Philosophy in a Nutshell
“Beware that no one enslave you by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition, and according to the elemental spirits of this world” (Col 2:8),
FAST FOOD AD 2025: Thirty-First Helping
If a philosophic morality of law or of rules based on reason and nature were a sufficient and acceptable ultimate morality for human beings to live by, the Incarnation need not have taken place and the Gospel need not have included a moral revolution. Gospel moral thinking is not based on what is convenient or appeals to human nature as presently subjected to the residue of The Fall. Gospel morality perceives the human being realistically, that is, as fallen and redeemed, if he or she desires to be. Gospel morality is concerned with what a human being can be and is supposed to be, can do and cannot do. Its ultimate purpose is Eternal Salvation and the Way to that end, neither of which is derived from a systematic philosophical morality of reason and nature. It is drawn from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. For example, salvation in the context of Gospel morality first consists in choosing to become fully human—not fully a Jew, a Greek, a European or an American. Second, salvation in the context of Gospel morality consists in choosing to become eternally one with and forever inseparable from God who is love, by loving as God loves. This love is known definitively only through the revelation of God in Jesus, the Messiah of Judaism and the Word (logos) of God “made flesh.”
A philosophical morality based on reason and nature does not have as its end or purpose salvation, as enunciated above. Eternal salvation is in part reached by choosing to live a life in accordance with Jesus Christ as the moral categorical imperative. “Love your enemies,”a verbatim ipsissima verba teaching of Jesus appears in no philosophical moral system in history prior to Jesus teaching it by word in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Sermon on the Plain, and later by deed in His Sermon on the Cross. It is incontestably taught as part of the Way to live in time because it is the Way of Life in Eternity. Yet moral philosophies rooted in reason and nature know nothing of it. They are insufficient for teaching and empowering human beings on how to overcome evil and death and how to become truly human and truly divine. Hence, because of their insufficiency to lead human beings to the fullness of life for which they were created, the revelation by God Incarnate, Jesus, the Messiah of Judaism and the Word (logos) of God “made flesh,” is absolutely necessary for human beings to become fully what they were made to be in time and for all Eternity.
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org
https://www.youtube.com/@emmanuelcharlesmccarthy3292
“Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Love.
Heaven and earth are full of Your glory!
Hosanna in the highest!
Blessed is He, Who comes in the Name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest!”
