Philippine E-Journals

The Virtue of the Negative: The Gospel Narrative of the Rich Young Person and the Paradoxical Relationship between Prohibitions and Love

Roger Burggraeve

 

Abstract:

This essay offers a ‘reflective meditation’ on the gospel narrative of the rich young person (Mt 19:16-19; Mk 10:17-19; Lk 18:18-20). In his quest for the fullness of life the rich young person turns to Jesus as if to some kind of ‘guru’ to show him the way. Refusing to act the role of absolute master, Jesus points his attention to the prohibitions of the second tablet of the Ten Commandments. This implies an ethical paradox, namely that of how the negative opens the door to the positive. As boundary rules, the formulated prohibitions create the conditions for love without defining that love as behavior prescriptively. This, in turn, opens up the perspective of the ‘aesthetics of ethics’ or the ‘beauty of the good’ and the ‘community of participation’, insofar as it gives shape to the attitudes and virtues that form the soul of the ethical prohibitions. From this it becomes clear how the prohibitions are merely the embedment and not the source or goal of ethical passion, nor that of qualitative human existence.