Can God Ground Necessary Moral Truths?

Robert from Canada wrote to Reasonable Faith:
Dear Dr. Craig,

There have been a lot questions recently asked about grounding the existence of morality in God, and I have one as well. The Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne rejects the Moral Argument for God because, he thinks, moral truths are necessarily true, and so the existence of God cannot have an effect on their truth.

He comes to the conclusion that moral truths are necessary because certain events are thought to be morally good or bad; more than that, the moral goodness or badness of an event is inseparable from the state of affairs itself. So, Swinburne claims, there is no possible world in which the exact same things occur as occurred during the holocaust, and in which the holocaust is not morally abominable. It is the same with other events that are considered morally good or bad. There is no possible world in which the event is the same as in the actual world and in which the moral judgement of the event is different than in the actual world. Thus Swinburne concludes that the moral judgement of an event is necessary to the event itself. And this leads naturally to his conclusion that the existence or non-existence of God is irrelevant to the existence of the moral judgement since the moral judgement is necessary given the event.

Swinburne's argument would thus undercut one of the premises to your moral argument. I am a Christian philosophy student at a secular university where many of my professors take a view similar to Swinburne, holding that the objectivity of moral values does not depend on God's existence. I have read and heard your arguments about the absurdity of life without God, and I am currently undecided. What would be your response to Swinburne's argument?

Robert

Mailbag: The Best Argument for Now? A Question about the Abductive Moral Argument

James writes:

In Good God, and God & Cosmos, Baggett and Walls argue that William Lane Craig’s deductive argument for morality isn't as persuasive to intellectual atheists, and that abductive arguments are preferred because they are more persuasive to unbelievers as they avoid the problems with the atheological premise of the Deductive Argument. However, what if the atheist were to ask, "Do you mean that's the best argument FOR NOW, or is it possible that there could be a better explanation than your best explanation down the road?" Granted, this objection would be an argumentum ignorantium, but for the Abductivist himself has conceded that his own argument wasn't designed to provide certainty, so how can the Abductivist answer this objection without begging the question that his current explanation is the best explanation, and will ALWAYS be the best explanation?

For the record, I like both arguments. I, however, use the deductive argument more frequently because I haven't been able to have a quality conversation with an unbeliever for any longer than 5 minutes since the 2016 election LOL

In Christ, 

James A., PhD

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Hi James,

Thanks for your e-mail to MoralApologetics. This is Dave Baggett, co-author of God and Cosmos & Good God. You note that in those books we issue a critical verdict on WLC's deductive moral argument. This is true. And that we talk about how abduction can avoid the atheological premise of the deductive variant. Yes. Then you write, what if the atheist were to ask, "Do you mean that's the best argument FOR NOW, or is it that there could be a better explanation than your best explanation down the road?" 

Yeah, I think this is a good question. The nature of abduction seems to leave open the possibility of a better explanation. If we're talking about the BEST explanation, a certain tentativeness seems built in. Otherwise we’d talk of the “best possible explanation,” which some students seem to think abduction means, before I point out that it’s not. If a better explanation comes along, it could unseat the current winner. That seems right.

Of course I can't imagine what that would be in the case of accounting for moral facts. Naturalistic accounts just seem inherently limited, axiarchic approaches seem deficient, pantheistic and panentheistic accounts seem wrongheaded, etc. So though it's theoretically possible there could be a better explanation, it's awfully hard to imagine what it would or could be. It's also the case that our analysis is predicated on Anselmianism, which literally involves a being than whom none greater can be conceived—which makes it all the harder to top when it comes to explanatory potential! 🙂

All that said, I've laid off criticizing Craig's approach in recent years. He and I co-taught a class on the moral argument at Houston Baptist, and I found that our approaches deeply dovetailed at so many points that the number of disagreements in approach seemed small by comparison. And we now have a contract with Baker Academic to write a book together on the subject, one in which we'll be mainly talking about the resonances of our perspectives, not any remaining differences, at least for the most part. (By the way, it was hearing Craig give an argument for the historicity of the resurrection in abductive terms years ago that most inspired me to go that route.)

I've also realized in recent years that talk of "best explanation" is awfully ambitious. I usually rest content with speaking of a robust account, or powerful account, or even adequate account.
Of course, all of this pertains to the matter of how best to couch the moral argument. As long as folks are intelligently pushing the moral argument, which can come in deductive, inductive, abductive, or even other forms (like Evans' Reformed-sounding "natural signs" approach)—or even embodying it by the life they live like Fred Rogers did—I'm happy to hear it and rejoice these important truths are being accentuated one way or another. (The fun aspect of inductive variants is distinguishing between what Swinburne calls P- and C-inductive arguments here: does the moral evidence increase the evidence for theism just a bit, or enough to make it more likely than not?)

Bottom line: What's really great is God himself, not any particular discursive analysis. Proponents of various stripes of the moral argument agree on a whole lot more than they might disagree on, and it’s vital we not lose the proverbial forest for the trees.

I've also seen, at the same time, that a helpful feature of abduction is that, when dealing with an individual, we don't have to take on every potential theory out there. We can just focus on contrasting a theist picture with the picture of morality that our interlocutor provides. This helps delimit the conversation and not have to do more than is practicable in a conversation or two. The ultimate aspirations of abduction when it comes to so heady a topic as ours is a human quest spanning generations to which any of us at most contributes but one voice. 

By the way, I’ve started reading a great book—McCain and Poston’s Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation. Highly recommended.
Every best wish in your work; thanks for the note.

Blessings,

Dave

Mailbag: What about the Cudworth Objection?

Question:

I am writing to you because I am currently working on an article that is critical of certain versions of the moral argument and I am researching the work that you have done on the topic. I have read both Good God and God and Cosmos. Recently, as I was reviewing your arguments concerning moral obligation, I was re-reading a passage from chapter 9 of God and Cosmos, specifically the section titled, "Moral Obligations." What caught my attention is something that you say on p. 289: "[God's] commands would furnish powerful new reasons or performing various acts." 

I hope that you might have time to consider and respond to a couple of questions about what you say here. The focus of my article is precisely on the question of whether God's commands can provide us with additional reasons. My view, roughly, is that divine commands provide additional reasons only when there is an antecedent obligation to obey God. In the absence of such an antecedent obligation, divine commands are normatively impotent (i.e., they add nothing to our reasons to engage in any action). My question is this: Do you agree that God's commands provide additional reasons only given the existence of such a prior obligation or do you think that God's commands can provide such reasons without such a prior obligation? If the latter, do you have an argument for the conclusion that God's commands can provide additional reasons in the absence of any prior obligation to obey God (and have you provided such an argument in any of your published works?). 
Please forgive me if you have addressed these questions in your books or other writings. I have tried to track down answers, but I have not found anything that directly addresses these questions. If I have missed something, I sincerely apologize.

Thank you very much for you time,

Jason

 Answer:

Hi Jason! Thanks for the note. Hope you are well. I'll offer what I have, which isn't much!

What a fun project you're working on. Appreciate the question, and it's an important one, I think. I suspect the answer to your question is "yes," that DCT provides new reasons iff we're antecedently obligated to obey God. The question then boils down to why whether we're obligated to obey God and, if so, why. This is the "prior obligations objection," and it's a thorny challenge, I think. We first discussed it a bit on pp. 122-123 of Good God, though not by name. There we took up the question of God's authority--does he have the authority to give us binding commands? And we try tying our answer to his great-making properties. That was at least our first go trying to address what we considered the crux of the issue. 

In a later book that my wife and I wrote together called The Morals of the Story, we discuss it at a bit more length, though still altogether too briefly. Here we discuss it explicitly by name, on pages 147-149. The objection is tied to Cudworth historically, so sometimes gets dubbed the "Cudworth objection." At any rate, we mention what Jer and I said about it in Good God, but also discuss a half dozen possible solutions to the puzzle that Evans provides in God and Moral Obligation. We don't really discuss them at length as much as point readers to take a look at what he says on pages 98-101 of his book. We also mention Hare's solution echoing Scotus and Pufendorf that you can find on p. 58 of God's Command.

'm sure there's quite a bit more to say about this important objection, but so far those are the only places I've addressed it. I'm inclined to think that if we can answer the question of God's authority well, it will address the matter. Although Evans made mention of the possibility of bootstrapping, most worry that there's something circular to punting to God's command to account for the authority of God's command--even though God does tell us to obey him. I'm left wanting more, and understand others who do as well. So far I've rested somewhat content with the sketch of an answer provided by the considerations Evans, Hare, and Jer and I have offered, but as I say I'm sure quite a bit more can and should be said.

The reason I retain such openness to DCT is not because I think it's the only possible way to ground ethics in God, but just because, honestly, it strikes me as intuitive that God would be the one able to issue authoritative commands owing to who he is and who we are as creatures, and because the objections to it I've heard usually strike me as admitting to a solution. So it's never seemed an obviously bad theory to me, although I'm more strongly committed to a dependence relation of morality on God in one way or another than specifically this way. Regarding this objection, if bootstrapping isn't enough, as I suspect it isn't, it would show that a key foundational principle on which DCT is predicated is an obligation not attributable to DCT. But since I don't think that all moral realities are grounded in DCT, this doesn't bother me too much. Maybe it should bother me more than it does, but at least I console myself by the reminder that other moral theories, at their root, encounter a similar challenge. For example, the utilitarian is confronted with the question, Why maximize utility? Appealing to the maximization of utility doesn't help much. It makes some amount of sense, to me anyway, that so foundational a grounding principle might have a slightly different moral rationale than the rest of the theory. And if, for the DCT'ist, it comes down to something as foundational as good moral reasons, and even an obligation, to obey our Creator who loves us, is perfect, who desires our well-being, etc., then I feel like we're on the right track. 

As I say, I have tended to divide the two questions you're tying together, though I can see why you think them intimately connected: does God have authority to issue us binding commands, and does DCT offer us distinctive ("powerful new") reasons to perform various acts. I find that explicit connection intriguing, and wondering if there's something new you're pointing out there or if there are just two conceptually distinct questions here.

Blessings in your work! I look forward to what you come up with.

Best,

Dave

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Mailbag: How to Decide Which Moral Principles to Use in the Moral Argument

Dear Dr. Baggett,  

What underlying principle determines which moral principles should be accepted by the “gods”? Every religion is different and wouldn’t one have to assume that all religions share a moral common ground? It seems to me that one has to first specify their metaphysics (perhaps even their epistemology) before arguing from morality.  

Thank you for taking the time out of your day to read this email. God bless!  

In Christ,  

Matthew  

Hi Matthew, 

Thanks for the note. 

This sounds like a question of first principles. Here I tend think morality has a sort of primacy. A German philosopher named Hermann Lotze affirmed a principle that our metaphysics is rooted in morality. This is rather different from what often gets affirmed today—start with metaphysics and epistemology, and then fit everything else in and around those disciplines. Lotze thought it okay to start with morality, sensing that it is somehow fundamental. I'm inclined to agree.  Following Mark Linville, I call this "Lotze's Dictum." I see something like such a principle at the heart of the moral apologetics enterprise.  

Then, following Robert Adams, I tend to think, based on basic credulity principles and such, that we are entitled to think that our moral convictions of the deepest ingression can be taken as generally reliable. Without some such assumption, there's not much hope of constructing anything like a moral argument. But again, if morality is considered for principled reasons a real indicator of reality, and evidentially significant in enabling us to figure out aspects of the world, these starting points seem eminently reasonable to me. If someone demurs, they're perfectly entitled to, of course, but I don't find there to be compelling reasons for me to overly concerned with their skepticism on the matter. I simply don't think I'm surer of just about anything than I am that, say, torturing kids for fun is wrong. So to me this can function axiomatically. I don't have apodictic certainty, but such an aim is unrealistically high. As I said in class, putting it this way makes it seem like affirming moral objectivism is nothing more than an intuitive matter, but I think there's a lot more to it than that. That's more appearance than reality. But for a starting point, it's not bad. 

Up until now religion and God haven't played any part in the conversation, you will note. We're just talking about a basic axiomatic moral principle or two. Once one becomes convinced of something like moral realism, the question then becomes, what worldview best accounts for the existence of objective moral facts (again, if such there be)? Now, there are two matters here: the modality of these truths, and the content of these truths. Some might simply wish to run a moral argument based on moral realism--the modality of these truths--their necessary truth or existence, for example. Others might wish to delve into the content.  

As for me, I stay away from the content except a few general claims. I like the example of torturing kids for fun. It's not particularly controversial. It's something I suspect most every religion would agree on. And most every atheist. It's a likely contender for a synthetic necessary moral truth if there is one, something we're more sure of than most anything that could challenge it, perhaps even something that's properly basic (though it needn't be for the moral argument to get off the ground). In other words, its epistemic credentials are pretty impeccable, as far as I'm concerned. 

At this point if one insists we must first lay out the metaphysics of such a truth before arguing from morality, I think I'd say I don't think so. The self-evidence of the proposition in question makes it such that it's more likely to be argued from than to. The moral argument is an effort to get at the metaphysics behind such a moral truth. Getting to the metaphysics is what the moral argument tries to do. If something like an Anselmian God provides the best explanation of such a moral truth, then I consider myself altogether justified and warranted to infer, at least tentatively, to God as the likely true explanation, which is to say, the metaphysical foundation, the ontological grounding, of such a truth. 

Part of what's going on here, I think, is this: our epistemic faculties are such that we can hold our belief about child torture for fun with a high degree of assurance. This is good, since it's basically a premise in the moral argument, and the premises of an argument, if the argument is a good one, need to be strong. If you're convinced of the truth of realism, with at least this minimal content held in common across a broad array of worldviews and religious persuasions, the rest of the work the argument needs to do falls on how well theism generally (or perhaps Christianity particularly) provides the most robust explanation on offer.  

When it comes to basic moral principles, I say I lean toward focusing on noncontroversial content (the vexed questions can be taken up later; this is a matter of ethical foundations)—but it's true that I also extend my four-fold approach to include matters of performance, knowledge, and rationality. But I at least start with minimal content and matters of metaphysics and epistemology—but with a high view of what morality has to say to us and a basic confidence in pre-theoretical moral convictions of a certain stripe. It has always seemed to me that we can know with great confidence the nonnegotiable truth of at least certain basic ethical principles, which is why I'm convinced they're as good a place as any to start doing natural theology. I figure if I'm wrong, well, I'm wrong, but it's where I feel good throwing my lot. People should not be sawn in two; dignity should be upheld; etc. (I'm not saying the rest of the moral argument is this obvious, but the starting point, at least, seems to be.) 

This is all too brief, but in a nutshell, it gives you an idea of what I think. I encourage you to keep thinking about this stuff! I appreciate your note very much. 

Blessings, 

Dave B. 

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David Baggett is professor of philosophy and Director of the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University.

Mailbag: Does Morality Need a Personal Explanation?

Good morning Dr. Baggett, 

I hope all is well with you, but I wanted to ask you a question as it pertains to Moral ontology. Now bear with me Dr. Baggett I am a novice and am just throwing thoughts out there so i may sound silly at times. However, when it comes to moral ontology I know many people who aren't theist will argue morality exist in this platonic state. That moral truths exist necessarily and we can ground them in moral Platonism therefore there is no need for God as the grounding. 

My question is this: do you think the foundation of morality (its ontology) needs to be a personal source? The reason I ask this is because when I think about morality it seems to only make sense between personal agents. Take for example humans When I kick another human for no reason that is considered immoral, however when I Kick say a rock or a tree no one looks at that and says I’m being immoral. As a matter of fact we would say that the relationship between a rock and me is more Morally apathetic, to even speak of morality between us is absurd. 

So if that's the case and morality only seems to really make sense between Personal agents. Why should we believe that Moral Platonism (a non-sentient or personal object) can even ground morality? 

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the long question Dr Baggett. 

Joshua 

              Hi Joshua! For a self-professed novice you ask an excellent question, and I think your intuition is exactly right. How we might choose to couch it could be either (among other possibilities) to say that the personal source is the only explanation or the best explanation. It may well be both but it's a bit less ambitious to argue the latter. This is what I do. A personal source of morality makes better sense of the relevant moral data than an impersonal source. After all the truths of morality don't merely seem abstract, but intimately tied to personhood. Many of the great luminaries in the history of the moral argument have shared this conviction, which inspired them to look for a personal source. Platonism is perhaps, to my thinking, the second-best account out there, and it has more than a little going for it. For example, a committed secular Platonist would agree with the thorough-going theistic ethicist on moral realism, moral cognitivism, error theory, expressivism, constructivism, and even non-naturalism. It's just the final fork in the road where they part ways: Platonism or theism. And this is where the personal nature of theism has a definitive advantage, it seems to me. But as George Mavrodes puts it, the Platonic man rightly sees morality as deeply rooted in reality, which is absolutely right. This means there's lots of common ground shared by the theist and Platonist. And even though theism posits an additional entity, as it were, there are principled reasons for doing so because the personal explanation is the better, more robust explanation, so parsimony alone can't be used to give the nod to Platonism. Besides, if Swinburne is right, a theistic explanation can often prove simpler than secular ones. We can also choose, if we wish, to be something like theistic Platonists, as Robert Adams does, which may well be the way to go. This way the eternal verities are thoughts in God's mind, or something like that, rather than existing in metaphysical limbo, as John Rist puts it. So those are a few thoughts anyway! Thanks so much for the note, and I encourage you to keep thinking these matters through, Joshua. You might peruse MoralApologetics.com for additional resources, all free. By the way, I just got done directing a dissertation by Stephen Jordan arguing that a whole range of moral facts point to a personal source rather than an impersonal one. Hopefully in time we will see a version of it in print.

Blessings, Dave

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David Baggett is professor of philosophy and Director of the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University.

Mailbag: Which Books on the Moral Argument Do You Recommend?

Hello, 

I am an aspiring philosopher/theologian with a graduate degree in and passion for apologetics, and I was hoping you could help me out. I'm looking for your personal list of books that someone who wants an advanced understanding moral argument needs to read.

For context, I'm looking to develop a list containing between 20 and 30 books dedicated to the moral argument. Ideally I'd have 15-20 books that provide support for and at least 5-10 books that challenge the argument. Ideally these texts would be mostly at the advanced level, or minimally, intermediate. 

The reason I'd like to do this is so that in the future I could dedicate a year to working through the best resources related to the argument. Ultimately, I'm looking to have advanced understanding of the argument.

I appreciate any recommendations you can give. 

Sincerely, 

Lucas

Hi, Lucas! Love that you want to spend time sinking into the moral argument. I think that too often nowadays arguments like this are treated as just a tool in the arsenal, rather than the rich resource they are for reflection, enjoyment, beauty, insight, spiritual formation, etc. The moral argument has it all going on.

There are five major components to the moral argument as I think about it. One is the history of the argument; another is a critique of secular ethics; another is a defense of theistic ethics; another is a defense of the moral realism on which it is all based; and another is an extension of the argument beyond theism to Christianity.

Regarding its history, Jerry Walls and I wrote The Moral Argument: A History, which directs you to folks like Kant, Newman, Taylor, Sorley, Rashdall, and others. Some of that’s really rich reading—especially Newman’s Grammar of Assent and Taylor’s Faith of a Moralist. Classics. Anyway, lots of recommendations in that book.

In terms of a critique of secular ethics, we wrote God and Cosmos, but just a start and promissory note. Linville’s piece on the moral argument, easily accessible online, is well worth reading. The debate between Craig and Wielenberg is coming out this year; that’s quite good. Edited by Adam Johnson. In terms of defending theistic ethics, that was the main goal of our Good God. But there are lots of possibilities here, including Zagzebski’s Divine Motivation Theory, Evans’ God and Moral Obligations, Hare’s Moral Gap, Adams’ Finite and Infinite Goods, Ritchie’s From Morality to Metaphysics. Most of these cover more than just one aspect of the moral argument—both defending theistic ethics and critiquing alternatives, for example. Wielenberg’s Robust Ethics offers criticisms of theistic ethics and an effort at a more secular account of ethics. Wielenberg and I have a written debate on Lewis’s moral argument in a book edited by Greg Bassham.

In terms of defending moral realism, see Cuneo’s The Normative Web, Shafer-Landau’s Moral Realism, and Enoch’s Taking Morality Seriously; all are important. Jerry and I aim to write our fourth book on the moral argument on this topic, finishing our planned tetralogy.

For extending the moral argument to Christianity, that is cutting-edge stuff. We need to see more books on this—especially using, say, Trinitarian resources. Adam Johnson wrote his dissertation on this recently at Southeastern, and Brian Trapp did about a decade ago at Southern. There may be more resources along such lines but I’m not as familiar with this literature. I have some doctoral students working on such topics in their dissertations. My guess is great work is coming here as the community of moral apologists builds and the momentum of the movement grows.

Incidentally, several of the folks mentioned—Hare, Adams, Evans, etc.—have done more than one book that’s important for the moral argument.

Important folks who are more secular to consider can be found when you look at rival ethical accounts. I mentioned Wielenberg, Enoch, and Shafer-Landau (though he aims for more neutrality on the God question than most), but as you get into error theory, expressivism, constructivism, sensibility, theory, and nontheistic moral realism (either natural or non-natural), you run into a host of thinkers: McDowell, Blackburn, Wiggins, Mackie, R. M. Hare (John’s father), Joyce, Korsgaard, Brink, Harman, Boyd, Foot, Parfit, etc.

There’s a four views book on God and morality edited by Loftin, and a nice anthology on God and ethics edited by Garcia and King called Is Goodness without God Good Enough? that’s eminently worth reading.

Of course avail yourself of this website, MoralApologetics.com, for a host of resources related to the moral argument from a wide array of disciplines. (The site will soon come under the auspices of the Center for Moral Apologetics we get to start at Houston Baptist this fall, as we are joining all the exciting things already happening there.) Recently the site’s begun a new series about recent developments in the moral argument—which reminds me, I have hardly mentioned contemporaries working on the moral argument; we’ve seen a real resurgence of work and interest on the topic over the last several decades.

Mark Murphy is an important thinker who has written some serious books on ethics from a theistic perspective although he is more reticent than many to make it into an apologetic matter. Still, though, quite worth reading, rife with trenchant insight and philosophical rigor. Kevin Kinghorn is a friend and good philosopher who studied with Swinburne and has written some important and germane books: A Framework of the Good, & (with Travis) But What About God’s Wrath? Much recommended.

In taking on alternative moral theories, of which there are a plethora, one might also be interested in taking on not just nonreligious alternatives, but non-Christian religious perspectives. Brian Scalise has done nice work using the Trinity to contrast an Islamic conception of love with that of Christianity’s; Ronnie Campbell has contrasted a Christian perspective on the problem of evil with those of several worldviews (pantheism, panentheism, etc.); TJ Gentry is finishing up a dissertation at North-Western using resources from moral apologetics to critique Mormonism; etc.

Paul Copan has penned a widely anthologized piece on the moral argument, and my wife and I have done a more popular level book that incorporated elements of Good God, God and Cosmos, and the history of the moral argument called Morals of the Story.

Sorry I can’t give you a more exhaustive list for now, but this is at least suggestive. You can find more resources in the notes and bibliographies of these books. I encourage you in your study! I am excited you have the interest; please keep in touch and let me know how it goes.

Blessings,

djb

Mailbag: How do you define the good?

Hi. I had a quick morality question for you. I hope that’s okay. I’ve been working with students at the local college campus, discussing morality. I’m wondering how do you define “the Good”? I’ll usually say something like “the Good is that which conforms to the nature and will of God.” What do you think?

Dave

Hi Dave! Thanks for the note. Your question is of course such a great one, and it is one of the hardest ones. Let me say a bit why I find it so devilishly difficult. Of course folks use “good” in nonmoral evaluative ways all the time—like "my computer is good." Thomists though want to put this sort of teleological consideration into the center of their ethical theory. Something is good to the extent it fulfills its function, or something like that, they will say.

Likewise with human beings, though morality enters the picture more explicitly with us, and if we are made by God and for intimacy with Him and others, then loving God and neighbor is what our purpose is. Thus, to the extent we do such things, we are (morally) good.

I don’t think that’s terrible. It probably has a lot going for it. But there has to be more, it seems to me, because of an example I think Wolterstorff comes up with: a serial killer’s “purpose” is to kill lots of people. So he’s a good serial killer if he does. But there is nothing moral about such goodness. So we have to ask not just whether someone or something performs his or her or its function or purpose, but whether the function or purpose is itself good. At that point a purely teleological account of the good seems to require something more deontological.

So regarding moral goodness in particular, what constitutes the standard or ground of moral value? To me the best account we have is the Christian God, owing to his nature. Of course our naturalist friends who are objectivists on such matters usually point to something like human flourishing. And there is some truth in that, it seems to me. This is what makes disambiguating these partially divergent/overlapping views onerous. As a Christian I’m convinced we were meant for flourishing, eudaimonia, shalom, joy, etc. But the question then becomes, what does that look like for us as humans? And the answer to that query invariably rides on what is ultimately real. If we are mere collocations of atoms and nothing else, our highest fulfillments are likely reducible to naturalistic items. But moral langauge and logic and phenomenology, to my thinking, all point beyond categories that naturalism alone can manage.

So I’m inclined to think the joy and telos for which we were designed requires more than that. So even if I were to agree that what's “good” for us is our flourishing (or something in that vicinity), it still points to something likely transcendent—something, I suspect, like the beatific vision. It seems to me the point is this: we cannot simply speak of what’s good for us and think we’re done; that very question drives us to ask what is good in and of itself.

Now, certain of our experiences are good intrinsically—like our friendships. But what is the ground of such intrinsic goods? Again, I don’t see how we avoid metaphysics if we really want to be thoughtful about it, and to me the best explanation seems likely to be classical theism. The nature of such a God seems to be at the front and center of what “the Good” is. This puts me in the theistic Platonist camp, but of course one can be a Christian without buying that. But it’s where I tend to go. Like you, I’m inclined to say that things are good to the extent they partake in or resemble the ultimate good. That is what makes sense of the value of friendship—it resembles God’s loving nature. At least that’s how I see it.

Christian theology makes even more fine-grained the analysis, since we know God’s nature to be Trinitarian—an eternal dance of other-regarding love. So this makes great sense of love being at the center of things, and of loving God and neighbor capturing all the laws and prophets. We are invited to participate in the love that functions at the foundation of reality and always has.

Ultimately I suspect we can effect a sort of rapprochement between Platonic and Thomistic accounts of the good, since we have been made in God’s image. What is best for us (loving relationships with God and others) and most conduces to our joy depends on what is most ultimately real and good in and of itself (God himself, indeed Trinitarian love).

Note, though, that this isn’t so much a “definition” of goodness as something else. I agree with Moore that we can’t define it. I still suspect, and think there’s good reason to believe, God is in some sense constitutive of it. That is more analysis than definition. And since God’s ineffable, this account has the advantage of rendering ultimate goodness, too, beyond our ken in ineliminable respects, necessitating what Adams calls a “critical stance” toward any other (likely deflationary) rival account of the good.

So, yes, hard question!! But in a nutshell that’s what I’m inclined to say. Thanks for the question.

djb

Mailbag: The Best Progressive Arguments for the Acceptance of Homosexuality and a Traditionalist Response

Editor’s Note: Earlier this month, we shared an article, “African Methodism will not bow the knee to US progressivism”, on social media. Charlie commented the following:

So, I would consider myself for this topic to be part of the aforementioned US Progressives. However, this article, while being very pointed, seems to a good job representing the African Church. 

I do have a request though, would it be possible for you guys to release an article on the, honestly, strongest argument presented the conference for the One Church Plan? I feel like they're missing the component of the opposing argument and I would really appropriate the honest response to the US Progressive camp from an evangelical perspective as opposed to an article very caught up in the political side (money, power, etc)

We asked our resident Methodist scholar, Dr. Tom Thomas, to give a reply.

Thank you very much for asking for the best arguments for the acceptance of homosexual practice, marriage and leadership in the church and an evangelical response.  That you are interested in thinking through this difficult issue by examining both the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ encourages me.  Too often today both sides of an issue are not given fair opportunity for rational interaction.  Permit me to make this proviso: our subject is way too long for a piece this short.  Nonetheless, your request is a worthy exercise.  Let us try to drill down to main arguments.  May this piece spur your study of fuller treatments.   

The determinative factor of both the progressives (those advocating acceptance of homosexual practice) and traditionalists (those advocating sexual relations only between one man and one woman in marriage) viewpoints is their take on the shared text:  Holy Scripture.  One’s assumption here is the basis of a continental divide between whether Scriptural commitments on homosexuality run east, or west!  Progressives reassure traditionalists ‘we love the Bible’ and ‘believe in its authority’.  ‘Good’, says the traditionalist, ‘but cannot one also love the United States Constitution and believe in its authority’?  Is not the paramount question whether the Holy Scripture is the God-breathed Word to human authors who unfailingly express what God desires written; or, whether it is a record of humanly, gifted people’s reflections of their experiences of God?  The traditionalist sees Scripture as God’s revelation to his people; the progressive as human revelation of God-experiences.  For the traditionalist the issue is not Scriptures’ authority but its supreme authority.  Is or is not the Bible God’s inspired, infallible word preeminent over every authority? While progressives privilege ‘the totality of human experience’ and subject all texts to it, the traditionalist submits every authority to Scriptural authority.

In assuming this, therefore, the progressives can say the debate over homosexuality is not about words in the Bible but about what the words ‘mean for us today’.    The GC 2019 Delegate newsletter of the pro-acceptance United Methodist group ‘Mainstream UMC’ says the meaning of the Bible’s words change over time.  Much of the Bible is ‘descriptive truth’ which means what was ‘true’ in former times and cultures is not ‘true’ today.   The traditionalist responds the authors’ words mean today just what they meant then, in South Korea or Kansas.  The meanings’ ‘significance’ may vary and continuing research enlightens the contexts, but what God meant to say then God means to say today.

You can see this play out in specific biblical texts (called ‘clobber texts’ because they are overwhelmingly negative regarding homosexuality) invariably at the center of the debate.    Leviticus 18: 22 (also, 20:13) states, ‘You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.’  Receiving accolades for his recent theological argument for same sex covenantal partnerships, Durham University Professor Robert Song acknowledges with traditionalists that it is difficult to see any other reference here than to homosexual anal intercourse.   However, Professor Song and other progressives typically discount the force of the prohibition.  They are seen privileging contemporary experience over Scriptural authority when they argue such a law as the above was part of an Old Testament Jewish ritual, purity code fulfilled in Christ.  Like ritual, dietary laws (eating pork), they are no longer binding on Christians today.  Traditionalists in a long tradition beginning in the New Testament distinguish between Jewish purity practices which are obsolete for Christians and Old Testament moral prescriptions such as homosexuality which are not.   The New Testament renews and reinforces these moral prescriptions (not ‘descriptions’) in the manner of Jesus who said he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

 A second major passage in the homosexual debate is Romans 1: 18-32. Herein the apostle Paul describes how rather than honoring God as God, persons rebelled against Him and exchanged the worship of the Creator for the creation.  This idolatry subverted the creative order God established in Genesis 1.  God constituted the nature of ‘Adam’ (Man, humankind) in His image and likeness, gender-differentiated, opposite-sex pairings, male and female.  Human revolt against God results in a dishonorable disordering of creation plainly demonstrated in males having sexual intercourse with males and females with females. Professor Robert Song basically agrees.  However, Professor Song says, the reason same-sex sex is a sin for Paul is only because it is non-procreative sex.  Procreative sex producing children is the only reason for gender differentiation.  Paul rejects homosexuality on the grounds it prevents offspring.  Professor Song declares Paul’s concern for procreative sex of two opposite genders is now superseded.  Christ’s resurrection has brought in a new, eschatological order, a new age, which reorients male-female procreative sex.  Jesus, speaking of this new age says, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage’(Luke 20: 34f).  A new vision of resurrected life makes the old age heterosexual marriage with its procreative sex obsolescent.  Resurrection life envisages a trajectory of life beyond marriage and procreative sex.  Song comments that same-sex covenantal partnerships might have been impossible for Paul and the New Testament.  Are they not now possible for us?

A traditionalist’s response is threefold.  First, the complementarity of gender differentiation of male-female pairing is not limited, as Song says, to the difference in male-female genitalia (responsible for children).  They run as deep as every cell’s sex chromosome pairings, whether xx (female) or xy (male).  The implications of gender differences of anatomy and physiology extend well beyond the necessity of procreation.  Second, Robert Gagnon, acclaimed New Testament scholar who has written exhaustively on homosexuality, notes Paul, in contrast to others of his day, recommended sexual intercourse in marriage not just for procreation but for mutual satisfaction of desire that might otherwise result in promiscuity (1 Corinthians 7: 2-5). Third, when Jesus speaks of those who ‘neither marry nor are given in marriage’, he is speaking not of the ‘in between times’ in which we Christians now live but the end of time when mortal death is no more and ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ have come.  The new creation has not transcended heterosexual, procreative sex!

Progressives submit the possibility of accepting same-sex covenantal partnerships on account of the church changing its mind over the years on such social issues as slavery, women’s issues, and divorce.  Logically speaking, this argument digresses from the moral issue at hand, homosexuality.  Further, every one of these subjects is a distinct issue which must be discussed in its own right.  The Church may be, and has been, at variance and back and forth on certain positions but God’s Word is constant in its meaning.  However, as Robert Gagnon states, where churches have moderated positions you can usually find a New Testament trajectory that has opened a countervailing possibility. Nevertheless, for instance, in regards to slavery, the New Testament never affirms slavery is a good institution.  New Testament scholar Ben Witherington shows Paul takes God’s people where they are but like Philemon, moves them to realize the Gospel’s implications and treat Onesimus as a free brother in Christ.  The early church worked to emancipate slaves but some churches in the nineteenth century did not.

Be that as it may, the Church and its theologians with roots in Old Testament teaching have never wavered, until very recent times, and always regarded the practice of homosexuality a sin. 

Progressives claim Jesus never spoke of homosexuality and the word is not even in the Bible.  They say the issue is not important to the New Testament.  Traditionalists respond Jesus reinstituted the natural, created order of marriage of Genesis as a biological, spiritual and interpersonal union of the complementary pairing of one man and one woman.  Jesus’ statement on marriage excludes the legitimacy of homosexual behavior, or, for that matter, any extra marital sex.  Indeed Jesus condemns porneia (fornication) in Matthew 15: 19 denouncing any sexual intercourse outside of the marriage covenant.  True, the actual word ‘homosexual’ is not used in the Bible (neither is the word ‘trinity’) but a rose by any other name is still a rose.  In another critical passage, 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10 Paul says ‘male prostitutes (malokos), sodomites (arsenokoitai)…none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.’   Progressives assert Paul is not here condemning loving, same-sex partnerships but only homosexual prostitution.  This follows what they deem is the problem in Genesis 19 - homosexual, gang rape and not consensual, homosexual acts when the men in the town seek to have sex with the visitors in Sodom and Gomorrah.  Their contention Paul is condemning unloving, brutal homosexual acts centers on Paul’s use of two debated Greek words, malokos and arsenokoitai.  Malokos means ‘soft’ or ‘effeminate’ and is likely a young male posing effeminately as a woman as the passive partner to attract another male (often for prostitution).  The second word arsenokoitai is literally translated ‘men who take males to bed’ and means active, consensual partners in homosexual intercourse. When one considers Paul’s Jewish, religious culture’s aversion to homosexuality, traditionalists affirm with New Testament scholars and Robert Gagnon these two terms together comprehend every conceivable passive and active type of same-sex intercourse which Scripture altogether condemns. To summarize, Paul in 1 Corinthians 6: 9 and elsewhere with Jesus condemns all forms of sexual intercourse outside the marriage of a man and a woman.

A prominent, persistent narrative of progressive and homosexual proponents is that homosexuals are ‘born that way’.  I have no doubt homosexuals feel this way.  Professor of Medicine Emerita of the University of Kansas Dr. Barbara Lukert states ‘there is consensus among human sexuality researchers and therapists that homosexuality is unchosen and in most cases unchangeable.’  National proponent for homosexual inclusion in the United Methodist Church, the Rev. Tom Berlin states, ‘We believe sexual orientation is a way a person is created by God rather than a sin they commit against God.’  Believing that this is an immutable, human quality like skin color, progressives assert the church is discriminating against and excluding, oppressing, and hurting homosexuals as it has other minorities.  As a traditionalist, I feel their passion about this; yet, I know of no traditionalist pastor who either desires or acts to exclude any member of the LGBTQIA community.  Pastors want any body and every body to be in worship on Sunday!  In fact, most traditionalist pastors have homosexuals in their church.

Nevertheless, truth and falsity are not emotional categories.  Though progressives are highly motivated to land this argument, truth and falsehood deal with what is and is not, regardless of how one feels.  In the 1990’s William Byne and Bruce Parsons of Columbia University reviewed the entire literature on the biology of homosexuality.  Their conclusion: there is no biological or genetic theory for homosexuality which has scientific consensus.  The New Atlantis journal reported in 2016, ‘Some of the most widely held views about sexual orientation, such as the “born that way” hypothesis, simply are not supported by science.’  The American Psychological Association states: there is no scientific consensus on the cause of homosexuality.  Objectively speaking, we cannot claim homosexuality is inherent.  Even if there were some biological connection, as is suggested in alcoholism, the Bible speaks not of one’s proclivity or orientation, but of one’s behavior. The progressive lament that traditionalists by their rejection of homosexual behavior are oppressing and discriminating against homosexuals whom God has created this way is neither scientific nor biblical but emotionally manipulative.

Nevertheless, progressives contend those who disallow homosexual behavior are ‘judging’, condemning and rejecting homosexuals as unacceptable and to be excluded.   Indeed, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God but Jesus welcomed and accepted all sinners.  Jesus said, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone...‘do not judge in order you may not be judged’ he said.  Traditionalists agree with progressives Jesus sought out and radically loved marginal persons (including sexual sinners).  Traditionalists are heard to be condemning the practice when they say ‘no’ to homosexual behavior.  Often they are in a position of having to condemn the practice before they are able to show they accept the person.  Our heart is to accept the person though not the practice.  Is not this Jesus’ emphasis?  Like the woman who interrupted his dinner, she had been a notorious sinner, guilty.  She left a cleansed sinner forgiven. Jesus said to her, ‘Go and sin no more’.  At this point progressives and traditionalists part company.  For the reasons recited above, when they say Jesus loves and accepts homosexuals, they mean ‘lock stock and barrel’ – person and behavior.  We love the sinner - but hate the sin.

Indeed, Jesus says in Matthew 7:1, ‘Judge not’.  That is, do not be a judgmental person putting dark constructions on ambiguous situations.  Do not pronounce eternal condemnation on anyone.  Nonetheless, Jesus says in Matthew 18: 15 ‘rebuke’ those who sin.  Bring their sin to light.  Point it out so that it may be forgiven.  ‘Open rebuke is better than hidden love’ says Proverbs.  Identifying same-sex sex as sin is not judging.  It is trying to bring to bear grace and mercy. 

Our differences range over Scriptures’ absolute authority, textual interpretations, theology, and even science.  At the end of the day, through such interchanges as this, the clarity of truth will shine like gold in a stream and the fullness of grace will come.

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Tom was most recently pastor of the Bellevue Charge in Forest, Virginia until retiring in July.  Studying John Wesley’s theology, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Bristol, Bristol, England. While a student, he and his wife Pam lived in John Wesley’s Chapel “The New Room”, Bristol, England, the first established Methodist preaching house.  Tom was a faculty member of Asbury Theological Seminary from 1998-2003. He has contributed articles to Methodist History and the Wesleyan Theological Journal. He and his wife Pam have two children, Karissa, who is an Associate Attorney at McCandlish Holton Morris in Richmond, and, John, who is a junior communications major/business minor at Regent University.  Tom enjoys being outdoors in his parkland woods and sitting by a cheery fire with a good book on a cool evening.

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The Bible, Same-Sex Sexual Activity, and the Parameters for Flourishing

Chad Thornhill

Mailbag: Why Would God Harden Pharaoh's Heart?

Question: Can you offer any insight into God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart? If God is good, why would he do that?

Answer: Eleonore Stump, in her magisterial Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (and an older article on sanctification, freedom, and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart), offers some very useful insights that may shed some light on this topic. In a nutshell, we’re as human beings all of us, to one degree or another, internally fragmented, double minded, and in a real sense our deepest freedom is compromised when there’s a fundamental disconnect between our (1st order) desires and our (2nd order) desires about our desires. So if I have an overwhelming desire to gamble but a desire not to have that desire, I’m in that sort of dissonant state and my deepest agency is somewhat compromised.

Suppose I ask God for help and to take away my desire to gamble, and in an act of miraculous deliverance he does. He’s not thereby vitiated my freedom by this gift of sanctification; to the contrary, he’s enhanced it, by enabling my first order and second order desires to move into alignment and for me to live more effectively as the person I want to be.

An inverted example is a case like Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Nazi propagandist, who wanted his own heart to harden so he wouldn’t feel compassion for the suffering Poles when he saw a graphic account of the hideous atrocities they were suffering at the hands of German soldiers. “Be hard, my heart, be hard,” he told himself. On reflection his choice was to be that kind of uncompassionate person. His first order desire, at least fleetingly, was one of compassion, but his second order desire, which more accurately reflected who he wanted and deliberatively chose to be, was not to have those compassionate desires.

If God, suppose, were to intervene and harden Goebbels’ heart, taking away some of that compassion, he would be bringing Goebbels’ lower and higher order desires into alignment, making him a more internally integrated person. Rather than detracting from his free will, in a real sense he would be enhancing it a bit. He certainly wouldn’t be making Goebbels less free. God would be giving Goebbels what he really wanted down deep, what he chose when, presumably he could and should have done otherwise. (For all we know, God doing this might help Goebbels see the horror of his choices and choose to repent and change course.)

So when Pharaoh hardened his own heart and God hardened it even more, God was actually honoring Pharaoh’s choice, not detracting from his freedom. God loves us, and desires that none would perish; love isn’t just what God does, it’s who he is. But God will also honor our choices if we decide to hold on to sin tighter than we hold on to him; if we renounce the only ultimate source of Joy there is, we may just get what we want.

That’s the basic idea, and I think it’s a helpful analysis to get our minds, at least a little, around what’s going on in the Pharaoh passage that, for many, poses quite the bête noire of OT stories. Of course the clearest picture we have of the immeasurable love of God is the cross; the Pharaoh passage is one of those challenging ones we have to think about a bit more to understand—in light of the cross.

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With his co-author, Jerry Walls, Dr. Baggett authored Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. The book won Christianity Today’s 2012 apologetics book of the year of the award. He is working on a sequel with Walls that critiques naturalistic ethics, a book to be called God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning. They are under contract with Oxford University Press for a third book in the series, a book that will chronicle the history of moral arguments for God’s existence. Dr. Baggett has also co-edited a collection of essays exploring the philosophy of C.S. Lewis, and edited the third debate between Gary Habermas and Antony Flew on the resurrection of Jesus. Dr. Baggett currently is a professor at the Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in Lynchburg, VA.  

Mailbag: Some Questions on Satan, Free Will, and the Nature of Evil

A colleague passed this question along from a student:

Hello, throughout my life I have always sought ought the guidance and insight of pastors of my churches and the Christian teachers at my schools. I base my religious view on history, faith, reason, and observation. I weigh most heavily on reason and try to figure out specific things that test my faith. Through this reasoning I have grown closer to the Lord. I have formed multiple questions that aren’t usually told in Christian school or churches, but questions that beckon my mind and soul. A lot of the question I have my personal answer to (and some are difficult to truly know the answer to until I can ask the Lord face to face in heaven), but I thoroughly enjoy asking other people their thoughts so that I may get insight on what they believe and possibly adapt my own view to fit what makes the most logical sense by means of a Christian standpoint. So, with all of that said, I have a question for you… 

The Lord created all things, but Satan is able to distort such things and taint them. So, if God created everything, why did he allow evil to be even a thing? God gave humans and angels the ability of freewill so that we are not mindless drones who blindly love Him; because true love has to be voluntary. But why did He even create evil to be an alternative? He could have allowed for freewill without evil being an option. Why create sadness and pain? Sin and torment? Anger and distortion? It is a bit difficult to explain, especially since humans aren’t fully able to understand a world without all of this stuff, so the meat of the question can get lost In the folly of my ability to explain. But why would God create such evil and bad things? Satan could still have the freewill to love God or not love Him without the factor of evil being an option. Satan is unable to create matter. No one can. Only God can. Matter cannot be created; it can only be reformed and repurposed. So, that means Satan tainted life and caused sin to be defined as a tainted version of something God created (in a paraphrased sense), so then how come sin was even able to be created? Why is something being tainted an ability that God gave us? Again, it is hard for the human mind to understand in this fixed plane of existence, but what if God had allowed something even worse than sin to be able to come into being? Where would we be then? Why would God allow for such pain? Such with Job, who did everything unto the Lord. God allowed Satan to destroy his life to test if he would still love the Lord. Why would God need any more assurance that Job loved him? Why would He allow his people to be subject to such pain and sorrow? Sure, Job got stuff in the end, but nothing could replace certain things that he lost. That is like a father allowing a bully to beat up his kid just to see if the kid would still love his father (even though he knew that his dad told the bully to beat up his son). So why is such distortion and sin and pain and sorrow and evil even a possibility? Freewill can still be existent without evil. Why would God find it necessary to create such things?

Here's my reply:

Thanks so much for passing along your student’s intelligent and thoughtful questions. I’m happy to try my hand at addressing some of them—addressing, more than answering. Some of the questions, to my thinking, don’t lend themselves to easy answers at all. At best we can list some clues and hints, not necessarily anything systematic that can tie it all up in a bow. We continue to see through a glass darkly, and coming to terms with our epistemic limitations is a good thing. We should certainly use the minds God’s given us, but at the same time epistemic humility is a virtue, and acting like we know more than we do is a mistake and ultimately dishonoring to God. All of that to say: these are hard questions and don’t lend themselves to quick, pat answers, by any stretch of the imagination.

The way your student is seeking guidance and insight from pastors and teachers is a good practice. There’s wisdom in an abundance of counselors. At the same time, he may have contributions of his own to add to the conversation. As members of the church, we all have a part to play, and who knows? Perhaps some of these burdens on his heart correspond to directions God’s laying on him for his own ultimate vocation. Each of us is instructed to seek wisdom, and the older we get, the more we have to balance our expectations about answers that others can provide with what God may be teaching us. God may want to speak through this student, who may one day become a great teacher himself.

As a philosopher, I’m a big fan of “reason” too. There’s nothing wrong with asking hard questions, nor with using the steam of general revelation and clear thinking to make progress in answering them. Often the very practice of asking and working hard to answer questions is itself a quite formative process, the culmination of which has for its most important result not just an answer, but the wisdom that comes from the struggle. I’m also aware, as a philosopher, of reason’s limitations. We don’t always get all the answers we want. The problem of evil, the topic of discussion here, is notorious for leaving us less than completely satisfied. The simple fact is that there are mysteries here, and though we can do our best to untangle knots, mysteries will remain. Sometimes we need to trust God and his goodness despite not finding all the answers we might want. We’re promised all the answers eventually, but not always within timetables of our invention. I think this is especially true with existential aspects of suffering. God promises to give us strength to get through, and to be with us through whatever we might be called to endure…but he doesn’t offer specific reasons for every trial we might have to go through, and expecting otherwise is bound to disappoint. Folks who claim to know all those specifics often strike me as inordinately presumptuous and overly confident in their own analyses.

Okay, then, Satan—yes, the Bible has a lot to say about Satan. On connections between Satan and the problem of evil, a new book is forthcoming on the topic by John Peckham. I wrote a blurb for it; it’s well worth the read. The book’s called Theodicy of Love, and it at least partially treats some of the questions your student raises. Now, why did God allow evil to be a thing? How we ask a question is revealing. For evil to be a thing, it sounds like some “reification” is going on. It may well be a thing in some sense, but not a substance or material object or anything like that, but a certain heart orientation. And I suspect that’s what it is. Suffering is nonmorally bad, but gratuitously inflicting needless suffering is morally bad, even evil. Immanuel Kant had this insight that nonmoral badness has to do with consequences, but evil is a distinctively moral category of the heart.

Now, I rather like the appeal to free will your student mentions (not that this is all that needs to be discussed in this context, but it’s a good place to begin), but he wants to suggest that, though free will might be necessary for genuine love relationships (which seems right to me), God perhaps didn’t need to “create evil” as its alternative. But though this is certainly an intriguing suggestion, it’s not clear to me that this was an actual possibility. Not to love as we ought, particularly not to love God as we ought, introduces sin into the world. It’s not clear we can have the ability to resist God and avoid evil; this may well be the very essence of evil at its root. If so, evil wasn’t created by God, but rather its possibility was introduced when God conferred freedom on us. God’s not, at least on my theology, the author of sin. Perhaps he would be on certain models of meticulous providence, but I don’t buy that theology. So the idea that God could have allowed for free will without evil being an option is not obvious to me, and I suspect it’s somewhat contrary to the standard Christian theology on this matter. 

Next, why create sadness and pain? These are examples of what I think are nonmoral bads. One fairly standard sort of reply is that these were introduced into the world because of rebellion against God. Why sin and torment? Sin, again, was introduced by human willfulness against God’s best for us. Torment? Sin intrinsically leads to torment, in one sense, because it goes against the grain of the universe; it’s not how we were meant to live, and it invariably detracts from our happiness, and the more entrenched we get into it the more tormented we become. Anger and distortion? Well, anger isn’t necessarily a morally bad thing; Jesus experienced righteous anger. Anger isn’t sin, or else we wouldn’t be told in our anger not to sin. In a perfect world, though, anger will be banished. But we’re not in a perfect world, but a fallen one that God’s in the process of redeeming. I could go and discuss distortion along similar lines, but the point is this: Why did God allow any of these things? (I wouldn’t say “create” as that’s misleading; at the least if we use that language it requires very careful unpacking.) Why allow them? Presumably because he knew that ultimately through his redemptive plan he could use our failings to produce more complex goods not otherwise possible, or something like that. Looking at the world at this moment is just a snapshot of something fully in motion toward a particular glorious end, if Christianity is true. It’s not yet the world as God intended it to be, but it will be when redemption has had its full effect.

“Why would God create such evil and bad things?” He made valuable agents whose existence introduced their possibility, is the way I’d put it. “Satan could still have the freewill to love God or not love Him without the factor of evil being an option.” I doubt it; not to love God is indeed evil; God is worthy of our worship. Again, the claim put forth is not at all intuitively clear to me, and stands in variance with Christian teaching. The idea that Satan twisted something in creation into what it wasn’t intended to be is right; this is very much the Augustinian account of evil. The student then asks why sin was even able to be created? Why did God give us the ability to taint his creation? Perhaps that question addresses, once more, the value of free will. If such freedom entails the freedom to resist God, then that may well entail this tainting ability. We don’t have to talk about Satan in this regard; we have this ability as well, and why? Well, perhaps the ability to love God requires freedom that entails such distortion capacity. It’s not clear this isn’t the case, at least to me. Your student may simply disagree; fair enough. But on that matter perhaps we’d just end up disagreeing. But what bolsters my conviction is that the sort of requisite robust freedom we need has big implications, among which is that sin is really, really bad—a violation of our telos, a disordering of creation, a subverting of God’s intentions, and all the rest.

I’m not trying to offer a definitive response to every question here, but just offer my first spit balling sort of ad hoc reply.

Next, what if God had allowed something even worse than sin to be able to come into being? Where would we be then? That’s what philosophers call a counterfactual, but more than that, it may well be a counteressential—an impossible scenario. What would be worse than sin? It’s not clear anything is. Sufficient are the actual sufferings of this world and the next; I’m not sure it’s a good idea to launch into a defense of counterfactual, perhaps even counteressential sufferings.

In terms of Job, I think there’s a lot to say about that book beyond that God did it to see if Job still loved God. I’d suggest reading some really good commentaries on Job. There are profound insights in the book. Reducing it to whether Job would still love God leaves way too much out. Just one example: In Job we see a minor theme of the OT that becomes a major, if not THE major theme of the NT: the redeeming value of innocent suffering.

And so my final point is just that: in the NT we see the clearest picture both of suffering and God’s use of it for redemptive purposes. None of this discussion can get off the ground, from a Christian vantage point, apart from the wondrous mystery of the cross of Christ, where God didn’t merely watch us suffer, but came and suffered himself, indeed took our suffering on himself. And we’re told that those who trust him may suffer for a little while here, but in the life to come there will be such glory it will make the sufferings of this world, as horrific as they can be, pale into insignificance by comparison. That’s a lovely promise to hold onto.

Again, pain and suffering are tough topics. Personally I think they raise the most difficult questions we face as Christians. At the same time, I can’t imagine any other worldview nearly as equipped as Christianity to offer us hope rather than despair in the face of sufferings.

Thanks for the chance to reflect. I hope your student keeps thinking and that God blesses his efforts!

Best,

djb

Mailbag: Doubts about the Privation Theory of Evil

Berat writes:

Hello,

Is there a post on the "ontological foundation of evil"? It seems to me that theistic metaethical theories have a strange implication like this: If God exists, he is the substantial ontological foundation of goodness. However, evil can't have a substantial ethical foundation like goodness since God doesn't have anything substantially evil in his nature. Therefore, evil is somehow derivative, it supervenes on God's attitudes and/or commands. It seems to be that something like privation theory of evil has to be true for a theistic metaethical theory to be able to completely explain the realm of moral values.

I'm highly skeptical of privation theories. So, my question is this: Can theism provide a substantial ontological foundation for evil as well? Like something analogous to Goodness=God's Essential Moral Nature.

Reply by Jonathan Pruitt

Hi Berat,

Thanks for this great question. Before attempting an answer, I think it will help to say what makes this such an important issue. If we think of God as identical to the good, as Baggett, Walls, Adams, and many other Christian thinkers propose, then we think that goodness has an essence and that it exists in a substantive way. God is the Good, that is, the ontological grounding for how we can meaningfully talk about goodness in daily life. We think that our moral judgments about moral goodness are meaningful only because there is some substantive, stable good which grounds them. Something is morally good when it bears a resemblance to God, who is the Good.

If then we ask, “What does it mean to say something is evil?” one obvious suggestion would be that there is some substantive evil which functions the same way that God as the good functions. When we say something is evil, we would mean it bears some resemblance to this object or person. This, however, would be a kind of dualism, according to which there are two fundamental and opposing forces in the world. Goodness would be grounded by reference to one and evil by reference to the other.  This is contradictory to theism and, therefore, not a live option for theists.

A second option would be that evil does exist, but that it was made by God or it is sustained by him. We might think that evil is some abstract object in the mind of God which does the kind of work that the Platonic forms do.[1] God would be the ground of evil in the same way he is the ground of the number 7 or the color red. However, it seems problematic to think of evil as ontologically grounded in God in this way. If God is wholly and perfectly good, we might expect that this entails that he could not be the ground of evil. This, then, is not option for the theist either.

The skeptic might pose one more possibility: if we can meaningfully speak of evil without it having the analogous ontological grounding of goodness, then why think goodness either needs or has God as its foundation? We seem to use the term “evil” with just as much confidence as we use the term “goodness,” but theists insist one needs ontological grounding and the other does not. Either both need grounds or neither does. Either way, the notion that God is identical to the good turns out to be false. Thus, the theist is faced with this “trilemma of evil”: Either (1) dualism is true, (2) God is not wholly good, or (3) God is not necessary for morality.[2]

It seems that the best way to overcome these objections and sustain our commitment to the idea that God is the good is to show how it is that evil is a meaningful concept, yet has its meaning in some way disanalogous from goodness. This is why a privation theory of evil might appear at least initially appealing. It is the threat of dualism that likely motivated Augustine, the former Manichean dualist, to think of evil as a privation of the good. He says, “All things that are corrupted suffer privation of some good.”[3] By this, Augustine meant that evil is not some entity which can have substance. Rather, evil is just some lack of goodness. Selfishness, for example, might be identical to a lack of love. The advantage of a theory like this is that it avoids a metaphysically substantive evil while also offering an explanation of the essence of evil. When we say something is evil, we are really saying that it lacks goodness.

However, it is not clear that mere privation can successfully ground our concept of evil. Adams suggests that God is the essential nature of the good similarly to the way that H20 is the essential nature of water. If water is essentially H20, then this would explain all the features that water has. Water is wet and quenches thirst exactly because it is H20 and our concept of water as having these features is best explained by its essential nature.[4] If evil is a unified concept like goodness, it ought to have an essence that makes sense of our usage of the term, assuming we have some understanding of evil. But it seems there is some difficulty with the idea that evil is merely privation. An example from Tolkien might help us see why this is the case.

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which contains the deep mythology behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he explains that God or Eru creates the world through music. Eru intends that his creatures sing a song that corresponds to the main theme that Eru has begun in creation. When all his creatures play together harmoniously, goodness and beauty fill the world. However, some of Eru’s creatures refused to play in harmony with Eru’s theme and this is the origin of evil in Tolkien’s mythology. If we thought of evil as merely privation, then we might expect Tolkien to explain that some creatures simply refused to play the part he was given by Eru and were silent. But instead Tolkien imagines that evil begins when Melkor interwove “matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of [Eru]; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself.”[5]

Tolkien’s mythology helps us see that evil can be understood in at least two different ways. Certainly, we can imagine some creature who simply fails to play anything at all and this would a kind of evil. But it also seems that, when some creature opposes Eru’s theme, this is a different kind of evil altogether. We might be able to say that Melkor’s song is a privation in the sense that it lacks the order intended by Eru, but it also seems that is only one narrow feature of his act and that opposition to the good would be a better and fuller description. Opposition is something active and not merely negative, like privation. As Adams says, “No doubt privation of goodness often does constitute badness, but that is not an apt explanation of the nature of all badness.”[6]

It also seems that in our everyday usage of the term evil, we often mean more than merely privation of the good. If we say that Hitler was evil, it would be surprising to find out that all we really are saying is that Hitler lacked goodness. “He lacked goodness” might equally as well describe a couch potato as it does Hitler. It may be that our moral judgment of Hitler as evil would be better explained if it turned out that evil was essentially opposition to good, perhaps opposition so strong that it amounts to hatred of the good. This concept of “opposition,” I think, makes more sense of how we often see evil portrayed in mythology and culture.

Evil characters have a visceral, active quality about them that cannot be explained in terms of mere privation. Darth Vader is not merely the negation of the good or “light side” of the Force. He opposes it; he rivals it. Perhaps the greatest archetype of all evil characters is the biblical Satan, whose name literally means “the adversary.” Barth argues that the demons, of whom Satan is chief, “are not divine but non-divine and anti-divine. . . . They can only hate God and His creation. They can only exist in the attempt to rage against God and to spoil His creation.”[7] Here again we see the intuitive move to think of evil as opposition to the good. If privation were the essence of evil, then the archetype of evil might be better named “Nothingness” rather than “Adversary.”  But what we see in our best representations of evil is that their primary, salient feature seems to be opposition rather than privation. We would more naturally describe Melkor, Vader, Hitler, and Satan as hating the good rather than merely lacking it; a recalcitrant fact for the privation theory.[8]

Even if this opposition theory of evil is correct, we have not yet said how this synthesizes with theism or solves the trilemma of the skeptic. Here is how an answer might go. First, this theory easily harmonizes with the idea that God is the good without entailing or implying dualism because evil understood as opposition clearly requires that evil supervene on the good. After all, evil is not merely opposition, but opposition in a definite direction. Martin Luther King Jr. actively opposed racism and inequality and we call him good precisely for that reason. Opposition is not intrinsically evil. Thus, if we have a definite concept of evil, it will likely be best explained by relation to some stable, ultimate good to which it is opposed.

Second, evil may depend on God in the same way that the notion of privation depends on existence or being, but this does not seem to pose a challenge to God’s goodness. We can think of the origin of evil as following from the reality of genuine freedom. God makes creatures with a will to choose between real alternatives, even to choose opposition to himself. God creates the possibility for opposition, but there is not a morally meaningful sense in which God is the ground of evil. If this is so, then we as theists have a way of thinking about evil that does not commit us to dualism, preserves God’s status as the best explanation of the good, and does justice to our best intuitions about the concept of evil.

[1] I have in mind the sort of metaphysics Plantinga describes in “How to be an Anti-Realist,” though Plantinga does not suggest that evil is one of the objects in the mind of God. See Alvin Plantinga, “How to Be an Anti-Realist,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 56, no. 1 (1982): 47–70.

[2] Of course, there is more to say about each of these possibilities, but my aim here is just to show some initial problems that this puzzle about evil might create.

[3] Saint Augustine, The Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 124.

[4] Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1999), 15.

[5] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 18.

[6] Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 103.

[7] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics The Doctrine of Creation, Volume 3, Part 3: The Creator and His Creature (Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), 523.

[8] However, this view would not entail that privation is not evil at least in some cases. It would only mean that evil cannot essentially be privation.

Mailbag: Why Do You Think Christianity is True?

Letter: Hello professor, I was just wanting to reach out to you and ask you for some guidance. I recently came across a post of the computer that stated this. Do you identife with a specific religion? If you do, ask yourself these questions: 1. Why did so many Gods and beliefs predate your own?   2. Why didn't your God choose a global revelation instead of a culture specific one? 3. Why were you born in the "right religion"? Now I am kind of stumped by these questions. Do you think, if you have time, could you give me your thoughts on them? Thanks, Billy

Response by Jonathan Pruitt

Hi Billy,

Thanks for writing to us at Moral Apologetics! Dr. Baggett has just left on vacation and so I’ll be responding to your letter. Let’s take these one at a time. The first question is “Why did so many Gods and beliefs predate your own?” The question as stated is imprecise, but I think the heart of the question is something like this: “As a Christian, what do you say about the fact that there are religions older than yours?” That’s a fair question and one we can offer several responses to.

First, we might ask what the problem is supposed to be. If there are religions older than Christianity, does that suggest Christianity is not true? I am not sure how an argument for that position might go. The age of the religion has little to do with the likelihood of it being true; what’s more important is the sort of evidence that gives credibility to the claims of the religion. Say, for example, that tomorrow all the stars moved in space so that from earth they spelled out, “Scientology is true.” That would make Scientology much more plausible than, say, Baal worship, even though the Baal religions are much older.

Second, if what the Bible teaches about God’s interactions with mankind is true, then the Christian God has been revealing himself to mankind since the beginning. Worship of the Christian God was the original religion, according to the Bible.  So the first question presumes a certain view of the development of religion and of world history in general that Christians deny. Worship of the Christian God is as old as mankind itself and so, in a sense, Christianity is the oldest religion.

The second question concerns the kind of revelation that the Christian God provides. The questioner seems to think that if a religion were true, then it ought to have “global revelation” pointing to its truth. I take it that this is a critique of the resurrection of Jesus, which happened at a specific time and place in history. This sort of revelation is what I suspect the questioner means by “local” revelation—sometimes this goes by the name “the scandal of particularity.”

In response, I will first say that I share the questioner’s concern. If God exists and he is good, then we should expect that he provides everyone with adequate reasons for believing in him. Of course, what the skeptic thinks are adequate reasons and what actually are adequate reasons are not always the same. As Paul Moser points out, we are often presumptuous when considering the evidence for God. We ask, “What evidence would satisfy me?” And we expect God to personally tailor the evidence to fit our expectations. We do not usually ask, “If God exists, how would he like me to know him?”

That said, I think God has given universally accessible reasons to believe in him. Let me give some examples. First, even if we take the resurrection which is supposed to be an example of a “local” revelation, the fact of the matter is that most people in the world are aware of the Christian claim to the resurrection of Jesus. Most people in the Western world even have the resources to conduct serious investigation into the veracity of these claims. So even though the resurrection is a localized event, it is open to investigation by a very large number of people.

The Bible also teaches that God does reveal himself universally. For example, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin, God’s righteousness, and the coming judgment (John 16:8). Paul says, “For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). In his speech in Athens, Paul proclaims,

The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ (Acts 17:24-28).

So the Bible clearly teaches that God reveals himself on a global scale and that he specifically arranged the world so that people would have the best chance at knowing him. The Bible teaches that God is intimately concerned with the salvation of the whole world and that he has actually revealed himself to every human being.

We also have highly intuitive theistic arguments which are universally accessible. If there is a moral law, there must be a moral law giver. If there is a universe, there must be a cause to the universe. If the universe appears intelligently designed, then likely there is a designer. Those are just very brief and rough summaries of only three of the theistic arguments, but the point is that they rely on common sense and basic empirical observations; they are open to investigation by any human person. In that way, they provide a kind of universal (or global) revelation of God.

The third and final question is “How do you know you were born in the right religion?” Clearly, if a person inherits their beliefs from their parents, this does not make them true. But the fact that I learned Christianity from my parents does not make it not true, either. If the questioner intends to say that, he would be committing the genetic fallacy. But if we answer the question as asked, we can provide two kinds of responses. The first answer is that I know that Christianity is true on the basis of my encounters with the Christian God. The Holy Spirit has provided the conviction of the truth of the gospel to me. And I have direct awareness and relationship with the Jesus of the Bible. These provide good reasons for me to believe in Jesus. But I also know that Christianity is true on the basis of critical thinking and the use of evidence. I mentioned some of the theistic arguments earlier, but there are also good arguments that Christianity in particular is true. There are philosophical arguments, like the one provided by Moral Apologetics contributor Brian Scalise that says a Trinitarian (and therefore Christian) conception of God makes the most rational sense. And there are empirical and historical arguments, like the minimal facts case for the resurrection employed by scholars like Gary Habermas and Mike Licona. So I know that I was born in the right religion because I have encountered the living Jesus myself and because careful and fair analysis of the evidence leads me to that conclusion.

In sum, it seems that the questioner is concerned about why we should think Christianity is true given the many religions in the world. The bottom line is that Christianity is better evidenced and more plausible than any other worldview.

Mailbag: A Question on Atheistic Moral Realism

  Dear Dr. Baggett,

I'm a Christian from Malaysia that has been interested in philosophy for the past few years now, and I have a burning question about the moral argument that I hope you'd be able to help me with.

Why can't the naturalist posit that moral laws are normative in nature just like the laws of logic are? I think J. S. Mill took this approach. Both the laws of logic and morality are prescriptive; the laws of logic prescribe how we ought to think if we want to be reasonable, while moral laws prescribe how we ought to behave if we want to be morally good.

The naturalist can claim that just as the law of noncontradiction can exist without having a logical lawgiver, moral laws can exist without the need for a moral lawgiver.

I think I got this from the moralapologetics website where Trent Dougherty interviewed Wielenberg on the issue. Was hoping you could help because something *feels* wrong about this response; it shouldn't be that simple. Yet I can't seem put my finger on what exactly is wrong with this response to the moral argument.

Regards,

Declan

Hi Declan,

Thanks for the question. It's a good one. Here are a few thoughts at least. Some do indeed argue that moral facts aren't significantly different from other normative facts--be they logical or epistemic or even aesthetic. All of these normative standards do share some things in common alright. Both logic and morality, for example, as you note, are prescriptive--the former for theoretical rationality, the latter for practical rationality.

Philippa Foot once argued even the standards of etiquette are more than hypothetical imperatives because they too prescribe certain behaviors even for those indifferent to etiquette. But the contextual relativity of such standards, and their lesser gravity, still seem to distance etiquette from morality, at least until they start shading into one another.

Logic's a bit of a tougher case than etiquette because it has greater gravity. But I think Wielenberg's unwillingness to see a significant difference between logical and moral norms is a mistake. It may well be the case that all genuine norms have their locus in God--reflecting aspects of His nature--His rationality, His beauty, His goodness, etc. J. P. Moreland argues that to be so in his work. I'm quite open to this because it makes sense that, as Plantinga once put it, necessary truths may well best be thought of as reflections of God: thoughts God thinks, owing to who He is, in this and all possible worlds (modal realities).

Nevertheless, despite whatever all the various norms may hold in common, moral ones seem distinct in an important sense. Both logical (and epistemic) and moral norms may all be both authoritative and prescriptive and unavoidable, but moral norms are, additionally, the sort of standards whose violation should make us feel guilty. I don't think of such guilt merely or primarily as a feeling (another way my view is a bit different from Wielenberg's). I see it as an objective moral condition. It's not that the violation of every moral norm results in guilt; not every moral norm is a duty; some are values. But the neglect of some values, anyway, violates a moral duty, and in such cases we are guilty. I don't generally see violations of logical or epistemic norms in the same way.

"Oughtness" may apply to them all, but this shows an important way oughtness locutions can be variously construed. Usually it's only the moral ought whose violation properly generates guilt. We often use ought language to point to prescriptions that don't attain to the level of obligations. As in etiquette. In the case of logic, the normative standards do give us reasons to make some sorts of inferences and refrain from others. And sensitivity to such reasons is good--expansively construed. Robert Adams says sensitivity to good reasons is a form of excellence, and I agree. But the violation of constructive dilemma or modus tollens doesn't, or shouldn't, generate guilt, a need to be forgiven, or alienation from others that forgiveness can fix--features of shirking moral obligations all.

I think Wielenberg, Parfit, McGinn, Enoch, and others put the cart before the horse. It's true that norms are connected with reasons, but moral obligations possess distinctive features. By my lights, we don't find reasons to act and then presume we have explained moral obligations. Rather, moral obligations themselves give us compelling reasons to act. Inverting this has been one of the ways a number of secularists have watered moral obligations down, neglected one of their most important distinguishing features, and mistakenly acted as though moral obligations can be explained merely by adducing a certain set of normative reasons to act. Acting and thinking rationally does not constitute a full explanation of moral belief and practice. Morality carries extra clout and punch, which needs accounting for.

Hope that helps!

Blessings, Dave

Photo: "Mail" by T. Johnston. CC License.