Utilitarianism - the problem of calculating consequences, revisited

Utilitarian theories hold that the rightness of an action depends wholly on consequences. For example, the most basic (act) utilitarian theory states that an action is right just as long as it is the one that maximises pleasure and minimises pain. More complex utilitarian theories present variations on this theme - for instance, rule utilitarianism states that an action is right if it conforms to a rule, which brings about the best consequences if it is generally followed. So, while a single act of murder might bring about more pleasure than pain (say, painlessly killing a healthy patient and harvesting his organs to save five other patients), things would be happier overall if the rule 'do not murder' was generally obeyed, than if it wasn't (because people would be constantly fearing for their lives, etc).

We can set these nuances aside for our purposes. Let's focus on a problem that faces all brands of utilitarianism, which we'll call the calculation problem. On any utilitarian theory, knowing whether a given action is right depends on knowing future consequences, whether of the action itself, or the rule that the action instantiates, or whatever else. Critics point out that it can be very difficult to know the future consequences of anything. Our ability to predict the future is limited, especially regarding long-term consequences. For all we know, a drowning child might lead to said child growing up to becoming a ruthless, murderous dictator. And the 'algorithms' put forward by utilitarian thinkers, like Jeremy Bentham's 'felicific calculus', are quite complicated, including many variables like the intensity and duration of the pleasures (and pains) produced, how soon these will occur, the number of people affected, and the 'quality' of the pleasures (in J.S. Mill's version). Not only is this impractical in situations where we need to act fast (do I save the drowning child or not?), it also implies a kind of moral scepticism: since we can never really know what the consequences of our actions will be, we can't know whether our actions are right or wrong. The objection goes something like this: (1) If utilitarianism is true, for any action, we can't know that this action is morally right or wrong.

(2) But we can know that some actions are morally right or wrong (e.g. we can know that torturing people for fun is morally wrong) (3) Therefore, utilitarianism is false.

Here, the utilitarian has an obvious reply to (1): we might not be able to be absolutely certain of the future consequences of something, but we can be reasonably confident about them, and thus reasonably confident that such-and-such action is morally right or wrong. And maybe that's enough for knowledge (unless you're an infallibilist, but that's another topic). Sure, it's strictly possible that torturing someone for fun will somehow lead to the greatest happiness somewhere down the line, but let's face it, how plausible is this?

Not so fast. Let's tweak the above argument a bit: (1') If utilitarianism is true, I cannot be absolutely certain that torturing someone for fun is not morally right.

(2') I can be absolutely certain that torturing someone for fun is not morally right.

(3') Therefore, utilitarianism is false.

(1') is motivated by the fact that we can never be 100% certain of any future event, even with a mountain of evidence to the effect that it will occur. No matter how many times you have seen the sun rise in the morning, there is always some chance (however slim) that it won't rise tomorrow morning. What about (2')? Try to conceive of a scenario where torturing someone for fun is not only 'not-wrong' (i.e. morally permissible) but in fact the right thing to do. Are you able to? For my part, I cannot - moral truths like 'torturing someone for fun can never be morally right' strike me as self-evident in the same way that logical truths like 'X and not-X cannot both be true' are. But if you somehow can, consider the most morally abominable act (or rule) that you can think of. Try to think of a far-fetched scenario in which it brings about the greatest good for the greatest number (if you think hard enough, you will be able to). Next, try to imagine that this act is somehow morally right. Can you? I suspect not.

The best way out for the utilitarian would be to deny that it is actual consequences that make an action right or wrong, but rather reasonably expected consequences (Bentham seems to have believed this). This is sometimes referred to as 'reasonable utilitarianism'. I may not be able to know that consequence C will actually occur, but perhaps I can be certain that my expectation that C will occur is reasonable. Can I really be certain of this, though? I am not so sure. Whether an expectation is 'reasonable' depends on whether it is sufficiently likely given my evidence. Unfortunately, we can never fully rule out that we are mistaken about the evidence that we have. Knowing what evidence we have almost always requires us to rely on memory - for instance, to know that I have seen the sun rise hundreds of times, I need to remember this. But relying on memory to know past events, much like relying on our predictive powers to know future events, can never give us certainty. For any memory, no matter how strong or seemingly accurate, we can never rule out that it is distorted or perhaps even entirely false. But if I can't be certain of what evidence I have, I cannot be certain that my expectation of C is likely given my evidence, and thus cannot know whether my expectation is reasonable.

We are thus back where we started: utilitarianism (in the above modified form) entails that I cannot know for certain that some action is morally wrong, since I cannot know for certain that my expectations of the relevant consequences are reasonable. But if we can know for certain that some actions are morally wrong - which we surely can - then it follows that utilitarianism has a false implication, and therefore is false.

How does the Incarnation work?

We saw in a previous article that the Incarnation is the means by which God shares his divine life with human beings, transforming them into his likeness, so that they can eternally enjoy perfect fellowship and union with him. As I will now argue, this has some interesting implications for (as it were) the specific 'mechanics' of the Incarnation.

How exactly does the eternal God 'become Man'? The most straightforward interpretation would have God literally transforming himself into a human being, exchanging his divine nature for a human one. But this is a non-starter. For losing his divine nature would surely entail losing the power to share the divine life with human beings. Hence on this simple account, the incarnation not only fails to fulfil its purpose, it makes said purpose impossible to fulfil.

The divine nature, then, must remain intact in order for the Incarnation to achieve its goals. That is why Christian theology has consistently taught that the Incarnation consists in the union of a divine nature and a human nature, not the transformation of a divine being into a human being.

But what exactly is this 'human nature' that the divine Word unites itself to? Well, one view is that it is simply a human body. The fourth century Christian bishop Apollinaris argued that in the Incarnation, God the Son simply took the place that an ordinary human soul would normally occupy. This sort of position is sometimes referred to as 'Word-flesh' (Logos-sarx) Christology. Its opponents charged that, here again, the view jeopardizes the efficacy of the Incarnation. Another bishop and contemporary of Apollinaris, Gregory of Nazianzus, put it like this:

The unassumed is the unhealed, however, that which is united to his Godhead is saved. If only half of Adam fell, then Christ assumes and saves only that half of his nature. But if his nature fell in its totality, then it must all be united to the nature of him who was begotten, and thus be saved in its totality. Let them not begrudge us our salvation in its totality, or clothe the savior with nothing more than bones and nerves and something which looks like humanity.

Let's try to unpack this a bit. If it is human nature as a whole that is to be regenerated and deified, and not simply its bodily component, God must unite himself to a complete humanity, both body and soul. Otherwise, God would not really be sharing his divine life with humanity at all. Further, and as we saw in the last article, the most important aspects of deification have to do with the character of the human soul, which is called to partake of God's love, perception, joy etc. Hence an Incarnation that failed to deify the soul would fall well short of what it promised.

For these reasons and others, the opposing 'Word-man' ( Logos-anthropos ) Christology eventually won out and became normative to mainstream Christianity, which affirmed that the divine Word of the Father and a particular human body-soul complex were perfectly unified in the person of Christ. The Third Council of Constantinople (680) went as far as to declare that there exist two distinct wills in Christ, one divine and one human.

This raises questions about the unity of the person of Christ, as it seems to imply two 'Christs', one divine and one human. I hope to discuss this i a future article.

"God became man so that man might become God"

Such was the "rallying cry" of Ancient Christianity, according to Prof. John Peter Kenney (2018, p.107). This statement pithily (and provocatively) summarises the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation. In particular, it connects nature of the Incarnation ('God became man') with its aim ('that we might become God'). It might seem natural to begin by explicating the former, before moving on to the latter. But sometimes the best way to understand what a thing is to look at what it does. We might therefore benefit from starting with what the Incarnation is supposed to accomplish, and work our way backwards from there.

The result of the Incarnation, then, is that it enables human beings to 'become God'. This obviously shouldn't be taken to mean that we are to become our own 'Gods'. The mere fact that we are and always will be creatures necessarily precludes this, since the divine essence includes absolute independence, and thus uncreatedness. In any case, Scripture offers some clarification on this point: "he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). We are called to 'become God' in the sense of having a share in his Being, i.e. in his perfect Goodness.

This isn't quite sufficient. Indeed, we saw in another article that God creates by sharing his Being with his creatures, which may be said to reflect or participate in the Being of God, each in their own way. If that's right, then it seems that all creatures partake of the divine nature, just by virtue of being creatures.

But even so, the extent of the partaking varies from creature to creature. Not all creatures reflect God's being to the same extent. For example, since God is perfectly rational, creatures with rational capacities share in more of his Being than creatures that don't.

So, being called to 'become God' must mean being invited to share in far more of God's Being than that which we already partake in as rational creatures -- specifically, to participate in his divine life. To see as he sees, to love as he loves, to experience his perfect joy and peace, and to do so eternally.

The incarnation, then, is the means by which God offers the gift of Himself to humanity. This is true not only in the sense of sharing his divine life with us, but also in the sense of allowing us to enter into perfect fellowship with God, the Supreme Good, whereby we 'know Him fully, just as we are fully known', to paraphrase St Paul (1 Cor 13:12). This is why the ultimate outcome of the incarnation is spoken of as a marriage between redeemed humanity and the incarnate God (Rev 19:7-9). In fact, the two senses go hand in hand: we cannot possibly enjoy intimate union with God without being sufficiently like him, any more than mice can have deep friendships with human beings. Conversely, we cannot be changed into his likeness without allowing him to pour his life into us, which itself presupposes some degree of union.

Origen of Alexandria compares this process to a piece of iron acquiring the characteristics of fire when place in it:

"If, then, a mass of iron be kept constantly in the fire, receiving the heat through all its pores and veins, and the fire being continuous and the iron never removed from it, it become wholly converted into the latter (...) In the same way, that soul which, like an iron in the fire, has been perpetually placed (...) in God, is God in all that it does, feels, and understands"

This brings us to my final question: how exactly is it that God's incarnation in Christ brings about these things? Though I hope to write more about this in future articles, I still have some space for a few vague comments about this. The event of the Incarnation, as understood by historic Christianity, involved the conjoining of a divine nature -- the eternal Word of the Father -- to a particular human nature. This enabled said human nature to achieve what humans had thus far failed to do, i.e. to live a life of pure self-giving love and willing obedience to God, even to the point of death on a cross. This opened a way to reconciliation and union with God, so that all human beings could embrace the perfect intimacy that Christ enjoys with his Father. In Christ's own words,

"All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you." John 16:15

In other words, the Incarnation does not strictly end with Christ -- rather, it continues in the life of his people, who receive the divine life that he himself receives from his Father. Thus we have come full circle: God was made man, so that we might be made God.