The Possibility of Virtue in Christianity and Buddhism (Part 3 of 5)

The Case for Buddhist Virtue

The first step in evaluating Buddhist ethics will be to understand the Buddhist worldview.

Ethical systems are always intimately tied to a worldview, but this is especially the case for Buddhism. The Buddha’s teaching was in response to an ethical problem, the problem of suffering. Through much effort and insight, the Buddha was able to perceive reality as it really is; he saw the Four Marks of reality. The solution the Buddha offered was also ethical: the solution to suffering is to live a certain kind of life, a life characterized by the virtues of the Eightfold Path.

The Buddha often spoke in parables. In one famous parable, he explained that a man struck with a poison arrow does not demand that someone explain the origin of the arrow to him before it is removed by a physician with the antidote.[1] Here the Buddha is represented by the physician; humankind is represented by the warrior so unfortunately wounded. According to the Buddha, it is not so important why humanity is in this injured state, as the fact that the Buddha has provided a solution - a solution that is entirely ethical.  Early Buddhism was an orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. But, practice is always related to belief. There is a fundamental relationship between reality as it is (Dharma) and ethics. The Buddha himself explained this using another parable:

Just, oh Gotama, as one might wash hand with hand, or foot with foot, just even so, oh Gotama, is wisdom purified by uprightness, and uprightness is purified by wisdom. Where there is uprightness, wisdom is there, and where there is wisdom, uprightness is there.[2]

In this context, the Buddha is equating wisdom with insight into the true nature of existence (Dharma). Thus, according the Buddha, living a moral, upright life is necessarily tied to understanding the universe as it really is. That being the case, understanding Buddhist ontology will be the first step in understanding Buddhist ethics.

The Four Marks of Reality

The Buddha taught that there are four essential properties of reality. One early sutra records the Buddha’s teaching: “Whatever is phenomenal is impermanent. Whatever is phenomenal is suffering. Whatever is phenomenal is devoid of self. Nirvana is eternally tranquil.”[3] Reality is, at its most basic level, characterized by impermanence, suffering, the absence of self, and the existence of nirvana.

Impermanence

The Buddha taught that "all things are transitory [anitya]."[4] This is a straightforward point that is apparently confirmed by everyday experience: every material thing human beings encounter will, soon or later, pass out of existence. People will eventually die, so will flowers. Even mountains will eventually be brought down. Some of the early discourses draw out the implications of the Buddha’s idea, suggesting that everything that exists is changing moment by moment so that, as Heraclitus suggested, one can never step in to the same river twice.[5] Even

something as apparently static as a rock changes from moment to moment so that it is not identical to the rock that existed a moment before and will be different from the rock that will exist in the next moment. One way of understanding this point is to think of the Buddha as denying the existence of something like the Platonic forms, which are permanent and unchanging.

Another implication of the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence is that all conditioned things are ultimately contingent, the result of an endless series of other causes. Whatever arises, arises co-dependently with a multitude of other causes and will pass from existence sooner or later. One of the most famous illustrations of this concept is the Wheel Dharma which shows how each effect is dependent on a previous cause, which itself is dependent on another cause. Each effect also serves as the cause for the other effects.[6]

Suffering

The second characteristic of reality is that "All created beings live in sorrow [duhkha]."[7] Usually, duhkha is translated as suffering. However, as many authors have pointed out, suffering is not an adequate translation. When the Buddha said that all things suffer, he did not mean that existence in the world would always be uncomfortable; rather, he meant that phenomelogical existence would always be conditioned by states of ignorance, greed, and hatred.[8] Reality that is conditioned is called "samsara."[9] Because people exist within samsara, they are never able to have their desire for what is ultimate or eternal satisfied. They will always be disappointed with the temporary, fleeting happiness derived from the phenomenal world and are destined to be continually reborn so that suffering will never cease.[10]

The ideal sort of existence is an existence that is completely unconditioned, free from the vicious cycle of dependent co-arising resulting from ignorance, greed, and hatred. People suffer “because we take too seriously the useful fiction of the person.”[11] When a person is ignorant of reality as it is characterized in the Four Marks, then suffering arises as a natural result. Life based on the assumption that the world is permanent and that selves exist causes clinging to the cycle of samsara and thus there is rebirth.[12] To cease suffering is to cease being conditioned by external factors; this is nirvana. The doctrine of dukha teaches, simply, that the kind of existence that human beings experience is not the ideal. [13]

No Self

The third and most controversial of the Four Marks is the doctrine of no-self. The Buddha taught that "all states are without self [anatman]."[14] In affirming this doctrine, the Buddha was denying that composite entities, like rocks, people, and animals, exist in the commonsense way they are normally understood to exist. Instead, objects and people only exist as collections of parts, aggregates of other, more basic elements.[15]  Persons, in particular, are composed of five

parts called the skandhas: form, feeling, perception, mental fabrications, and consciousness. As the Buddha taught, "The body is composed of the five skandhas, and produced from five elements. It is all empty and without soul."[16] However, the Buddha emphasized the importance of composite objects as they relate to themselves and to other objects. This tension in Buddhist discourse has resulted in a distinction between the conventional and ultimate existence of an object. A Buddhist might refer to an individual as a single, distinct person that exists through time; however, he does this only as a convention of language and not in reference to the person’s ultimate, ontological condition.[17]

“The Discourse of the Not-Self Characteristic” from the Pali Canon provides an excellent record of the Buddha’s argument against a persisting self. Within this narrative, the Buddha answers questions from five of his disciples. The Buddha explained that each of the five skandhas cannot be identified as the self. Each of the skandhas are subject to change, inconstant, and give rise to suffering. At the end of the analysis of each skandha the Buddha asks, “And is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: 'This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am'?"[18] The disciples responded, “No, lord.” In response to this the Buddha gave his approval. The discourse concludes with an explanation of how to achieve freedom from the suffering arising through the skandhas:

Seeing thus, the well-instructed disciple of the noble ones grows disenchanted with form, disenchanted with feeling, disenchanted with perception, disenchanted with fabrications, disenchanted with consciousness. Disenchanted, he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion, he is fully released. With full release, there is the knowledge, 'Fully released.' He discerns that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'[19]

The argument the Buddha makes here has at least two presuppositions: there is not an I that stands behinds the skandhas–the skandhas are all a person is–and if there were an ultimate self, it would be permanent.[20] From those two assumptions, he proves that since the skandhas are impermanent and cannot be identified with the self, then there is no ultimate self. The perception that a person possesses a substantive identity that endures over time is incorrect.

Instead of “substance-selves,” the Buddha argues that people are “process-selves” that exist only momentarily and only “in a dependent sense.”[21] The "self" is dynamic so that a new self arises and departs each moment.[22] However, there is a causal connection between these moments, so there is a loose relationship between past, present, and future “selves” in a single collection of parts. This conclusion should be understood as a middle way between the sort of egoism taught in other Indian schools of thought and a complete denial of the existence of self in any sense.[23] Clearly, the Buddha wanted avoid the sort of clinging that results from egoism, but he also acknowledges that there is at least a conventional self even if there is no ultimate self. Sideritis sums up the matter: “The Buddhist view of non-self says that a person just consists in the occurrence of a complex causal series of impermanent, impersonal skandhas.”[24] “The person who lives at 9 a.m. this morning is the result of the person who lived at 7 a.m.”[25]

Nirvana

The final mark of reality is nirvana and it the most difficult of the Four Marks. The term nirvana literally means “‘extinguishing,” and in its broadest sense nirvana is the extinction of samsara: “This is the peaceful, this is the sublime, that is, the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion cessation, Nibbana.”[26] Nirvana is the cure for what ails humanity.[27] However, it is not merely the proper goal of all conditioned beings, it also the ultimate reality in Buddhism: "‘Nibbana is supreme,’ say the Buddhas.”[28] So in addition to being the foundation of reality, it is also the soteriological goal of Buddhism.

Buddhist doctrine teaches that the solution to suffering is the attainment of nirvana: “It signifies soteriologically the complete extinguishing of greed, hatred, and fundamentally delusion, the forces which power saṃsāra."[29]As the soteriological goal, there are two elements: “the Nibbana-element with residue left and the Nibbana-element with no residue left.”[30][31] The element with “residue left” refers to the kind of nirvana that was available to arahants[32] that still exist in their composite form. The Buddha described the arahant in this condition as a person who has

The holy life fulfilled, who has done what had to be done, laid down the burden, attained the goal, destroyed the fetters of being, completely released through final knowledge. However, his five sense faculties remain unimpaired, by which he still experiences what is agreeable and disagreeable and feels pleasure and pain. It is the extinction of attachment, hate, and delusion in him that is called the Nibbana-element with residue left.[33]

On the basis of this text and others, there are several conclusions that can be made about nirvana in this life. First, the Buddha takes it as self-evidently true that nirvana is the appropriate goal in light of impermanence, no self, and suffering. Second, it is clear that the arahant lives without ignorance concerning the way things really are. He lives in light of the fact that all is impermanent, there is no ultimate self, and that all conditioned states are full of suffering. He exists in contrast to the unenlightened who still suffer from greed, hatred, and ignorance. Whereas the unenlightened might despair over his home being destroyed in a flood, the arhant recognizes that the home destroyed is not his and that clinging to material possessions only results in more suffering. He is able to face such disaster with steadfastness and a kind of aloofness, not because he is apathetic, but because he views the disaster as if it happened to someone else far away. He feels concern that such destruction results in more suffering, but he is not overwhelmed and he does not experience it as a personal disaster.[34]

Some might object that this kind of existence would create a lack of empathy for others or even an unhealthy lack of concern for one’s self. The Buddha himself is said to have been living in a place called Atuma when “two people were killed, being struck by lightning, but the Buddha, who was seated under a tree close by, did not hear a sound.”[35] However, Buddhists argue apathy is not the result of attaining nirvana. Instead, it is the realization of what is actually important: the destruction of suffering which arises out of ignorance. The Buddha himself is the greatest example of a person who achieved nirvana in this life, and though he seemed aloof in the example of the lightning strike, he nevertheless reacted appropriately. Even though he was passive in this incident, there are other examples of the Buddha taking an active role in bringing about the cessation of suffering, the greatest example of course being his commitment to teach the dharma. So, Buddhists argue, while an arahant might have behavior that seems apathetic to the ignorant, his behavior is nevertheless justified in light of the dharma. They are illuminated so that they act appropriately in light of all the facts. The arhanant becomes liberated from selfishness and an unfounded concern for his own well-being to the freedom of experiencing “delight and enjoyment at whatever happens in the present moment.”[36] Only through this sort of liberation is one able to have peace.

The Buddha further taught that nirvana with remainder was not the ultimate goal of life. Nirvana without remainder, nirvana after this life, was the desired destination. The Buddha describes this element of nirvana: “Here a bhikkhu is an arahant. . . completely released through final knowledge. For him, here in this very life, all that is experienced, not being delighted in, will be extinguished. That, bhikkhus, is called the Nibbana-element with no residue left.”[37]

This aspect of nirvana is notoriously different to articulate. One of the reasons for this is that the concepts and definitions derived from conditioned reality do not apply to nirvana which is unconditioned. The Buddha illustrated this point in a conversation he had with a disciple named Vacchagotta. Vachhagotta asked whether an arahat would exist after death. In response, the Buddha asked Vachha whether, once a fire was extinguished, it made sense to ask, “to which direction did it go: to the east, the west, the north, or the south?”[38] The answer, of course, is that the question does not apply. In the same way, concluded the Buddha, the question of whether an arahat exists after death does not apply. In the Udāna, the Buddha gives his most complete teachings on nirvana.[39]At the end of his first teaching on the subject he says

There is, bhikkhus, that base [sphere of reality] where there is no earth, not water, no air; no base consisting of the infinity of space, no base consisting of the infinity of consciousness, no base consisting of nothingness, no base consisting of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world nor another world nor both; neither sun nor moon. Here, bhikkus, I say there is no coming, no going, no deceasing, no uprising. Not fixed, not moving, it has no support. Just this is the end of suffering.[40]

The point is that the question of existence beyond the conditioned does not fall into easy to understand categories. Nirvana is both not static and not dynamic The arahat does not exist but he also does not cease to exist.  This is not a contradiction of logic, as some naïve interpreters have understood it to be. Strictly speaking, the Buddha does not teach something like “A and not A.” Such a claim would violate the law of non-contradiction. What he actually suggests is “Not A and not B,” while offering distinctions between what is, apparently, not distinct.[41] The Buddha is expressing that nirvana is not comprehensible while trapped in samsara and conditioned by ignorance. To achieve nirvana is to transcend conventional ways of understanding the world; it is to understand the world as it really is, without conditions. The extinguishing that takes place in nirvana is not the destruction of an individual; the individual never really existed anyway.

Instead, it is the extinction of all conditioned states. The illusion of self is destroyed.

Karma

Intimately related to the Four Marks is the law of karma since "in the moral order, Dharma is manifest in the law of Karma."[42]  Karma is the mechanism that allows present actions to have effects on future states of affairs.  In this way, karma is like the law of cause and effect.  Gowan suggests that karma "is an impersonal feature of the causal relationships in the world, and there is no prospect of deviation from the causal effects of kamma on the grounds of mercy."[43] According to Keown, "Karma is not a system of rewards and punishments meted out by God, but a kind of natural law akin to law of gravity."[44]  Karma is a moral arithmetic. Certain actions have certain effects.  Karmic actions are like a seed that will ripen into a specific fruit.[45] The Buddha explained it this way:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draw the carriage. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him.[46]

Thus, according the Buddha, karma has at least two important aspects. First, it is objective. It operates according to predefined, constant values. If one performs action X, it will have result Y. However, there is no set way that consequences are dispensed.[47] The consequences of a particular action may appear immediately, in the next life, or even several lives from now.[48] Second, while the law of karma cannot be changed to suit one's needs, it can be used to bring about desired consequences. The Buddha makes this clear when he says that by performing actions with "pure thought," one will, as a matter of fact, be rewarded with happiness. The Dali Lama states this rather explicitly: "To suppose that karma is some sort of independent energy which predestines the course of our lives is incorrect. Who creates karma? We ourselves. What we think, say, do, desire, and omit creates karma."[49] Therefore, as Harvey states, "Good actions are thus encouraged because, through their goodness, they lead to pleasant, uplifting effects for the doer."[50] Karma is the rudder that allows one to steer from suffering to liberation in nirvana.

Karma is typically understood as having a moral dimension. There are differing interpretations regarding just how karma is related to morality. There are proponents for understanding karma as a deontological moral law, although this view is not widely held.[51] There are others who suggest that karma is a means to a desired end, nirvana. Another option is to understand karma as rewarding actions that are good in themselves. Keown has proposed that at this point Buddhism faces its own version the Euthyphro dilemma:  Is an action good because it generates good karmic results or does an action produce good karmic results because it is good? If actions generate karma because they are good in themselves, like the virtues of Aristotle, then Buddhist ethics might be a kind of virtue ethic. If an action is good because it generates the desired consequence, then Buddhism is more similar to utilitarianism.[52] Which of these interpretations is most likely will be discussed later in this chapter.

The Four Noble Truths

The Four Marks represent that which is most fundamental to Buddhism, the Dharma.[53] When the Buddha received enlightenment, it is these Four Marks that he perceived. From these marks, he assembled his Four Noble Truths: (1) suffering arises, (2) the origin of suffering is desire, (3) suffering ceases when desire ceases, and (4) the Eightfold Noble Path is the way to bring desire to an end.[54] Many have pointed out that the Buddha's Four Noble Truths are like a doctor's diagnosis and prescription. In the first two truths, Buddha gives his diagnosis. In the third he provides the cure. In the fourth he gives a prescription.

The prescription suggested by the Buddha is the most critical part of his Four Noble Truths for ethics. One might rephrase the fourth truth like this: ethical practice is the way to reach nirvana. The Eightfold Path consists of eight criteria for reaching nirvana: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. One might further clarify the purpose of the Path as having the purpose of helping those who practice it to understand reality as it really is: "The principal cause that allows us to overcome our cyclic existence [samsara] and the basic misunderstanding that underlies it is familiarizing ourselves with the dependently existing nature of things."105 The way to escape suffering is to act appropriately in light of the true nature of reality (impermanence, not-self, and [55]suffering) both practically and intellectually. This moves one closer to achieving nirvana.  According to the Buddha, it is the Eightfold Path that "opens the eyes, and bestows understanding, which leads to peace of mind."[56]

Therefore, the Fourth Noble Truth should be understood as defining the goal of Buddhism: to extinguish the conception of self, to remove the clinging to this world that causes samsara in order to achieve liberation. Karmic merit, accumulated through adherence to the Eightfold Noble Path, is instrumental in achieving the liberation, nirvana, that the Buddha saw as the solution.[57] Indeed, all of Buddhist thought and practice is designed to aid in the obtaining of nirvana. It is because nirvana is described as the goal that it is sometimes as seen the telos and meaning of Buddhism. As Keown argues, "Nirvana is the perfection of these virtues [listed in the Eightfold Path]."[58] However, others are more reserved in ascribing a telos to Buddhism. For example, Siderits argues that “there is no one whose life either has or lacks meaning. There is just the life.”[59]

This Fourth Noble Truth reveals how ethics is related to ontology in Buddhism. The way a person ought to live is determined by the certain desired outcomes; in this sense, Buddhist ethics is teleological. Ethical practice in Buddhism is at least partially motivated out of soteriological goals. Harvey points out that "from the perspective of the Four Noble Truths, ethics is not for its own sake, but is an essential ingredient on the path to the final goal."[60] Keown agrees and says that "It is the purpose of the Eightfold Path to bring about the transition from saṃsāra to nirvana."[61] The question that remains for a virtue view of Buddhism is whether Buddhism is merely teleological. Is the Eightfold Path merely a means to an end or is it good in itself? Is Buddhism a utilitarian or a virtue ethic?

Notes:

[1] See the Majjhima Nikaya.

[2] "Sonadanda Sutta," in Dialogues of the Buddha , trans. T. W. Dīghanikāya, Rhys Davids, and Caroline A. F. Rhys Davids. Sacred books of the Buddhists (London: Luzac,1956.), 157.

[3] Ekottara-agama               

[4] Magandiya Sutta, in In the Buddha's Words, ed. Bhikkhu Bodhi (Somerville: Wisdom, 2005), 205.

[5] 56  David Kalupahana, Buddhist Philosophy  (University of Hawaii, 1984), 36.

[6] Tich Nhat Hahn, The Heart of Buddha’s Teaching (New York, Random House, 1999),  229.

[7] Magandiya Sutta, 206.

[8] 59  Paul Williams and Anthony Tribe, Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition (London, Routledge, 2000), 42.

[9] 60  Ibid., 51.

[10] Kalupahana, Buddhist,  37.

[11] Mark Siderits, Buddhism As Philosophy: An Introduction (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), 76.

[12] 63  H. Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethic: Essence of Buddhism (New York: G. Braziller, 1971), 21.

[13] 64  Some, like Tich Naht Hahn , have suggested that second mark of existence is nirvana. In a sense, nirvana

and duhkha are, as Hahn suggests, two sides of the same coin. Nirvana is the state of being without duhkha and dukha is existence in anything but nirvana.

[14] Magandiya Sutta ,206.

[15] 66  Charles Goodman, Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 11.

[16] "The Skandhas and the Chain of Causation," in Anthology of Asian Scriptures, ed. Robert E. Van Voorst (Belmont: Wadsworth), 89.

[17] Siderits, Philosophy, 56.

[18] 69  Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu,

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.059.than.html

[19] Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic.

[20] Siderits, Buddhism,  39.

[21] 72  Christopher W Gowans, Philosophy of the Buddha. (London: Routledge, 2003), 23.

[22] 73  Winston L King,. In the Hope of Nibbana; an Essay on Theravada Buddhist Ethics (LaSalle: Open Court, 1964), 15.

[23] 74  Kalupahana, Buddhism, 39.

[24] 75  Siderits, Buddhism, 69.

[25] 76  Gunapala Dharmasiri, Fundamentals of Buddhist Ethics (Antioch: Golden Leaves, 1989), 13.

[26] Bodhi Ñāṇamoli, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Majjhima Nik⁻Aya (Boston: Wisdom, 1995), 540.

[27] Gowans, Philosophy, 135.

[28] 79

Buddhavagga: The Buddha, trans. Acharya Buddharakkhita

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/dhp/dhp.14.budd.html

[29] 80 Williams and Tribe, Buddhist Thought, 49.

[30] 81  The Nibbana Element, trans. John D. Ireland, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.2.042-

[31] x.irel.html#iti-043

[32] An arahant is a person who has achieved nirvana.

[33] The Nibbana Element.

[34] Gowans, Philosophy,  144.

[35] Kalupahana , Buddhism, 76.

[36] Gowans, Philosophy, 142.

[37] The Nibbana Element, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.2.042-049x.irel.html#iti-043

[38] The Middle Length Discourses, 593.

[39] Gowans, Philopshy,148.

[40] Nibbana Sutta: Parinibbana, trans. John D. Ireland,

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/ud/ud.8.01.irel.html.

[41] Although, the Buddha is not really offering distinctions. He is pointing to the fact that distinctions made on the basis of conventional reality are not valid. In reality, the categories of “existence” and “non-existence” just do not apply.

[42] Damien Keown, Buddhist Ethics A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Kindle Edition, location 294.

[43] 93 Gowans, Philosophy, 105.

[44] Keown, A Very Short Introduction, locations 308-19.

[45] Dale Stuart Wright, The Six Perfections: Buddhism and the Cultivation of Character (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 53.

[46] "Wisdom of the Buddha," in Anthology of Asian Scriptures, ed. Robert E. Van Voorst (Belmont: Wadsworth), 98.

[47] Lynken Ghose, “Karma and the Possibility of Rebirth: An Ethical Analysis of the Doctrine of Karma in Buddhism,” Journal of Religious Ethics 35, no. 2 (2007): 286.

[48] Dharmasiri, Fundamentals, 37.

[49] Bstan-ʼdzin-rgya-mtsho, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), 186.

[50] 100 Harvey, Introduction, 28.

[51] 101  Charles Goodman, Consequences of Compassion: An Interpretation and Defense of Buddhist Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 23.

[52] Keown, A Very Short Introduction, locations 652-63.

[53] 103  Williams and Tribe, Buddhist Thought, 7.

[54] 104 Ibid., 41-46.

[55] Sonam Rinchen, Ruth Sonam, Nāgārjuna, and Tsoṅ-kha-pa Blo-bzaṅ-grags-pa. How Karma Works: The Twelve Links of Dependent Arising : An Oral Teaching (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 2006), 27.

[56] "The Sermon on the Four Noble Truths," in Anthology of Asian Scriptures, ed. Robert E. Van Voorst (Belmont: Wadsworth), 88.

[57] 107 Tribe, Buddhist Thought, 47.

[58] Keown, Nature, 107.

[59] 109  Siderits, Philosophy, 77.

[60] Harvey, Introduction, 41.

[61] Keown, Nature, 107.

The God Who Casts No Shadow

A Twilight Musing

Have you ever put your fingers in front of a projector to create the shadow image of a rabbit or some other object? This old trick illustrates the three elements necessary to create a shadow: a source of light, an object that interrupts the projection of light, and a screen or background substance on which the shadow can be cast. The biggest shadow show for human beings is an eclipse, as when the shadow of the moon blocks out our view of the main body of the sun, or the earth comes between the sun and the moon and we have an eclipse of the moon. In the eclipse of the sun, we are in the shadow being cast by the moon, whereas in an eclipse of the moon, we see the shadow of the earth cast on the moon. However, we never see a shadow cast by the sun, because there is no source of light greater than the sun, nor a “screen” on which its shadow could be cast.

Perhaps theoretically the conditions might exist that enable the sun to cast a shadow, but from our perspective it does not and cannot.

What is true of the sun relatively speaking is applied to God absolutely in the book of James:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17, ESV)

James’s use of the imagery of light and shadow here is quite instructive. One might say that God, like the sun, casts no shadow, for He is Absolute Light, just as He is Absolute Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, beyond Whom and outside of Whom there is no reality. The conditions that create shadows in our physical world are in constant flux, for either the source of light or the objects that interrupt it are moving. Shadows are ephemeral, visual experiences that have only brief existence and cannot be captured or preserved. Even photographs of shadows are preserving only secondary images of a fleeting phenomenon.

Shadows in biblical poetry are used to reflect the briefness and transitory nature of human life, especially in light of the eternality of God. (All biblical quotations are from the ESV.)

Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding. (II Kings 20:11) Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath! Surely a man goes about as a shadow! (Ps. 39:5b-6a)

My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass. (Ps. 102:11)

Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. But you, O LORD, are enthroned forever; you are remembered throughout all generations. (Ps. 144:1)

Beyond the use of shadow to depict the brevity of life is the representation of death as transition to a land of shadow and darkness, as depicted by Job:

Are not my days few?

Then cease, and leave me alone, before I go—and I shall not return— to the land of darkness and deep shadow, the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick darkness. (Job 10:21-22)

And of course, there are the references to the shadow of death, represented most familiarly in Ps. 23:4.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

Here, however, there is also a positive element connected with shadow, for God is not only immune to shadows Himself, He gives comfort to those who are vulnerable to its threats. This picturing of shadow as a symbol of God’s protection is seen repeatedly in the Psalms:

Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings, (Ps. 17:8)

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. (Ps. 36:7) He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the LORD, "My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." (Ps. 91:1-2)

Thus the God Who casts no shadow has ultimate control of it, and can turn even the “shadow of death” into Good News. Ps. 107 depicts those who “sat in darkness and in the shadow of death” and were in physical and spiritual prison. They “cried out to the Lord in their trouble,” and in response “He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death” (Ps. 107: 10, 13, 14). In the same vein, Matthew quotes from Isaiah in regard to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned" (Matt. 4:16).

The ultimate good and perfect gift of the Father of Lights Who casts no shadow will be the creation of the New Jerusalem, where “night will be no more” and there will be no need of “lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light . . . “ (Rev.22:5). Into this eternal City of Light will be called all who in the midst of this dark world of shadows have walked in God’s light (I John 1:5-7). “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished,” if one can radically re-apply the words of Hamlet.

Addendum to this Musing

Shadows

Shadows lengthen, deepen, merge.
Darkness is all, and I am there.
No thought of shadows when
The sun is full, for then
They merely accent the brightness.
When all is shadow, love may thrive,
Though hope be dim; when all is bright,
Shallow bliss holds sway.
Even the Arctic is both night and day.
Darkness gives more to defining light
Than light to the understanding of dark.
I will see the shadow grow,
And dwell in it even, to know
That light is its own verity,
And darkness but an island in its midst.

--Elton D. Higgs

Debate: Ron Smith and Matthew Flannagan "Morality Does Not Need God"

Matthew Flannagan, co-author of Did God Really Command Genocide? and atheist moral philosopher Ron Smith, engage in a lively and thoughtful debate concerning theistic morality. Dr. Smith argues that theism is not necessary for morality; that it is incoherent and leads to atrocities. Dr. Flannagan defends divine command theory.  The debate took place at The Lady Goodfellow Chapel, Waikato University on 11 May 2016.

Image: "Christ Gives the Law" by Lawrence OP. CC License. 

Welcome to the Sawdust Trail: Campmeetings and the Moral Argument

Dr. Baggett felt inspired to write this book about a Michigan campmeeting when his mom was sick and in the hospital in Lansing, Michigan about nine months before she died. As he walked the grounds at the Eaton Rapids Campground in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, thinking about her physical decline, he felt nostalgic thinking about his parents’ love of the place and its formative role in his upbringing. The idea occurred to write a history of the 130 year old holiness campmeeting, and now, four years later, the book by him  and his wife, with Joelee Bateman, is done and available for purchase. It’s called At the Bend of the River Grand, and available at, for example, Amazon.com. The price currently listed on Amazon.com is 45 dollars, but that’s going to change to 31.50 very soon. For those acquainted with campmeetings, you’ll appreciate reading the book and may well recognize much of what’s discussed; for those less familiar, we hope the book brings a little bit of campmeeting to you. Before too long we at MoralApologetics.com may feature a Campmeeting writing contest, the winner of which will receive a free copy of the book. If you’re wondering how campmeeting connects with moral apologetics, that will become clear in the course of the interview, but quickly: campmeeting is about both evangelism and living a victorious Christian life. So it touches in a very practical way on what we here at the site call the performative variant of moral apologetics: how by God’s enablement we are made able to live victoriously, finding victory over sin, and, ultimately, being conformed entirely to the image of Christ.

Twilight Musings: Random Ruminations (and a Couple of Aphorisms)

Rumination # 1

There is something to be said for the non-believer who manifests a common-sense, pragmatic positive approach to life. Such a one may admit that he does not perceive designed reasons for his existence, but nevertheless he or she says, “Even though I don’t see the point in the God thing, I can focus my attention on the good that it is possible to experience in life. Although I have to recognize that I live in an imperfect world, I might as well make the best of it, without being bitter.” Thinking thus is compatible with either agnosticism or a sanguine kind of atheism (as opposed to militant atheism). But one who accepts life without bitterness and tries to live it constructively in spite of its downsides has already given a nod in the direction of the objective existence of good and evil and has tried to make a responsible choice between them. He/she is manifesting a kind of stoical common-sense decision to accept the ambiguity of the world at face value without feeling persecuted or mistreated.

On the other hand, there is also some sense to be made of a person with faith in God, or at least in Divine Purpose, who is willing to deal with the philosophical complications that such faith brings in order to be in touch with mysteries that enrich life beyond merely “making the best of things.” That, too, is internally consistent, and it shows once again a responsible choice to exercise discernment toward the mixture of good and evil in the world.

There is, however, a third position one often encounters which is totally inconsistent, i.e., angrily indicting God for cruelty or malice and making that a reason for refusing to submit to Him. It is ironic when one believes in God’s existence only to have someone to blame for the ills of the world.

Rumination # 2

It is interesting to contemplate the idea that if it were not for evil, love could not be fully manifested. Extreme love can be seen only through a willingness to incur hardship for the benefit of the beloved. If people had no impediments to their happiness and no bad character traits, what significance could be attached to their being loved? One may ask whether God Himself could have shown supreme love had it not been for the needs of sinful mankind (the idea of felix culpa, or “happy fault”). And since supreme love involves sacrifice, what was God to give that would be a real sacrifice for Him, since He is wholly sufficient within Himself? He could only give a part of His own nature—His Son. God’s love is most fully reflected in us, not when we love those who are easiest to love, but when we show the love that sacrifices even for the unworthy.

And a Couple of Aphorisms

• No one can be ill-tempered if he is convinced that God loves him.

• The way people justify their behavior does not always explain it.

• Christian living begins in creative despair.

Image: "Think" by R. Frasser. CC License. 

The Possibility of Virtue in Christianity and Buddhism (Part 1 of 5)

Introduction

Aristotle, the great teacher of Greece, once asked, “What is the good for man?” This is a question that every worldview seeks to answer. The Israelites said that good for man consisted in living a life of holiness to God, as a separate and distinct people. The Greeks said that man was meant for the polis.[1] Christ taught men were for his kingdom. The Buddha held his own view.

The heart of Buddhism is ethics.[2] This is evident even in the legendary accounts of the Buddha’s life. The Buddha first encountered the problem of suffering after he finally escaped the isolation of the palace he had grown up in. His father, a powerful ruler, wanted to force his son into a life of politics and war. He had been warned that if his son was exposed to the kind of life people experience every day, a life marked by suffering, that his son would likely become a great teacher instead of a ruler. However, despite his father’s best efforts, the Buddha eventually ventured outside the palace walls. There he was faced with illness, old age, and death. As a result, the Buddha became a renunciate; he gave up his royal lifestyle and began searching for a way to bring an end to suffering. In his search, the Buddha tried all the available philosophies and religions; whether they be hedonistic or ascetic. Whatever he tried, the Buddha excelled beyond his teachers, but in each case, he found that suffering still remained. Eventually, while under the Bodhi tree, and after much effort, the Buddha attained enlightenment. He saw reality as it really is and was able to formulate a solution.

The solution he came up with was an entirely practical one: cultivate happiness.[3] This was to be achieved by taking “the appropriate action: seeking nirvana.”4   This emphasis on action means that Buddhism is primarily an orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy.[4][5] What is important is “the harmony of behavior, not harmony of doctrines.”[6]

What this means is that Buddhism as a worldview is in a unique position. Since it is primarily a particular set of practices, essentially an ethic, the validity of the Buddhist worldview rises and falls on whether or not Buddhism succeeds as an ethical system.  This provides an opportunity to test Buddhism to see whether it is a coherent worldview.

Statement of the Problem

There are two leading interpretations of Buddhist ethics. The first and most popular interpretation understands Buddhism as a kind of utilitarianism. Proponents of this view argue that Buddhist ethics are merely provisional and ought to be disregarded once nirvana is attained.

The well respected Saddhatissa takes a utilitarian view and argues that the moral teachings of the Buddha "were never ends in themselves, confined to a mundane life, but were the essential preliminaries, and the permanent accompaniments, to attaining the highest state."[7]  However, a system that is merely provisional will not do if it is agreed that ethics must account for what is ultimately good or valuable. But there is another interpretation. Damien Keown, as well as several others, suggests that Buddhism is a kind of virtue ethic, very much similar to the kind taught by Aristotle.[8] A Buddhist version of virtue ethics offers the possibility of a complete, substantive account of ethics. Whether or not virtue ethics can be meaningfully understood in a

Buddhist context is the first problem that thesis will seek to solve.

The second problem concerns whether a Christian worldview might accommodate a virtue view of ethics better than a Buddhist one. Increasingly, Christians are adopting a blended approach to ethics, usually holding to a combination of deontological and virtue ethics.[9]  This thesis will put the possibility of a Christian virtue ethic to the test. If it turns out that Christianity can, in fact, provide a more robust context for a virtue ethic, then in order to be a fulfilled virtue ethicist, one ought to abandon the Buddhist worldview and adopt a Christian one.

Statement of the Importance of the Problem

A prima facie look at this thesis might cause some readers to think it is relevant only to Buddhists who hold to a virtue view of ethics–the subject matter here ought not concern the average Buddhist, much less anyone else. However, this is not the case. To understand the importance of this thesis, one must first understand just how the topic falls within contemporary scholarship. First, there is the current state of Buddhist ethics as a scholarly discipline. Many writers on the subject have been quick to point out that serious study of Buddhist ethics from a theoretical standpoint is a rather new phenomenon.

So far, there have been primarily only two theoretical accounts of Buddhist ethics offered: utility and virtue. If one agrees that a utility view is not a satisfactory account of ethics, then there is only one other viable option: the virtue view. Of course, there can also be new interpretations and revisions to old ones, but that is why this thesis is significant: the best contemporary interpretations of Buddhist ethics may need to be adjusted.  Second, since Buddhism is primarily a system of ethics, then whether or not it succeeds as an ethical system is vitally important to the entire worldview. If the Buddhist worldview does not succeed as an ethic, it does not succeed at all.

Foundational questions of worldviews are always weighty, so it is hard to overestimate the importance of engaging the foundations of a religion, especially a religion as influential as Buddhism. While it has been shown that the discussion in this thesis will be relevant for more than just a few, it also needs to be understood that a goal of this thesis is to be part of a wider conversation about the nature of Buddhist and Christian ethics and not the final word. The topics discussed are immensely important; the thesis itself is only part of that vital conversation.

Hopefully, it will contribute to a greater understanding of both systems.

Statement of Position on the Problem

As stated above, this thesis seeks to discover whether a virtue ethic interpretation of

Buddhist ethics is viable. This thesis addresses the question both negatively and positively. Negatively, the position taken on this problem is that a virtue view is inadequate for multiple reasons. Positively, this thesis holds that a Christian view of virtue ethics succeeds and is superior to the Buddhist view. Consequently, if one wants to be a satisfied virtue ethicist, one ought to abandon the Buddhist worldview and become a Christian.

Limitations

Since the label “Buddhism” covers a wide array of beliefs and practices, this thesis will be limited specifically to early Buddhism. All Buddhist scriptures are taken from the Pali Canon, a set of scriptures considered authoritative by nearly all Buddhists.  Further, the clarification needs to be made that Buddhist cosmology or metaphysics itself is not under scrutiny. It is specifically the relationship between worldview and ethics that is being examined. This means that questions like, "How can it be the case that these are the four marks of existence and not three others?" will not be addressed. Also, this thesis will be limited to metaethical concerns.

Issues of practice will not be discussed. Primarily, the goal will be show that foundational issues in early Buddhism prevent Buddhist ethical practices from being applied in a way consistent with a virtue view of ethics.

Methodology

Comparative ethics can be a difficult endeavor. There are two primary pitfalls. The first is to presume the truthfulness of one view at the start. The result is that opposing viewpoints are inadequate due to mere definition and no understanding is gained. A Buddhist, presuming Buddhism to be correct, might say that Christianity is inadequate simply because it does not further progress toward nirvana. The other danger is to assume that there can be no conclusions. Systems may be compared, but each one is right in its own context. The best we can hope for is greater understanding. This produces unsatisfactory results as well. There ought to be resolution: one view demonstrated to be superior to another. To avoid these dangers, a neutral framework is needed. The first component of this framework is a shared assumption: the fundamental relationship between ethics and reality. This is the same assumption as made by Geertz:

It is the conviction that the values one holds are grounded in the inherent structure of reality, that between the way one ought to live and the way things really are there is an unbreakable inner connection. What sacred symbols do for those to whom they are sacred is to formulate an image of the world’s construction and a program for human conduct that are mere reflexes of one another.[10]

The second component needed is an account of virtue ethics that is neutral to both Christianity and Buddhism. Alasdair MacInytre has established such a view of virtue ethics. His view presupposes at least two features that are required of a worldview in order to accommodate a virtue ethic: an account of teleology and the narrative unity of a single human life.

The next step will be to take these criteria and their necessary conditions and apply them to Keown’s interpretation of Buddhist ethics. If it turns out that Keown has adequately accounted for these in his system, then perhaps it is correct to characterize Buddhism as a kind of virtue ethic. However, if Keown does not succeed, then he has not saved Buddhist ethics from the other primary interpretation: Buddhist ethics is merely utilitarian. The final step will be to apply the criteria to the Christian worldview in order to determine whether the Christian worldview provides a superior account of virtue.

Notes:

[1] Rosalind Hursthouse, “Virtue Ethics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford : Stanford University, 2007). Par 6.

[2] 2

Damien Keown, Buddhism A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1.

[3] 3  Christopher W Gowans.  Philosophy of the Buddha (London: Routledge, 2003), 25.

[4] Mark Siderits, Buddhism As Philosophy: An Introduction (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007), 22.

[5] Keown, Buddhism, 3.

[6] 6 Paul Williams and Anthony Tribe, Buddhist Thought (New York: Routledge, 2000),  99.

[7] 7  H.  Saddhatissa, Buddhist Ethics: Essence of Buddhism ( New York: G. Braziller, 1971), 81.

[8] 8 Keown, Buddhism, 33.

[9] This is the position of Reuschling, Moreland, and Craig .

[10] Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia(Chicago: University

of Chicago Press), 97.

Image: CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=202801

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.

The Twilight Years

A Twilight Musing

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'' (Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra,” lines 1-6)

[su_dropcap size="4"]S[/su_dropcap]ince I have chosen to allude to my age in the overall title of my weekly articles, I suppose it would be appropriate for me to say a few words about the way I have come to regard my “twilight years.” Although I don’t completely share the sanguinity about aging expressed by Browning’s character, I do see some advantages to being old, in spite of the minimal inconveniences attached to this stage of life (reduced energy, less supple joints, erratic memory, and other less mentionable difficulties). However, I acknowledge that by the grace of God and through no merit of my own, I have not had to struggle with the chronic illness and economic insecurity that often bedevil people my age. It is with that qualifier to my credibility that I presume to share with you some of the advantages I see in having completed almost 79 years on this earth.

The first advantage to the elder years is that I have a wider perspective from which to evaluate both my experiences and those of others. When I was young, I was much more absorbed in what was happening to me, and I judged events to be good or bad by how they made me feel, not how they affected others. What was it to me if I received the Dean’s Award and others saw it as evidence of favoritism? In my imperceptiveness, their anger was a total surprise to me. Later on, in the midst of my career, what if my losing out on an appointment as dean meant that the person who got the job was thereby launched on a highly successful administrative career? Any ability to celebrate his success was obscured by my feelings of rejection. As I matured, the real value of such successes and failures diminished, and I was able to understand that I not only had to look beyond myself, but also had to view events over a period of time to evaluate accurately what was happening to me and those around me. The same widened perspective also eventually made me less prone to snap judgments about people’s character.

Second, in my latter years I am better able to appreciate the value of long-term relationships. I am able to have a much deeper kind of intimacy with my wife of 56 years than I had any conception of when we were young. And long-term friendships become special treasures. We have lost touch with most of the friends we had in our younger days, but with those we are still close to we share a richness of mutual understanding that comes only with long and growing acquaintance. Moreover, in those rare instances when it is possible to establish new significant friendships, I have learned to cut through superficialities to the meat of getting to know each other and discussing things that really matter.[su_pullquote]Old age brings with it a sharp understanding of the fact that this world is not our home, and a willingness to hold it loosely now and to let it go gladly when the time comes.[/su_pullquote]

Third, I have learned in my early winter years not to be too concerned with what people think of me, which in turn frees me to state my convictions clearly and directly, though I now see more clearly the need to do so gently and with patience. But in the latter part of my life, I have also discovered the need of attentiveness to the words of others. Truly listening to others leads not only to being listened to more intently oneself, but to finding out how interesting and complex other people’s lives are if you encourage them to tell you how they came to be who they are.

Fourth, through long experience in struggling to see God’s will being worked out in my life and those of others, I have been privileged to compile a record of God’s faithful provision that convinces me to the core of my soul that He is always at work, sometimes especially when we’re not able to see it, or when in His wisdom He doesn’t let us see it. Many times my wife and I have looked back and realized that God’s perfect timing required that His resolution to a problem be delayed until other circumstances were in place. In the buying of our present home, for example, we looked for months until our agent informed us of a house that had just gone on the market, and it turned out to be the perfectly suitable and pleasant home that we still live in.

Finally, old age brings with it a sharp understanding of the fact that this world is not our home, and a willingness to hold it loosely now and to let it go gladly when the time comes. This, too, has a freeing effect, not only liberating us from the fear of death, but enabling us to embrace with eagerness the transition that brings us into the presence of our Savior.

Psalm 92:12-15 declares that the righteous “flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green.” Because of the borrowed righteousness from our Lord Jesus, one of the richest benefits of my twilight years has been God’s gifts of renewed possibilities to “bear fruit in old age.” Besides opportunities to serve in a fellowship of Christians that I became associated with only when I was 70, and the recent boon of singing with my daughter in a local choral society after years of absence from singing with a group, the privilege and challenge of writing this column has been a wonderful stimulus to my creative skills and disciplined thinking that might easily have become inactive. I pray that for those who read these “Twilight Musings,” my “sappiness” will always be reflective of my being planted, by His grace, in “the courts of our God.”

The Christian Answer to Suffering

Editor's note: Stanley Jones (1884-1973) served much of his life as missionary to India, ministering among the most disenfranchised—members of the lowest castes and the outcastes. Known affectionately as the Billy Graham of India, Jones sought to present the gospel disencumbered from Western ideologies, looking for means of translating Christianity in South Asian cultural terms. This work gained Jones inroads to the higher castes, including students and academics, and made possible interreligious lectures that he delivered throughout the continent. His most important writing is The Christ of the Indian Road (1925), which sold over one million copies.

The Christian Answer to Suffering

by E. Stanley Jones, Asbury College Radio Program

Audio available here

I’m going to talk to you this morning about the Christian answer to suffering, merited and unmerited. It’s a world of suffering and getting worse. It’s going to steal into many a heart and embitter it, and we have to be able to answer this question. Suffering, not answer it as a verbal thing but as a vital thing. I can understand merited suffering. It’s a world of moral consequence. I am free to choose, but I am not free to choose the results of my choosing. Those results are in hands not my own. It’s a world where I don’t break the laws of God; I break myself on the laws of God. Action is followed by reaction, and it’s according to the quality of the action that determines the quality of the reaction. I can understand that I must reap what I sow. If I do wrong, the consequences of that wrong are going to come back on me, unless of course God steps in and takes it on himself and bears it and delivers me of the consequences of my wrong through forgiveness and the new birth. I can understand merited suffering, but what about this unmerited suffering? Why should people suffer when they don’t do wrong? Other people do wrong, and the consequences of that wrongdoing hit the innocent. Why should little children suffer? This war, very few people chose it, and yet here we are in a world of suffering because of the sin of not many but a few. It’s at the place of unmerited suffering that the mind of man reels and sometimes rebels.

Differing systems coming to this whole question give differing answers. One answer is the Greek answer, the Stoic. He said, “My head might be bloody, but it will be unbowed under the bludgeonings of chance.” He would match his inner courage against the circumstances of life. It was a noble creed. Good, but not good enough. Then there’s the answer of Omar Khayyam, the great Persian poet. He said he’d like to take the steam of things entire and smash it and remake it according to the heart’s desire. It’s lovely poetry, but you and I can’t take hold of the steam of things entire and smash it. We have to work out our destiny under things as they are in large measure. Margaret Fuller once said, “I accept the universe,” and Carlyle’s comment was, “Gad, she’d better.” There’s nothing else to be done.

The ancient Buddha had his answer. He sat under the Bodhi tree at Gaya and pondered long and deep upon the problem of suffering and came to the conclusion that existence and suffering are one. As long as you’re in existence, you’re in suffering. The only way to get out of suffering is to get out of existence, and the only way to get out of existence is to get out of action. The only way to get out of action is to get out of desire. At the root of desire, even for life, as we stop the weed of existence from turning round, and then you go out into that passionless, actionless state called Nirvana, the state literally of the snuffed out candle. I asked a Buddhist monk once whether there was any existence in Nirvana. He laughed and asked, “How could there be? There’s no suffering, and if there’s no suffering, there can be no existence.” In Buddha we get rid of the problems of life by getting rid of life. We would get rid of our headaches by getting rid of our heads. Too big a price.

The Hindu has his answer. He says that the thing that comes upon you from without isn’t from without really. It’s the result of your sins of a previous birth. They’re finding you out now. Whatever is, is just. So where there is suffering, there has been antecedent sin. A Hindu said to me one day Jesus must have been a terrible sinner in a previous birth because he was such a terrible sufferer in this one. According to the strict law of karma, that’s right. But I would suspect a premise that brought me to that conclusion.

The Mohammaden has his answer. He says that which comes from without is the will of God. Everything that happens is God’s will; bend under it. Islam literally means submission to the will of God. But I question whether everything that happens is the will of God. If so, what kind of a God is there? His character is gone. When I turn to the Old Testament, I find several answers. One is, “No plague will come neigh your dwelling. Only with your eyes will you behold and see the reward of the wicked.” In other words, the righteous will be exempt. The Old Testament prophets had difficulty in fitting that in with the facts of life. They saw that the righteous did suffer. They were puzzled.

When we come to the New Testament, a great many Christians give the Mohammaden answer: “It’s the will of God, bend under it. Accept it as the will of God.” Others give the answer that the righteous will be exempt. Oh, I grant you that they are exempt from a good many things that come upon other people. They know how to live better in a universe of this kind. They’re not breaking their shins on the system of things all the time. They know how to live better in a universe of this kind. But they’re subject to other sufferings which do not come upon the unrighteous. The world demands conformity: if you fall beneath its standards, it will punish you. If you rise above its standards, it will persecute you. It demands a grey, average conformity. But the Christian is a departure upward. His head is lifted above the multitude. Therefore, that head gets whacked. And if it doesn’t get whacked, well, it’s not above the multitude. “Woe unto you,” said Jesus, “when all men speak well of you.” You’re like them. If you’re different, you get hurt.

A man said in one of my roundtable conferences in India, he said, “You know I’ve lost my faith. I asked God for something anybody could have answered. My brother was wounded in the last war. I prayed that he might get well and might be spared. And when he wasn’t spared and he died, my faith died too.” A professor walked across the street in Chicago and was knocked down by a motor truck, leg broken. After many weeks in the hospital, he came back to the university chapel service and said, “I no longer believe in a personal God. Had there been a personal God, he would have whispered to me when he saw me in that danger. But he didn’t whisper to me, so when my leg was broken, my faith was broken.” These converge upon one idea, namely if you’re only righteous, you’ll be spared. And when they weren’t spared, their faith crashed.

Well, let’s look at it. Suppose that were true, what would happen? First of all, to religion. Well, we’d take out religion, as you’d take out a fire insurance policy. You’d say, “I want to get through the fires of suffering, and therefore, I’ve become religious to be exempt.” And religion would be degraded to the level of a fire insurance policy—no more, no less. Besides, what would happen to the character of the universe? The universe would soon become an undependable universe. You wouldn’t know what to expect. If a good man leaned over the parapet too far, the law of gravitation would be suspended. If a bad man leaned over too far, he would need an operation. You wouldn’t know whether the laws of nature would be in operation or suspension because you wouldn’t know the character of the person concerned. Now I know if I lean over the parapet too far, the law of gravitation isn’t going to ask whether I’m good, bad, or indifferent; it’s going to pull me down. So I don’t lean over too far. It’s a hard school, but I know the rules.

Suppose it could be proved that motor trucks would not knock you down, what would happen to the character of the righteous? Well they’d become the champion jaywalkers of the world. They’d roam around amid the traffic meditating and vegetating. And that quickness of decision which comes from a world of chance and circumstance would be taken away, and that elimination would be their exemption. Now when I walk across the road, I know if I don’t belong to the quick, then I will belong to the dead. So I watch, both ways. I belong to the quick. No, that’s not the answer. If that were the answer, the righteous would be the petting child of the universe, and the petting child is always the spoiled child.

What, then, is the Christian answer? It’s none of these. But it’s more wonderful than all of these put together. It’s this. That you can take hold of suffering and sorrow and frustration and injustice and not bear it, but use it. Almost everything beautiful in the pages of the New Testament has come out of something ugly. Almost everything glorious has come out of something shameful. They don’t ask to be exempt. They don’t ask to be taken out of suffering. All they ask is inner soundness of spirit so they can take hold of the raw materials of human life as it comes to them—justice and injustice, pleasure and pain, compliment and criticism. And they can take it up into the purpose of their lives and transmute it and make it into something else. That is an open possibility of living—in spite of.

I know a man who went out to China on an adventure of service and love for his master, he and his family. And they came back from China a shattered, battered remnant of that campaign for Christ. The father caught an infection of the eye, which left him blind. The mother died of a painful illness, cancer—long, lingering illness. One son died of Addison’s Disease; another got an abrasion upon the heel on a sports field and died from that infection. The daughter was stricken with infantile paralysis and hobbles around on crutches. The only remaining son had to give up his course at the seminary to undergo a major operation. But on an airfield in Miami, Florida, at midnight, he took me by the hand and said, “I’m proud of my family.” And well he might be.

What happened to that family? The only two remaining ones at home were the father, blind, and the daughter, a cripple. Between them, they had a seeing-eye dog and a pair of crutches to come back to life with. Were they beaten? Oh, no. The father has a church where he is on the pastorate, preaches all over the country evangelistic sermons with his seeing-eye dog. And the daughter organizes the games of the church, hobbling around on crutches, and keeps house for her father, still hobbling on her crutches. Between them, they have a seeing-eye dog and a pair of crutches. Oh, no. They have an unconquerable spirit. No wonder that boy at midnight said to me, “I’m proud of my family.” Well he might be. You see, they’ve taken hold of injustice, apparent injustice, and turned it into victory.

General Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang are wonderful people. I was talking to Madame Chiang one day in China, and I said to her, “Is General Chiang a real Christian?” She said, “Yes, he is. He reads his Bible every day and prays, gets strength from God.” But then she turned to me and said, “You must remember that he’s only a babe in Christ.” It was interesting. He was seated right there, and his wife was saying that he was only a babe in Christ. How did he become a Christian? Three influences really helped him to be a Christian. One was his mother in law. You can chalk that up in favor of the mother in laws who are so often maligned. Sometimes we should call them mothers in love. The second influence was a Negro evangelist who prayed for a child in that home where Chiang Kai-shek was, and the child was healed. . . . And the third influence was a doctor.

When Chiang Kai-shek’s army swept across that country, in the early days, there was a communist left wing, and they looted a hospital belonging to a missionary left with a shell, his life work went to pieces. But he followed after the army and tended to their sick and their wounded. When Chiang Kai-shek heard about it, he said, “What makes that man follow after and tend to the sick and wounded of the very people who looted his hospital? What makes him do it?” And they said, “He’s a Christian. That’s why he does it.” Then said Chiang Kai-shek, “If that’s what it means to be a Christian, I’m going to be a Christian.” Then, in the midst of an anti-Christian movement that was sweeping that country, to the astonishment of everybody, Chiang Kai-shek announced that he was a Christian. That doctor had calamity come upon him, but through that calamity, he showed his spirit. And through the revelation of that spirit, he won one of the greatest men of this age. And through him, it may win a great nation. You see, he took hold of injustice and turned it into something else. He had mastered a way to live. And it may be that through your suffering and frustration and defeat, you can show a spirit, and that spirit will do far more work than all your years of work. They’ll look through that little revelation, and they’ll see something eternal abiding in that moment. That’s the Christian answer. The Christian answer is to take hold of everything and make it into something else. That is victory.

Greater Than the Mess

Several days ago, during my morning devotional time with my wife, we were talking about some disturbing things in our domestic life and in the nation, and I ended up saying, “Boy, what a mess!” I then opened up a book of daily readings that I use, and the headline for the meditation of the day was “Greater than the Mess!” We both responded with a laugh and a rush of amazement at how God often gives comfort and instruction in unexpected ways. We talked later about personal and biblical experiences of God’s showing Himself to be “greater than the mess.” The most notable of these in our life was the time in the mid ‘90s when we were under great stress from caring for our emotionally troubled daughter and her young child, whom we had adopted at birth. Our home was in disarray because of the complexities and pressures of our situation, and we were desperate for relief. As my wife commented, “One of us is going to wind up in an institution. We just don’t know yet which one.” Then, when it seemed we couldn’t cope anymore, the Lord supplied a politician who had a word with a mental health director, who cut through the red tape and supplied us with an adult foster care home for our afflicted daughter within a week. Our daughter’s psychological counselor told us she had never seen such a fast placement. God was greater than the mess!

Scripture is full of examples of this truth. The Israelites were caught between the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s terrible chariots—what a mess! But God opened the sea for them to pass over and closed in on Pharaoh’s army. God was greater than the mess!

Elijah destroyed the prophets of Baal while Jezebel was away, but when Jezebel came back she sent her soldiers in hot pursuit of him, so that he had to run and hide in a cave—what a mess! But God showed Elijah that 400 other prophets were also on God’s side, and He sent Elijah out in renewed hope to anoint his successor, Elisha. God was greater than the mess!

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego dared to refuse Nebuchanezzar’s order to bow down to his golden idol, and the king in his wrath cast them into a furnace so hot it killed those who put them in. Quite a mess! But a fourth figure was seen in the furnace with the three faithful Hebrews, and they came out of the furnace without even a singed hair. The God they had trusted to deliver them was greater than the mess!

Paul and Silas cast out a prophetic demon from a poor, exploited young woman, and they were seized and arrested and beaten for their merciful deed. What a mess! But while they were singing in jail at midnight, God sent an earthquake and broke them out, so that they could preach to the jailor and convert his household. Once again, God was greater than the mess!

All of us who have served the Lord any length of time have personally seen many instances of His being greater than the mess, and the Scriptures are full of illustrations as well. Why, then, do we find it so hard to feel that truth when we are still in the midst of some mess? I will suggest three reasons. First, although we rejoice in the times when God has shown Himself to be greater than a particular mess, we forget that God is in His essence greater than any and all manifestations of evil and suffering. In a sense, He does not have to prove Himself in each instance to be Master of the Mess, for He is the one than whom no greater can be imagined. His power simply has no rival, and there is no threat He cannot overcome.

Second, we find it easy to focus on the particular mess that we are involved in, and we lose sight of the many other personal, social, and environmental messes in the world at large. Therefore, we aren’t aware that our suffering is interlocked with the larger suffering in the world around us. As my high school principal used to say, “If you’ve got a boil on your neck, it’s hard to be concerned about starving people in Africa.” But God, of course, sees the whole picture, and His timing in solving our particular mess may be connected with what’s needed to remedy some other mess or messes. That larger concern is illustrated in II Peter 3:9, in answer to the question of why God delays his righteous judgment on an evil world: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (ESV).

Third, our difficulty in seeing past our immediate pain may blind us to the possibility that God is in the process of transforming us in ways that we don’t even see the need of. As the writer of Hebrews says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11).

At the center of the “peaceful fruit” spoken of in this verse is the sure hope we have as children of God that Father will complete the supreme and overarching example of His being “greater than the mess.” His ultimate solution has already been launched in the coming of Jesus Christ, His own Son, who was sent to die the sacrificial death which would take care of the systemic mess of sin and death for which Adam and Eve were the catalysts. Therefore, we endure in confident faith that, although we still live in the weakness of our own mortal flesh and exist in a sin-stained and disordered world, these bodies we live in, the scarred planet we inhabit, and the corrupt society in which we carry on our daily lives will be gloriously replaced by immortal bodies in a perfect world, living in the harmony of full communion with the eternal Master of the Mess—Jehovah Jireh, the God Who Provides.

Image: By Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24564985

How Kantian Ethics Helps to Demonstrate the Attractiveness of Biblical Ethics: Part II

BIBLICAL ETHICS SUCCEEDS WHERE KANT FALLS SHORT

In comparing the three proposed biblical principles of ethics with Kantian ethics, it is evident that both Kant and the biblical principles attempt to achieve many of the same objectives despite having different foundations to ground morality. Kant’s ethic, however, proves to be less plausible when his justification for objective morality, his requirements for moral worth, and his argument that humans possess inherent value are compared with a biblical view of ethics.

Kant departs from the first biblical principle by grounding objective morality in the “good will” that is produced by reason in every rational creature. In accord with the Enlightenment ideals of human autonomy and reason, humans can legislate morality apart from God. Assessing the philosophical merit of Kantian ethics versus the biblical ethic on this point deserves careful attention because both views stand or fall with the ability that their intrinsic “good” has to ground objective morality.

The classic problem that confronts any moral system that claims some absolute standard as the ground of objective morality is the Euthyphro dilemma. This dilemma, which goes back to the time of Plato, questions whether God’s commands could really determine what is good (or “pious”). The dilemma is stated: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?”[1]

Both horns of the dilemma are a challenge to any proposed absolute standard of goodness. For any purported standard of objective morality, one can ask whether that standard merely recognizes goodness (i.e., goodness is external to the standard) or whether that standard determines goodness arbitrarily. Consider first whether the biblical ethic is able to defend that the Christian God is plausibly the ground of objective morality in the face of this challenge. It will not do for objective morality to be arbitrary (if good is merely what God says), and God cannot ground objective morality if there is a standard of morality outside of God (if God simply affirms what is independently good). Fortunately for biblical ethics, there is a third alternative—God Himself is the “Good.” The third alternative is that “God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is what Plato called the ‘Good.’ He is the locus and source of moral value.”[2] So God is the Good. God’s will and essentially holy nature are fused such that God only wills that which consistently flows from His nature. God is not an arbitrary “stopping point” for morality’s foundation, as there are “principled reasons to think that God’s existence is necessary and that God functions as the very ground of being.” If God is the “primordial good of unsurpassable value,” then goodness is anchored in an unchanging, personal, and necessarily perfect source.[3] It is reasonable that the ground of objective morality would have these properties; morality seems to be essentially bound up with personhood, and anything that would ground objective morality would have to be unchanging and beyond human opinion.

Although the biblical grounding of objective morality in God’s holy nature appears to survive the Euthyphro dilemma, Kant’s “good will” does not fare as well. Kant may seem to split the horns of the dilemma by claiming that the good will is intrinsically and necessarily good. The problem, however, is that there is no reason why the good will must be good “without qualification” in the way Kant says it is. Louis Pojman raises the problem that the good will itself—the rational faculty that recognizes the CI as the supreme moral principle—could potentially be “put to bad uses.” Although the good will seems to be a good, Pojman insightfully recognizes that it is “not obvious” that the good will is necessarily good or that it is “the only inherently good thing” since a “misguided do-gooder” could act in accordance with what he believes is good and yet carry out what most of us regard as bad actions. Perhaps the good will is a “necessary condition to any morally good action,” but it does not seem to be sufficient.[4]

Ultimately, for Kant, the good will is intimately tied to the principle that it produces—the CI and its requirement of universalizability. The problem is that universalizability is unable to stand as the ultimate moral criterion. For one thing, Kant does not adequately specify parameters for the characteristics of a maxim that is appropriate to universalize as moral law. Aside from the limitation that a maxim must not violate the Principle of Ends, Kant “provides no guide for determining what features must be included in the maxim.” This leaves open the door for morally problematic actions “to be based on a maxim that a person would universalize.”[5] Also, it is highly dubious that reason necessarily produces the same conclusions in all rational beings. For example, one could justifiably will to universalize the maxim that “one should always tell the truth no matter what consequence might come about as a result.” Indeed, Kant believed that reason demands the acceptance of this maxim. Yet many would argue that reason demands the acceptance of the maxim that “one should tell the truth unless doing so would harm others.” It is unclear which maxim is necessitated by reason, and both positions have defenders. This example also highlights the difficulty the CI has in handling moral conflicts.[6]

If, however, God’s unchanging and necessarily good character is the intrinsic “Good,” then there is no concern about disagreements among rational human persons as to what should be universalized—that is, what is good. Only God, out of His necessarily holy nature, stands as the ontological ground of goodness, and conflicting human beliefs are irrelevant to the existence of objective morality. With biblical ethics, the existence of moral values and duties (moral ontology) does not depend upon the conclusions we reach as we try to know what these moral values and duties are (moral epistemology). What happens when two maxims that appear to be legitimately justifiable according to our best human reason disagree with each other? If objective morality is rooted in God, then such a situation is irrelevant to moral ontology.

In addition to providing a better foundation for objective moral values, having a biblical ground of ethics can adequately justify moral duties while the Kantian ground of ethics cannot. Since biblical ethics grounds objective morality in God, God’s commands are justifiably our moral duties because they are derived from His essentially holy nature.[7] Biblical ethics is able to sustain itself as a truly deontological ethical system. On the other hand, although Kant would deny it, significant voices have charged that Kant’s good will is unable to produce true moral duties without appealing to a more subjective consequentialist justification for them. The famous utilitarian ethicist John Stuart Mill, for example, claims that the CI does not avoid seemingly “immoral” actions on purely logical grounds; rather, he says Kant merely shows “that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur.”[8] Mill has a valid point. Some seemingly immoral maxims do not lead to any obvious contradiction if universalized, though we can see that the consequences of universalizing it would be morally bad and may produce a negative result. For example, consider the maxim that “two consenting adults who are not already in a committed relationship should always have sex with each other if they desire to do so.” The universal acceptance of this maxim would not in any way lead to a logical contradiction that would undermine the very practice of the maxim, and it is not obvious that the Principle of Ends is being violated since both individuals are consenting and may well have a legitimate interest in the wellbeing of the other person; however, one can reasonably will that this maxim should not be universalized because of the consequences it would have. Such promiscuity is known to carry a heavy emotional weight for those who engage in it, and it also raises the likelihood of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Such behavior also makes it more difficult to form meaningful committed relationships, which one can reasonably argue have significant value. In fact, there are actually “Kantian consequentialists,” such as R. M. Hare[9] and David Cummiskey. Cummiskey argues that Kant’s ethical system “is consistent with and supports a consequentialist normative principle” even though Kant sought a fully deontological ethic.[10] If that is the case, then it is hard to see how Kant’s good will allows for objective moral duties; however, because God Himself is the necessary “Good” and His nature produces moral truth that is essential and binding upon us, moral duties transcend humans, and their existence does not depend upon our own assessment of what actions will probably produce “good” consequences. It is not clear that Kant’s CI is able to account for the full range of objective duties that are binding on us and that it can do this without recourse to subjective human considerations of consequences.

Moreover, the authority and bindingness of moral duties seems to be much stronger and more plausible if the source of these duties is a person rather than something impersonal, such as “reason.” Merely “acting and thinking rationally does not constitute a full explanation of moral belief and practice. Moral obligation carries extra clout and punch, which needs accounting for.”[11] When we fall short of our moral duties, we sense that we are guilty in a sense that goes beyond simply violating a principle of reason. Locating the source of moral authority in an essentially holy personal God better explains the objective guilt that seems to accompany violating one’s moral duty. In view of all these considerations, the biblical ethical principle that the standard and basis of all goodness is found in God is quite plausible, and this fact is highlighted by the apparent problems that Kant’s system has in establishing the good will as the one intrinsic good that grounds objective morality.

Moving to the second principle of biblical ethics, Kant’s insight in agreeing with the biblical principle that moral worth depends on our motives as well as our actions has been noted; however, Kant’s view of moral worth proves to be too narrow when compared to the biblical assessment of moral worth. As Joseph Kotva points out, Kantian ethics and all ethical theories that are based strictly upon “rules or duty” are at a disadvantage in accounting for the biblical recognition that the moral life is more than rules. Kant fails to see that life is a “race” that requires ongoing character development. While Scripture goes beyond virtue ethics, it captures its insights. We are constantly to “run with perseverance the race marked out for us” as we model ourselves after Jesus (Heb 12:1-2). Paul emphasizes the need to develop such virtues as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23), and he exhorts others to grow in character by following his example as he follows Christ (1 Cor 11:1). While Christian ethics certainly has a strong deontological component, Kotva rightly points out the biblical emphasis on developing virtues and constantly struggling for moral growth in order to become a person of greater character.[12]

The key shortfall of Kant’s view of moral worth is that he does not credit moral worth to a person who grows in character such that she no longer does an action out of rational duty but out of modified and improved inclination. We have seen that Kant is clear that there can be no moral worth involved when an agent is “so sympathetically constituted” that she performs kind acts out of the pure joy of doing them rather than a sense of duty.[13] While biblical ethics would applaud someone of such character who enjoys doing virtuous things, Kant does not recognize such a person as morally praiseworthy. He thus fails to capture the value of moral growth and the fact that one should strive both to “will and act” according to what is good (Phil 2:13). While feeling joy from doing what is good should not be our sole moral motivation, “normal healthy human considerations of self-interest are a perfectly legitimate part of moral motivation.”[14]

Therefore, although Kant is certainly right that duties such as the command to love others should be done regardless of inclination, loving others is something that we ought to work towards wanting to do so that the duty does not have to be against inclination. Finding joy in doing what is good is a mark of moral development and personal character, and the Bible more completely captures this. Such character is exemplified in Jesus, who, though He dreaded it, even found joy in sacrificing Himself on the cross for others (Heb 12:2).

Finally, Kant’s ethic falls short of the third biblical ethical principle in terms of justifying the idea that humans possess value. We have seen that Kant attempts to ground the intrinsic value of humanity in our rationality. Kant argues that pure reason forces us to the conclusion that humans must have value because nothing can be valued without rational beings to do the valuing. In contrast, biblical ethics holds that humans have value in virtue of being made in the “image of God” (Gen. 1:26-27). Human value is based on “the relationship for which we were created” rather than because of any “distinguishing characteristic” that is found in human capabilities.[15] This is attractive; for if human value is rooted in a capacity like reason or rationality, then how can the value of babies or the brain damaged be upheld?[16] The reason that the biblical justification for the value of humans is superior to Kant’s follows from the earlier point that God is a far more credible “stopping point” for objective morality than the good will.

If God truly is the ultimate “Good,” then perhaps human rationality is an instrumental good rather than an intrinsic good. Rather than agreeing with Kant that the “rational nature” of humans is itself sufficient for regarding humans as “ends in themselves,”[17] it may be that rationality functions as an instrumental good in so far as it allows us to have a relationship with the one true source of ultimate value—God Himself. If that is the case, then Kant is correct in valuing rationality but wrong in thinking that it has intrinsic value.

Beyond the automatic implications that locating objective morality in God has for human value, careful consideration of the question of human value by itself reveals that humans, if they are to justify having truly objective value, must justify their value by appealing to something outside of themselves. If humans consider themselves intrinsically valuable merely because they value themselves, then how can David Hume’s is-ought problem be avoided? Just because it is the case that humans tend to ascribe value to their own lives and the lives of other people does not mean that we necessarily ought to do so.

Finally, there is a sort of argument from contingency that points to God as the proper justification for human value and dignity. Kant and many others have claimed that we are the sort of beings who have intrinsic value.[18] But even if Kant were right that our rationality provides a basis for intrinsic human value, this would not negate the fact that God is necessary for us to have value because “relationality and intrinsicality are neither at odds nor mutually exclusive.”[19] If there is no possible world in which beings like us could exist apart from God, then there is no reason in principle why our value could not come from both our relationship to God as well the intrinsic qualities God has given us. Paul Copan argues that morality and value are “necessarily connected” with personhood. Since an essential attribute of God is that He exists necessarily and is the ontological ground of all other persons, morality and value would be impossible without God.[20] Using this logic, it is plausible that the source of intrinsic value can only be found in a necessarily existing person. Thus, in response to Kant’s view that the mere possession of rationality endows all rational creatures with intrinsic value, one must ask on what basis humans persons exist to have rationality. God, if He does exist as Kant himself believed, is the only reason that there is rationality. Even if it were true, as Kant claims, that rationality brings about value, God is the source of rationality. Ultimately, in view of these considerations, the biblical justification for human value appears more plausible and legitimate than Kant’s justification.

CONCLUSION

The three biblical principles of ethics proposed in this paper appear to be eminently plausible when held up to philosophical scrutiny. Because Kant, without grounding morality in God, sought to achieve many of the same goals that these biblical principles accomplish, Kantian ethics serves as an instructive litmus test of the plausibility of biblical ethics. Morality must be objective and universal if it is to avoid the total collapse that relativism ensures. Kant is undoubtedly correct in recognizing this. Furthermore, we have seen that objective morality—to be truly objective—must have a plausible absolute standard of intrinsic value and goodness that grounds it. Biblical ethics provides a philosophically justifiable basis for accomplishing this by identifying God as that source. In contrast, Kant is unable to legitimize the “good will” as being “good without qualification” and able to produce moral principles and binding duties that are defensibly objective and have an ontological basis that is fully independent of humanity. Biblical ethics also legitimizes the attractive conviction that humans really do have intrinsic value. Kant is right to recognize the truth that humans are “objects of respect” and should be “treated as ends,” but he is unable to objectively ground this apparent truth in a justifiable source. God Himself is the ultimate standard of goodness and value, and it is only by way of our relationship with God that we, as creatures made in God’s image, can have intimate connection to the ultimate source of value and can ourselves be endowed with objective value.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Sources Cited:

Baggett, David, and Jerry L. Walls. God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning. Oxford: University Press, 2016.

Copan, Paul.  “A Moral Argument.”  In To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview.  Edited by Francis Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland.  Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

Craig, William Lane.  Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics.  3rd ed.  Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008.

Cummiskey, David.  Kantian Consequentialism.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Driver, Julia.  Ethics: The Fundamentals.  Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.

Gert, Bernard.  Morality: Its Nature and Justification.  New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Grenz, Stanley.  The Moral Quest.  Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998.

Hare, John E.  The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Kant, Immanuel.  Critique of Pure Reason.  In Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of its First Publication.  2nd ed.  Translated by F. Max Müller.  London: Macmillan, 1907.

--------.  Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.  In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?  Translated by Lewis White Beck.  Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.

--------.  “What is Enlightenment?”  In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?  Translated by Lewis White Beck.  Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959.

Kotva, Joseph J.  The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics.  Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996.

Lewis, C. S.  Mere Christianity.  San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2001.

Mill, John Stuart.  Utilitarianism.  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1906.

Moreland, J. P., and William Lane Craig.  Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003.

Plato.  “Euthyphro.”  In The Trial and Death of Socrates.  3rd ed.  Translated by George Maximilian Anthony Grube and John M. Cooper.  Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000.

--------.  Plato’s Republic.  Translated by George Maximilian Anthony Grube and C. D. C. Reeve.  Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.

Pojman, Louis.  Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong.  6th ed.  Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2009.

Porter, Burton Frederick.  The Good Life: Alternatives in Ethics.  3rd ed.  Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.

Smith, R. Scott.  In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy.  Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Tiffany, Evan.  “How Kantian Must Kantian Constructivists Be?”  Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49, no. 6 (December 2006): 524-546.

Wielenberg, Erik.  Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Additional Sources:

Craig, William Lane.  “The Indispensability of Theological Meta-ethical Foundations for Morality.”  Foundations 5 (1997): 9-12.  http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5175 (accessed February 12, 2016).

Kant, Immanuel.  “Critique of Practical Reason.”  In Great Books of the Western World.  Vol. 42.  Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott.  Chicago, IL: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952.

McElreath, Scott.  “The Inadequacy of Kant’s View of Moral Worth.”  Philosophical Writings, 19-20 (Spring/Summer 2002): 23-42.

Ritchie, Angus.  From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of Our Ethical Commitments.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Notes:

1. Plato, “Euthyphro,” in The Trial and Death of Socrates, 3rd ed., trans. George Maximilian Anthony Grube and John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), 11.

1. J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 491.

1. Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 286.

1. Pojman, Discovering Right and Wrong, 127.

1. Bernard Gert, Morality: Its Nature and Justification (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2006), 306.

1. Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 167.

1. William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics, 3rd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008), 182.

1. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1906), 5.

2. John E. Hare, The Moral Gap, 18-19. Hare notes that R. M. Hare is a Kantian who believes he is consistent with Kant in applying act-utilitarianism to Kant’s CI to determine whether an act should be universalized.

1. David Cummiskey, Kantian Consequentialism (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), 9.

1. Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 176. This quote is in the context of showing a limitation of Erik Wielenberg’s secular approach to ethics, but this particular criticism applies to Kantian ethics as well.

2. Joseph J. Kotva, The Christian Case for Virtue Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996), 156.

1. Kant, Foundations, 14. Kant believed happiness must result from moral living for us to press on in the moral life, but our motivation to be moral must be duty and not happiness. See Hare, The Moral Gap, 76-78.

1. Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 266.

1. Stanley Grenz, The Moral Quest (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 217.

1. Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 117.

1. Kant, Foundations, 46.

1. Erik Wielenberg, Robust Ethics: The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Godless Normative Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 83-84. Wielenberg, a secular moral realist, contends that rooting human value in God devalues the intrinsic human value that common sense tells us we have.

1. Baggett and Walls, God and Cosmos, 286.

1. Paul Copan, “A Moral Argument,” in To Everyone an Answer: A Case for the Christian Worldview, ed. Francis Beckwith, William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 113.

Apocalyptic Love and Goodness

While much attention has been given to the conquest narratives in the Old Testament (which skeptics commandeer to disprove a loving and good God) and how Christians can responsibly advocate for divine love in lieu of these episodes, one potential issue has gone relatively underappreciated and therefore unanswered—How is God’s love witnessed in the eschaton in which His wrath is existentially poured out on the world? Would a loving God really destroy a world and the majority of its people, sending them to an eternal lake of fire, and only preserve those who follow Him? Or, as has been popularly promulgated, does love win in the end and everyone eventually receive a reward in glory?

The book of Revelation seems to argue that God’s love does win in the end—God’s special love for his people—and this, as will soon be argued, seems to be an argument in favor of divine goodness. However, to understand this appropriately, one must appreciate at least one important image that is employed throughout the Canon to illustrate the love and goodness of God—marriage.

Both God and the God-man have been portrayed as a husband for thousands of years. However, God is never portrayed in Scripture as being married to the world. Instead, he is said to have been and is depicted as married to Israel in the Old Testament (Isa. 54:4-8; 62:1-5; Jer. 3:14; 31:31-33; Hos. 14:-20) and to the church in parables (Matt. 22:1-14; 25:1-13), comparisons (Eph. 5:22-33), instructional material (2 Cor. 11:2), and prophecies (Matt. 26:26-30; Mk. 14:22-31; Lk. 22:14-23). The marriage image is even revisited at the very end of Revelation itself as it describes the much anticipated marriage supper of the Lamb.

“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. Then he said to me, ‘Write, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’” (Rev. 19:7-9)

These passages not only portray the love exchanged between God and humans, but something of its exclusivity. To be sure, theists believe that God loves the world (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8). However, these same theists also affirm that God’s love is not applied in the same way to everybody. Instead, as depicted above, God appears to especially love certain groups (see passages above). This special love, applied to Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament, is ultimately and in part a product of God choosing (volitionally) those who have pleased him (upon his evaluation) and will persevere in a relationship with him that will continue to the end.

In fact, “choice” is something engrained in the very semantics of “love” as it appears in the Scriptures. For instance,  אהב seems to involve choice in the context of Malachi 1:2-3 when it says, “Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.” Not only that, but the New Testament suggests that in order to follow the Lord one must choose Him over one’s family and oneself—signifying superior love for the former, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” (Lk. 14:26). Most agree that “hate” in both these contexts is not equal to disdain as much as it is comparable to allegiance in relationship. In other words, Jacob was chosen and therefore involved in a special relationship with God and, in that relationship, and object of God’s special affection. Similarly, Luke 14:26 suggests that anyone hoping to be a disciple of Jesus chooses Him over and above all others, thereby entering into a relationship with him that does not compare to anyone else.

Nowhere is this most appropriately encapsulated than within the context and image of marriage. In a marriage, a groom has chosen a bride above all others to remain with him until death. He does so in the best of situations, not under compulsion, but because his wife is pleasing to him and within the context of their marriage, he knows that she will consistently bring delight and affection into their home. Most, even in today’s morally deprived world, agree that a man who loves his wife in special and exclusive ways can be called “good.” If he loved every woman in the same way, he would otherwise be labeled a reprobate and/or womanizer.

The same is true of God as witnessed in Revelation. God’s hatred and wrath poured out over a world that has rejected him (witnessed in John’s graphic apocalyptic and prophetic presentation) indicates not only his holiness and justice, but his incomparable love for His wife—the church. God’s love, and by proxy, his goodness, might be called into question if he showed the same love and granted the same rewards to everyone in the end—even those who never responded positively to his constant overtures.

Therefore, one might say that “love wins” in the end, but not in the way it is popularly promoted. God’s love for his bride wins in the end and this is an eschatologically significant consideration pertaining to His goodness. If love for all wins, God’s love would not be particularly special or meaningful—God would not be as good as the faithful husband he is presented as through the Scriptures in general and in the book of Revelation in particular.

Image: "Jesus" by x1klima. CC License. 

Assaying the Gold

I’ve been thinking this week about the uses of the word “gold” in the Bible, which in turn prodded me to find out more about the characteristics of this most precious of metals. Among other qualities that make it the king of metals, gold is the most malleable of them, so much so that “a single gram can be beaten into a sheet of 1 square meter, or an ounce into 300 square feet. Gold leaf can be beaten thin enough to become transparent” ( Wikipedia). That reminded me of a line in John Donne’s poem, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”:

Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat.

Donne is referring in his image to the gold-like quality of his relationship to his wife, with whom he is in spiritual connection, even though they are absent from one another. The stress on their golden intimacy merely proves its strength. I think the same can be said of the intimacy between God and His children, the testing of which is several times likened to refining gold through fire, as in Zechariah 13:8-9:

In the whole land, declares the LORD, two thirds shall be cut off and perish, and one third shall be left alive. And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, And I will answer them. I will say, 'They are my people'; and they will say, 'The LORD is my God.'

And then the more familiar passage in Malachi 3:2-3:

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD.

Both of these passages, and a number of others like them, deal with the purification of Israel as a nation, and that is the norm in the O.T. As I have commented before, the redemptive power of suffering is presented in a much fuller way in the New Testament than in the Old Testament, and the emphasis in the N.T. is more on individual experience and responsibility, as when Paul speaks of teachers building on the foundation of Christ laid by others:

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (I Cor. 3:12-15)

Peter presents the refinement by fire in a more positive light:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (I Pet. 1:6-8)

And the same sentiment is echoed by James:

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. (James 1:2-3)

These N.T. passages invite the individual Christian to embrace and find meaning in being tested, and to be active participants, in fellowship with the suffering of Christ, in bringing glory to God. They are the proven “gold” of God; they are His treasure, and He is theirs. Like John Donne and his wife, though we are stretched “to airy thinness,” our connection with our Father is only strengthened by being tested.

How Kantian Ethics Helps to Demonstrate the Attractiveness of Biblical Ethics: Part I

INTRODUCTION

Few ethical systems have been as influential or as hotly debated in Western philosophy as the one proposed by Immanuel Kant. Kant, living when reason was king in eighteenth-century Enlightenment Europe, proposed what he considered to be the one true ethical system—a system rooted in pure reason, without recourse to grounding morality in God, that sought to explain universal moral truth.[1] This paper will argue that Kant’s ethical system, despite grounding morality purely in reason and in light of its own philosophical failures, contains significant insights that serve to illuminate the philosophical attractiveness of key biblical ethical principles.

To accomplish this, I will highlight three important objectives of Kant’s ethical view and compare them to three critical principles of a biblical ethic. Kant emphasizes (1) the existence of objective and universally-binding moral values and duties that require an intrinsic “Good” to ground objective morality; (2) the principle of “moral worth” that incorporates insightful appeal to the role of motive in ethics; and (3) the belief that humans have inherent value. Kant’s justification for these three contentions will be juxtaposed with the rationale for the biblical ethical principles that (1) God Himself is the intrinsic “Good” that grounds objective morality; (2) moral worth is found in honoring God by willing and acting in accordance with God’s will; and (3) God provides a superior basis for ascribing value and respect to human beings.

After briefly explaining Kant’s ethic, I will first show how Kant, in spite of his exclusion of God from morality’s foundation, offers several key insights that help to establish the tenability and attractiveness of these biblical principles. Then, I will demonstrate how Kant’s ethic fails to accomplish his own desired objectives and how a biblical ethic succeeds. Note that, for the purposes of this paper, a “biblical ethic” refers to a general Christian ethical approach that draws upon the Bible and minimally includes the three biblical principles identified above. Certainly there are a variety of nuanced positions that a Christian ethicist might hold, but this paper will defend these three particular ethical principles that are widely recognized as biblical.

KANT’S ETHICS

Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Germany, and he lived there until his death in 1804. A crucial influence on Kant that was especially formative to his ethical thought is the Enlightenment thinking that was occurring in Europe. The Enlightenment, at its height in Europe during Kant’s lifetime, led to an explosion of scientific progress that brought about a wave of confidence in human reason, and this spilled over into philosophy. Kant was a staunch defender of the Enlightenment ideal of human autonomy and the lofty capabilities of human reason.[2] He viewed the Enlightenment as “man’s emergence from his self-incurred tutelage.” By “tutelage,” Kant means “man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.”[3] He encouraged people to stop blindly following the traditions of others and claimed that the “motto of enlightenment” is: “Have courage to use your own reason!”[4] Indeed, as we will see, autonomous human reason (i.e., our ability on our own to use the mind’s conceptual schemes to generate knowledge) is the very foundation of Kant’s ethical theory.

For Kant, reason exists in the human mind prior to and independent of experience, and it ultimately produces the basis for objective moral truth. Kant spurned the idea put forth by empiricists like David Hume that all synthetic knowledge is a posteriori. While empiricists were arguing that morality is a human construction based entirely upon human experiences, feelings, and desires, Kant was insisting that “there really exist pure moral laws which entirely a priori (without regard to empirical motives, that is, happiness) determine the use of the freedom of any rational being, both with regard to what has to be done and what has not to be done.”[5] These “pure moral laws” that reason produces are “imperative” and “in every respect necessary” because they are rooted in reason and not contingent upon human experience.[6]

But how does pure reason produce “necessary” moral laws that are objective and universally binding? Kant’s answer is that reason alone produces an intrinsic “good” that serves to ground objective morality—the “good will,” which is the rational faculty that recognizes moral duty. This “good will” is not an instrumental good that merely produces other goods; rather, “it is good only because of its willing, i.e., it is good of itself.” Even if circumstances should not allow the good will to be put to use, it would still be intrinsically good and would “sparkle like a jewel in its own right, as something that had its full worth in itself.”[7] The good will is the only good “which could be called good without qualification.” As such, the good will is able to discern what Kant considers to be the “supreme principle of morality”[8] that serves to generate our moral duties—the categorical imperative (CI).

Although Kant considers the CI to be one cohesive principle, it comprises three formulations. The first formulation is the Principle of Universal Law. It states: “I should never act in such a way that I could not also will that my maxim should be a universal law.”[9] If reason dictates that we could will that a maxim should be applied universally, then it becomes our moral duty to act on that maxim; conversely, if we could not rationally will to universalize a maxim, then it is our duty not to act on it.

It is important to see that Kant’s CI is intended to generate duties that are morally obligatory and not optional or contingent upon the desires of any person. Kant contrasts the idea of a “hypothetical” imperative with his concept of a “categorical” imperative. A hypothetical imperative “says only that an action is good for some purpose,” but the CI “declares the action to be of itself objectively necessary without making any reference to a purpose.”[10] Kant provides a number of examples to illustrate how the Principle of Universal Law reveals to us our moral duties independent of desire. In one example, Kant describes a man who needs to borrow money but does not have the means to repay what he needs to borrow. The man is considering accepting the following maxim: “When I believe myself to be in need of money, I will borrow money and promise to repay it, although I know I shall never do so.” Kant argues that when the man applies the Principle of Universal Law to this maxim, the man will discover that the maxim cannot be universalized and is, therefore, morally wrong. It cannot be universalized, Kant says, because that would make “the promise itself and the end to be accomplished by it impossible; no one would believe what was promised to him but would only laugh at any such assertion as vain pretense.”[11] Thus, regardless of what the man wants to do, reason dictates that his objective moral duty is to reject that maxim and not make the lying promise. If everyone in such a situation made a lying promise then a contradiction would result because the man’s goal of obtaining a loan would not be possible. Kant wants to say that it is this contradiction and not the consequences of undermining loans that makes reason demand the rejection of this maxim.

The second formulation of the CI is called the Principle of Ends. It states: “Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.” Kant upholds the inherent value of humans on the same basis that he argues for objective morality—pure reason. Kant argues that humans, as “rational beings,” are by nature “ends in themselves” and “objects of respect.”[12] This is because every person “necessarily” thinks of himself as a valuable end in himself because he has a “rational nature” that grounds value—nothing can be valued without rational beings to do the valuing.[13] This argument of Kant is sometimes called the “regress” argument because “by regressing on the condition of value, it is possible to derive the intrinsic value of rational nature itself.”[14] The second formulation of the CI ensures that no maxim that devalues a rational person can be acceptably universalized.

The third formulation of the CI is the Principle of Autonomy. It states: “Never choose except in such a way that the maxims of the choice are comprehended in the same volition as a universal law.”[15] Given the first two formulations, it is clear that Kant’s theory has no need for a transcendent being to generate moral law for humanity. In this final formulation, Kant emphasizes that the good will of a rational being is sufficient for determining absolute moral law. Humans have the autonomous ability to legislate moral values and duties. In fact, Kant holds that God Himself, along with all rational beings, can only be good by adhering to the CI. He declares, “Even the Holy One of the Gospel must be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before He is recognized as such.… But whence do we have the concept of God as the highest good?  Solely from the idea of moral perfection which reason formulates a priori.”[16]

Another concept that is especially critical to Kantian ethics is “moral worth.” For Kant, “moral worth” means moral praiseworthiness. An agent’s action has moral worth if it is in accordance with duty and the agent is motivated to do the action out of duty. This means that the motivation of an agent is critical, and Kant even asserts that an action done out of duty that is contrary to one’s natural inclination results in the “highest”[17] moral worth of all. Kant regards it as unthinkable that subjective feelings could have any bearing on moral motivation. While Kant thinks God, who lives up to the moral law perfectly, gives us hope that the moral law can be perfectly fulfilled, he at the same time does not allow such hope to be our motivation for being moral. Rational duty must be our motivation in order for our action to have moral worth.[18]

Having briefly surveyed the core points of Kant’s ethic, we will now examine how the three key principles of a biblical ethic identified previously are plausible by comparing them to Kant’s ethic. We begin by seeing how Kant’s ethic offers positive insights that support the tenability and attractiveness of these biblical ethical principles.

INSIGHTS OF KANT’S ETHICS

Kant’s ethical system offers a number of insights that help to reveal the soundness of a biblical ethic. Consider the first biblical principle that objective and universal moral values and duties exist, and that God is the intrinsic good that grounds their existence. This traditional view sees God as the basis of objective morality such that the truths of morality are found in God and are fully independent of all human opinions and beliefs. The Bible portrays God as the very foundation and standard for universally-binding morality. Support for this concept can be gleaned from numerous biblical passages. We are commanded to be holy because of God’s holy character (Lev 19:1-2). God is maximally holy (threefold repetition of “holy”) and exposes our sinfulness (Is 6:1-5). Jesus states that “no one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18). God alone is the standard. Although Kant rejects the idea that God grounds morality, he does correctly recognize the reality of objective morality and the need for an intrinsic “good” that must provide some ontological basis for it.

There is great wisdom in Kant’s passionate rejection of all ethical systems that cast morality as a human construct that is relative to the desires of individuals or the whims of culture. Morality must be objective and universal to be truly normative, and normativity is a seemingly necessary feature of any adequate ethical system. Moral relativism, if true, would make moral criticism impossible such that morality would fall apart. Kant recognizes this and harshly condemns ethical relativism for making morality out to be a “bastard patched up from limbs of very different parentage, which looks like anything one wishes to see in it.”[19]

Kant appears to be correct that objective morality must be grounded in an intrinsic “good” that has “its full worth in itself.”[20] He saw that if there is no objective good that serves as the incorruptible standard of moral perfection, then the subjectivity that unacceptably destroys the prescriptivity of morality cannot be avoided. As C. S. Lewis rightly argues, “The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard.... You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality.”[21] Plato recognized this as well when he postulated the idea of a “Good” form that serves as the objective basis by which anything can be called good. Plato saw that the “Good” must exist independent of all appearances and human conventions. Recounting the words of Socrates in Plato’s cave allegory, Plato writes of this “Good” as that which is the ultimate “cause of all that is right and beautiful,” even though we often see it in only a distorted way in this world.[22] As long as morality is truly an objective reality, as it apparently must be, then both Kantian and biblical ethics are correct in affirming an intrinsically good moral standard as a foundation.

Kant also provides perspicacity concerning the second principle of biblical ethics by affirming that moral worth depends on our motives and not just our actions. As discussed previously, Kant only allows for an agent’s action to have moral worth if the action is in accordance with moral duty and the agent is motivated to do the action out of moral duty. Similarly, the Bible indicates that God is concerned not only with our actions but also our motivations and our will. God does not merely base the moral worth of a person’s action on whether the act itself is in accordance with His commands; rather, the motivation of the agent to act in a God-honoring way is also critical. For example, the Apostle Paul writes that God wants us to “will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2:13). The scribes and Pharisees “do all their deeds to be noticed by men,” and Jesus condemns this motivation (Mt 23:1-12). Even good works, such as prayer, must not be done with a wrong motive (Mt 6:1-6). All food is acceptable to eat, but if one is convinced that eating a certain food is wrong and does it anyway, he is morally guilty (Rom 14:14, 23). So, in Scripture, the action done by a person is not the only thing that is significant in terms of moral praiseworthiness; one’s motivations and reasons for acting matter greatly.

Louis Pojman rightly points out that the benefit of an ethical system that accounts for motive is that “two acts may appear identical on the surface, but one may be judged morally blameworthy and the other excusable” depending on the motive of the agents carrying out the acts.[23] Kant captures this truth, and he realizes that one’s commitment to his moral duty will sometimes require him to contradict his natural inclinations. For example, Kant’s contention that “love as an inclination cannot be commanded” is theologically insightful and attractive.[24] While some critics find such dutiful love to be cold and uncaring, Kant is surely correct that love for others must be more than a feeling that we are either inclined or disinclined to have if love is truly a moral duty.[25] In the same way, biblical ethics involves the command to love others—even one’s enemy—regardless of inclination (Matt. 5:44).

Finally, Kant’s agreement with the third biblical principle that humans are inherently valuable and deserve respect is also intuitively attractive. Although the next section will explore the difficulties Kant has in justifying the value of humans independently from God, Kantian and biblical ethics share the advantage of being in accord with the nearly universal sense most people have that human life is valuable. As Burton F. Porter notes, it is “difficult, if not impossible,” to deny our moral sense that there is something valuable about human life, and denying that human value is an objective reality “runs counter to our most basic feelings.”[26] While this widely-held moral sense that humans have value does not prove that humans really are valuable, any ethical theory that is in accord with such a prominent aspect of our moral experience is to be preferred. With these insights of Kant in mind, let us now examine how the shortfalls of Kant’s ethic highlight the greater tenability of the three specified biblical principles of ethics.

Notes: 

1. John E. Hare, The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God's Assistance, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). Though it is not clear, Hare thinks Kant might have believed traditional Christian doctrines (see pp. 38, 48). God is important to Kantian ethics in that He ensures that virtue and happiness align and that the moral law can be perfectly fulfilled; however, for Kant, we will see that moral law springs from reason. God is not its source.

2. R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 94.

1. Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?,” in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 85.

1. Ibid.

2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: In Commemoration of the Centenary of its First Publication, 2nd ed., trans. F. Max Müller (London: Macmillan, 1907), 647.

1. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 647.

1. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and What is Enlightenment?, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 10.

1. Ibid., 8-9.

1. Kant, Foundations, 18.

1. Ibid., 31-32.

1. Ibid., 40

1. Kant, Foundations, 46-47.

1. Ibid., 47.

1. Evan Tiffany, “How Kantian Must Kantian Constructivists Be?,” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 49, no. 6 (December 2006): 540.

1. Kant, Foundations, 59.

1. Kant, Foundations, 25. Kant sees the “highest good” as the conjunction of virtue and happiness. Notably, he thinks only God can bring about such a condition; however, God is only good by perfectly living up to the CI as demanded by reason.

1. Ibid., 15.

1. David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (Oxford: University Press, 2016), 265-266.

2. Kant, Foundations, 44.

1. Ibid., 10.

1. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2001), 13.

1. Plato, Plato’s Republic, trans. George Maximilian Anthony Grube and C. D. C. Reeve (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992), 189.

2. Louis Pojman, Ethics: Discovering Right and Wrong, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2009), 11. For example, it seems that a man who helps an elderly lady across the street to impress his friends should be judged as less morally praiseworthy than a man who does this same action out of a sense of moral responsibility.

1. Kant, Foundations, 16.

1. Julia Driver, Ethics: The Fundamentals (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 86.

1. Burton Frederick Porter, The Good Life: Alternatives in Ethics, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 85.

The God of More

We live in a society geared to “more.”  We are urged by advertising to acquire more possessions, more pleasures, more comforts, or more power and success, abetting our own desires for increased possessions or.  But of course what humanity in general wants more of doesn’t fit very well with what God’s “more” is.  Recently I noticed some of His “mores,” voiced through Paul, in my reading of Romans 5, and I’d like to share those with you now.

Romans 5  begins with a summing up of God’s marvelous provision of unmerited salvation through His Son’s death and resurrection and the generosity of His grace, concluding that through His  generosity, we also ”rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (vv.1-2), the same glory that God is going to bestow on the Son (Rom. 8:17). And then he goes on to say (italics my emphasis),

3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering  produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and  hope does not put us to shame, because God's love  has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Rom. 5:3-5, ESV).

“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings.”  Whoops!  Wasn’t that a slip of the tongue, Paul?  Didn’t you mean, “We exult in our being the elect of God”?  No, indeed, for this is one of God’s “mores” that contrasts with human expectations.   Although God is constantly and faithfully generous in pouring His love into our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 5), we do not embrace the hope of glory without struggle or pain, any more than our Lord Jesus did.  He “learned obedience through what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8) and “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2).  Paul goes on in Romans 5 to expound on the progression by which “suffering  produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope”—that is, the seasoned hope that rests in a faith that has been put through the fire to be proven as pure and precious as refined gold (see I Pet. 1:3-8).

We are now better prepared to understand the “mores” of verses 9-11.

9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Verse 9 picks up from the fact that Jesus died for people because they were in desperate need and in spite of their being thoroughly undeserving of His sacrificial death.  If, Paul argues, we were “justified by His blood” when our value was severely tarnished by sin, “much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God” now that we are in covenant relationship with Him.   Similarly, if Jesus’ death reconciled us to God while we were still enemies, “much more . . . shall we be saved by His life” (v. 10), the resurrection life that prefigures our own participation in His glory.  The final “more” of this little paragraph brings us back to the rejoicing Paul referred to in v. 2, which has gained depth by being subjected to the suffering that brings maturity to our hope.

There is yet one other, culminating “more” at the end of this chapter that will serve to sum up the theme of God’s abundance overcoming all obstacles:

18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness  leads to justification and life for  all men. 19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The analogy drawn in vv. 18-19 seems to be an equivalency: one trespass resulting in condemnation for all = one act of obedience resulting in justification for all.  But the problem of sin brought to light by God’s Law, which “came in to increase the trespass,” was cumulative.  Humans did not cease to sin when Christ died, and therefore the grace of God had to cover not only the sins committed up to the point of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but for all of the time from the Fall until God chooses to wrap things up in the final judgment and the restoration of creation.  God’s grace had, so to speak, not only to keep up with but to outstrip the pace of sin revealed by the Law.  Thus, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” And so, as Paul sums up at the end of Romans 8, “we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (v.37).  Our God is not merely adequate, He is abundantly sufficient.

Waiting in the Dark

The story of Joseph in Gen. 37-50 is another example of a servant of God “waiting on the Lord” (see Twilight Musings 27).  To sum up his experiences: as a boy of 17, Joseph had dreams of his brothers—and even his parents—bowing down to him, an allegorical prophecy of what actually occurred over 20 years later when Joseph was master of Egypt’s food resources in a time of famine.  A lot of water had to run under the bridge before the time was ripe for these early prophetic dreams to be fulfilled.    Although it wasn’t apparent to Joseph during the first part of this interim period, it was a time of constructive waiting.  His youthful pride in his dreams and in the special favor shown to him by his father were tempered by the hardship of his years as a servant in Egypt.  But God also blessed Joseph in the midst of his servitude by giving him favor with his masters.  He rose quickly to be overseer of the household of his master Potiphar, and then, when he was unjustly thrown into prison, the prison master put him in charge of the rest of the inmates.  Through these jobs he developed the managerial skills he would need to manage Egypt’s national economy through the seven years of plenty and the succeeding seven years of famine.

No doubt when his privileged position in Potiphar’s house was abruptly taken away, Joseph must have wondered why God had blessed him and then allowed him to be cast down again.  I have tried to capture in the following poem Joseph’s thoughts and feelings at that time.  The combination of questioning what God is doing and trying to be ready for what He is going to do next  should be familiar to all of us.

JOSEPH IN PRISON

 (Gen. 39:1-23)

How far away the fields where grazed my father's sheep,

Where in my sleep the visions spoke,

Affirming that my special coat was well deserved;

And in my youth I knew that God had favored me.

A willing instrument I was, rebuking in my father's name

My brothers' worldly ways.

And then the pit, the chains, the foreign land--

No one then to listen to my dreams!

But God was gracious to me still,

As Potiphar repaid the works of God in me,

And I regained my virtuous pride.

In confidence I turned aside

The evil of my master's wife,

Rebuked in righteous words her monstrous lust.

And for my trouble once again

I lie imprisoned and disgraced.

Has God seduced me too, and cast me off

For basking in His favor?

It seems but scant reward

To be chief of those who languish in the dark.

How shall I deal with One who rips away

What He Himself bestowed?

My robe of innocence my brothers drenched in blood;

My robe of righteousness was snatched

To scandalize my name.

[su_spacer]

How shall I now be clothed, my Lord,

Lying naked to Your will?

(Elton D. Higgs,11/28/86)

Of course, we have the advantage of knowing what the final outcome of Joseph’s puzzled waiting is going to be.  Not only will God’s servant be raised up out of prison, he will be launched out on the road that will lead to the final fulfillment of his youthful dreams.  We also know the answer to the question in the poem, “How shall I now be clothed, / Lying naked to Your will?”  In God’s good time, Joseph was pulled out of prison and given appropriate clothing for standing in the presence of Pharaoh; and quickly after that he was given fine linen garments and a robe and jewelry proper to his office as vice-Pharoah of Egypt.

Perhaps our seeing the whole picture of Joseph’s story is a good analogy to our status before God: In our limited understanding, we wait in patient expectation to see the rest of the story unfold, but from God’s point of view it’s already finished, and the ending is to our benefit and to His glory.  Those who wait patiently on God will always be clothed (i.e., equipped) appropriately for what He calls them to do.  And beyond that, we sometimes need, like Joseph, a lot of life experience and the wisdom that it brings to be able to experience in humility what was originally embraced in pride.

Image: Supper ate Emmaus by Lambert Jacobsz. (circa 1598–1636) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Victor, not Victim

A linguistic quirk in the history of the English language has resulted in the term “Good Friday” being applied to the day on which Jesus, the Son of God, was crucified. Other languages, though, have more intuitively appropriate designations for this liturgical day, such as “Sad” or “Dark” or “Mournful” Friday. This variation of nomenclatures can serve as a catalyst for some comments on the fact that the events of Crucifixion Friday in scripture can be seen as both sad and good. Today, of course, we have the advantage of knowing what came on the Sunday after Dark Friday, when Jesus burst out of the tomb. On Friday, He appeared to be the victim, but on Sunday, He was clearly the Victor. On Friday, the darkness eclipsed the light; on Sunday, the Light overcame the darkness.

In our life experiences, the shadow of Friday is sometimes all we see and feel, but we still walk in the Light of that Resurrection Sunday, with an additional firm hope of eternal glory to come. We mourn the events of Dark Friday when Jesus was the victim of evil men, but we are buoyed by the realization that Jesus’ death was the necessary door that He had to go through to become the Victor over sin and death. He did not so much overcome His victimization as transform it by showing that victory was embedded in the very act of willing sacrifice. So His death can be seen as a sort of mine planted in the cross that the Devil stepped on unawares, bringing about his own doom and the explosive Life of the Resurrection.

This point of view is very effectively conveyed in the Old English poem, “The Dream of the Cross” (or “Dream of the Rood,” to use the Old English word for cross). In this poem, Jesus is represented as a hero coming to do battle with and overcome his foes. In the narrator’s dream, the cross of Christ speaks:

Then I saw the King of all mankind In brave mood hasting to mount upon me. . . . . Then the young Warrior, God the All-Wielder, Put off His raiment, Steadfast and strong; With lordly mood in the sight of many He mounted the Cross to redeem mankind. When the Hero clasped me I trembled in terror, But I dared not bow me nor bend to earth; I must needs stand fast. Upraised as the Rood I held the High King, the Lord of heaven. (trans. Charles W. Kennedy, 1960)

This is a lovely picture of Christus Victor as He “mounts” the cross, fully capable at any time of exercising His heavenly power to defeat His enemies. But scripture makes it clear that He had a more profound purpose than the exercise of worldly power. His design was to implement the “deeper magic” of God’s world (to use C. S. Lewis’s terminology in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), and through the redemptive power of the Lamb of God to bring about an eternal victory, not just a temporal one. Jesus did indeed come as a conquering hero, but in the heavenly way of things, He had to endure defeat as an avenue to victory. Let us be willing to follow Him through that door of suffering and sadness to reap the victory in Jesus that lies on the other side.

Image: "Crucifixion" by Rooztography. CC License. 

Waiting as Patient Expectation

The meanings of the word “wait” can refer to basically two situations: (1) someone is standing quietly by in anticipation of another person’s joining him, or (2) someone is serving another person or persons, as in being a waiter in a restaurant. Both cases represent a kind of deference shown by the waiter toward the one being waited upon. It is common in Shakespeare’s plays to find an expression like, “We await your pleasure, my good lord,” which is to say, “We are deferring to your right to say what happens next.” Both of these senses of waiting connote subordinating our immediate desires to the needs or desires of another, so it should not be surprising that the concept of waiting has spiritual applications.

Frequently in the poetry of the Old Testament there is the admonition to “wait upon the Lord,” as in the following:

In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation. (Ps. 5:3 NIV)

Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD. (Ps. 27:14, NIV)

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices! Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. For the evildoers shall be cut off, but those who wait for the LORD shall inherit the land. (Ps. 37:7-11 ESV) The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (Lam. 3:25-26 ESV)

So we see that waiting on the Lord involves patient expectation, courage, and dependence on God to set things right in the world. In other words, waiting on the Lord means deferring always to God’s will and trusting that He is at work every minute to bring about what will be best for His children. The payoff for this confident waiting on God is inner peace and the experience of His goodness.

Some scriptural examples will illustrate how God’s people in the past have profited or lost by waiting or not waiting on the Lord. One of the most salient examples of losing by not waiting on God is seen in Saul’s desperate offering of the sacrifice when Samuel didn’t show up exactly when he was expected. The prophet Samuel had instructed Saul to go down to Gilgal and wait for seven days for Samuel to come and offer a sacrifice and give Saul instructions from God on what to do (I Sam. 10:8). Some time later Saul finally was able to assemble an army to fight the Philistines at Gilgal. As he awaited Samuel’s promised arrival there, he grew increasingly worried that his army would disintegrate in fear and panic before the battle even began. And since as the seventh day drew to an end, Samuel was not yet there, Saul took it upon himself (although he had no priestly authority) to offer the sacrifice. Immediately after the illicit sacrifice had been offered, Samuel came, and he pronounced on Saul the severe judgment of God:

Samuel said to Saul, "You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the LORD your God, with which he commanded you. For then the LORD would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you." (1 Sam 13:13-15 ESV)

Why was Saul’s action so wrong? Did he not have a real problem on his hands, with the Philistines threatening and his army scattering? Wasn’t his decision to go ahead with the sacrifice evidence of his recognition that God’s help was needed for the Israelites to succeed in battle? But at the base of Saul’s disobedience was a willingness to put his own understanding and judgment ahead of God’s, and this attitude is incompatible with the patient surrender to God’s will that undergirds waiting on the Lord. Although in his rash self-reliance Saul showed some of the qualities that make a good leader—he made a strategic judgment in a tight situation and followed through with determination and resolve—he mistakenly gave the exercise of those qualities precedence over obedience to God and trust in Him. Waiting for Samuel as he was commanded to do would have required Saul to look beyond what was immediately in front of him in order to “see” with the eyes of faith. Saul’s failure to wait in patient expectation for what God was going to do cost him and his heirs the kingship of Israel and set him on a path of self-destruction.

Let us also look at Abraham. His experience in regard to God’s promise that he and Sarah would have a son shows us how even those who eventually reap the rewards of waiting on the Lord may have to go through stages of waiting and learning. There was a long path between Abraham’s initial response to God’s call and the completion of his journey of faith. When Abraham was first commanded to leave his native country to go to another land (Gen. 12), he went “not knowing where he was going” (Heb. 11:8); and when he got there, he wasn’t allowed to stay, but had to go to Egypt to escape a famine. And when he finally returned to the land God had promised, he merely camped out in it, rather than possessing it, for actual control of it by Abraham’s descendents did not come about until many years after Abraham’s death (Gen. 15:12-16). God’s promise of a son to Abraham was renewed when Abraham quite understandably asked God about it after a number of childless years (see Gen. 15:1-6). But no timetable was set, and Abraham and his wife decided to act on their own to supply a son and heir, setting up an enmity between different branches of his descendents down to the present day. Finally, when Abraham and Sarah were far beyond the normal age for producing children, God told them that the arrival of the promised son was right around the corner (Gen. 17).

But even this miraculous fulfillment of God’s promise of a son who would be the forefather of a populous nation was not the end of Abraham’s waiting on the Lord. In Gen. 22 we see the astounding final test of Abraham’s willingness to serve God in obedience (i.e. to wait upon God), when God ordered him to take his only son, this cherished, promised son, and offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord. Only one who had traveled the long path of cumulative experiences of waiting on God could have met this challenge. We want to say on Abraham’s behalf, “Lord, hasn’t this man already led an exemplary life of waiting on you? Can’t you leave him alone to enjoy his old age with the son you finally sent him?” But the outcome of this final testing of Abraham produced a profound symbol of God’s future redemptive action in giving His one and only Son as a sacrifice.

No wonder Hebrews 11 spends so much time presenting Abraham as a prime exemplar of faith in God. In fact, Abraham was the forerunner of a whole line of descendents who awaited in faith the fulfillment of God’s promises and the final end of His plans. “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God . . . . These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:10, 13).

That brings us to the present period of human history, and to the archetypal waiting we are called to do as members of Christ’s Kingdom on earth, we who are also heirs of the faith testified to in the chapter of faith in Hebrews. In Romans 8, Paul speaks of the glory of final redemption from the corruption of sin and death:

And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom. 8:23-25)

In II Peter 3, this active hope and eager waiting are presented in a context of contrasts: God’s immeasurable eternal time with the mutability of human time; and the present perishable earth with an eternal “new heavens and a new earth” (3:13). God’s purposes will be carried out in His time and in His way, and only after the present earth and its inhabitants have reached the limits of their willingness to repent will God bring “the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (3:7), in which “the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed” (3:10). But out of this destruction and judgment will emerge the final fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham and his physical and spiritual successors. Peter concludes: “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God . . . .” (3:11-12).

When our hope and trust are in the promises generated by God’s providential goodness, our patient expectation will always be rewarded. As the saying goes, God never hurries, and He’s never late.

Summary of Chapter 7: "The Foreconditionality of God’s Love" of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

The key question in chapter seven of Peckham’s Love of God is whether God’s love for the world is unconditional or conditional, the answer to which is also essential for determining if humans can forfeit divine love or if it is unilaterally consistent. Peckham employs the term “foreconditional” to express his understanding that “God’s love is freely bestowed prior to any conditions but not exclusive of conditions” (p. 192). He further elaborates: “God’s love is both prior to human love and yet responsive to and conditioned on human love, which is itself response to God’s initiative. This is the foreconditionality of divine love” (p. 196).

Peckham contrasts his understanding of the foreconditionality of God’s love with both the immanent-experientialist and transcendant-voluntarist models, which both in different ways view divine love as unconditional and as something that cannot be forfeited. In the immanent-experientialist model, divine love is ontologically necessary in that God has an essential sympathetic relationship to the world. In pantheism, God is bound to the world and is mutually dependent on others so that God is unable to choose not to love humans. In the transcendant-voluntarist model, God is self-sufficient so that his love depends solely on his sovereign will. Divine love is thus not conditioned on any external factor and is spontaneous and unmotivated in every way. In this system, the object of divine love can do nothing to inhibit, decrease, or forfeit divine love.

The Conditionality of Divine Love

Peckham opts for a model of divine love that recognizes the priority and necessity of divine initiative but that also sees conditionality and reciprocity as essential to the relationship between God and humans. He argues that Scripture depicts divine love as conditioned upon human response. In the OT, God’s “lovingkindness” (hesed) is for those who love him and obey his commands (Exod 20:6’ Deut 7:9-13). What God has promised within this covenant “is presented as explicitly conditional on the ongoing relationship” (p. 194). In the same vein, Jesus declares that the one who loves him is the one that he and the Father would love (John 14:12) and that the Father loves the disciples because they have loved Jesus (John 16:27). Mutuality is evident in these texts, which indicate that believers remain in the love of God and Jesus by obedience.

This conditionality in divine love is complemented by the evaluative aspect of God’s love that Peckham has developed in chapter five of this work. The Lord loves the righteous but hates the way of the wicked (Prov 15:9). Divine mercy is conditioned upon humans showing mercy to each other (Matt 5:7; 18:33-35). Friendship with Christ is also conditioned on obedience to his commands (John 15:14). God loves all persons and bestows his foreconditional love on all (John 3:16), but his “particular, intimate, relational love” is only received by those who respond to his foreconditional love.

The conditionality of divine love means that humans may also forfeit the benefits of divine love. The prophets Hosea and Jeremiah speak of God hating his people, not loving them, and withdrawing his hesed from them (Hos 9:15; Jer 11:15; 12:8; 14:20; 16:5). Jude’s exhortation for believers to “keep themselves” in the love of God (Jude 21) reflects that fellowship with God can be forfeited. The need for believers to “abide” in God’s love (John 15:5-10) also demonstrates that enjoyment of God’s love demands a proper response to it. Peckham argues that this biblical evidence does away with “the sentimental notion that God’s love is monolithic, constant and unconditional,” and he concludes that “God’s love relationship with the world, then, is not dependent on God’s will alone but takes into account human disposition and action” (p. 199).

Three Objections to the Condtionality of God’s Love

Peckham addresses three common objections to the idea of the conditionality of divine love. The first objection is that some would argue that such conditionality might mistakenly attribute primacy to human action in the divine-human relationship. In response to this objection, Peckham asserts the “absolute priority” of God’s love in the divine-human relationship (1 Jn 4:7-8, 16, 19) and argues that God “is the primary source of love and draws humans to himself prior to any human action” (p. 201). God’s love not only precedes human love, but also follows it as well, energizing love for God and obedience as an expression of that love.

The second objection is that the conditionality of divine love might appear to suggest that God’s love is something that could be earned or merited. Peckham explains that his foreconditional-reciprocal model makes a sharp distinction between conditionality and merit. God’s love toward humans is always undeserved, just as was his love for Israel (cf. Deut 4:37; 7:7-8; 10:15), but divine love can be unmerited while at the same time contingent upon human response. The individual who freely receives God’s love has not merited that love, because even the ability to receive divine love is something that comes as a gift from God (cf. 1 Cor 4:7).

The third objection is that the conditionality of divine love might seem to diminish the greatness of God by removing the assurance of divine love or suggesting that God’s love is not faithful. Peckham counters this objection by noting that God never arbitrarily rejects humans or withdraws his love, The removal of divine love always occurs in response to unrelenting human evil. Divine love is conditional but never capricious.

Peckham also assesses if God’s love would be greater by reconciling all to himself in a reciprocal love relationship. Certain forms of universalism are based on the premises that God desires a love relationship with all and also possesses the ability to effect such a relationship with all persons. Deterministic models of divine love would affirm the second premise, but some forms of determinism would deny the first. According to this understanding, God loves all in some respect but he only chooses some to irresistibly receive the benefits of divine love leading to eternal life. Humans do not possess the ability to accept divine love or not.

In contrasts to these perspectives, the foreconditional-reciprocal model accepts that God desires a love relationship with all (cf. Ezek 18:32; 33:11; 1 Tim 2:4-6; 2 Pet 3:9), but that a truly reciprocal loved relationship between God and individuals “cannot be unilaterally determined by God” (p. 207). This conditionality is not due to any defect in divine love or lack in his power but rather to the fact that any truly loving relationship requires “significant freedom.” Peckham argues that “it is impossible for God to determine that all beings freely love him” (p. 208).

The Conditionality and Unconditionality of God’s Love

The final question that Peckham addresses in this chapter is how we should view the many passages that speak of God’s love as everlasting (cf. Jer 31:3; Rom 8:35, 39) in light of the conditionality of divine love. Distinguishing between God’s subjective and objective love, Peckham argues that, “Divine love is everlasting in some respects, yet may nevertheless be discontinued in other respects” (p. 212). God’s subjective love refers to his loving disposition toward all humanity, and this love is everlasting because it is grounded only in his character. God’s subjective love is unconditional and everlasting because his character is unchanging. God’s objective love, however, is conditional because it is “foreconditional and requires reciprocal love for its permanent continuance” (p. 212). Humans possess the freedom to either accept or reject divine love, and God only removes his love relationship with humans “in response to the prior rejection of God’s love” (p. 213).

Peckham also argues that God’s love is unconditional and everlasting in a corporate sense. He writes, “That God will love and save some people is unconditional.” The Lord’s saving purposes and covenantal promises will come to fruition for his people, but conditionality is maintained at the individual level in regard to who will belong to the remnant. The remnant will only consist of those who favorably respond to God’s loving initiatives (cf. Isa 65:8-9; Rom 9:6; 11:7, 22-23). The interplay between the unconditionality and conditionality of divine love is specifically reflected in the working out of God’s covenant grants in the OT. These covenant promises are unconditional in terms of ultimate fulfillment, but individuals or even entire generations may forfeit the blessings of the covenant and even their covenant status. In the Davidic covenant, Christ is the “entirely faithful servant” who receives all of the blessings that are part of that covenant and to confer those blessings to all of his spiritual offspring. However, individuals may either choose to enjoy those blessings through adoption into God’s family or reject these intended blessings and the love relationship they might have enjoyed with God.

In concluding this chapter, Peckham summarizes the differences between God’s subjective and objective love in this manner: “While God’s subjective love never diminishes or ceases, God’s objective love will eventually no longer reach the one who finally rejects it. Those who respond positively to God’s love, however, enjoy everlasting reciprocal love relationship” (p. 217).

Image:By Attributed to Cima da Conegliano - The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN, UK [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10662424

Results from the 2016 MoralApologetics Writing Contest

Results from the 2016 MoralApologetics Writing Contest: It was our great pleasure to read through all the entries to this year’s writing competition. Submissions ranged from a prose poem to a defense of Molinism, from critiques of naturalism to a critical scrutiny of apologetics by a skeptic. Seasoned writers mixed it up with bright newcomers, and our decision was not an easy one. We finally settled on a Grand Prize Winner, a Runner Up, and two Honorable Mentions:

Overall Winner: Jeff Dickson, “Apocalyptic Love and Goodness”

Runner Up: Frederick Choo, “The Third Option to the Euthyphro Dilemma”

Honorable Mentions: Anil Deo & Nolan Whitaker

Thanks to all who participated, and be sure to try again next time around!