We need more information about what God is like and what he has done for us of the kind set out in previous chapters, for this has consequences for how we should behave towards God.Read more at location 1072
We also need better knowledge of which kinds of behaviour towards our fellow humans are supererogatorily good, obligatory, or wrong.Read more at location 1085
We acquire a sense of morality by being told that such and such actions are obligatory or supererogatorily good beyond obligation,Read more at location 1086
we need to be shown or have described to us many examples of the correct applicationRead more at location 1089
Most Christians, Hindus, and atheists alike are introduced to this common concept of morality by being shown many of the same kinds of examples.Read more at location 1110
We need to be reminded of these necessary moral truths, and we need to be told how they apply in detail. For example, we may recognize that (with the possible exceptions considered above) it is wrong to kill people, but need to be told whether a foetus or an old man in a coma is or is not a personRead more at location 1118
God has (within limits) the right to impose further obligationsRead more at location 1129
God has (within limits) the right to impose further obligations on us—as (within much narrower limits) parents have the right to impose obligations on children and the state has the right to impose obligations on its citizens;Read more at location 1129
Such obligations created by a command from an authority who has the right to issue it are contingent moral truths.Read more at location 1132
Even if it is not otherwise obligatory to care for the poor in distant lands, God could make it our duty and thus oblige us to live better lives than we would live otherwise. And there are more specific matters, for example, matters concerned with sex or the sanctity of life, about which God might impose obligations which are more demanding than the very general necessary truths of morality.Read more at location 1133
Why would God burden us with more stringent obligations than are involved in the necessary truths of morality? For reasons of two kinds. The first kind of reason [A] is to ensure coordination of good actions.Read more at location 1137
setting up a mechanism to enable us to reach collective decisions;Read more at location 1142
The second kind of reason [B] is to get us to do actions which it is good for us to do and which forward God’s purposes in an important way, but which without a command of God would be good but not obligatory. When their children are young, parents often command them to do actions which but for the command would be supererogatoryRead more at location 1144
to get us to do actions which it is good for us to do and which forward God’s purposes in an important way,Read more at location 1145
to do actions which but for the command would be supererogatoryRead more at location 1147
Parents may tell children to do the shopping for a sick neighbour,Read more at location 1148
because parents want their children to get into the habit of doing what is good beyond obligation.Read more at location 1150
Likewise God wants humans to be naturally good people, to get much of our happiness from making other people happy.Read more at location 1153
We need God’s propositional revelation to us to give us more moral informationRead more at location 1160
The Creed acknowledges this by the claim that God (the Holy Spirit) ‘spoke through the prophets’, the prophets being those who taught ancient Israel about God.Read more at location 1175
Christianity, is that we should show love to God and to other humans in ways far more extensive than those contained in the Ten Commandments or elsewhere in the Old Testament.Read more at location 1214
Jesus and his Church clearly taught that many actions previously supererogatory were now obligatory. We should worship and pray much, for that will make us aware of God,Read more at location 1217
Christian tradition has taught that there are certain further specific actions which are wrong, mainly actions concerned with sexual conduct (e.g. sexual intercourse outside marriage), family stability (e.g. divorce), and the preservation of life (e.g. abortion and euthanasia).Read more at location 1227
While, I pointed out earlier, it is a necessary moral truth that adultery is wrong, traditional Christianity also teaches that sexual intercourse outside marriage and divorce (or at least divorce from a faithful spouse), are also wrong.Read more at location 1237
Both of these prohibitions presuppose an understanding of marriage as lifelong;Read more at location 1239
I suggest that our normal moral understanding can see that the ideal family (marriage with children when it works well, that is) is a good thing.Read more at location 1242
I suggest that, if it were the general custom in society to confine sexual intercourse to lifelong marriage, that would make it a lot easier for families to approach the ideal.Read more at location 1244
even if all the attempts of some couples to make their marriages work fail, the persistence of these couples in this task will encourage other couples to try harder to make their marriages work; and these other couples may succeed in this task.Read more at location 1255
if separated spouses do not remarry, that will bring home to others considering marriage the seriousness of the marriage commitment and deter them from entering into marriage too lightly.Read more at location 1257
There is no reason to expect that God would provide for us a total moral code.Read more at location 1282
God could certainly provide propositional revelation in words without himself becoming incarnate, and other religions (e.g. Islam) claim that this has happened. It is, however, I argued earlier, necessary if we are to understand such fundamental moral concepts as ‘good’ and ‘obligation’ that we should be shown, or at least have described to us, examples of ‘good’ actions and ‘obligations’ by means of which we can then recognize other examples of these.Read more at location 1290
It would be a lot easier to understand how to live a perfectly good life if we have an example of someone doing this.Read more at location 1297
So God has good reason not merely to provide us with revealed teaching on how to live, but to show us how to live and to encourage us to live in that way by himself becoming incarnate.Read more at location 1300
To be easily comprehensible in some society, it is often best if teaching is expressed within the presuppositions of that society.Read more at location 1302
Even if teaching in one culture is not expressed in terms of false presuppositions, it may be expressed in ways that do not provide answers to questions which worry a different cultureRead more at location 1311
teaching may need to be re-expressed for a different culture in a different way.Read more at location 1313
To be comprehensible to ordinary people in a particular society, moral teaching must be immediately relevant to their concerns.Read more at location 1326
For these reasons any revelation needs an interpreting body, a Church,Read more at location 1330
But if the revelation is to be available to future generations and cultures, God must ensure that in the end, perhaps after much controversy, the correct interpretation of the original revelation emerges.Read more at location 1332
The Nicene Creed claims that God has provided ‘one holy catholic and Apostolic Church’.Read more at location 1334
‘catholic’ means ‘universal’, and ‘Apostolic’ means ‘deriving from the Church of the Apostles’.)Read more at location 1335
an obvious further task for a Church (additional to being a source of revealed truth) is as a society in which those who seek atonement for the past, and to learn what is the good way to live in the present, also help each other to form a naturally good character—help each other to become saints. The Church should be a community of encouragement,Read more at location 1351
probably also in order to encourage us to become saints. 6Read more at location 1365
Note: L' offerta del Paradiso Purgatorio: chi è armato di buone intenzioni ma è anche ignorante Santi. Dio è giusto ma anche amorevole (perdona). Le intercessioni dei santi fanno appello a qs caratteristica Edit
