Temptation Again

This from a reader:

 

I have been a follower and great admirer of you and your blog writing for some time. I enjoyed reading your most recent post, especially as this topic has been fresh in my mind from preaching a sermon last week from James 1:13-15 on the nature and power of temptation in the Christian life. While of course our conclusions will inevitably differ in many ways on this topic, given our differences of belief concerning Christianity, I wanted to write you to ask for clarification concerning what you distinguish as first-order temptations and meta-temptations (or perhaps second-order temptations?).

 

I believe the heart of your argument is: Meta-temptation is the worst form of temptation because one who succumbs to the temptation to reject the objective validity of the moral point view has removed the context in which dalliance with floozies, paying one's debts, not murdering one's rivals, etc. are morally evaluable.

My question is this: is not your definition of meta temptation true of all temptation? Since I always choose that which is most desirable to my mind’s eye in the moment (to paraphrase Jonathan Edwards on the Freedom of the Will), am I not choosing that which I perceive as the greatest good and desirable, even if in reality it is not good but evil? Of course self-deception is at work where I assent to contradictory propositions in the moment: I should not do [X] because it is evil (i.e. God has forbidden [X]); I should do [X] because it is good (i.e. [X] will satisfy me and thus I determine what is good and evil).

 

The distinction I was making was between being tempted to do what one's moral sense tells one is wrong in a particular situation, and the temptation to discount as illusory the entire moral point of view.  These strike me as different  because one can be tempted in the first way while having no doubts at all about the objective validity of morality. Consider an example.  I am a married man in a distant city attending a convention.  A woman I meet there makes it clear that she is attracted to me and is available for sex. Finding her attractive I am tempted to invite her up to my hotel room. This is a 'first-order' temptation in that it concerns a specific action.  Let us assume that there is no prudential reason why I shouldn't act upon my desire.  But my conscience or moral sense  tells me that the contemplated action, adultery, is wrong because it violates a vow I took.   I do not doubt at all the objective validity of the deliverances of conscience in general or even the validity of the present deliverance; I simply override the present deliverance.  I just block it out.  I don't even have to engage in any rationalization.  I merely suppress the bite of conscience and go ahead with the action.

 

So I don't see that my definition of meta-temptation applies to this sort of case.  I know (or rather believe) that what I am about to do is objectively wrong, but, in the grip of lust, I freely suppress this knowledge (or belief) and freely go ahead with the contemplated action. I am not choosing what appears to me at the moment most desirable (desire-worthy), for I believe I am about to do a morally shabby thing.  But I do it anyway!  I willfully do what I know or believe I ought not do.  And I do it freely.  Lust may have me in its grip but I am not powerless to resist it; I freely consent to going with the flow.

 

Is not the purpose of all temptation to construct on alternate reality/metaphysic of what is good and what is evil, to make the false “look more true than truth itself” (to quote Irenaeus from his Against Heresies), to make something look larger than life in order to tempt me to believe that it will slake and satisfy my vicious lusts? It reminds me of Romans 1:22-23 where the Apostle Paul writes, "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, [23] and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” What is interesting about verse 23 is that Paul lists the order of creation backwards as if to say, “The moment you exchange the glory of the Creator for the creature, all of reality becomes inverted and perverted and thrown completely upside down.”

I think that seems to be the nature of all temptation: an inversion and perversion of reality where the evil becomes the good and the good the evil.

 

I don't see that all temptation amounts to an erection of an alternative metaphysic of good and evil.  The example I gave, which is common enough, involves no transvaluation of any received values.  We value fidelity and disvalue betrayal.

 

Please note that the inversion you speak of where the evil becomes good and the good becomes evil presupposes the moral point of view.  Suppose A agrees with B that there is an objective and absolute moral order.  But they disagree about which actions are good and which evil.  A might hold that it is objectively good to procreate while B, under the influence of Schopenhauer, holds that procreation is objectively evil.  That is a deep disagreement but one that plays out within the context of the shared assumption of an objective moral world order. The meta-temptation I am referring to is far more radical: the 'Nietzschean' temptation to dismiss as illusory the very notion of objective good and evil.