Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 17: “Is It Rational to Believe God Commanded the Killing of Innocent?”

Did God Really Command Genocide? 

It’s been argued that it’s rational to believe the Crucial Moral Principle is not absolute and this claim is rationally believable when the grounds for thinking God issued such a command are stronger than the ground for thinking killing innocent is always wrong. But does the biblical theist have adequate grounds for thinking that God on these unique occasions issued such an exemption? Wesley Morriston has recently argued that the biblical theist can’t have adequate grounds for thinking this. His claim is twofold. First, the relevant biblical texts explicitly state what God’s reasons are for issuing the commands. Second, we have good grounds for thinking these reasons are inadequate ones for commanding the killing of innocent people. The four relevant texts to consider are Deut. 20:16; Deut. 7:2; Numbers 31:15; and 1 Samuel 15:3.

Deuteronomy 20:16: “Save Alive Nothing that Breathes”

Morriston cites Swinburne’s defense of the destruction of various peoples. Swinburne likens the spiritual condition of the relevant peoples as an infectious lethal disease in need of eradication. Morriston replies that such reasons for their destruction are inadequate. He says the obvious worry is that this line of argument may have wider application than Swinburne intends it to have. Should a law be passed to silence or kill evangelical atheists?

F&C argue there are three problems with Morriston’s argument. First, contrary to what Morriston asserts, Deut. 20:16-18 does not explicitly state that God’s reason for issuing the command was to prevent the Israelites from being taught to follow the abhorrent practices of the Canaanite nations. It gives the Israelites a reason to obey a command God has already laid down. The reasons for issuing a command and the reasons why people should obey the commands are not always the same. As Richard Brandt argues, what justifies someone in promoting the acceptance of a code or set of rules is not necessarily the same as the motivation or reason people have for following those rules.

A second problem with Morriston’s argument is this: all his argument shows, if successful, is that Swinburne has failed to defend these reasons. The failure of one person to defend a position is a far cry from the claim that the position itself is problematic.

Third, Morriston’s critique of Swinburne is unpersuasive because it misses some important disanalogies found in Swinburne’s defense. Swinburne doesn’t just mention “spiritual infection”; he refers to a specific type of infection that includes child sacrifice. It was a defensive measure necessary to preserve the identity of the people of Israel and was limited to the nations the Lord gave them as an inheritance. Such features call into question Morriston’s analogies. If Dawkins was trespassing on church property, refusing to leave; leading people not just to apostasy but to human sacrifice of infants; and threatening the entire community of God’ s people, in principle frustrating God’s mission to bring salvation to the world, then perhaps he should be silenced or isolated from the rest of the population!

Deuteronomy 7:2: “Destroy Them Totally”

In this passage God is reportedly commanding the Israelites to totally destroy the seven Canaanite nations. Morriston makes two claims. First, he asserts that this passage teaches that God’s reasons were to prevent the Israelites from marrying Canaanites and worshiping other gods. Second, he offers an argument that this reason is inadequate. F&C think both moves are questionable.

First, the text doesn’t portray God as commanding genocide. Nor does the command commit Israel to kill people with the intention of physically destroying the whole or a substantial part of an ethnic or religious group. The text states that the Israelites must totally destroy the Canaanites after God had driven out these Canaanite nations. Only those who stayed behind to fight would be subsequently defeated. And again, the text doesn’t cite the prospect of intermarriage as the reason God issued the command. Contrary to what Morriston says, in this passage God doesn’t state explicitly what his reasons are at all.

Morriston’s second assertion is also problematic. He argues that intermarriage and apostasy does not constitute a sufficient reason for God to command such violence. He provides two grounds for rejecting this purported reason for God’s command: (1) God had other (presumably less morally reprehensible) means of achieving this goal, and (2) this method failed to achieve the goal in question anyway.

Morriston’s first point proves too much by making this assumption: A loving and just God would not command people to suppress some evil he desires to be suppressed if God has a more efficient means of suppressing that evil himself. But this is clearly false. If it were true, then we would have to give up almost everything we take for granted about morality. Consider, for example, the existence of courts which suppress crimes such as theft and rape. Clearly God could suppress such crimes far more efficiently without relying on human beings. Does it follow that a loving and just God would never permit human beings to set up courts that punish crime? Of course not.

Similar problems afflict the second justification for Morriston’s argument—that God’s chosen method did not get the job done. The biblical record shows that the Israelites did not follow God’s command and that the Canaanite nations and religion were not destroyed. The problem is that this is again true of many actions which a loving and just God would plausibly prohibit. God would command people not to murder, steal, and cause harm, but people continue to do so. Does this mean God would not issue commands to refrain from such actions?

Number 31:15: “Have You Allowed All the Women to Live?”

The third example Morriston cites to make his point is the defeat of Midian as recorded in Numbers 31. The Israelites fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man (v. 7). After the battle, however, Moses commanded Israel to kill all the boys and every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Morriston says Yahweh was angered by the fact that some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides, writing, “Not only must the Israelites be punished, but the Midianites must be punished for causing the Israelites to be punished.” God’s stated reasons, according to Morriston’s thinking, are inadequate.

But Morriston appears to have misread the text. First, consider his claim that the text explicitly states that God’s reason for commanding the killing of the Midianite women and boys was “spiritual infection” because “some young Israelite men had worshiped Baal alongside their new Midianite brides.” There are several problems with this.

First is the fact that, in the text Morriston cites (Num. 31:17-18), God himself does not explicitly command Israel to kill all the Midianite women and boys. God’s command to Moses regarding the Midianites is actually recorded in Numbers 25:17-18 and 31:1-2. God explicitly commands Israel to respond to the Midianites’ spiritual subterfuge by fighting against the Midianites and defeating them. The reasons why Israel is to obey isn’t the spiritual infection of women as Morriston says, but rather the fact that Midian has been hostile toward and deceived Israel.

The Numbers 31 text does not explicitly attribute the command to kill the women and boys to God, but to Moses. Morriston acknowledges this, but suggests three reasons why this observation doesn’t come to much. (1) Moses is regularly characterized as being very close to Yahweh, faithfully obeying his instructions most of the time; (2) Yahweh expresses no disapproval of anything Moses does in this story; and (3) Yahweh himself is the principal instigator of the attack on Midian.

These responses, however, are inadequate. Consider the last point first. The fact that someone is the “principal instigator” of an attack doesn’t entail that he approves of every single action that takes place within the battle in question. Similarly with 2: the lack of explicit disapproval in the text does not entail approval. Morriston’s argument is an appeal to ignorance; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is not uncommon in biblical narratives for authors to describe sinful behavior without expressing explicit disapproval. In most cases, no doubt, the author expects the reader to know certain actions are right and wrong.

Finally, regarding 1, the fact that someone is portrayed in the text as close to God or faithful to him does not mean that every action he is recorded as doing is commanded or endorsed by God. Consider David, or Abraham.

A second instance of Morriston misreading the text is that not only does he attribute Moses’s reasons to God; he also misstates the reasons Moses does give in the context. The real issue is that the Midianite women had been following the devious advice of the pagan seer, Balaam, who had been explicitly commanded by God not to curse Israel. Balaam had led the Israelites into acting treacherously at Baal-Peor. This is the clearly stated issue (31:16). What occurs, when the background is taken into account, is not that some Israelites marry Midianite women, but rather these women use sex to seduce Israel into violating the terms of their covenant with God—an event that threatened Israel’s very national identity, calling, and destiny. This act was in fact deliberate.

So Morriston’s comments are far off the mark when he insists that the Midianites could not have been trying to harm the Israelites by inviting them to participate in the worship of a god in whom they obviously believed. The whole point of the exercise was to get God to curse Israel so that a military attack could be launched by Moab and Midian. The picture isn’t one of innocent Midianite brides, but acts tantamount to treason and treacherous double agents carrying on wicked subterfuge.

Note that the problem wasn’t God’s opposition to Israelites marrying Midianites per se. Indeed, Moses married Zipporah, a Midianite, and he received wise counsel from his father-in-law, Jethro, a Midianite priest.

1 Samuel 15:3: “Do Not Spare Them”

Morriston’s final example is the account of Saul’s destruction of the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15, which he juxtaposes with Deut. 25:17-19. He rejects interpretations of the passage proposed by Stump, who suggests that God made a reckoning of what the Amalekites had done hundreds of years previously. Morriston dismisses this as unsupported speculation, which fails to do justice to the text. He writes that the implied reason for waiting a while to deal with the Amalekites has nothing to do with future Amalekite transgressions, but with the urgent need to get the Israelites safely settled in Canaan.

But Morriston’s own claim that the reason for waiting a while to deal with the Amalekites has nothing to do with future Amalekite transgressions is refuted by the text. 1 Sam. 15:18 puts the emphasis on the present wickedness of the current Amalekites. Likewise with Agag’s personal involvement in aggressive wars. In chapter 14 we see evidence of Amalek’s present aggression against Israel, and a reason for Saul’s military response.

So F&C suggest the best way to understand this passage is not just to read it alongside Deut. 25:17-19, but also alongside a passage like Jeremiah 18:7-10, which makes clear that announcements of future judgment against a nation are conditional, and can change if the nation repents. The book of Jonah makes a similar point. If prophetic pronouncements of doom are conditional, then this nicely explains what we see in 1 Samuel 15. Morriston similarly misreads 2 Kings 23:25-27.

Final Thoughts on Divine Judgment

How do we square God’s judgment with God’s love? God’s judgments are done with a heavy heart. God states emphatically that he does not take pleasure in punishing the wicked. Divine judgment can’t be characterized as indifference. Judgment is not opposed to God’s love and compassion, but rather springs from the character of a loving, caring God. F&C quote Yale Theologian Miroslav Volf, who experienced the horrors of war in the former Yugoslavia, who comments on the relationship between the two, concluding this: “Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them? Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”

Son of Perdition (Matt. 27:3-5)

A Twilight Musing

Did all the powers conspire

To make me plant that kiss?

And why did what He sowed among the Twelve

Bear bitter fruit in me alone?

I was called and sanctified

And given power to exorcise—

Even held the purse for all the rest.

He alone could see the secret fires

That burned my soul away,

And yet He left me to my course

And urged me from His presence

In the Upper Room.

My doom is His to bear as well;

This day we meet in hell.

He let himself be killed,

Poured out the ointment

Meant as alms for all,

While I, at least, have

Dared to test my worth

And act my will.

Even now,

When emptiness engulfs me,

I cannot be still

Beneath the scourge of God;

I shall die on a tree

Of my own devising.

                              --Elton D. Higgs

                                (Sept. 22, 1979)

Image: "The-Last-Supper-large" by Carl Heinrich Bloch - http://www.carlbloch.org/The-Last-Supper.jpg. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The-Last-Supper-large.jpg#/media/File:The-Last-Supper-large.jpg

Yahweh, Glory, Goodness

A Twilight Musing

There is much to learn from the following passage that tells us of Moses’ audacious request to see God in all His glory.

18 Moses said, "Please show me your glory." 19 And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name 'The Lord.' And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” 20 “But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." 21 And the Lord said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, 22 and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen."  (Ex 33:18-23, ESV)

God has already promised (v. 14) that His presence will be with Moses as he continues to lead the people of Israel, but Moses wants to take that promise a step further and requests to see personally the very Essence of God (which he designates as His Glory).  In response, God gives him both more and less than he asked for (in my experience that is the kind of an answer God often gives).  Initially (v. 19), God seems to substitute His “goodness” and His “name” for the requested vision of His glory.  But then God makes clear in v. 22 that His “glory” still describes what Moses will be able to see indirectly when the Lord passes by him.  We may conclude, I think, that we have a triad of descriptors of God’s essential Essence, with differing but delicately interlinking nuances that equally reflect who God is.

It is understandable that after Moses’ encounter with the Glory of God on Mount Sinai he should refer to God’s Essential Self as His “glory.”  That God follows this request immediately with reference to His Goodness and His ineffable Name,  “The LORD”, seems to indicate that the Absolute Presence of God is characterized not only by His over whelming power (glory), but also by His absolute moral perfection and holiness and the irreducible and non-referential nature of the Name Above All Names (the I AM, or YHWH of Ex. 3:14).  He then reinforces this triad of Absolutes by affirming the Absolute Sovereignty of His Will, which creates and defines the actions springing from His Goodness (the graciousness and mercy that go beyond mere law and judgment).

So it turns out that Moses’ request can be met only partially, because God’s Holiness and Absolute Moral Perfection cannot be endured by sinful human beings    (“. . . man shall not see me and live”).  But on the other hand, what God does grant to Moses is even more marvelous than what he originally asked for.  God’s generous solution is for Moses to be hidden in “a cleft of the rock” while he is covered there by God’s hand, so that he can see, as it were, God’s back .  Through His Sovereign Will, the LORD reached beyond the withering force of His Glory and the fire of His Holiness to manifest His merciful Goodness to a faithful servant.  In this Sovereign act of merciful Goodness we see a foretaste of God’s eternal bridging of the gap between His holiness and fallen mankind.

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Reweaving

Reweaving(To an Estranged Brother)

When God has done, He has undone, too; The knots of will unraveled Await the Weaver's hand. Though that which bound our love Seemed closely knit, He knew that it required A purer bond to make us one. So, Lord, secure the cords again, And stay our fumbling hands, Lest we re-tie what you undid; In one deft stroke, Retwine our hearts in unity, For love alone, and not security.

--Elton D. Higgs (Oct. 29, 1982)

Platonic Ethics and Classical and Christian Theism, Part 3

In my first  two posts, I reviewed Plato’s requirements for a truly objective morality and then showed how Judeo-Christian theology meets his four requirements, providing a solid foundation for objective morals. With an objective foundation for morality in place, the big question becomes, “Why should I care?” Just because objective morals exist doesn’t necessarily mean I sufficiently want to obey them. This is the issue of moral motivation, and, unsurprisingly, Plato addresses this topic as well. In this post, I’ll take a look at the three levels of moral motivation that Plato describes in the Republic.

I’ve actually been working backwards in these posts. In the Republic, the question of moral motivation is the subject of Book II and the starting point for the investigation as to what justice (the Good) really is. After Socrates defeats Thrasymachus’s philosophically unsophisticated challenge that justice is merely “the advantage of the stronger” in Book I, Glaucon doesn’t let Socrates off the hook that easily, immediately challenging him to show why one should want to be just. While Plato asserts that justice is good in and of itself and good for the one who practices it, Glaucon responds:

Well, that’s not the opinion of the many…rather it seems to belong to the form of drudgery, which should be practiced for the sake of wages and the reputation that comes from opinion; but all by itself it should be fled from as something hard.[1]

Glaucon persuasively recites some popular arguments against acting justly, saying that it is best merely to appear just (so you can enjoy the benefits of a good reputation) rather than to actually practice justice—if you can get away with it. Given this popular opinion, why should one want to be good? Plato has three reasons, corresponding to three levels of moral motivation.

1. It Is Good to Love the Good because It Is Good

As discussed before, in the Euthyphro the pious was loved by the gods because it was (obviously) pious.[2] It had an innate loveliness that impelled the gods to love it. Likewise, the Good is loved by the gods because they directly experience its goodness and cannot help but to love it. Plato describes this concept the most thoroughly in his Symposium where people are drawn to the Beautiful through a form of eros, erotic love. John Rist brings the point home well:

The Socratic person, as we have seen, is a philo-sopher, a lover of wisdom, an erotikos, as has been emphasized in the Symposium…. His knowledge of the Form is inseparable from his love of it; he is as committed emotionally as he is intellectually to the world of Forms and the Good; his mind is not that of a Cartesian calculator, but of a Socratic lover.[3]

The first and highest form of moral motivation is love of the Good. Those who experience the form of the Good directly—the gods for Plato—are captivated by it and happily arrange their actions according to it because of their love for it. If men could see the Good directly, they would always want to do good. Unfortunately, they do not. What then are we mortals to do? What should compel us to do good even if we do not have this love for the Good? We should do good because it is good for us.

1. It Is Good to Do the Good because It Is Good for You

In the middle of Book II, after repeating the common man’s argument that it is best to act unjustly as long as people believe you to be just, Glaucon sets up the main challenge for Socrates that drives the rest of the book:

So, don’t only show us by the argument that justice is stronger than injustice, but show what each in itself does to the man who has it—whether it is noticed by gods and human beings or not—that makes the one good and the other bad.[4]

In effect, Glaucon wants to know what makes practicing justice good for the soul and practicing injustice harmful to one’s soul—this is the main question of the Republic. Through his investigation of the best and worst types of cities, Socrates is really discovering the best and worst types of man.

The very worst city corresponds to the most miserable man—the tyrant. This person, even if he enjoys wealth and good reputation (wrongly), is the most miserable because the turmoil in his soul will not allow him to enjoy the good things that are available to him. He is more a beast than a man. He cannot enjoy the best pleasures of this life because those enjoyments are experienced through our rationality and the tyrant has debased himself in this area. Because of the defilement of his soul, at best he can enjoy animal goods; but, because of his injustice, even those things cannot satisfy him.

On the other hand, the very best city, ruled by the philosopher-king, corresponds to the very best type of person: he who lives justly, who does the Good and can truly enjoy it. Because he is trained in philosophy, his rational abilities are honed and he can truly enjoy the best—the most human, or, better, the most divine—pleasures. Even if this person does not have material possessions, and if his fellow citizens do not understand him and hence mistreat him, his intellectual pursuit of and love for the Good make him the happiest man of all.

John Stuart Mill captures the difference between these two types of people in his famous quote:

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

The pursuit of, and adherence to, the Good leads to the very best life, whether or not that life is accompanied by material possessions and the acclaim of men. For Plato, Socrates was the prime example of this. The pursuit of injustice leads to the worst possible life for a person. Even if it is accompanied by riches and fame, the debasement of the soul that it causes leads the unjust man to a truly miserable life, whether or not he realizes it.

So, for the rational person there are two good reasons to be moral: love of the Good is good in and of itself, and the Good is also good for you. In his Finite and Infinite Goods, Robert Adams similarly argues that what is best for us is what is good in and of itself. But what motivates the person who is acting irrationally?

1. It Is Good to Do Good because the Just Will Be Rewarded and the Unjust Punished

In the early dialogues, Socrates teaches, and Plato appears to hold, that people will never knowingly do the worse when they know the better. In his middle and later dialogues, Plato appears to move away from this position and deal with the problem of akrasia, where people know the good to do but choose the worse. How are people motivated when they know the Good is good, and is good for them, but they still choose to do the worse? For these people—who are more like unreasoning animals than men—rewards and punishments must be offered to motivate them.

In Book II Glaucon challenges Socrates to show that acting justly was beneficial even if it was accompanied by poverty and scorn, and Socrates argues his case with this restriction in place. In Book X, Socrates asks Glaucon to let him correct this injustice and show that the just man will receive good for acting justly: “Thus, it must be assumed in the case of the just man that, if he falls into poverty, or diseases, or any other of the things that seem bad, for him it will end in some good, either in life or even in death.”[5] In this life, Plato believed that the just will typically receive rewards for the good that they do and that the unjust will typically receive punishment for their injustice; however, if it does not happen in this life, Plato had a story for what would happen to the just and unjust after this life.

Book X ends with the myth of Er, a valiant warrior who died in battle but came back to life after twelve days and shared what he saw in the “other world.” There, the just and unjust went through a period of 1,000 years of either rewards or punishment for their deeds. The just “told of the inconceivable beauty of the experiences and sights” in heaven, while the unjust “lamenting and crying, [recounted] how much and what sort of things they had suffered and seen in the journey under the earth.” While the common unjust suffered for 1,000 years, men who were tyrants, after suffering for that same duration, were bound and thrown into Tartarus, never to emerge. This is Plato’s message for those who would practice injustice, and the message “could save us, if we are persuaded by it, and shall make a good crossing of the river of Lethe and not defile our soul.”[6] If nothing else will motivate one to be just, they must be coerced with either the hope of reward or the fear of punishment.

Conclusion

So for Plato there are three levels of moral motivation. The first and purest is to be good because of a passionate love for the Good itself; this is the best, and only truly moral, type of motivation. For those who are too short-sighted to make the philosophical investment to know the Good directly, the second is to be good because doing justice is good for you—more importantly, it is good for your soul. This motivation leans more towards the self-interested side, but at least it remains a form of internal motivation. Finally, for those who will not strive to do even what is good for them, the third form is either to bribe with promises of rewards for acting justly or threaten with punishment for the unjust. This form is not strictly moral motivation, but, given the problem of akrasia, it is necessary to get some to act rightly in a world that is moral to its core.

In my next post, I’ll take a look at how Plato’s moral motivation compares with Judeo-Christian theism’s and briefly contrast these views with moral motivation typically found in certain naturalistic ethical systems.

Notes:

[1] Plato, The Republic, Book II, 358a.

[2] Plato, Euthyphro, 10a, d.

[3] John Rist, Plato’s Moral Realism, p. 150.

[4] Plato, The Republic, 367e.

[5] Plato, The Republic, 613a.

[6] Plato, The Republic, 621c.

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Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary Chapter 16: “Can One Rationally Believe God Commands a Violation of Innocent Human Beings?”

Did God Really Command Genocide?  

In our last chapter we read that it is possible for God to command the killing of innocent human beings on those rare occasions where some greater good might prevail. The prohibition against taking innocent life is understood as one that normally holds, but is not one that is an absolute against all circumstances. In this chapter, F&C examine some objections that might arise to this reasoning.

They first begin to examine an objection that comes from the mind of one of the greatest German philosophers of modern times, Immanuel Kant. Kant’s objection arises from his consideration of the biblical account of God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. F&C cite Kant, “That I ought not kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, are God – of that I am not certain, and never can be, not even if this voice rings down to me from (visible) heaven” (195). Kant is pulling a Hume-like “weighing of the epistemic evidence” move in his argument. His point is not so much that God could not issue such a command, but that one could not have apodictic certainty that such a command came from God. It would always be possible that one’s understanding or interpretation of the command could be in error. However, one can have such certainty when it comes to the moral law concerning the killing of the innocent. This we know for certain is wrong. Hence it is a weighing of epistemic certainty or knowability that is at issue. According to Kant (ala Hume) one should always go with that which has more epistemic certainty, which in this case, will be with the moral law rather than the divine command.

F&C point to Phillip Quinn’s two pronged response to Kant’s objection. Quinn’s first prong is to question Kant’s “optimistic view” of our ability to achieve apodictic certainty concerning our moral judgments. Quinn acknowledges that this might be the case with certain moral claims, such as torturing little children for fun, but it seems overly optimistic when it comes to moral claims across the board or in general. Philosophers have become more comfortable with thinking of moral duties as having prima facie standing as opposed to thinking of them as absolutes. The very fact that we serious debates about moral issues such as capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion, participation in war, torture, and many other issues of which many good and intelligent scholars hold differing views should give one pause about taking such an optimistic attitude. Quinn’s other prong is to question Kant’s doubt that one can never be rationally certain of knowing a command came from God. He sees no reason one could not, in principle, be as certain or more certain that God is speaking than they are that the moral claim holds in a particular situation. This is especially the case if one takes the first prong seriously. There is no reason to assume that moral claims always have a higher epistemic status than theological claims. In answering the objection, “But this is killing the innocent, certainly we are certain about this moral duty,” F&C state, “We agree that in normal circumstances it is wrong to kill innocent people . . . However the claim that it is never permissible under any circumstance is extremely controversial.” (197)

F&C go on to examine the objection by Randall Rauser that a literal reading of the command by Yahweh to kill babies is “really stronger” than the moral duty not to kill the innocent. They explore an answer to four specific objections Rauser raises. Rauser’s first objection is the assertion that “every rational properly functioning person cannot help but know that it is always wrong to bludgeon babies” (197). In support of this claim Rauser offers several examples of moral atrocities of which, he claims, any “intellectually honest human being will condemn these events without question” (197). Rauser’s argument is that since we do not need any qualifications or further information to condemn such actions, such actions are always wrong without exception. However, this simply does not follow. While a particular example of wrongdoing can be condemned “without qualification,” that does not imply that another example of the same actions might have a qualification for which the action can be morally acceptable. The point of the arguments being presented by F&C is that an action that might normally or regularly be condemned can be morally justifiable in a rare case. They provide an example in which terrorists are going to crash a hijacked plane into a building in which thousand may be killed and the option of shooting the plane down to stop the terrorists from accomplishing their goal. Certainly innocent people will die, but many “intellectually honest” persons will hold such a shooting as morally justifiable in such a case.

Rauser’s second argument stems from the idea that commanding others to perform moral atrocities such as killing the innocent often has detrimental effects on those commanded to perform such actions. He cites examples of those in the military who experience PTSD from traumatic experiences as support that commanding someone to do such actions is a moral atrocity itself. F&C point out that this reasoning backfires on Rauser himself, who advocates active involvement in just war where certainly the possibility of PTSD is highly possible. In fact any activity in which one could be seriously psychologically affected would have to be placed under Rauser’s condemnation and could not be commanded including many necessary activities of firefighters and police officers.

Rauser’s third argument is the idea that acceptance of a literal interpretation of these conquest passages leads to “the ubiquitous human tendency to rationalize illegitimate violations of the principle of universality” (201). The “principle of universality” is the basic idea that we should apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others. Rauser offers two criteria for distinguishing a legitimate exception to this principle from an illegitimate one, and then claims that the conquest narratives fail to meet the criteria. F&C reply first by showing that the view they are promoting does not violate the principle as they are not claiming the exception they offer (that God commands it) does not just apply to us but to anyone whom God commands. They then suggest problems with Rauser’s criteria. The first, “criterion of extraordinary exceptions,” simply states that the more radical the exception the stronger the rationale is needed. However, F&C point out that is the very point of the idea of prima facie prohibitions: one needs a rationale for violating the prohibition. However, the context determines the level of rationale. One cannot apply an abstract principle and then form a judgment. Rauser’s second “criterion of common origin” is also problematic. The criterion states that one should be suspicious of a rationalization if it “conforms to a well-established pattern of rationalization.” However, F&C point out that one cannot decide a rationalization is illegitimate purely because it follows a particular pattern because examples can be provided of acceptable rationalizations that follow such patterns and they proceed to provide one.

Rauser’s final argument is a more pragmatic one based on practical consequences. Rauser contends that a literal interpretation of the conquest narratives has “contributed to a long history of moral atrocities” (204). Rauser appeals to both John Howard Yoder’s claim that from the time of Augustine Christians have appealed to the conquest narratives to justify genocide and increase the empire as well as Jeremy Cort’s claim that there is a link between the violence of Canaan and the Crusades. F&C will deal more fully with this discussion in later chapters, but at this juncture they simply show that, first, these charges are dubious at best. Augustine is the father of the just war doctrine and advocated against the ancients like Aristotle and Cicero in conquering weaker and inferior peoples. Mainstream Christianity followed Augustine in this doctrine, and F&C cite Aquinas and Francisco Vitoria as example of mainstream thinking concerning the treatment of the innocent: “Let my first proposition be: The deliberate slaughter of the innocent is never lawful in itself” (205). They also briefly address the common assumption concerning the crusades and point out that in a study of medieval texts, scholar Douglas Earl shows that very little appeal is made to the conquest narratives to justify the crusades, but instead appeals to the teaching of Jesus were much more prominent in justifying the crusades. Finally F&C explore the underlying assumption behind Rauser’s argument: “If a belief as contributed to a long line of historical atrocities, then we should reject that belief” (206). However, they point out that many atrocities have occurred in the name of good things, such as the splitting of the atom or the reign of terror, but that does not mean we should reject the good because people have used it for bad.

F&C conclude by showing that the objections raised against the idea that God could on rare occasions abrogate a moral duty that normally one should keep fail and that the principle holds.

Image: "Abraham's-sacrifice-from-Raduil" by Edal Anton Lefterov - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abraham%27s-sacrifice-from-Raduil.jpg#/media/File:Abraham%27s-sacrifice-from-Raduil.jpg

Podcast: A Christian Perspective on Bioethics with Mark Foreman

On this week's podcast, Dr. Mark Foreman gives a Christian perspective on some key bio-ethical issues. Dr. Foreman helps us understand how we should think about trans-humanism, fertility treatments, abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Working from a Christian and Aristotelian and natural law perspective, Dr. Foreman explains how right action results from careful consideration of human nature.

God’s Goodness and the One Ring

A Twilight Musing

Those of you who read the last installment of the “Letters of Ichabod” series will remember how it depicts the possibility that even a demon can be affected by the goodness of God.  That scenario may be far-fetched, but this conclusion to the career of Ichabod reflects a more certain truth: that the Goodness emanating from God will either transform the person who engages it, or the person will reject the Good and replace it with a counterfeit “good,” which then becomes an instrument of evil.  True goodness is a part of God’s nature that can be wielded only by Him and by those to whom He grants the grace to be avenues and instruments of His Goodness. God’s Goodness is a part of His non-contingent existence, which can be defined only by reference to Itself (cf. Ex. 3:14: “I AM WHO I AM”).

This fact reminds me of the nature of the One Ring, the Ring of Power in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.  Again and again, the characters in this epic struggle between good and evil are reminded that the Ring of Power cannot be used except according to the manipulative design of its creator, Sauron, the evil Lord of the Rings. All who try to use the Ring, even for good purposes, will be corrupted by that usage.  It strikes me that the reverse principle is true in a theological sense: Only God, who is Absolute Goodness and the Source of all true goodness, can bring out of His Goodness truly good things.

“To be drawn thus into the imprisoning vortex of Evil is to experience an ever-narrowing path leading away from all true reality.   By contrast, the drawing of the soul into the Goodness of God offers an infinite future for that soul’s development and enhancement. ”

To this similarity, however, must be added the observation so astutely made by St. Augustine in his Confessions (as a part of his rejection of his earlier Manichaeism), that evil has no separate existence and can be manifested only as a corruption of the Good.  Seen in that light, Sauron’s One Ring doesn’t represent a dualistic Evil Power equivalent in nature to the Good Power, but rather (like Satan) a horribly distorted counterfeit of the Good.  Consequently, unlike the Good, the only transformative capacity Evil has is to take its users farther away from reality into illusion.  To be drawn thus into the imprisoning vortex of Evil is to experience an ever-narrowing path leading away from all true reality.   By contrast, the drawing of the soul into the Goodness of God offers an infinite future for that soul’s development and enhancement.    C. S. Lewis depicts this contrast graphically in The Great Divorce, in which he shows the inhabitants of Hell continually and progressively growing more isolated from the center of things, because they chose to focus on their own “good” rather than embracing the great and essential Good. Herein is the chief pitfall of self-centered insistence on individualistically defining ourselves.  The noblest desires within us to be good and to do good can easily be diverted into a kind of solipsistic and pitiful parody of the Source of Goodness.   That associates us with the demonic “shadow government” that Ichabod’s letters were describing, a complete model of darkness purporting to be light.  (More to come about the intertwining of Goodness, Glory, and Light.)

Cyprian, Mortality, and Future Hope

Cyprian of Carthage was a third century bishop in North Africa. He is most famous for his pastoral interactions during the Novatianist schism. His writings evidence his pastoral concerns not entering into theological reflection for the sake of doctrinal elegance, but rather focused upon the needs of those connected with his ministry. He influenced later thinkers, including Augustine, and was himself influenced by Tertullian’s writings. His most famous work is On the Unity of the Church, in which he wrote what is perhaps his most well-known statement: “He can no longer have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother.” In his On the Mortality, Cyprian also addressed how the Christian ought to respond to suffering and the imminence of death in this life.

On the Mortality no doubt reflects Cyprian’s concern, as do many of his works, for the threat of recantation which faced many of his flock. Cyprian ministered in an age where persecution was an ever-present threat for the Christian community. Much of Cyprian’s theological reputation comes from his opposition to Novatian, who had set himself up as an anti-pope and was opposed to reinstating the “lapsed” (i.e., those who had denied their faith when faced with persecution) to good standing in the Church. Cyprian, though he advocated for re-instating the penitent, nevertheless did not encourage laxity among believers. In On the Mortality, Cyprian encouraged Christ-followers to remain faithfully obedient to God, even when faced with death. Part of Cyprian’s plea is for the believer to keep the reality of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God ever present before them. He wrote:

The kingdom of God, beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand; the reward of life, and the rejoicing of eternal salvation, and the perpetual gladness and possession lately lost of paradise, are now coming, with the passing away of the world; already heavenly things are taking the place of earthly, and great things of small, and eternal things of things that fade away. What room is there here for anxiety and solicitude? Who, in the midst of these things, is trembling and sad, except he who is without hope and faith? For it is for him to fear death who is not willing to go to Christ. It is for him to be unwilling to go to Christ who does not believe that he is about to reign with Christ (Cyprian of Carthage, On the Mortality, II, translation by Robert Ernest Wallis).

Cyprian, assured by the words of Jesus that the kingdom of God is both here and near, maintained that confidence in the face of death is available to the Christian. This, though, does not mean—because of the “not yetness” of the kingdom—that Christians can expect a life free of suffering in the “now.” As Cyprian continues:

Thus, when the earth is barren with an unproductive harvest, famine makes no distinction; thus, when with the invasion of an enemy any city is taken, captivity at once desolates all; and when the serene clouds withhold the rain, the drought is alike to all; and when the jagged rocks rend the ship, the shipwreck is common without exception to all that sail in her; and the disease of the eyes, and the attack of fevers, and the feebleness of all the limbs is common to us with others, so long as this common flesh of ours is borne by us in the world (Cyprian of Carthage, On the Mortality, VIII).

According to Cyprian, not only should believers expect to experience the same pain and suffering as the unbeliever, they should in reality expect more, since the spiritual powers will battle all the more fiercely against them (Cyprian of Carthage, On the Mortality, IX). They are ultimately, however, assured that they will overcome death even if they must traverse through it in order to do so. Cyprian wrote:

What a grandeur of spirit it is to struggle with all the powers of an unshaken mind against so many onsets of devastation and death! (Cyprian of Carthage, On the Mortality, XIV).

In On the Mortality, Cyprian referenced Philippians 3:21 in his word of assurances. Because of the power of the risen Jesus, who has been given authority over all things, those in Christ will be transformed into the state of his glorious body. As Paul writes elsewhere (1 Thessalonians 1:12), Christ’s glory will be shared with those united with him. Ultimately the assurance of believers’ resurrection can be held firmly because Jesus himself is the firstfruit of that resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20). The greatest threat which the cosmic powers can wield against God’s people (O, Death) must ultimately be viewed as no threat at all. Death’s sting departs. Death’s failure arrives. And in the face of the suffering inevitable in this world, that truly is Good News.

Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 15: “Can One Coherently Claim that God Commanded the Killing of Innocents?”

Did God Really Command Genocide?  

Accepting DCT doesn’t mean accepting that God commanded the killing of Canaanite noncombatants. The further claim is needed that in very unusual circumstances in the past, God commanded people to kill the innocent for the sake of some greater good. This chapter responds to the charge that affirming such a proposition is incoherent. (The next couple chapters after this one will respond to the claim that even if it is coherent, one can’t rationally claim God has ever issued such a command.)

Can One Coherently Claim that God Commanded the Killing of Innocents?

Several writers have suggested the claim that a loving and just God could command the killing of the innocent is simply incoherent. Cowles, Seibert, and Bradley have all given variants of this claim. They all seem to consider such a command so utterly beyond the moral pale that we can’t coherently claim a perfectly good God could issue it, on pain of our language being implicated in rabid equivocation.

Calling Right Wrong and Wrong Right? Robert Adams’s Version of the Coherence Objection

More careful and plausible versions of this argument have been developed by Robert Adams. The DCT’ist, he writes, must appeal to the fact that God is essentially good. This means there are limits to the commands one can coherently attribute to God. Adams argues it follows that God can’t coherently be called good if what he commands is contrary to “our existing moral beliefs.” But, as one like Bradley argues, the Crucial Moral Principle—that it’s wrong to kill innocent human beings—is one of those beliefs. So we can’t coherently attribute this command to a loving and just God.

A Reply to the Coherence Objection

Adams’s argument is too quick. God can’t issue a set of commands too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our theological thinking, but the phrase “too much” suggests that one can accept a set of commands somewhat at odds with the outlook we bring to our ethical thinking. Adams in fact elsewhere makes the same point, saying we can’t identify moral obligations with God’s commands if what God commands is contrary to “an important central group” of what we consider to be right and wrong. He grants that it would be “unreasonable” to expect God’s commands to “agree perfectly with pre-theoretical opinion.” An ethical theory may give guidance in revising one’s particular ethical judgments, but there is a limit to how far those opinions may be revised without changing the subject.

Adams makes two points that suggest this qualification is necessary. First, while we do have some grasp of what is good and some idea of what is right and wrong, it is clear that our moral judgments can be fallible. Second, our moral concepts are subject to revision. Indeed, Adams accepts the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center, though not to a wholesale replace of good with evil.

Such points limit Adams’s conclusion. It’s not that our existing moral beliefs are sacrosanct, but rather that certain types of our existing beliefs serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands. What he has in mind are those ethical beliefs that are so central to our concept of goodness that rejecting them would create a moral revolution of sorts in which good and evil switch places.

James Rissler gives two examples of cases where a purported divine command violates a nonnegotiable belief. The first is where God issues a command to reverse one’s conception of right and wrong or issues a set of commands that negates a large number of moral imperatives that one currently accepts. Second, he suggests that a command might contradict a moral belief sufficiently integral to one’s conception of morality that abandoning that belief would force such a radical revision as to destroy one’s concept of goodness altogether.

The key question, then, is not whether the Crucial Moral Principle is one of our existing moral beliefs, but whether it’s nonnegotiable. Can it be overridden in rare circumstances of supreme emergency? Such as the alternative is, say, tolerating significantly greater evils? To think so is not obviously incoherent. So, taken as a universal, the Crucial Moral Principle about the wrongness of killing innocent people is not a nonnegotiable principle.

Once this is realized, it’s evident that the arguments of Cowles, Seibert, and Bradley fail. The claim that God on rare or highly unusual occasions allows exceptions to a general rule against killing for the sake of some greater good does not violate a nonnegotiable moral belief. Hence one can coherently attribute it to God.

Rauser offers an argument in favor of an absolute prohibition against killing the innocent, which could be used to contest what F&C have argued. Rauser assumes that the command to kill the Canaanites is a command to physically slaughter an entire society, but F&C already argued against this assumption.

But this brings us to Coady’s argument against alleged exceptions to an absolute prohibition on killing noncombatants. Coady notes that the criteria for extreme emergency is “conceptually opaque” and requires calculations that are difficult to accurately weigh in situations where people are prone to rationalize their behavior. For this reason, adopting an absolute rule against killing the innocent will have better results morally than allowing an exception. General acceptance and conformity with an absolute rule will bring about more good than the acceptance of a rule allowing supreme emergency situations.

Nathanson and Donagan make similar criticisms. A categorical prohibition will produce better overall results. What’s more, humans have the pervasive tendency to rationalize and be tempted to apply exceptions when it isn’t legitimate. Escape clauses to traditional morality will cloud moral judgment in the heat or tension of the moment.

F&C have considerable sympathy with this argument. But they make two replies. First, they write, the permissibility of killing noncombatants in some rare cases is not incoherent at any rate. Second, whereas humans are limited in knowledge and moral judgment, in the matter under discussion it isn’t a human being making calculations that allows for the exceptions, but God, who isn’t prone to bias or temptation and is omniscient, making the exception. So it seems perfectly coherent to attribute an occasional command to a good and just God who has some greater good or purpose in mind and is not erroneous in his judgment.

Find the other chapter summaries here.

Image: "The canonised Joshua and Samuel. Lithograph by J.G. Schreine Wellcome V0034403" by http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/9a/06/910917420c0c7eb93974d7fd24f2.jpgGallery: http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0034403.html. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_canonised_Joshua_and_Samuel._Lithograph_by_J.G._Schreine_Wellcome_V0034403.jpg#/media/File:The_canonised_Joshua_and_Samuel._Lithograph_by_J.G._Schreine_Wellcome_V0034403.jpg

His Rules Are Good

Editor's note: Today marks the start of a new series, written by the luminous mind behind “Leaked Documents: Ichabod to Apollyon,” whose identity has heretofore been kept anonymous: none other than my (Dave’s) main undergraduate mentor and longtime dear friend, the inestimable Dr. Elton Higgs. Our contributor section contains the highlights of his long and impressive career as an English professor and scholar. The new series will feature a new piece from him each Friday, and is to be entitled “Twilight Musings,” as he approaches the end of his eighth decade on this terrestrial ball. (His choice; my guess is he’ll outlive us all!) We have offered him the regular Friday slot at MoralApologetics.com in perpetuity, or at least until either the eschaton arrives or Elton shuffles his mortal coil. In the interim, we are all sure to derive great benefit, edification, and insight from his thoughtful reflections, and it is our distinct pleasure to bring you the first of a great many installments to come. 

Perhaps others, like me, have been puzzled by the contrast between repeated affirmations of the goodness of God’s law in the Psalms (particularly Ps. 119) and Paul’s strong arguments in Romans and Galatians that the Law, though perfect, has been shown to be insufficient for our eternal salvation.  How can we celebrate the goodness and beauty of a moral yardstick that ends up condemning us?  Was it only the unenlightened Jews under the Old Covenant who could delight in the Good Law of the Lord, or is there a basis for doing so under the New Covenant?

In light of this tension, I was struck by a re-reading of Ps. 119:39-40 (ESV): “Turn away the reproach that I dread, for your rules are good.  Behold, I long for your precepts; in your righteousness give me life.”  The speaker feels the ambivalence of both dreading God’s reproach and loving the good rules of God, which are the standard by which we are all judged as deserving of reproach.  It’s a little bit like being forced to kiss the paddle that has been the instrument of punishment.  And then the next verse presents a parallel contrast between longing for the precepts of God and at the same time desperately needing a righteousness that goes beyond the letter of these precepts to grant him life as a gift.

The resolving of the tension between the goodness of God’s Law and its salvific insufficiency hinges on making a distinction between the imbued goodness of the Law and the Absolute Goodness of God.  The Psalmist can request that God “turn away the reproach” he dreads and, instead, gift him with life because he recognizes that the goodness of the Law derives from its Absolutely Good Source, which can go beyond the goodness of the Law to grant moral security that can be defined by the Law, but not empowered by it. 

So long, then, as I think that being in communion with God depends on my performing well enough to “feel good about myself,” I will fail to find comfort, for my failures when judged by the Perfect, Good Law of God are palpable.  It thus becomes clear that the question is not, “Do I feel good about myself?”, but rather, “Do I feel good about God?”  To do the latter requires me to understand that any fellowship with Him depends on Him, and not on me.  Only in that frame of mind can I love God’s Law and not feel threatened by it.  From that perspective, I and the Law are bound together by our both sharing a derived Goodness from the Underived and  Absolute Goodness, God Himself.  His reproach then comes to us as loving discipline, not judgment, having passed through the Cross and been sanctified by the One who bore the reproach due to us all.  Only then can I wholeheartedly accept that “His rules are good.”

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Moral Knowledge and Loving Our Neighbors

What is moral knowledge and how ought we use it? It helps to first understand what knowledge is. By the account of most, knowledge is a justified (or warranted) true belief. In order to have knowledge about something, I must have a justified true belief about it. Justification can take a variety of forms. For example, if I read in The New York Times that Obama was in China last week, this would be adequate justification for believing that Obama was in China. Notice that knowledge does not require certainty, it only requires that the belief is true and justified. If knowledge did require certainty, as the work of Descartes ended up showing, we could only know a very small list of things, likely just beliefs confined inside our own heads. Building the bridge to anything outside invariably introduces the possibility of being wrong, however slight, thereby precluding absolute certainty. Since Descartes, most epistemologists have realized the mistake in hankering after Cartesian certainty.

Moral knowledge, then, is a justified true belief of a moral proposition. “It is always wrong to torture children just for fun” is an example of a moral proposition.

You might wonder what kind of justification can make belief in this proposition knowledge. As Christians, we can give several different answers. One possible answer is that the proposition about torturing children for fun is “properly basic.” This means that we do not need to provide any reason to think the proposition is true in order to know that it is. A Christian can give this answer consistently by arguing that God has made humans in such a way that they simply recognize the truth of certain moral propositions immediately.

Or, alternately, we might say that justification comes from the Christian view of human persons. Since all humans, including children, are made in the image of God, they have intrinsic value and dignity. Therefore, it is always wrong to torture children for the fun of it. This is an attempt to infer wrongness from the badness of violating a person’s dignity or value. There are number of other ways we could ground our justification of this belief on the Christian view, including an appeal to God’s command to love others as we love ourselves. The bottom line is that Christianity has tremendous resources for justifying our belief in moral propositions.

What I want to suggest is that if you think Christianity is true, then you should be confident that moral knowledge is available to you. We could list a wide range of moral beliefs that a Christian should think justified, like the wrongness of adultery and stealing, the goodness and value of nature and animals, and the dignity of all human life.

Now, this robust kind of moral knowledge gives us both moral authority and responsibility. We have moral authority because we know the truth of certain moral propositions and, since we know the truth, we have an obligation to communicate that in a clear, but loving way.

As Christians, we face a problem when exercising our responsibility to tell the truth about morality: our neighbors often disagree with us about certain moral propositions. We have often been told that the greatest virtues are tolerance and humility. If there is one sin in our culture, it is the sin of speaking with authority about morality. Each person has the right to find happiness wherever and however they can, even if it means acting in ways those dogmatic Christians think disagreeable.

However, when we only practice the virtues of tolerance and humility and exclude the virtue of truth telling, then we actually harm others. If it is really true that torturing children for fun is wrong, then it is not virtuous to say to the child torturer, “Well, for me, torturing children is wrong, but you are entitled to you own opinions. You have your truth and I have mine. If it makes you happy, go ahead. If it causes you pain to stop, then don’t.” This harms the child torturer by enabling him to continue the degradation of his own soul, not to mention the harm he will continue to do to the children. Really loving the child torturer means confronting him with the truth in love.

The principle is generalizable. Consistent with regard and respect for others is the proclamation of truth. Since so many nowadays seem to identify their convictions with their very identity, challenging someone’s belief might be interpreted as something of a personal attack. This, for obvious reasons, makes expressing disagreement more challenging. Although we shouldn’t aim to be disagreeable ourselves, we should be willing to speak the truth in love, winsomely and irenically.

In The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis wrote about what it means for God to be good. He says,

By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness—the desire to see others than the self happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, “What does it matter so long as they are contented?” We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, “liked to see young people enjoying themselves” and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, “a good time was had by all”.

The point Lewis was driving at is that in order for God to be good, he cannot just leave us as we are. Real love is active and not passive. When God loves us, he helps us out of the mire of sin and depravity he found us in. He does not say, “Getting out the muck will be hard and you seem contented enough, so you stay there.” God wants us to flourish as humans and not to continue the process of rotting away. Therefore, God demands moral transformation from us. God desires what’s best for us; His love demands it.

The illumination provided by Lewis can help us think more clearly about our own responsibility to love others. If we truly love others, we will not be merely kind to them. That, in the end, is patronizing and harmful. Instead, we will call our neighbors to a life of rich happiness that is only available when we accept that we must also be holy to be happy. We must help our neighbors out of the muck and mire by telling them the truth about morality, even if they’d rather not hear it. Lucky for us, Christianity provides the grounds for doing just that.

Paul Copan and Kenneth Litwak write,

In our therapeutic age, Westerners commonly view God as a divine therapist rather than as the cosmic authority who commands our obedience and allegiance. To those who trust in him, God gives the Holy Spirit, not the Happy Spirit. God is more interested in our being good and doing good than our feeling good; he is more interested in character transformation than self-authentication. God is not only concerned about sincerity, but also that sincere hearts be aligned with the truth; after all, people can be sincerely wrong, as history amply illustrates. Only by losing our lives for Christ’s sake, by taking up our cross daily, will we actually find what is life indeed (Mt 16:25; Jn 10:10). (The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas, p. 55.)

The New Testament provides the earliest and most paradigmatic examples of outreach to an unbelieving world. And though the earliest evangelists were careful to be sensitive to context and to establish a solid rapport with their audiences, starting where they were, they were always true to their beliefs, had the courage of their convictions, and tried taking their listeners to where they needed to be. If this required calling sin out, identifying instances of iniquitous idolatry, calling people to repentance, and warning of the judgment to come, they were willing to do it. And so should we. The Good News of the Gospel is good news indeed, but only after people realize their malady and need for healing.

Flannagan and Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary Chapter 14: “Other Euthyphro-Related Objections”

Did God Really Command Genocide? 

In the previous chapter F&C examined objections to divine command theory that flow out of Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma. In that chapter they claimed that most objections can be divided into two basic categories: arbitrariness objections and emptiness objections. The last chapter was concerned with the most common arbitrariness objections. In this chapter they examine a few more arbitrariness objections before moving on to the emptiness objections.

Some arbitrariness objections concern God’s omnipotence. Wes Morriston argues that God’s goodness and his omnipotence are mutually incompatible. If he is omnipotent he can do anything including commanding one to do unnecessary and capricious evil such as rape. However, because he is all good, he cannot make such a command and therefore these two foundational characteristic for theists are mutually incompatible and one must be forsaken for the sake of the other (or both must go). F&C offer three responses to this objection, all of which either clarify or qualify the meaning of omnipotence. Most theists (and even some atheists) respond that this objection misunderstands the traditional understanding of omnipotence. Omnipotence does not mean God can do absolutely anything, but only that God can do that which is logically possible. Hence one does not need to deny omnipotence, for one can respond either that there is no possible situation in which God chooses to issue an evil command or that it is not logically possible for an all good being to make such a command. Another alternative is simply to qualify what is meant by omnipotence by making it something weaker, such as the claim that “God has as much power as is compatible with essential goodness.”(173) The point is that one can escape Morriston’s objection by reconceptualizing his idea of omnipotence.

A second group of objections uses counterfactuals as a way of showing the divine command theory is problematic. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong acknowledges the theists’ point that “If God is good, he would not command us to rape,” but then goes on to claim, “Moreover, even if God in fact never would or could command us to rape, the divine command theory still implies the counterfactual that, if God did command us to rape, then we would have a moral obligation to rape. That is absurd.” (174, emphasis theirs) He offers no reason for why it is absurd and, in fact, F&C argue that its absurdity is not that obvious, “According to the standard view of modal logic, a conditional statement with a logically impossible antecedent . . . is true. So Sinnott-Armstrong’s suggestion that the consequent is obviously false is far from obvious.” However, Sinnott-Armstrong replies to this objection by simply claiming that the proposition ‘If God commanded us to rape, then we would have a moral obligation to rape’ “seems plausible to most people regardless of technical details about counterfactuals.” (174) The main problem F&C raise if one takes that tactic is that logical consistency demands one applies the same counterfactual to any ethical theory, rendering them all arbitrary and ineffective. So, for example, regarding utilitarianism, “Even if rape never would or could maximize utility or usefulness for society, utilitarianism still implies the counterfactual if rape were to maximize utility, then it would be obligatory.” (174-175)

Another critic, Eric Wielenberg, suggests that “God does have the power to make any logically consistent claim but that it is only His character that prevents him from exercising this power.” (175) He asks us to imagine a situation in which God does not have that character, but is instead cruel and capricious. According to Wielenberg, if this counterfactual were the case, DCT would entail that gratuitous assault would be morally obligatory. However, the main problem is the terms as we have defined them. As the maximally greatest being, one worthy of worship, God would not be cruel and capricious. In order for Wielenberg’s argument to be successful, he must propose a world that is not possible, where a maximally great being is one full of hatred and cruelty.

Sam Harris attempts to critique DCT by saying that “we are being offered a psychopathic and psychotic moral attitude.” (177) He makes three claims: First, DCT entails the following conditional: If God commands you to blow up a bus full of children, then you are required to do so. Second, the truth of this conditional requires a psychopathic perspective. Third, accepting the conditional easily rationalizes the slaughter of children. F&C answer Harris by noting that, while the first claim is true, it is (1) a conditional claim that says nothing about what God actually commands, and (2) it is only morally obligated if God commands it. However, as has been stated several times, the conception of God being argued for is a morally perfect being who would not and cannot command such a thing. The hypothetical conditions are logically impossible. As far as the second claim, it only requires a psychopathic perspective if one is talking about blowing up buses per se, but it does not if the hypothetical conditions hold, i.e. that it is not unloving, unjust, and irrational. Hence F&C hold that Harris’s second claim is incoherent. As far as the third claim, F&C state, “A divine command theory insists that an action is obligatory only if God actually commands that action. It does not contend that an action is obligatory if someone claims or believes that God commands it.” (179) F&C point out that we can reject that God has made some such command for the same reasons that Harris does, because a good and just God would not do so.

Having successfully explained the arbitrariness objections, F&C spend the remainder of this chapter briefly examining two emptiness objections. The first of these is suggested by Peter Van Inwagen. Van Inwagen claims that God does not have any moral obligations, so nothing he does can be considered right or wrong. This of course would be true if one was to conceive of God’s moral perfection in terms of obligations and duties. However, F&C point out that many theologians and philosophers do not think of God’s goodness so much in terms of duties as character traits such as truthful, benevolent, loving, and gracious. It is certainly possible to exhibit such traits without reference to any particular duties.

The other emptiness objection comes again from Sam Harris, who claims that, if God is not bound by moral duties then he does not have to be good. (183) F&C respond by clarifying what is meant by “God does not have to be good.” If it means, “he is not under an obligation to be good” then of course the implication holds. However, if Harris is implying that “God does not have to be good” implies he can be evil, then the implication does not hold, for the term ‘God’ means a maximally great being, which includes moral perfection. Hence, by this conception, it is impossible for God not to be good.

Podcast: Mark Foreman Explains Why Abortion is Wrong in Ten Minutes

On this week's podcast, we hear from philosopher and bioethicist Mark Foreman. Dr. Foreman explains in about ten minutes why humans still in the womb are persons and deserve all the rights due to human persons. An Argument against Abortion in Ten Minutes with Mark Foreman.

The Possibility and Pursuit of Truth

The Christian worldview is nothing if it is not true. John 14:6 records Jesus’ declaration of his truthfulness and the exclusivity of that truth claim: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Paul comments that the historicity––the truthfulness––of the resurrection is a foundation that Christianity stands or falls by in 1 Corinthians 15:12–19.

The most basic question we need to strive to answer is not, “How does this make me feel?” Rather, we need to answer the question, “How do I know this is true?” Truthfulness is at the heart of Christianity. The entire Christian perspective is worthless if it isn’t true.

Recently I was struck by overlap between my overwhelming interest in truth and the perspective of someone with a very different view of life. In her book, Galileo’s Middle Finger, Alice Dreger announces something should be obvious but needs defense in the contemporary age: “Evidence really is an ethical issue, the most important ethical issue in a modern democracy. If you want justice, you must work for truth. And if you want to work for truth, you must do a little more than wish for justice.”

Dreger is an advocate for intersex rights (which deserves more nuanced attention from Christians) and a proponent of sexual ethics at odds with Scripture. However, the commonality in understanding between my worldview and hers is noteworthy. We both recognize that truthfulness has ethical implications that are essential for society to exist. We both believe that truthfulness will lead to justice.

And this is important methodologically in our discourse with unbelievers. Paul at Mars Hill in Acts 17 demonstrated that he was willing to start with where his interlocutors were at, complement them when he could, identify features of their worldview that resonated with his own, and even quote writers and poets that his opponents would recognize as their own and as potentially authoritative. In all of these ways, incidentally, Paul was following the well tread dictates of Greek rhetoric. Starting with shared ground in our evangelistic efforts is an impeccable bridge-building exercise and features a distinguished biblical pedigree and precedent.

It is the pursuit of truth and its proclamation that is at the heart of the Christian life. We have access to truth, because of God’s illumination of his self-revelation in Scripture, in a way that secular thinkers and practitioners of false religions lack. This does not mean we possess a perfect objectivity—the ability to see things without bias—but it does mean we have access to truth and should strive for objectivity.[su_pullquote align="right"]It is the pursuit of truth and its proclamation that is at the heart of the Christian life.[/su_pullquote]

Even Dreger argues for the importance of objectivity. She wryly comments, “Sure, I know: Objectivity is easily desired and impossible to perfectly achieve, and some forms of scholarship will feed oppression, but to treat those who seek a more objective understanding of a problem as fools or de fact criminals is to betray the very idea of an academy of learners.”

We may disagree with Alice Dreger about what the content of truth, but we should be able to agree with her that the truth is essential and the pursuit of objectivity is necessary if we are going to find truth. Often, our first step in reaching out to people with the hope of the truth needs to be making a case for the existence of truth itself.

I recently reviewed a book for the academic journal Environmental Ethics. In Religion and Ecology, a professor from Florida International University, Whitney Bauman, applies queer theory to ecology in an attempt to discover a planetary ethic. The book, at its heart, is trying to re-envision the relationship between “self-and-other beyond substance-based notions of identity.” Bauman is rejecting the foundational understandings of the existence of truth in search of something that “works better” for the environment.

In Bauman’s post-foundational approach, he rejects the possibility of objectivity in natural sciences because science necessarily begins with certain assumptions. As Dreger acknowledges, and I affirm, any human pursuit of truth is tainted with our own perspectives. However, Bauman calls for an abandonment of the quest for objective truth altogether, which creates enormous difficulties both in theory and in practice. A standard we can only asymptotically approach without ever being able to achieve perfectly is not evidence for its absence, nor grounds to suggest that more closely approximating it isn’t a worthwhile endeavor.

The end result for Bauman is a mishmash of experience, emotion, and knowledge that is difficult to comprehend, much less defend. His goal, it seems, is to find a unity by erasing distinctions between categories. This includes his contention “that atheism and theism are really like two sides of the same coin, as are reductionism and holism or relativism and universalism.” Such a rejection of differences is bound to make both the theist and atheist unhappy.

For Bauman, reconfiguring the means of gaining knowledge is necessary, and it allows him to conclude that the best solutions for contemporary environmental problems are “free” higher education, universal healthcare, and the promotion of leisure time. The book offers no explanation as to why those things are good for the environment, but that just illustrates the problem with Bauman’s approach to truth. The method undermines the possibility of a meaningful solution.

Both Dreger and Bauman are people in need of the truth, which is rooted in the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, the approach to engaging them––and people that share their views––is entirely different.

People who accept that truth exists and is an objective reality can be influenced by traditional apologetic arguments. They recognize the cogency of the world and are seeking to find a systemic understanding that has explanatory power.

Others, though, who consider belief in any truth to be naïve, are more difficult to engage. With palpable paradoxicality, their axiomatic belief is that foundational beliefs are inappropriate. This illustrates the circularity of the belief system, but breaking through the infinite regress is much more difficult. The first step here is more important and harder. It requires demonstrating that an objective truth is possible and necessary.

In the arena of moral apologetics, it’s harder to reach those who don’t believe in at least certain obvious moral truths. Fortunately this remains a distinctly minority position among secularists, but, if Nietzsche was right (and he may well have been), it’s a position that is likely to grow in popularity as the implications of naturalism sink in. Ours is a culture that still benefits from the effects of being steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but, as even recent events have shown, the Christian framework for apprehending reality is gradually losing its grip on the popular imagination.

As we reach into the world with the hope of the Gospel, there is more to the discussion than just memorizing an evangelism outline. We need to ask enough questions to be aware of the appropriate starting point and make the case that needs to be made. The Bible itself makes it clear that our outreach needs to be audience-sensitive. In Paul’s speeches in Acts, his sermons to Jews and God-fearers were filled with biblical references; but at Lystra or Athens he shifted gears, finding common ground elsewhere: in nature, in pagan poetry. Although his preaching on such occasions tapped into biblical truth, explicit references to the scriptures came to a screeching halt. One size doesn’t fit all. In some cases, in a culture increasingly relativistic, pluralist, and postmodern, the conversation will have to begin by explaining that there is an objective moral order in the universe and that such truth is both available and valuable.

Image:"What is truth" by Nikolai Ge - http://www.picture.art-catalog.ru/picture.php?id_picture=7515. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:What_is_truth.jpg#/media/File:What_is_truth.jpg

Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 13: “Arbitrary Divine Commands? The Euthyphro Dilemma.”

Did God Really Command Genocide?  

The reason critics typically see a divine command theory as coming to ruin is due to a more substantive family of objections clustered around an argument known as the Euthyphro dilemma, which comes from an early Socratic dialogue. The dilemma arises from this central question from that dialogue: “Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?” Adapted to a monotheistic context, the dilemma can be recast like this: “Are actions wrong because God prohibits them, or does God prohibit them because they are wrong?” Either way we go, James Rachels argues, we seem to run into a problem. Either God’s commands are arbitrary and the goodness of God is rendered meaningless, or we admit there is a standard of right and wrong independent of God’s will.

Rachels offers two fairly standard criticisms of divine command theory. The first is that a divine command theory (DCT) makes God’s commands arbitrary. This is the arbitrariness objection. The second is that DCT renders empty or meaningless the doctrine that God is good. To say “God is good” is to say nothing more than that God is what God commands. F&C call this the emptiness objection.

The Arbitrariness Objection

F&C distinguish two versions of this objection. One is that a divine command theory implies that God’s commands are arbitrary—that God can have no reasons of any sort for commanding as he does and that his decisions are purely whimsical and capricious. The other version is that a divine command theory implies that the content of morality is itself arbitrary. Both will be discussed, along with the “prior obligations objection.”

“Arbitrary Because God Has No Reasons” Objection

Shafer-Landau (henceforth ‘S-L’) argues that God can have no reasons for issuing the commands he does on DCT. Either God has reasons for his commands, or he doesn’t. If he does, those reasons, and not God’s having commanded various actions, make those actions right. If he doesn’t, God’s choice is arbitrary.

This argument is flawed because he gets slippery with his terminology. He says that if God has excellent reasons for his commands, then those reasons—and not the command—make the commanded action seem right. But in this context, the word “make” can be used in two very different senses—the constitutive explanation and the motivational explanation.

Constitutive explanation: This kind of explanation explains or lays out the factors that make up or constitute a thing. What makes a cup of clear liquid a cup of water is the fact that the liquid is H2O.

Motivational explanation: This kind of explanation attempts to tell us why an agent acted the way he did by giving us the reasons or motivations the agent acted on. A parent’s love for his child makes him persevere over the long haul of parenting. This is a different explanation from laying out factors that constitute a thing or make it up.

If S-L is using the word “makes” to refer to a motivational explanation, then his affirmation is quite correct. If God has reasons for commanding as he does, then those reasons do motivate God’s decision to command what he says. But when DCT claims that God’s commands make an action wrong, it’s not claiming that among God’s reasons for commanding something is that he has commanded it!

DCT offers a constitutive explanation of moral obligation. So what happens when S-L uses the word “makes” to refer to a constitutive explanation, not a motivational one? The adjustment looks like this: If God’s commands are based on reasons, then it is those reasons and not God’s commands that are identical with moral rightness. But this seems clearly false. If a judge has excellent reasons for issuing a verdict in a case, S-L’s reasoning would entail that those reasons are the verdict. Or if a university has good reasons for conferring a degree on a doctoral candidate, then those reasons are identical to the conferral of a degree. Such inferences are obviously flawed.

Another argument S-L gives to show that DCT makes morality arbitrary is this: Absent divine disapproval, nothing is immoral. This, though, is mistaken. God could prohibit rape for reasons other than the fact that rape is morally wrong, and the prohibition could still be backed by the right kind of nonarbitrary reasons. Among those nonarbitrary characteristics: an action could cause severe harm, violate someone’s autonomy, show contempt for a person, etc.

Recall that DCT is a theory of moral obligation, not moral goodness. Just as there is a distinction between the good and the right, there’s a distinction between badness and wrongness. The badness of an action could be part of the motivating reasons for prohibiting it.

Perhaps the perceived problem here is that the existence of such goodness-enhancing reasons makes a divine command theory appear explanatorily unnecessary. This perception is mistaken for at least two reasons. First, it relies on fallacious reasoning. Even if certain characteristics of an action provide God with a sufficient reason for prohibiting that action, it doesn’t follow that (apart from God’s issuing a command) we have sufficient reason to refrain from it. God doesn’t have our epistemic limitations. Second, even if one grants this kind of reasoning, it’s not clearly a problem for DCT. We may have sufficient reasons to perform some action, but these still may not obligate us to carry out that action apart from God’s command. Moral obligations are not identical with what one has good reasons to do. Obligations involve a certain type of reason to act: one that involves a demand with which we must comply, one by which others can rationally blame us and reproach us for failing to do, and the like.

Excursus: God’s Commands and Prior Reasons

Mackie and Cudworth raised a prior reasons objection to DCT: God can only make something obligatory by commanding it if there’s first a general obligation for us to obey him. God’s commands thus can’t be the source of moral obligations. Despite its initial appeal, this argument fails for at least two reasons.

First, the argument generalizes. It applies to every account of moral obligations within any given ethical theory, secular or theological. Take social contract theory, which says moral obligations are those requirements that rational, impartial persons in a society would agree to. But one could argue that we are morally obligated to such a contract only if there is already an obligation to follow such hypothetical agreements. So the hypothetical agreement can’t itself be the source of moral obligation. The same can be said about every major account of moral obligations defended today.

What has gone wrong with the argument? It plays on an ambiguity between two claims—what is called “the fallacy of equivocation.” Note the ambiguity between the following two claims:

1. If God commands X, then we have an obligation to do X, and
2. There is an obligation to do what God commands.

Only the second of these claims affirms the actual existence of an obligation to obey God. The first claim does not. Rather 1 makes a conditional claim: it claims that if God commands a specific action, then we have an obligation to do that action. 1’s truth is compatible with there being no obligations at all.

Mackie’s central claim is false that DCT requires 2. All DCT needs is 1. 1 is based on God’s particular status as a moral lawgiver. God jointly possesses various characteristics or traits such that his act of commanding is sufficient to constitute moral obligations. This is what Adams was getting at in discussing issues like creation, benefaction, and covenant as contributing to God’s will being a constitutive rather than a derivative moral standard.

“Divine Command Theory Makes the Content of Morality Arbitrary” Objection

This objection says that if DCT is true, then God could have given us different commands just as easily. God could have commanded atrocious acts which would have then become obligatory. This sort of objection can be put in argument form:

1. If DCT is true, then if God commanded us to rape, we would be required to rape.
2. God could command us to rape.
3. It is absurd that we could be required to rape.
4. So, DCT is absurd.

The key claim is 2—that God could command us to rape, which is seriously questionable. DCT doesn’t maintain that moral obligations are identified with the commands of just anyone. God is understood as a personal being who is all-good, all-loving, and the like. Claim 2 holds only if it possible for the Greatest Conceivable Being, who is necessarily good, to command rape. What’s more, scripture itself makes clear how misguided such criticisms are. Because of his intrinsically good nature, God just could not command certain things (Jer. 19:5). God also can’t break promises (Ps. 110:4; Heb. 7:21) or lie (Rom 3:4; Titus 1:2; Heb. 6:18). Nor would God command us to hate him rather than love him or torture babies for fun.

This response to the arbitrariness objection is the essential goodness response—that an essentially good God could not command what is intrinsically evil. Are there difficult divine commands in scripture? Yes, but not impossible or intrinsically evil ones.

Flannagan and Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary Chapter 12: “The Divine Command Theory of Obligation: What It Is – and Is Not”

Did God Really Command Genocide?  

In the last chapter F&C introduce the idea of the divine command theory (hereafter, DCT). There are a number of versions of the DCT that have come down to us throughout the history of western thought. The specific version F&C wish to explore and defend is expressed by William Lane Craig. This is a version of the theory that has come to be known as a “modified divine command theory” most closely associated with Robert Adams. Craig states it as “the thesis that our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a loving and just God.” (F&C, 146)

Throughout much of the last century the DCT was generally disregarded as an ethical theory. Even currently many textbooks on ethics will relegate the DCT to the status of an archaic theory that is inadequate to function as a satisfactory theory due to a number of fatal problems often associated with voluntarism and the Euthyphro dilemma (these will be discussed in further chapters). However F&C point out that in recent years the DCT has been undergoing a revival and a number of robust defenses of modified and nuanced versions have been authored by several significant philosophers. Today one cannot easily dismiss the theory as once one was thought able to.

To understand Craig’s formulation of the DCT, one must begin with an understanding of his use of the term “God.” For Craig, God is the title we give to a being who is maximally great or, in Anselmian terms, “the greatest conceivable being.” Only such a being is worthy of worship, and this is part of the very meaning of the term God. Just as we identify water with H2O, we identify God with a being who is morally perfect as that is part of what it means to be a maximally great being. This is why we cannot have a God who is evil, because then the being would not be God in much the same way that a married male cannot be a bachelor. As the meaning of the term “bachelor” includes an unmarried male, so the meaning of God includes “morally perfect.” It is impossible for God not to be essentially good. As F&C affirm, “This point is an important one. We will argue that some important celebrated objections to Craig’s divine command theory fail precisely because they do not note this point.” (150, emphasis theirs).

Craig also clarifies two very important aspects of his version of the DCT. The first has to do with the distinction between “right” and “good.” This traditional distinction has been introduced by others but it is very important for Craig’s argument. The term “right” specifically concerns our moral obligations or duties. The term “good” is a broader term that speaks of values that we hold not just in morality but in aesthetics, rationality, etc. For example, while it would be good for one to use one’s skills and become a surgeon, one does not necessarily have a moral obligation to do so. There are many actions that are good, but which one does not have an obligation to perform. This is an important distinction as many critics confuse the right and the good (as we will see later, this is the heart of the problem presented in the Euthyphro dilemma).

The second aspect that Craig wants to clarify is a distinction between the claim that moral obligations are identical with God’s commands and two other claims: “(1) the claim that the word ‘wrong’ means ‘prohibited by God’ and (2) the claim that one cannot know or recognize one’s moral obligations.” (151) Craig’s point is that we can know the meaning of a term and know our moral obligations without necessarily consciously associating the moral obligation entailed with God. So, some critics of DCT might assert, “Well I know that rape is wrong without referencing God, or believing rape is prohibited by God. I just know that it is wrong.” Craig’s point is that by holding a DCT which claims that “our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a loving and just God” he is not affirming that one must necessarily be aware of or agree to such a theory for it still to be true. Using the example of “light” he shows that, while “light” can properly mean “a certain visible range of electronic spectrum” one does not have to be aware of or even agree with this meaning to correctly use the term. I can recognize what “light” means and use it without knowing its basis, origin, or nature. This goes to the heart of many objections raised by non-theists who claim “I don’t need God to be moral.” Nobody denies that, but that has nothing to do with accounting for the origin, basis, or nature of morality. One can employ a concept without knowing anything about it just like one can drive my car without knowing where it came from or the nature of how it works. Craig’s point, then, is that one can affirm DCT as the foundation for our moral obligations even though those who employ such moral obligations may not affirm that foundation.

F&C raise two kinds of mistakes critics often make, one semantical and the other epistemic. The semantic mistake simply confuses the terms “right” and “good.” Some critics think the DCT is about “goodness.” Some versions may, but not the modified version Craig is supporting. It refers instead to “rightness,” specifically moral obligation. The epistemic criticism simply claims that, since one can know what our moral obligations are apart from any divine revelation of God’s commands, a DCT which affirms “our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a loving and just God” is false. This objection fails to make a distinction between epistemology (how we come to know our moral duties) and ontology (the foundation or grounding for those duties). One may come to believe one has certain moral obligations from all sorts of possible sources. However, the question is not what do you know, but what is true. If you really have such obligations, what are those obligations grounded in? The claim of DCT is that they are grounded in the commands of a loving and just God. Again, one does not have to be aware of or agree with that for it to be true.

Finally, some have revised the criticisms away from epistemology to a discussion of the nature of commands themselves. Some, like Wes Morriston, raise the issue of a command as a “speech act” that must be heard from someone in authority. However, the “reasonable non-believer” who does not believe in God cannot “hear” God issue such a command as there is no such being to do so. “God cannot command people to do something unless they recognize that they have heard the command and that it is God doing the commanding.” F&C find such a scenario implausible. One often heres commands without knowing who authored them. We are often under legal obligations to follow certain commands without knowing who authored such commands, the federal or state government. They summarize their response, “To be ‘subject’ to the command in the sense mentioned, one does not need to recognize that the command has a divine origin. One simply has to recognize an action as prohibitive and the prohibition as being authoritative and having a claim on one’s own behavior.”

In the next chapter we will examine the most often raised objection to DCT, the Euthyphro dilemma.

Find the other chapter summaries here.

Image: Rembrandt [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 11: “Divine Command Theory: Preliminary Considerations.”

Did God Really Command Genocide?  

Chapter 11 marks the transition into Part 3 of the book, entitled “Is It Always Wrong to Kill Innocent People?” Part 2 gave reasons to call into question the claim that a biblical theist is committed to 4’’’—which says that the divine author of the Bible uses the text to perform the speech act of commanding us to perform acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle. Part 2 did not attempt a moral evaluation of what these texts say.

Making Moral Assessments: What if Some Innocent Persons Were Killed?

At this point, however, moral evaluation clearly comes into play. In granting the general wickedness of the Canaanites and the presence of extensive hyperbole, it seems implausible that in such battles no innocent people were killed—or that every single innocent person escaped destruction. So even if God does not command us with these texts to kill innocent people, and even if the texts don’t envisage genocide, they still seem to suggest that a loving and just God did command killing the innocent on a particular occasion. This would mean that God on at least one occasion endorsed violations of the principle of noncombatant immunity.

How many women and children is it acceptable to slaughter before it becomes morally problematic? This brings us to the next question: Can the biblical theist reject 3? Proposition 3, recall, states: “It is morally impermissible for anyone to commit acts that violate the Crucial Moral Principle”—namely, that “it is morally wrong to deliberately and mercilessly slaughter men, women, and children who are innocent of any serious wrongdoing.” Plenty argue the biblical theist can’t reject 3 without endorsing the atrocities of Genghis Khan or Hitler.

William Lane Craig’s Argument

Craig has provided a straightforward way that a biblical theist can deny the Crucial Moral Principle without embracing nihilism (the view that denies the meaningfulness of objective morality). Craig argues that, technically, the Crucial Moral Principle is not an exceptionless principle. Reflecting on God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Craig argues that in this highly unusual case, God, for the sake of some greater good, exempted Abraham from a moral principle that otherwise would be binding on him by commanding him to kill his son. Craig suggests that the “same considerations are relevant for the case of the destruction of the Canaanites at God’s command.”

Examining Three Claims

Craig’s support for this conclusion consists of three premises:

1. “Our moral duties are constituted by the commands of a loving and just God.” (Craig here proposes a divine command theory of ethics whose thesis is analogous to the way water is constituted by H2O; just as one can know what water is without knowing it is H2O, so one can know one’s moral duties without knowing they are divine commands.)
2. A loving and just God, in normal circumstances, prohibits killing the innocent.
3. In very unusual circumstances in the past, God commanded people to kill the innocent for the sake of some greater good.

These three claims entail that 3—it is morally impermissible to violate the Crucial Moral Principle—is false. Now a and b entail that killing the innocent is normally wrong. But a and c entail that killing the innocent in those highly unusual situations is morally permissible, where a loving and just God had morally sufficient reasons and valuable ends in mind when commanding killing in these instances. Hence, strictly speaking, the Crucial Moral Principle does not hold for all persons, places, and times.

Craig’s claim is not radical or novel. The idea that God, on rare occasions, might grant exemptions to the moral rule against killing the innocent has been entertained by Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Duns Scotus, John Calvin, and a great many other thinkers through the generations. The history of this idea is rich and interesting.

Craig’s argument suggests a way that biblical theists can reject 3—that violating the Crucial Moral Principle is never morally permissible—without committing themselves to the problematic implications that various critics point to. It retains the conviction that killing innocents is generally wrong, and it doesn’t entail the endorsement of atrocities by the likes of Stalin or Hitler. A biblical Christian may have theological reasons for thinking that such commands would not occur outside the extremely unusual events of salvation history recorded in scripture.

The success of Craig’s position depends on whether a biblical theist can rationally accept a, b, and c. The next three chapters will defend a and b, starting with divine command theory. (Then the next three chapters will defend c.)

Image: By Robert W. Weir (photograph courtesy Architect of the Capitol) - Architect of the Capitol, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1381170

Matt Flannagan and Paul Copan’s Did God Really Command Genocide? Summary of Chapter 10: “Legal and Theological Objections Concerning Genocide”

Did God Really Command Genocide? 

Having made a compelling case for a hyperbolic interpretation of the claims of genocide in the conquest narratives of Joshua, F&C turn in this chapter to a consideration of objections raised from the legal and theological standpoints. Some critics hold that, even if the commands to “utterly destroy” the Canaanites are taken to be hyperbole, there is still a concern that some form of genocide is still being commanded and carried out.

F&C raise the point that some critics may not be satisfied with the hyperbolic explanation because, while the conquest narratives may not be describing the entire annihilation of a people group, they are describing the physical destruction of a substantial number of Caananites, enough to still qualify under the legal concept of genocide. The ICPPCG definition of genocide does not require entire destruction, but just the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group” (quoted on 126, emphasis mine).

F&C begin to address this criticism by quoting a more complete statement of the meaning of genocide according to the ICPPCG which includes the following condition: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Critics might point out that driving out the Canaanites would be considered part of fulfilling this condition and hence the legal concept of genocide would be met by the actions of the Israelites.

However, as F&C argue, while such actions could lead to fulfilling this condition, the evidence shows that this is not the case in the conquest narratives. They point out that one of the key aspects of this concept of genocide is the intention to cause the complete physical destruction of the people group in question. However, as our previous studies have shown, this was not the intent in driving the Canaanites out of the land. The intention of the commands given to Joshua and the fulfilling of those commands were just to drive the people from the land. It was not for the intention of the complete physical destruction of the Canaanites.

F&C use current rulings concerning the recent charges in the conflict between the Bosnians/Herzegovina and Serbians to show two points concerning the issue of genocide: (1) that the destruction intended must be the physical-biological annihilation of a people group and (2) that the destruction entail a substantial number of the group. They quote from the case of Prosecutor v. Radislov Krstic (2004) where the ICTY stated, “The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole” (quoted on 127-128, emphasis theirs). Again Israel was not intending the annihilation of the Canaanites. They were merely attempting to end their criminal activity and to drive them from a land that was by all rights their own.

None of this is to say that there might not be other ethical problems and issues that need to be addressed in the conquest narratives (many of which will be discussed further in the book), but one cannot claim that Israel was guilty of genocide simply because it drove the Canaanites from the land. As the ICTY stated in the case of Prosecution v Milomar Stakic (2003), “A clear distinction must be drawn between physical destruction and mere dissolution of a group. The expulsion of a group or part of a group does not in itself suffice for genocide” (quoted on 129, emphasis theirs). While the term “genocide” might have strong rhetorical impact, it is not the correct legal term to use concerning the conquest narratives.

F&C spend the rest of this chapter dealing with a number of theological objections that some might raise concerning the hyperbolic interpretation they offer. They first address an objection that some might raise concerning interpreting historical passages non-literally. Some might think, “Well if we can just claim that these descriptions are not literal, then what’s to stop one from claiming that all other historical passages should not be taken literally, such as miracle passages like the resurrection?” F&C address this by pointing out the failure of some to recognize different forms of genre present in scripture. Scripture uses a number of genres to communicate truth, and a sophisticated approach to biblical interpretation takes cares to consider genre when making one’s interpretive choices about passages to be taken as accurate historical descriptions and others that are non-literal, such as using hyperbole or metaphor. For example, one certainly does not believe that when Isaiah claims that “the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Is. 55:12) that this will literally occur.

One might ask, “How do we know when a passage is literal and when it is figurative?” Well let’s take a contemporary example. Suppose your friend comments, “Did you see that game last night? The Dodgers murdered the Cubs.” You can certainly know that he is not saying the same thing as a news report that states, “The jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the trial of Ted Bundy today.” Now how do you know one is a hyperbole and the other not? You look at the evidence. Were any Cubs really filled on the field? Is this first statement a common hyperbole used by sports fans in our culture? The context of the second statement is a news report about a trial—that tells you something, doesn’t it? In the same way we examine the evidence in scripture to help us determine how to interpret a passage. In the case of the conquest narratives, F&C have pointed to lines of evidence that are similar to our example. One is the usage in other conquest literature of the ancient Near East which tends to use hyperbole concerning military conquests. The other is the evidence of passages which claim that the Caananites were not “utterly destroyed” as many are still living after the event described.

A second objection raises concerns about God’s control over miscommunication and misinterpretation. If he did not mean the passages to be taken literally, why didn’t he simply allow it to be stated as thus when the scriptures were written down? F&C point out that there will always be the possibility of miscommunicating the message of scripture and certainly God cannot be responsible for each time someone misinterprets his word. Besides, he uses the styles of the authors in communicating his message. Again, hyperbole was a common style back then.

The final objection raised is when critics use an inappropriate analogy in objecting to the conquest narratives. An example would be, “What if the President decided to wipe out Iran because he thought God told him to do so?” However, such examples are bad analogies because they are relevantly similar to the relationship of Israel and God. Israel was a theodicy, and the US is not. The US has not been promised a land that Iran is now encroaching upon. There are other dissimilarities as well. The point is that one needs to be careful about making false analogous claims as objections to the historically conditioned situation in which the conquest narratives were written.

Having fully addressed the question of genocide and the conquest narratives, F&C move into a third part of the book and address the broader question, is it always wrong to kill innocent people?

Image: By Jörg Bittner Unna - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46476422