Episode 244: Manuel Cruz – What It Means to Be Moral

Pete  

You’re listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I’m Pete Enns.

Jared  

And I’m Jared Byas.

Intro  

Pete

Hey folks, it’s me Pete. Before we get started with our episode today, I wanted to bug you with some info about our May class. Now I know you’ve been hearing a lot about our classes, but bear with me because this class is going to be the best yet—because I’m the one teaching it! It’s called “The History of Biblical Interpretation” and it’s happening live on May 31st from 8-9:30pm ET. And it’s a one night class surveying the seven stages of interpretation from Second Temple Judaism to post-modernity, which I am so excited to teach about.

So it’s pay what you can until the class ends and then it costs $25 to download. And if you want to access this class and all future classes, yes, past and future, you can get that for $12/month through our community The Society of Normal People. And for more information and to sign up for the class, go to www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/interpretation.

Pete  

Welcome everyone to this episode of the podcast. And on today’s episode, we’re talking about: what it means to be moral with Manuel Cruz and Manuel is an Associate Professor of Theology at Belmont University, all the way down in Tennessee. 

Jared  

That’s right. And he specializes in continental philosophy and—something that he says in his bio, that’s intriguing—he says “The only questions worth asking are the ones that never come to a close.” 

Pete  

That’s for us.

Jared  

A man after- 

Pete  

That’s us! 

Jared  

-Our own heart here. And for me, interesting, because his background is in philosophy. We haven’t done a lot of philosophy. I mentioned in there that his advisor is Jean-Luc Marion, who helped me tie some of my philosophy background with my Christian tradition early on. So I really appreciated that and we get into some of that and more. 

Pete  

Well, let’s get right into this conversation with Manuel Cruz!

Manuel  

Pete  

Alright, Manuel, welcome to our podcast. It’s great to have you.

Manuel  

It’s great to be here. Thank you so much.

Jared  

We’re gonna dive into some deep thoughts today, so let’s try to set this up. When we talk about doing what’s right in philosophy, it’s based on the number of things we can talk about doing what’s right based on what’s reasonable, reason, we talk about it in terms of our duty, like our obligations. Some, like, we would talk about like a utilitarianism—which I think maybe as a term some people have heard—where we talk about the greatest good, or we can talk about it in terms of self interest. So there’s a lot of angles, that we can talk about doing what’s right, doing the right thing, doing the good thing. So, what’s the overlap between morality, all those things, and love? Because we also, within the Christian tradition, when we talk about doing the right thing, we often end up talking about love. But what’s the overlap between those in the Christian tradition?

Manuel  

Yeah, so over the years, I’ve gotten the chance to work through a lot of those different philosophies. So utilitarianism, what is the greatest good for the greatest number of people, or using a kind of like, what can we universally would say is right, in a certain situation that all of us could try to agree on. But the thing that I keep coming back to is, actually, an event when I was about 15 years old. I found myself in Romania, immediately after the revolution. My French teacher was Romanian—I was living in Germany at the time—and he decided to take some of his students there to take some relief supplies. And I remember being on the steps, it was January—January 1990—and being on the steps of this cathedral out in front, and it was snowing a little bit, and the person that was showing us around, was talking about how the Revolution had started right there on those cathedral steps, and there was still blood on the steps of the cathedral. 

And obviously, as a 15 year old, not having the resources to be able to process what happened there, the violence that happened there. I remember reflecting over the years on that blood and thinking, you know, that was the first time that I saw blood that was shed. And I began to think about the story of Cain and Abel. In that story, right, which is the first story of violence, of murder in the scripture. You have God confronting Cain asking him what he’s done, and God says, “Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” And I realized, reflecting back on that moment, that that was really for me the birth of a sense of conscience, a conscience beyond what had my parents taught me was right or wrong, conscience beyond a particular cultural set of values, or religious set of values, but this real profound care and concern for the lives that were lost, and the lives of people that I hadn’t really known. 

And so for me, ethics is the working out of that fundamental intuition, of conscience, of concern for the life of a stranger, a life of a person who is vulnerable. And that really set me… For me it marries together those two horizons between the sort of the theoretical, the moral theories, and then what’s really at stake in love, and what’s at stake in love is our responsibility for the life of a vulnerable person. And we all find ourselves in those positions at different times and so it’s really in there, that conscience becomes this kernel by which we can reason out what then are my obligations? What is right? What is the good I need to pursue?

Jared  

You mentioned the word intuition. Maybe you can say more about that because I think, for a lot of folks—and I don’t want to go down this rabbit trail, I’m just going to bring it up for context—which is, I grew up in a Christian tradition that told me I couldn’t trust my intuition, that I was sort of rotten to the core kind of total depravity. But what I hear you say is like, there is this experience of concern, there’s this experience of care for others, that is intuitive and we can actually build the idea of doing what’s right, our own ethical framework, on top of that experience, so it works out from an experience of concern. Am I hearing you right? Is there a certain way of thinking about us as humans that requires us to start with, you can trust your intuitions about these things?

Manuel  

Yes, I think that it is, for me, desire and intuition are a very good starting point for developing our own sense of what is right, to be able to judge where does my community have it right? Or, perhaps are they slightly amiss in their understanding of what is right? But I would also double down on that Christian intuition that, well, we can get it wrong [Chuckles]. And not only can we get it wrong, but in fact, we can find ourselves turning away from an intuition for the good and being drawn away by other passions and other desires, that can definitely be far more centered on ourselves, and far more centered on manipulating others to whatever particular aspirations I have. But I think that desire and intuition are a starting point. And so let me name some of those: the fundamental desire to be loved, a fundamental desire to be able to rejoice with others, a desire to find a home for oneself and for one’s loved ones, a desire for justice. I think these are things that are universal. And they’re universal because I think they’re intuitions that are implanted within us. And I would say that, certainly, how we understand what is the right way to fulfill those desires? Where is that intuition leading us? There are so many different roads that people take, and some of those roads end up being more destructive than others, more alienating than others. Because of the desire for home, while in itself is good, and something that we should pursue can come at the expense of costing someone else their home, right? Of excluding someone else from the possibility of them being able to share in that.

Pete  

Manuel, can I ask a clarifying question? Because I’m not philosophically trained, and this, this is a complicated issue, I think, you know, “What is right? And how do you know?” Right? So, if I’m right in hearing you, it’s our intuitions, our experiences, our desires that can maybe… We should listen to kickstart a moral discussion, whether community-based or whether internally-based, but along the way, we have all these decisions to make about like, what’s the good way to have a desire for a home, like you’re saying? And does that then get us into a conversation about theory, as you were saying before, right? There’s theory and then there’s intuition, and they’re both working together. Am I right in surmising that?

Manuel  

That’s correct. 

Pete  

Okay. 

Manuel  

And I would add to that, you have intuition, you have certain theory—and by theory, we can simply define theory as how do we begin to explain these particular intuitions? How do we begin to elaborate? I have a desire to be in relationships of love that are meaningful, relationships that are faithful, right? But what does that look like? Right? I think there, you do need to begin to articulate what are the kinds of relationships that you can enter into? Which ones do we find are more meaningful than others? And so you need to fill it out and elaborate. And I would add another piece of that is the function of rules that function as kinds of morals, like we’re going to pursue it this way. We’re going to avoid these kinds of relationships. And for me, these rules function as supports, as practices that can help cultivate and shape the way that we pursue these things.

Jared  

Let’s maybe just keep on that line, then because, again, there’s this tension in Christian conversations between kind of love and rules as though they are opposed to each other when it comes to ethical living. So, can you just say more about this idea of rules that support to cultivate and to shape? Because that, for me, slips into more wisdom language. Where wisdom is the thing we’re pursuing and rules support that, not “rules are this, the end all be all, and everything supports that.”

Manuel  

Yeah. And I think that’s right. I think if St. Paul, who, if the apostle has taught us anything, is that following rules does not make a person loving. It does not make a person just. Or to use the biblical language, “following the law” is not going to make a person righteous. But you don’t have to consult St. Paul, to be convinced of that. Ask any scientist, ask any lawyer, and ask any athlete.

Pete  

Manuel  

No lawyer is going to tell you that laws are going to produce a just society. And no scientist is going to tell you that their meticulous following of an experimental process is going to produce truth. As well as an athlete, no athletic regimen and following the rules of a game is going to produce a great performance. At the same time, without the support and the practices that come alongside that, there is no way to be able to work toward a just society without rules or laws that are there supporting, giving consistency to a practice as we pursue something that is more profound than the rules. And when it comes to—for myself, both philosophically, so I would say independent of my Christian faith convictions, but then squarely doubling down on my faith convictions: love and justice. Those are the two moral ends that a set of rules can help support, but that they, in themselves, cannot establish. I’m a rock climber. So I like to go out into the mountains and scale these five hundred foot walls or thousand foot walls. And I’m sure that you and your listeners have seen the National Geographic movie on Alex Honnold and free-soloing. 

Pete  

Oh, yeah. [Laughs]

Manuel  

Yeah?

Jared  

It makes my palms sweat just thinking about that.

Pete  

I didn’t sleep for two nights after seeing that. So anyway… [Laughs]

Manuel  

So when I tell people that I rock climb, they’re like, “Do you have a rope?” And I’m like, “Oh, yes.”

Pete  

Manuel  

I definitely have a rope. And I think about moral rules as the safety gear that I put into the rock as I climb. That safety gear is not going to get me up that mountain face, right? It’s going to be me. But when I fall, when I fail—and when it comes to morals, I fail every day—these are the things that are going to remind me or help me get back on the right track. And so, I think it’s important to have a set of moral rules to guide, to support our pursuit of these deeper ends, ends that for which, you know, again, to cite St. Paul, you know, when he’s discussing the fruits of the spirit, “Love, patience, peace, self-control, there is no law against these things.” There’s no law for these things, because these things are far deeper.

Ad Break  

Pete  

Manuel, can I… Something- A question that keeps coming up for me, as we’ve been talking the past few minutes and—let me put it this way—is the quest for morality fundamentally subjective? Even talking about love and justice—which I fully agree with personally—but what is love, exactly? You know, and what does justice really look like? And it seems like there’s going to be some level of subjectivity involved in that. So I mean, you’re probably going to suggest we embrace that subjectivity and just acknowledge it and not make believe that we have this objective rule that doesn’t need our own human experiential engagement with, to try to even figure out what it is.

Manuel  

Yeah, I think the core of who we are goes a lot further. The core of who we are, so what the Bible and many other traditions called “the heart,” right? Or “the soul,” the core of who we are goes far deeper than any set of objective rules that you could articulate. So, at a certain level, to the degree which love and justice are in their fullness is about me being able to give myself, and the whole of myself, as far as I can, which I’ll never be able to do it to the depths of who I am. But as far as I can, to a certain kind of relationship, to certain kinds of actions, to certain kinds of concerns. Absolutely, it is subjective. But by subjective, I mean engaging the core of who the person is. I don’t mean that while this person might experience it this way, and this person might experience it a different way, and this person might experience it a third way. But that subjective really means encompassing the core of the person. 

And the second thing I would say to that is, morality is never individual, and in fact, morality is always about you, and another person. Whether that person is the person of God, or whether that person is another human, your neighbor, alongside of you. And so it’s not just your subjectivity, who you are individually, but who you are in relationship to this other person, this other heart, this other subject. I spent some time in South Africa both doing missions work, but then later, I’ve taken students to South Africa, and done some research there. And one of.. There is an African ethic, or they would probably call it an ethos, a way of being in the world called Ubuntu. It says something along these lines—this is the way that they’ll translate it for Westerners sometimes—they’ll say, “Decartes says, ‘I think therefore I am.’ The African by contrast, says, ‘You are therefore I am.'” So that who I am is bound up with this other person. 

And the ethics that flow out of it is that when this other person in your community is suffering, there is an invitation and a responsibility to come alongside that suffering and share in that suffering. When the other person is flourishing and rejoicing, that there is an invitation for you to also participate and share in that flourishing and in that rejoicing. And so, I do think that morality is about the subject, it is about the core of who you are, but not the core of who you are as an individual, but the core of who you are as an individual in relationship with other individuals. And to geek out a little bit theologically, I think that’s one of the most profound aspects of Christianity is this sense that our God, who is one God, is communal. That when we talk about a personal God, we actually don’t mean one person, but we have a God that is in this radically intimate relationship of love, of justice, of the very existence, right, is bound up in the different persons of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I think that there is an invitation, at least for Christians, to be able to understand ethics in this very profoundly intrapersonal way.

Jared  

That’s a great segue, because I was hesitant to take a step back and come at this from a little bit more theoretical, but when we bring God into this, can we say a little bit more about that? In- I was interested once I heard that—it is true that your advisor was Jean-Luc Marion? 

Manuel  

Yes. 

Jared  

That’s wonderful. So, he has this idea of God is love, which, of course, is straight from the New Testament. But he infuses all of this—I remember reading his book, “God Without Being,” I don’t know, 15 years ago or something, and it blew my mind. And I thought it was an incredible take on God as this God without being, but God is love, and it gets pretty heady. But maybe we could take a stab at—maybe you can help us understand that concept of God is love in a way that is grounded a little bit more philosophically.

Manuel  

Yeah. So, one of the things that Marion noted very early on in his career, is when you go back to—at least the origins of Western philosophy, with Socrates and Plato—you have a very clear articulation that philosophy is a love, that philosophy is the love of wisdom. But very quickly, and especially in the modern period—especially in the beginning of the 17th century with Decartes and others, but one might argue even before that—in the Middle Ages, it is as though philosophers gave love over to the theologians, to the monks, to the faithful, and proceeded to just follow the questions of knowledge, questions about the nature of existence, so what they call ontology or metaphysics, and then just ignored love altogether. And the consequence has been that our notions of love are often purely emotional or purely a function of passion or romance, and we haven’t fully appreciated the meaningfulness of love, even what he would call the rationality of love. 

Pascal, who is a hero for Marion, has a wonderful phrase, “The heart has reasons that reason cannot understand.” And Marion takes that and wants to say, well, what are those reasons of the heart? What is that meaningfulness of love? And one of the radical theses that Marion puts forward is that our notion of love, that love is something that is fundamentally erotic. Now as a Christian [Chuckles], right, you hear love is erotic, right? And you’re like, “Well, I don’t… That makes me a little nervous. It sounds a little spicy.” But what Marion means is that love is this desire for something that is beyond us, and love is a relationship to another that we can never fully encapsulate within ourself. The erotic nature of love is that love transports us outside of ourselves. That was part of the initial intuition of Socrates and Plato on love, is that love moves us beyond ourselves, it moves us beyond our finite concerns of the day, it moves us beyond our finite concerns about money, it moves us beyond into that which is more true and more real than anything that we could imagine. 

And so Marion has wanted to capture this sense that love puts us in relationship to something that is beyond us, and so therefore, it’s something that we can’t fully manipulate, right? Something that is not fully within our power, which is a beautiful thing. But it also means that love is not something that we can ever be fully certain of. There’s always a risk that as we love that that love will not be returned, there’s a risk that one day we may lose that love. And he thinks, nevertheless, that it is the nature of love, and it is worth the risk. To put it in one word or two, I guess three words—when Marion talks about love, he says, “What we say when we say I love you is we say, ‘Here I am, here I am for you. I am here, and I am willing to make room for what it is that you bring into this relationship.'” Marion says that when we love, it’s not giving something to another. But it’s actually creating the space within our own life, to let that other person give themselves as they really are. 

And the crazy thing—and I think that philosophy is at its best perhaps when it is playing with what is crazy—is that is also the nature of God’s love for us and our love for God. That when God loves, he creates a space within himself for us to exist. He wants us to be ourselves and so he creates a world in which we can exist in relationship to God. And he invites us to hear God saying, “I am here, I am here inviting. I am here because you are of concern to me, because I love you.” And that that invitation invites a response. And the response that God asks of us is simply the repetition of that love. For us to say in return, “Here I am. God, I am going to create a space in my life for you. I’m going to allow your concerns to become my concerns.” 

I’d say one other thing about Marion’s notion of love, and specifically the love of God, is that the love of God is a love of abandon. A love without reserve, a love without restraint. And as we’re recording this on Maundy Thursday, getting ready to move into Good Friday and Easter, Marion would say that the love of God gives itself fully on the cross into the hands of sinners. And God does so without reserve. Marion’s notion of, and we shift from love to evil—because those two for Marion have an important relationship to one another. When Marion defines evil or sin, he says that “Evil is a universal and even rational drive toward vengeance and self preservation.” And it’s a drive that gets stimulated whenever any one of us experiences pain and suffering. So that, when we suffer, there is something within us that wants to pass that suffering on to others. Simone Weil, the great 20th century mystic, says “Human mechanics: if a person suffers, he will be driven to pass that suffering on to someone else. How can we be saved from such a law? A law that stands like gravity.” 

And on the cross—and this is me inspired by Marion—but on the cross, Christ breaks the power of sin, the power of evil, by refusing to return violence for violence. Rather than being driven toward vengeance, God gives himself over to offering love instead of vengeance. God refuses to preserve his life, but rather gives his life. And so in the face of our own pain and suffering, Jesus and his enemies offer us two paths: we can take up the sword in search of vengeance or self preservation, or we can refuse the sword, we can set it aside, in which case, we’re also going to perish on the cross. And the exchange—you know, there is an exchange there—and the exchange is love for violence, right? Love in exchange for suffering.

Ad Break  

Pete  

So for us to be moral is to love as God loves and to make space for the other. Which is a—maybe negating is too strong a word—but it is, in a sense, a dying to self.

Jared  

The only thing I would say there too, is it actually reminds me a little bit of Richard Rohr, who says, you know, “the pain we don’t transform, we transmit.” And I think that’s part of it, too, that sometimes this language, I think of self-negation, of self-sacrifice, doesn’t adequately make room for—

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

—the way to make room for others is actually to make sure we’re healing ourselves or to find healing and wholeness for ourselves. 

Pete  

Mhmm.

Jared  

Because I appreciate that Simone Weil idea, which is in line with this Rohr idea, that we have to figure out a way to transform our pain. That we will have pain, that’s inevitable. But if we don’t transform it, that’s when we transmit it. And sometimes I wonder if, Christian traditions, we don’t give enough attention to that. And we ignore, just ignore the self, ignore the self. And really, we’re just creating more and more pain—

Pete  

It’s a healthy self. 

Jared  

Right.

Pete  

Healed. A healed, healthy self, yeah?

Jared  

Right. I just think that’s an important piece or nuance to this idea.

Manuel  

Yeah. And going along with Simone Weil, she has another wonderful little phrase where she says, “Love wants to go ever further and further. Love wants to give its all and just keep going as far as it can go. But there’s a limit. And if we are forced or forced ourselves beyond that limit, love can too easily turn into resentment and into bitterness.” She says, “In order to avoid that, love must be transformed.” And what I like about that, you hear three moments. You hear that inherent in love, is this kind of infinite desire, or at least a desire to love without limits. And to go back to the beginning of our conversation, I think that is one of the fundamental intuitions that we have as human beings, is that we have this desire to love without limits. But as we begin to live out that love in the world, what we confront, immediately, right, is how finite we are. How finite is the satisfaction that we get from the things, the beloved things that we are pursuing. How finite are the abilities of others to love us in return. That problem of finitude of the limits of love, we are at a danger of turning back in on ourselves—which that is exactly how Luther would talk about sin—that even though there is this infinite desire in us, when we experience enough of the pain in the finitude of life, that there is a turning in on oneself. And what needs to happen there is that that finitude needs to be transformed in some way. And that transformation is something that only God can bring about.

Jared  

It reminds me of, I think it’s a famous poem by W.H. Auden that talks about—I’m just gonna read this one stanza because I think it fits perfectly what you said. It says, “How should we like it were stars to burn, with a passion for us we could not return. If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me.” And I think that speaks to that passion to give it your all. Yeah.

Well, as we wrap up our time here, what would be, for our listeners, who are struggling with figuring out the way forward with how to set up an ethical framework outside of maybe the traditions that they grew up with? They’re trying to figure out how to trust these experiences and intuitions and what does it mean to exchange love for violence, and all that? What are the steps that you know…you teach, probably young, impressionable youths quite a bit who are trying to ask the same kind of questions. What are some practical ways to develop a new—what I want to use is the word subjective. An experience of morality and things where if I grew up and it’s all rules, and it was all given to me, I haven’t really developed my own inner sense of how to do this.

Pete  

Where they have to take responsibility.

Jared  

Yeah, taking responsibility for my own ethical framework and how I work this out for myself. What are steps that, you know, you’ve found that have worked or helped people to gain clarity about this?

Manuel  

I think a couple of things, I go back to one of the philosophers that I have spent probably too much time with, a Jewish philosopher by the name of Emmanuel Levinas. And for Levinas, he said that “the core of ethics can only be found in a face-to-face encounter with another, another who you realize that—that person will never fully fit within your framework of how that person is supposed to be.” And I think that there is something about sitting alongside another person, and asking these questions of them, asking these fundamental questions. What do you love? And listening to what it is that they love. Not asking them to explain, not asking them to justify. “What do you love? What brings you life?” And then taking the time, I would say even usually apart from those conversations, to wonder at what it is that moves that person to love, that moves that person to want something more, a society that is more just. 

You know, we garden, as many others do, and it’s springtime here, and we’re getting the garden ready. And one thing that I always do with my kids—and my oldest is now 17—and, but every year, I say the same thing, and I ask the same question, holding a little seed, “Isn’t it amazing that there is a whole tomato in here, a whole vine of tomatoes, in this little seed?” And so those conversations, those face-to-face conversations where you ask these basic questions about love, about life, about suffering, and you hear what the other person has to say, if we can treat those as those seeds. And just wonder about what can such a vision of love, what can such a vision of justice, bring out into the world? And so that’s one, I guess, one or maybe two. 

The third is—and here, I’ll turn to my Catholicism—to have a consistent practice of prayer where you realize that what you are approaching is you are approaching a God who wants to give you a gift of love, and receiving that love with both a sense of gratitude, and a sense of responsibility. And I think that when we talked about rules earlier in our conversation, that discipline of week after week, even day after day, going back to one’s prayers as a way of approaching a God that again and again wants to give the gift of love, and that gift of love is also a gift of responsibility. One of the things that I’ve come to appreciate so much from my research in Jewish thinking and Jewish philosophy and Jewish scriptural study, is just how much the Jewish tradition understands love in terms of responsibility for one’s neighbor. 

Pete  

Yeah, that’s wonderful.

Jared  

Thank you, Manuel, for coming on and giving us a lot to chew on and think about. 

Pete  

Yeah.

Jared  

Really appreciate it.

Manuel  

I appreciate it! Thank you.

Outro  

Jared  

Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give. 

Pete  

And if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join. 

Jared  

And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show. 

Outro  

You’ve just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People! Don’t forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team: Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Stephen Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.