Imagine a crowded, standing-room-only
subway car during rush hour in Boston, Massachusetts. Even though many riders
are standing, a seated passenger keeps his backpack on the seat next to his own
seat. It would be difficult upon seeing such a blatant display of selfishness
not make certain assumptions about the man’s values and character. I did, twice
on Boston subway trains, as I stood looking at one young man, and then another
on another train about a month later who was doing the same thing. Because many
of the train operators in Boston ignore their training by slapping the brake
lever backwards all at once rather than gradually just before abruptly stopping
at a station-stop, standing can be perilous. Once I found myself running
through half of a trolley car to re-establish my balance because the driver had
applied the brakes too abruptly. The inconsiderateness
for the riders could easily be inferred, and from that, we could say that the reckless
employees suffered from the vice of selfishness. The same can be said of the
drivers’ supervisors, for whom the word accountability was not in the English
dictionary. With so much selfishness delimiting intending benefits to others
that are intended by one’s decisions and actions, moreover, a dysfunctional
organization and even an enabling society can be inferred. Some Christian
theologians have sought to relate the ethical vice of selfishness to the
religious sin of self-love, which as Pierre Nicole made clear in the
seventeenth century, is mutually exclusive with Christian love from compassion.
Even amid such clear relationships, the ethical and religious or theological
domains should not be fused as if the two domains were actually one. To view
selfishness self-love as containing both ethical and theological implications
and yet hold that the two domains are qualitatively different—each having its
own unique aspects—is the goal.
Selfishness is the manifestation
of self-love that is oriented teleologically to the person’s exclusive benefit
(i.e., private benefit). Although other people may benefit too, that is not
within the selfish person’s purview. Typically, selfishness cuts off benefits
going to other people and even a society as a whole. The vice is thus at odds
with compassion, which fuels benevolence, because even if other people benefit,
that byproduct is not motivated by a selfish person. Only such benefits as are
in the self-interest, and thus benefit,
of a selfish person fall within one’s intentionality. That is not compassion.
A continuum from the ethical
domain to that of religion may seem easily constructed; people of bad character
are likely to go to hell rather than heaven. If the kingdom of God preached by
Jesus in the Gospels is entered in this life by heartfelt acts of compassion to
one’s neighbors and detractors alike, then people who are only concerned about
themselves benefitting will not enter that spiritual state. As solid as this argument
is, it is also vital not to constrain God’s omniscience (knowledge) and
omnipotence (power) to fit within our ethical principles and theories. A figure
such as Abraham might take a decision that is the inverse of
compassionate—attempted murder of his only son—because God has decreed that
Abraham sacrifice Isaac. To be sure, Abraham’s intent to make the sacrifice
could hardly be considered selfish, but at the same time it is harmful rather
than compassionate. God’s knowledge and power so surpass our own that we should
take care in judging a selfish person soteriologically; salvation is up to God,
not us.
John Calvin, a Protestant
reformer in the sixteenth century, held that by absolute sovereignty, God has
predestined an elect who are saved. Although he viewed wealth as a sign of
God’s approval of the elect, it was not until the next century that Calvinists
considered industriousness to be a Christian virtue.[1]
Being rich could be an indication that, whether one is selfish or not, one is
already saved among God’s elect. All this contradicts Jesus’s statement in the
Gospels to the rich man that unless he gives up his fortune, he would not enter
the kingdom of God; it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a
needle. Furthermore, wealth as a sign of divine favor leaves out the divine
favor that could be supposed to be lavished on monks such as Cuthbert and
Godric of Finchale, who lived intentionally impoverished lives so to be
worthy of being saved. Wealth as a sign of divine favor also flies in the
face of the preachments of such religious notables as St. Francis of Assisi and
Luther, both of whom can be interpreted as attempting to apply brakes to the
emerging and maturating Christian pro-wealth paradigm in their respective
times.[2]
As a species of selfishness, greed—the desire for one’s own gain—is difficult
to reconcile with neighbor-love as compassionate benevolence. A greedy, selfish
person who claims to be saved by the blood of Christ on the Cross because Jesus
died for mankind as if the person’s debt to God is already paid flies in the
face of the claim made both by Paul and Augustine that God is love. To be in
union with God thus requires that a person loves, and selflessly (agape) at
that. In short, free-will must voluntarily chose compassionate love for a
person to be among the elect. In fact, Samuel Hopkins, who was a protégé of the
New England theologian and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, claims in his book on
holiness that the essence of the kingdom of God is kindness and acts of compassion
oriented to the humanity of people who dislike one or whom one dislikes.[3]
Such humane compassion is two degrees of separation from selfishness.
Even so, self-love and
selfishness can be distinguished. Not only is the former term theological
whereas the latter is of the domain of ethics; self-love, unlike selfishness,
can include the intention and effort that benefits be extended to other people without
instantiating compassion. In his book on virtue, Edwards himself distinguishes
selfishness from “compounded self-love,” which differs from simple self-love
because benefits are intentionally extended to other people rather than limited
to oneself.[4]
Similarly, Pierre Nicole, a seventeenth-century Jansenist Catholic priest and
theologian, claims that the inherently sinful self-love can nonetheless be
cleverly manifested as courtesy—but not interior kindness!—to other people
because more can be gotten from laying out honey than from the stinginess of
selfishness. Had the subway passengers moved their respective backpacks so
someone standing could sit down to withstand the primitive, inconsiderate
operation of the trains, perhaps a person who might have been useful might
have sat in the suddenly empty seat. To clear off a seat with the intention of
benefitting can be distinguished from having compassion for a passenger trying
not to fall over or even be thrown forward in the train-car at the next
station-stop. Hopkins, Edwards, and Nicole were all
very clear in averring that even if self-love can have intentional beneficial
consequences for other people, which are of course in the acting person's
self-interest, the root is still a sin, and a sin is not identical to a vice or
any unethical decision or action. Sin is utterly incompatible with compassion
that resonates either from love directed to God (i.e., caritas) or selfless
love (i.e., agape). Self-interest, which
is selfishness oriented to a goal, and is based in ethics rather than theology,
is incompatible only with the second type of Christian love, agape. Even so,
exercising such (wholly religious) agape love can be very unethical. In the
religious (but not ethical) domain, ethical scruples should not get in the way
of obeying a divine command.
In Fear and Trembling,
Kierkegaard distinguishes the universally-accessible moral domain from that of
the divine command that only Abraham receives.
What is attempted murder (of Abraham’s son, Isaac) in moral (and legal)
terms is a sacrifice in religious terms. Both domains are valid in themselves
and their respective meanings, and they relate to each other, as in the story
of Abraham, but attempted murder and religious sacrifice are qualitatively
different. This point is also clear in the Book of Job, as Job is a righteous
man and thus does not deserve to be made to suffer by the devil even as a test
sanctioned by the Old Testament deity. Abstractly stated, divine omnipotence
(i.e., all-powerful) means that divine command cannot be constrained by human
ethical principles. Regarding the five Commandments that have ethical conduct,
it is explicitly based on divine command, and thus on divine will, and thus is
not a constraint on the deity. This does not mean that the ethical itself is
theological in nature.
So, while it is tempting to
relegate a selfish person to hell as a sordid reprobate, especially as
selfishness is antithetical to benevolentia universalis, which in turn is
a manifestation of “God is love” in Christianity, both our own finite nature as
judges and the distinction between acting unethically and obeying a divine
command, and, moreover, being saved, mitigate against making such a hasty and
wholly convenient category mistake that superimposes that of the creature onto
the Creator. It could be that the man on a crowded subway train puts his
backpack on the seat next to him because suffers from PTSD or is autistic. Even
such a simple justification, which separates our ethical verdict from God’s
judgment on the man’s selfishness, can easily pass by mere creatures such as
homo sapiens.
