Apart From Me

Christ’s use of parables and analogies plays a significant role in His teaching and preaching style. Their use is, for the most part, an effort to impart knowledge of a transcendent God to finite humans.

One such analogy occurs in John’s Gospel: “Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit because, apart from me, you can do nothing. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be done for you.”

As is often the case, there is much to digest from Christ’s words. However, for the purpose of this paper, I want to examine two aspects. First, whether morality can exist independently of God and, second, what are the value, if any, of so-called good works?

Reason And Morality

In keeping with the time and intended audience, Christ uses language associated with farming and horticulture (i.e., branch, fruit, and vine). As is His custom, Christ’s analogies have much greater importance than a plain language reading would imply. The text itself focuses on the importance of being united to Christ. From a Catholic perspective, being united to Christ has profound spiritual implications and is best achieved by participating in the sacraments entrusted to the Church by Christ, particularly the Eucharist.

However, for this essay, I want to utilize Christ’s words as a point of departure to inquire whether morality can exist if one is not united with Christ. Said differently, can morality exist if one does not abide in God?

Morality may be defined as a code(s) of conduct accepted by a society or group. In turn, morality can be categorized as descriptive or normative. Descriptive morality simply describes the current moral condition. Normative morality, on the other hand, refers to morality as a standard of how things should be. That is to say that it is a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be endorsed by all rational people. Nevertheless, the two aspects complement one another.

We cannot complain or praise our current moral state without contrasting it with an idealized state. Unless there is a standard that prohibits murder, we cannot say objectively that murder is wrong. This leads to the question, what is the source or creator of such a moral standard?

There are two fundamental possibilities. The first possibility argues that God (or some other transcendent source) is the cause of morality. In this context, morality is based on objective and universal precepts that are independent of human constructs and are, therefore, absolute.

The second possibility is that morality has a psychological source. In this sense, morality is a product of the human mind, predicated on empathy, feelings, and opinions, or it is the product of evolutionary psychology. A psychological source of morality is, of necessity, subjective. That is to say that the individual determines what is moral. An evolutionary source undermines free will, rendering it impossible to speak intelligibly of moral responsibility. After all, if one has no free will, one cannot be held responsible for one’s actions.

Catholicism is antithetical to subjectivism for several reasons; I want to mention two briefly. First, subjective morality at the societal level can lead to tyranny. Since there is no objective standard to judge morality, right and wrong become whatever those in power declare them to be. This is essentially the “might makes right” nightmare depicted in George Orwell’s “1984” and warned about by C.S. Lewis in “Abolition of Man.”

The second problem with subjective morality is more fundamental. Subjective morality is self-refuting. To claim that morality is subjective is to make an objective truth claim that there is no objective truth.

The above argument is philosophical in nature. It seems necessary, therefore, to ask whether God must be the source of objective morality.

Catholicism, of course, asserts that morality must be grounded in God. Since morality involves the rightness or wrongness of one’s actions, it follows that morality presupposes consciousness, and consciousness presupposes a mind. Since such a mind must be independent of human beings in order to be objective, the source of morality must be a transcendent mind, which is one way of saying God.

From what has been said, it appears that God has established a moral framework for human beings to follow. This framework, known as natural law, is the mind of God that is knowable to human beings through reason alone.

If that is the case, then it seems logical that we will be judged in relation to whether we have been moral. This leads us to the question of “works.”

Good Works

A common criticism of Catholicism is that it teaches a “works-based” soteriology. A works-based soteriology claims that one’s salvation is based at least in part on one’s actions. This is not a new criticism, of course. Ironically, the Catholic Church condemned works-based salvation when it confronted the teachings of the British monk Pelagius.

Pelagius thought that “good works” (moral acts) had a significant influence on one’s salvation. Pelagianism, as the heresy became known, was rejected by the Church at the Second Council of Orange (A.D. 529).

The Council was emphatic when it taught that “If anyone asserts that by his natural strength, he [sinful man] is able to think as is required or choose anything good pertaining to his eternal salvation, or to assent to the saving message of the Gospel without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit…he is deceived by a heretical spirit…does not understand… ‘Apart from me, you can do nothing.’ (John 15.5).”

It is the position of the Church – and Christ’s words in John’s Gospel echo here – that acting morally and any subsequent “good works” are a result of God’s grace alone. Apart from this grace, that is, apart from Christ, we cannot produce the good fruit of morality.

It is this causal relationship between grace and works that makes morality possible. For this reason, Jesus said to his disciples: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in Heaven.” (Matthew 7:21-22).

Conclusion

There are various ways to interpret John 15:4-7. For this essay, I have sought to focus on the necessity of an objective moral benchmark and the relationship between grace and works.

Catholics are called to “produce good fruit,” that is, act in accordance with the will of God and, in so doing, help bring forth the Kingdom of God.