UNIVERSITY OF CAGAYAN VALLEY

New Site Campus Tuguegarao City,Cagayan

SCHOOL OF CRIMINOLOGY
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Name of student: Year/Section:

Subject: Character Formation 1 Instructor :

Module No. 1 MIDTERM COVERAGE

Title: KINDS OF HUMAN ACT, NORMS AND MORALITY

Course Description:
The midterm coverage covers the study of the religious concepts and values, kinds of
human acts, classification of actions according to norms of morality and the types and concepts
of voluntariness. specifically, the application of knowledge to law enforcement administration,
public safety and criminal justice and embodied in the applicable law and jurisprudence.

Learning Outcomes:
In the end of this module, the students shall be able to:
 Demonstrate and understand the different concepts and values on religious
 Understand and identify the core values, kinds of human acts and norms of morality.
 Contribute Knowledge in the understanding the classification and types of voluntariness
in relation to human acts and the existence of law.

Learning Objectives:

The objectives of this module are:

 Students are able to appreciate and understand the different concepts and values on
religious.
 Students are able to understand and apply their knowledge about the core values, kinds of
human acts and norms of morality and utilized their knowledge in law enforcement
administration, public safety and criminal justice.
 Students are able to exercise the concepts and types of voluntariness in relation to human
acts and the existence of law.

Discussion: (Pls refer to your hand-outs)

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Religion
 Is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and
practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctifiedplaces, prophecies, ethics,
or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental,
or spiritual elements. However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely
constitutes a religion.
 Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from
the divine, sacred things, faith, a supernatural being or supernatural being or "some
sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of
life". Religious practices may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration
(of deities and/or saints), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary
services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service,
or other aspects of human culture.
 Religions have sacred histories and narratives, which may be preserved in sacred
scriptures, and symbols and holy places, that aim mostly to give a meaning to life.
Religions may contain symbolic stories, which are sometimes said by followers to be
true, that have the side purpose of explaining the origin of life, the universe, and other
things. Traditionally, faith, in addition to reason, has been considered a source
of religious beliefs.

SPECIFIC KINDS OF RELIGION

1. Hinduism
 Hinduism the complex of beliefs, values, and customs comprising the dominant religi
on of India, characterized by the worship of many gods, including Brahma as suprem
e being, a caste system, belief in reincarnation, etc.
2. Buddhism
 The teaching of Siddhartha Gautama that life is permeated with suffering caused by d
esire, that suffering ceases when desire ceases, and that enlightenment obtained throu
gh right conduct, wisdom, and meditation releases one from desire, suffering, and reb
irth.
3. Islam
 The religion of the Muslims, as set forth in the Koran, that teaches that there is only o
ne God, Allah, and that Muhammad is His prophet.
4. Confucianism
 The teachings of Confucius emphasizing love for humanity; high value given to learn
ing and to devotion to family (including ancestors); peace; justice; influenced the tra
ditional culture of China.
5. Taoism
 A Chinese philosophic tradition founded by Laotzu, advocating a life of simplicity an
d naturalness and of noninterference with the course of natural events, in order to atta
in a happy existence in harmony with the Tao.
6. Judaism
 The monotheistic religion of the Jews, tracing its origins to Abraham and having its s
piritual and ethical principles embodied chiefly in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Tal
mud.
7. Christianity
 A religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus. Most forms of Christianity hold t
hat Jesus is the son of God and is the second person of the Trinity, through whom hu
mans may attain redemption from sin.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

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 The Ten Commandments, also called the Decalogue (Greek, “ten words”), were divine
laws revealed to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai. Appearing in both Exodus (Ex. 20: 2–17) and
Deuteronomy (Deut. 5:6–21), the commandments are numbered differently depending on
whether they appear in a Catholic, Protestant, or Hebrew Bible. The following is the version
given in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible.
1. You shall have no other gods before me.
2. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in
heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you
shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation
of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and
keep my commandments.
3. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him
guiltless who takes his name in vain.
4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your
work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any
work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your
cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven
and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord
blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the
Lord your God gives you.
6. You shall not kill.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his
ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor's.

THE LOVE OF GOD.

Love of God can mean either love for God or love by God. Love for God (philotheia) is
associated with the concepts of worship, and devotions towards God.
The Greek term theophilia means the love or favour of God, and theophilos means friend of
God, originally in the sense of being loved by God or loved by the gods; but is today sometimes
understood in the sense of showing love for God.

10 Things You Should Know about the Love of God

1. God’s love is incomprehensible.

No human mind can comprehend God. We cannot define God. We cannot provide a
comprehensive account of who he is. He "dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Tim. 6:16). If
God is incomprehensible, then so is his love. While we may and must speak truthfully about
his love, we can never fathom it, because it is divine love, as different from our love as his
being is different from our being

2. God’s love can be known.

We cannot define God in the sense of delimiting exhaustively who he is, but we can
nonetheless describe him truthfully. We can do so because he has made himself known to us
in his Word and he opens our eyes to that Word by his Spirit. How is that possible, given the
divine difference? It is possible because God makes himself known to us in creaturely
reality. He takes up the things he has made and uses them to describe himself to us. Thus he
is a lion, a rock, fire, even moth and dry rot (look it up!).

3. God is known by analogy.

When God uses created things like lions to speak about himself in the Bible he is speaking
analogically. This means that the things he uses to describe himself are neither identical

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with him, nor utterly different from him. He is a rock, for example, not because he is made
of stone. When he says "rock" of himself, we are not to map all the rockiness of a rock onto
him point-for-point. But nor are we to think that he is he entirely unrocky, discontinuous in
every way with rocks. When he says that he is a rock he means some of what we mean when
we say that a rock is a rock: he is not made of stone, but he is solid and reliable. How is it
possible for created things to image God for us like this? It is possible precisely because he
created them. It is as if his fingerprints are left on the things he has made, so that each of
them contains a pale reflection of some of his divine attributes. Our fallen minds cannot
piece together a picture of God from what he has made—indeed we suppress his natural
revelation—but in his inspired Word he himself can use those things to describe himself,
and then he can illuminate our minds to understand and believe those descriptions. This all
applies to God’s love: when we read "God is love" we know something of what love is from
what he has made, but his love is never to be identified point-for-point with any created love
that we already know.

4. The pictures of God in the Bible regulate themselves, including pictures of his love.

A pressing question then arises: how do we know which aspects of each picture that God
draws of himself we are to apply to him and which we are not? How do we know that we are
not to infer that his love might ebb and flow as human love can, even that it might fail? This
may seem obvious to us, but that is only because we have to some extent already learned
how to read the Bible properly. What, when we stop and think about it, is the reason that we
do not infer this? The reason is that other ways in which God describes himself prevent us
doing so—for example, his repeated self-description as a covenant-keeping God who makes
solemn oaths to his people. The Bible is a self-interpreting book: what it says in one part
shows us how we are to read another part. Its many pictures of God form a self-interpreting
mesh of images. And that includes its pictures of his love.

5. We quickly leap to the wrong conclusions about God’s love.

We are often less alert to the ways in which the love language is to be interpreted in the
light of God’s other descriptions of himself. This comes out very clearly when someone
says something like, "If I were a God of love then I . . . " The reasoning that follows is
usually untethered from God’s wider portrayal of himself in Scripture. When we do this God
becomes in effect just a massive projection of our own selves, a shadow cast onto a screen
behind us with all of our own features magnified and exaggerated. Whereas it may be
immediately obvious to us that God will not decide to stop loving us, for some reason it is
less obvious that his love is different from our love in other ways, such as in being self-
sufficient, sovereign, unchanging, all-knowing, just, and passionless (yes, rightly
understood).

6. God’s love must be "read" within the rest of what Scripture teaches about his divine
attributes.

We are not free to pick up the ball of "God is love" and run with it wherever we will. The
statement must remain tethered within its immediate context in 1 John 4, within the broader
context of John’s writings, and within the ultimate context of God’s entire self-description
in Scripture. The local context immediately reminds us (in verse 10) of the connection
between love and propitiation, which requires that we understand God’s love alongside his
justice and wrath. The ultimate context of Scripture will bring alongside his love all of the
other attributes of God. Together they will form a self-regulating mesh of meaning.

7. God’s love must be "read" especially within what Scripture teaches about his triune
life.

Further, the wider context in John’s writings will repeatedly connect the love of God to his
triune life. John delights to write of the Father’s love for the Son and the Son’s love for the
Father. He even records the Lord Jesus saying that the Father loves him because he lays
down his life (John 10:17). Love is not unique for being a trinitarian attribute: all the
attributes of God are the attributes of the one God who is three persons, but we must never
miss the trinitarian character of the love of God.

8. Reading God’s love in its wider context keeps us from error.

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Love is perhaps the most obvious attribute for consideration from a trinitarian perspective,
but we more readily observe that than grasp the theological consequences of it. What a
difference it will make if, for example, we recall that the love of God is rooted in the
Father’s love for his Son and his resulting will to see the Son honored (John 5:22–23). Then
we will not infer from "God is love" that he easily overlooks sin, because we will grasp that
Christ-dishonoring sin is itself an offense against the very heart of God’s love. From God’s
love for his Son will follow his wrath against sinners. It is only when we read the love of
God like this that we will be prevented from reaching false conclusions from it by making
our own natural minds the context in which we interpret it.

9. Understanding the different manner of God’s love helps us to see its

immeasurable magnitude.

The consideration of the love of God in its proper biblical contexts is not an exercise in
abstraction of interest only to obscurantist systematic theologians. It may be easier just to
think "God is love" and to fill that statement with whatever our human minds suggest.
Certainly it requires less mental effort just to let our own minds generate our theology,
rather than to subject them to the disciplined study of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. But
at the end of the day a god who is little more than a projection of my own mind can never
satisfy me. Worshipping such a god would be like being locked in a room with only myself
as company, a kind of theological solitary confinement, a terrible narcissistic solipsism, and
ultimately a form of self-worshipping idolatry akin in some ways to hell itself. There is no
satisfaction on this road, only bitter disappointment. It is meditation on the authoritative
self-revelation of God in its fullness that will bring rest for our souls, the rest of finding in
him one who infinitely exceeds our own puny finitude, one whose delights can never be
exhausted.

10. God’s love truly perceived always draws out from us a response of love.

The contemplation of divine love in its biblical fullness is never something that ends in
itself. Our rest in God never finds its fulfillment in ourselves but always leads us out of
ourselves toward him and toward others. The love of God is to be lived as well as learned.
The love of God for us begets love in us for him and for others. The true Word of love that
we have in the Bible, if we have it truly, will abide in us, and will not return empty as, by
miracles of grace, we make glancing reflections of the immeasurable love of God visible to
others in our own lives.

HUMAN ACT
 The human act is one that is proper to a human being, an act that proceeds from the free
will of a man.
 A human act is an act that is deliberately performed by one possessed of the use of
reason. Deliberately performed means that it is done freely and knowingly.
ESSENTIAL ATTRIBUTES
Knowledge – a human act proceeds from the deliberate will.

Freedom – a human act is an act determined by the will and by nothing else.

Voluntariness – the formal essential quality of the human act. Both knowledge and freedom are
present.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF HUMAN ACTS

 Elicited Acts – These are human acts which find their adequate cause in the will alone.
 Commanded Acts – Human acts that do not find their adequate cause in the simple-will
act, but are perfected by the action of mental or bodily powers under the control of will.

TYPES OF ELICITED ACTS

 Wish – the simple love of anything.
 Intention – the purposive tendency of the will towards a thing.
 Consent – the acceptance by the will of the means necessary to carry out intention.

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  Election – the selection by the will of the precise means to be employed in carrying out
an intention.
 Use – the employment by the will of powers to carry out its intention by the means
elected.
 Fruition – the enjoyment of a thing willed and done.

TYPES OF COMMANDED ACTS

 Internal – acts done by internal mental powers under command of the will.
 External – acts affected by bodily powers under command of the will
 Mixed – acts that involve the employment of bodily powers and mental powers.

VOLUNTARINESS OF A HUMAN ACT

 Degrees of Voluntariness

 Perfect – it is present in the human act when the performer fully knows and fully
intends the act.
 Imperfect – it is present when there is some defect in the agent’s knowledge,
intention, or in both
 Simple – it is present in a human act performed, whether the agent likes or dislikes
doing it.
 Conditional – is present in the agent’s wish to do something other than which he is
actually doing.
 Direct – is present in a human act willed in itself.
 Indirect – is present in that human act which is the foreseen result of another act
directly willed.
 Positive – is present in a human act of doing, performing.
 Negative – is present in a human act of omitting, refraining from doing.

VOLUNTARINESS

 A voluntary act is an act which proceeds from free will acting in the light of knowledge.
 Came from the latin word “voluntas” reffering to the WILL.

TYPES OF VOLUNTARINESS

1. PERFECT VOLUNTARINESS

 Is present in a person who fully knows and fully intends an act.

2. IMPERFECT VOLUNTARINESS

 Is present in a person who acts without fully realizing what he means to do, or without
fully intending the act.

3. SIMPLE VOLUNTARINESS

 Is present in a person doing an act willfully, regardless whether he likes to do it or not.

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 4. CONDITIONAL VOLINTARINESS

 Is present in a person who is forced by circumstances beyond his control to perform an

act which he would not do under normal conditions.

Prepared by: CFLM INSTRUCTORS

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