action looks identical – same foreplay, same change of blood pressure and temperature, same climax, etc. To put it more starkly: If we say that adulterous and marital sex are the “same” action, we have assumed a materialist view of action. Action is defined by the physical facts of the case.

We have also assumed an individualist view of action. The fact that one act is man-with-mistress and the other is man-with-wife is irrelevant. Relationality is cancelled. What makes the action what it is is simply male-with-female. Move this another step, and it’s easy to see that homosexual relations are “the same” as marital sex.

Only on an materialist and individualist basis do the two acts appear to be variations within a genus of action, two varieties of “sex.” We can reach that conclusion only if we have stripped each participant down to his/her individual body.

If we deny materialism and individualism, then the two acts are not the same.

The contextual facts of status and relationship are relevant not only to judging the morality of the action, but to determining what the action is . A married man with his mistress is engaged in an act of infidelity, a betrayal, a violation of marriage vows, no doubt surrounded by a series of cover-up lies. One event is an event of married-man-with-kids-sleeping-with-mistress; the other is married-man-with-kids-sleeping-with-wife. That the sheer physical facts are the same is not determinative.

Now, the upshot: If this is true of sexual acts, then it is presumably true also of acts of force or “violence.” Using deadly force to save a Hebrew slave who is being beaten to death is not the same as beating the Hebrew slave. The two actions are not species in the same genus, but two different actions. So too, carrying out a death penalty against a murderer is not another murder; it is an act of justice. Fighting a just war against violent oppressors is not another act of violent oppression. Bonhoeffer’s plot was not an extension of Hitler’s genocide.