THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING FOR OR
AGAINST SOMETHING AND BEING FOR
OR AGAINST A GIVEN DEFINITION
OF THAT SOMETHING

© 2007 by Orchid Land Publications (20070202)

     One can be against murder or abortion without being in favor of this or that definition of "murder" or "abortion."  For example, capital punishment is not murder for those who oppose murder but nevertheless reject the definition or premise that capital punishment or other kinds of killing like initiating a war are murder.  To avoid misleading oneself and not very educated discussions of the topics just mentioned and others, it is necessary to address the definitions of murder, which (generally speaking) is a kind of killing forbidden by law.  Since the taking of human life is generally unnatural, doing so for some other reason than to protect some nature or other not only treats a human being as an animal that one slaughters for food.    Defensive wars─which pacifists, probably including most Quakers, deem immoral─can be defended in some moral systems if the pretext under which they are initiated are not false.
     Some of a juridical orientation do not need to resort to a debate over any kind of killing or other normally harmful act if a law made by a authority that they consider authoritative does not forbid it.  The law is what makes an act lawful, unlawful, or─if it the act is not m explicitly forbidden─optional.  Some forms of various religions reject the concept of nature (let alone as being different from an essence) and decide almost everything without a long chain of reasoning.  To decide an issue, one may in hard cases bring in  some modish contemporary concept they value, such as relationship or intimacy with the legislative authority.  In general, something, however novel, may be allowed if not explicitly forbidden. The central criterion is always whether a law speaks to an issue.  If the law permits (or forbids) treating people of a given race as inferior, that is all that such people require for treating (or not treating) people of the race in question in bemeaning ways.  For thinking according to a juridical orientation, the answer is simple:  One simply asks what, not why:  Do any commandments forbid this or not?       For those of a very different outlook, the question is how to differentiate killing that is not murder from killing that is murder.  Even so, discussions in this framework can be murky and contentious, at least if one does not adopt a simplistic outlook that treat all killing as murder.  Whatever one's view of killing is, few would agree that murder, unlawful killing, is okay.  The idea that legality evolves over centuries and millenniums as human experience and learning proceed is rejected by few legalists or few naturalists, though for different reasons:  The concept is more intelligible,  given that human nature is presumably a constant over history, for philosophical naturalists who reject the rôle of materiality (Mysteries or sacraments) and development (evolution) in creation, revelation, and salvation.
     Aristotle and Greek Church Fathers like John of Damaskós and St. Gregory of Nyssa spoke of Aristotle's three kinds of life or souls─vegetative, animate, and rational-human.  Since murder is the taking of a human life, some discussions have centered less on morality as such than on definitions.  This is a fact everyone would like to avoid, since definitions are, like any premise or assumption, neither true nor false, draw the line between what is this or that─true or false, permitted or disallowed.  J. S. Mill used various criteria to decide what the terms "nature" and "natural" should most properly refer to.  Some will accept, others will reject, his presentation.  For one thing, he did not distinguish nature from essence the way Christians do when they speak of human essence as made according to the ICON (LIKENESS) of God and of human nature as made according to the energetic ASSIMILATION to God . . . the way laid out in Genesis 1:26 in the Greek Bible translated over two centuries before Christ by 72 bilingual rabbis in northern Africa.    Questions like when life that is properly human begins, whether it does not end until death, etc. can be and are debated, though generally with little realization that one is usually debating arbitrary definitions or assumptions.  One can try to avoid that quandary in various ways, accepting the Church Fathers or a philosopher like Aristotle.

  Certain the view of warfare evolved somewhat over the course of Old Testament history.  The subject is so often emotion-ridden that it can be very difficult to plough through it.  The con-temporary relevance of a position taken by the Church Fathers on, say, X is contingent on whether their definition of X is properly understood and accepted and whether that is the (only) allowable definition of X in our time.  The Orthodox revere and hallow the patristic tradition, but on non-religious subjects don't necessarily cherish ideas they espoused. 

     The purpose of the foregoing inconclusive─but not vague!─remarks is not meant to favor a particular view of every matter mentioned, though the writer cannot hide his rejection of what is called the positive law approach, leaning on law without regard to reason and the complexities of even making a law that fits all occasions.  The aim of the foregoing is less to take sides than to expose the traps that beset the unwary, the complications that a simple-minded approach ignores at its own risk.  There have to be law-makers.  If they are human, they can sometimes get it wrong, as in the case of laws discriminating against Jews or Black people.  If a reader views a law as being of divine revelation, human interpretations are not infallible because one views the divine Law-Giver as infallible.  Interpreting law is not as easy as simple-minded readers may think; it it were, we would not need supreme courts and so on.  Also worthy of consideration is that being open-minded (contrary of being closed-minded, being an ideologue) is not the same as being broad-minded.  The difference is hard for many to balance; it is so easy to lean one way or the other on an issue of vital importance.  What we accept should not be taken for granted but reasoned . . . something that is the enemy of the ideological juridicalist.  We can at least try to achieve any clarity that may be achievable.