A few months ago I devoted several posts to discussing the problem of psychopathy. Psychopaths are not merely “psychos” (i.e. completely “crazy”). Nor are they “the embodiment of evil”. Rather, they are persons who seem to lack some fundamental mechanisms in the human brain which help us to identify moral facts and to act on them. As I noted in “The Moral Blindness of the Psychopath” while drawing on the work of Robert Hare, psychopaths lack the ability to feel emotion: they cannot empathize with others, they cannot feel fear or regret, they are blind to the emotional life that guides our moral action. Many theorists have focused on this lack of emotional perception as central to psychopathy. Along these lines Ishtiyaque Haji summarizes the views of Walter Glannon as follows:
“It is through emotions such as empathy that an agent takes the interests of others into consideration when he acts. Since psychopaths lack empathy, their reasons for action exclude concern for others; hence, psychopaths are not motivated to act on moral reasons.” (262)
Other theorists surmise that the problem is more centrally a rational deficit rather than an emotional one. But all are agreed with the observation of Jeanette Kennett that the central hallmark of psychopathy is “profound amoralism”. (243)
This diagnosis of profound amoralism presents a particular problem for Christian theology which teaches a general revelation of God and his moral law which is written on the hearts of all people. This doctrine is described in Romans 2:
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.)
This passage is distinguishing two classes of people: those who have access to God’s revealed law in scripture and those who do not. Those who do are culpable for the knowledge they have from exposure to that law. The latter are not. But that latter group are still culpable for their failure to live up to another natural law, one that is “written on the heart” and to which their consciences bear witness. Theologian Millard Erickson explains:
“From the revelation within (Rom. 2), a person should realize that one does not live up to the [moral] standard. The content of the moral code held will vary in different cultural situations. All persons, however, have an inner compulsion that there is something to which they ought to adhere; and they should reach the conclusion that they are not fulfilling that standard. In other words, the knowledge of God which all humans have, if they do not suppress it, should bring them to the conclusion that they are guilty in relationship to God.” (49, emphasis added).
So here is the problem succinctly stated:
(1) Scripture teaches that all people have a basic knowledge of the moral law and a conscience that signals when they fail to adhere to that law.
(2) Psychopaths do not have a basic knowledge of the moral law and a conscience that signals when they fail to adhere to that law.
In other words, psychopaths appear to be exceptions to the scriptural rule. But does the rule admit to exceptions?
Bibliography
Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001).
Haji, “The Inauthentic Evaluative Schemes of Psycohpaths and Culpability,” in Responsibility and Psychopathy: Interfacing Law, Psychiatry, and Philosophy, ed. Luca Malatesti and John McMillan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 261-82.
Kennett, “Reasons, emotions and moral judgment in the psychopath,” in Responsibility and Psychopathy: Interfacing Law, Psychiatry, and Philosophy, 243-260.
