John Hare’s God’s Command, Chapter 6, “Divine Command in Some Medieval Islamic Thinkers,” Introduction

This chapter is about the concept of divine command theory (DCT) in three medieval Islamic thinkers: al-Ash’ari, al-Maturidi, and ‘Abd al-Jabbar. Hare will argue that al-Maturidi takes a plausible mediating position between an extreme form of DCT (in al-Ash’ari) and an extreme form of natural-reason theory (in the Mu’tazilites, especially ‘Abd al-Jabbar). Despite reservations, Hare took up this part of the book because the concept of DCT is central outside the Christian tradition as well as within it, and there is a great deal to be learned from the comparison. Within medieval Islam, and within contemporary Jewish appropriations of medieval Judaism, there is very much the same range of options in understanding the relation between a sovereign God who gives us commands and our own reason, as we try to determine how to live our lives.

Hare is assuming, without arguing for it, that the three Abrahamic faiths worship the same God, though they say very different things about this God. He additionally argues that a useful side effect for a Christian of examining DCT in Judaism and Islam is that new light gets shed on areas of the Christian’s own faith that had tended to get obscured. Psalm 119, for example, acquires fresh meaning, and likewise doctrines of divine concurrence.

The chapter covers just three thinkers, and has no pretension to be talking about Islamic ethics as a whole. The scope is relatively modest, and Hare admits he’s on a big learning curve in this area. But he thinks there’s an obligation, if one thinks one has something useful to say about divine command, to relate this to the faith of over a billion people for whom divine command is a central concern. It is the confinement to a discussion of Christianity that requires justification, not the inclusion of a discussion of Islam.

This chapter locates al-Maturidi against the background of a dispute between Mu’tazilites and Ash’arites about three questions. The first is whether acts and persons have intrinsic value (or whether that value is to be understood only as a divine willing or commanding), and what kind of access we have to that value. The second question is whether human beings have freedom of choice in what they do, or whether our actions are only the product of divine causation. The third question is whether there is any proper use of human reason independent of divine revelation, or whether the proper use is only derivative from what we are given in the Qur’an and the Traditions.

There are many differences between Mu’tazilites (especially between the schools from Baghdad and from Basra), and this chapter relies mainly on the texts of ‘Abd al-Jabbar (from Basra, d. 1025), who gives the fullest account. Al-Ash’ari (d. 935) and al-Maturidi are roughly contemporaries, though there is no evidence that they met. They are both responding to Mu’tazilites, and indeed al-Ash’ari started off as a Mu’tazilite under the tutelage of al-Jubba’i of Basra (d. 915). ‘Abd al-Jabbar lived almost a hundred years after them, and they are therefore not responding to his version of the arguments (which is, in many cases, a refinement of them). Hare will start with the Mu’tazilite position, and continue with the Ash’arite response. He then locates al-Maturidi between the two, taking something from each side. But both al-Ash’ari and ‘Abd al-Jabbar also see themselves as taking middle positions, and indeed we should expect this because the Qur’an itself recommends this strategy [“Thus We have made you to be a community of the middle [road]” (2: 143).] Middle-ness is not itself truth-marking; everything depends on what the extremes are between which middle ground is being claimed. But Hare thinks it’s instructive to compare al-Maturidi’s middle ground with that of Duns Scotus.

Two other general comments will be helpful in what follows. First, understanding and interpreting law is chronologically antecedent in Islam to questions in theology (kalam) about the relation between divine command and human reason. Of the four main Sunni traditions or schools of jurisprudence (Hanafite, Shafi’ite, Hanbalite, and Malikite), al-Ash’ari comes out of the Shafi’ite school and al-Maturidi from the Hanafite school. The last of these is the school that gives the most leeway of the four to legal reasoning that is not itself derived from the Qur’an and the Traditions. The Hanbalite school, by contrast, is the most conservative in terms of the attempt to confine legal reasoning to what can be derived from the Qur’an and the Traditions. Al-Ash’ari constructs his own “middle” position as being between the Hanbalites and the Mu’tazilites.

The second general point before we get to the three questions is that some influential secondary sources associate DCT in Islam with fundamentalism, and oppose it to enlightenment. The project of defending the Mu’tazilites within Islam is correspondingly seen as rescuing Islam from obscurantism and hostility to the modern world. But so far as the thesis of Hare’s book is correct, there is no conceptual requirement to connect DCT with fundamentalism, Christian or Muslim or Jewish. The term ‘fundamentalism’ is itself prejudicial here, but DCT can give us an account of the ground of human dignity in a way that simply making human dignity “a truth of reason” can’t. As a meta-ethical theory, DCT doesn’t tell us what the commands of God in fact are. But it gives no grounds for inferring that these commands will be any less or any more liberal than the prescriptions generated by the various versions of natural law. Having said that, Hare notes that it’s also true that a theory that has an honored place for both revelation and reason will find conversation with other traditions easier to sustain.

The Love of God in the Life of St. Patrick

Detail of St Patrick with a shamrock in a stained glass window at the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows at Navy Pier in Chicago

Most religious celebrations and feast days for saints of the church garner little attention outside ecclesiastical circles. St. Patrick’s Day is a notable exception, especially throughout America. Across the country parades and festivities are held to commemorate all things Irish. It’s a delightful holiday in many ways, with ubiquitous shamrocks and obligatory green clothing or accessories and Shamrock shakes galore. Because the church traditionally lifts the Lenten restrictions on alcohol for this celebration, the revelry of St. Patrick’s Day is often marked with more than a little inebriation. Regardless of the specific form of the celebration, rarely invoked are the particulars of the man for whom the day is named. Just who is this Patrick, patron saint of Ireland? Why commemorate his life at all?

The most obvious and the official answer is that we celebrate Patrick’s life because of the key role he played in turning the Irish away from paganism and toward Christianity. This was no mean feat. In Philip Freeman’s helpful biography of Patrick, he tells of the entrenched cultural powers—kings, druids, slaveholders—that Patrick would need to engage to carry out his sixth century mission’s work. The political structures, religious customs, and social practices of Ireland at the start of Patrick’s ministry were all overtly and fiercely anti-Christian. Patrick’s navigation of those dynamics is certainly noteworthy; his overwhelming success in subverting them is nothing short of miraculous. Attempts to capture the astonishing outcomes of Patrick’s work have elevated the man himself to something of a spiritual superhero, complete with his own folklore and fantastical stories.

Sensationalistic tales such as his banishment of snakes from the island and his staff that took root and grew into a tree give the saint an air of mystery and the heroic. The rapidity and breadth of Christianity’s growth across the island is difficult to explain without appeal to the supernatural, and these fabricated stories were probably intended to capture something of the divine power that clearly animated and directed his missions work. But the legends might just as easily distract us from understanding Patrick as the model for Christian faithfulness he provides. True, Patrick was instrumental in radically transforming the landscape of a cruel and dehumanizing culture. Yes, he is rightly recognized as a luminary of the Christian faith. But his life also serves as an example and encouragement for all Christians seeking to live out their faith. What we find in Patrick’s own words testify that the source of this work is the life of Christ available to all Christians. The inspiration of Patrick’s life is not to be found in its outsized results but in its steady faithfulness.

To be sure, the circumstances of Patrick’s life were extraordinary. He was born in fifth-century Britain, the privileged son of a Roman official. During his teenage years, he was kidnapped by Irish mercenaries and forced into slavery in Ireland for six years. After an escape from captivity prompted by an angelic vision, he returned home and devoted himself to the study of scriptures and preparation for ministry of some kind. During his years as a slave, he had become deeply aware of God’s call on his life and of his need for a savior. He later attributed his spiritual growth in this time to his terrible conditions: only when all was stripped away did he realize his complete dependence on God. His physical slavery counterintuitively brought him spiritual freedom. This transformational experience affected him so deeply that when he felt led to return to Ireland, the land and people responsible for his greatest torment, he abandoned himself wholly to that calling. Not only did he return to share the life-giving gospel message with the hardened and violent people of Ireland; he came to love them, even risking his life and reputation for their sake.

This love motivated his letter to the soldiers of Coroticus, a British tribal ruler. This letter jeopardized Patrick’s standing in the church and cost him no small amount of anxiety and energy; nevertheless, his commitment to the Irish people and to the gospel overrode those personal concerns. He wrote his note in response to a raid into Ireland by British soldiers who killed and kidnapped a group of Patrick’s newly baptized converts on their way home from the baptism. Sending this missive put Patrick in danger because it violated long-standing church protocol that leaders should not meddle in the congregations of other church leaders. And Patrick’s letter did more than meddle. It condemned not only the actions of the soldiers but the soldiers themselves, appealing to scripture to justify the judgments he rendered.

Patrick’s righteous indignation and rage at the soldiers’ actions permeate the letter, but undergirding that wrath is a devotion to God and commitment to his people. Britons thought very little of the Irish, seeing them as less than human and suited only for slavery. Patrick’s writing proclaims again and again that God cares for them. Patrick upends the British assumptions by describing the Irish as his brothers and sisters, and even more by extending that relationship to the soldiers themselves, who publically pronounced themselves Christian. Patrick puts that presumption to the test by challenging them to release those they had enslaved. He also called on other fellow Christians to cut off fellowship with them until they demonstrated their faith through their actions.

For Patrick, faith and works go hand in hand. This is demonstrated by his Confession, a follow-up to his earlier epistle that appears to be a response to challenges to his leadership that stemmed from his rebuke of Coroticus. In this recount of his testimony, what emerges is a picture of a man who submitted himself fully to God’s call on his life. What is most remarkable about this account is the way it depicts how receiving God’s love leads to serving others. The mercy God showed Patrick in his early years as a slave stirred in him gratitude and a desire to share that blessing with others. The love he offered the Irish, despite their responsibility for his kidnapping and enslavement, was an overflow of the love God bestowed on him.

Despite the time and space that divide us, the Patrick of these letters has much to teach us. He displayed remarkable courage in confronting wrongdoing, but not of his own strength. Forged in the fire of oppression was his abiding conviction about God’s love and its radical and often counterintuitive demands. The debasement of slavery and dehumanization he’d endured had stripped away all pretenses of his superiority, making him acutely aware of his desperate need for God for power and productiveness, for trust and tenacity. God’s redemption of his brutal circumstances constituted a crucible that formed his understanding of God alone as good, as the lone source of any real value, and as the one whose calling on our lives confers on us our true purpose.

Near the end of his letter, Patrick wrote these poignant words we would do well to take to heart:

“My final prayer is that all of you who believe in God and respect him—whoever you may be who read this letter that Patrick the unlearned sinner wrote from Ireland—that none of you will ever say that I in my ignorance did anything for God. You must understand—because it is the truth—that it was all the gift of God.”

Image: "Detail of St Patrick with a shamrock in a stained glass window at the Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows at Navy Pier in Chicago." by T. Zajdowicz. CC License. 

John Hare’s God’s Command, 5.3, “Barth and Our Access to the Commands”

In the last section of chapter 5, Hare explores Barth’s view of our access to divine commands. In order to get a clear picture of how Barth thought about access, Hare thinks it will be helpful to use Kant’s view of conscience as a foil. To this end, Hare first discusses Barth’s view of Kant, then Kant’s view of conscience, and finally Hare lays out Barth’s view.

Barth is a careful interpreter of Kant, but his analysis does not always hit the target. Hare proposes that Barth has missed the mark in a couple of ways. First, Barth understands Kant as saying that God is a merely regulative idea and not a constitutive one. By Barth’s lights, Kant thought of God as just a useful (regulative) idea—it doesn’t matter if God actually exists. But a right reading of Kant will show that though Kant did not think we could have knowledge of God by pure rationality, through practical reason God becomes a constitutive idea. Kant needs God to exist in actuality for his moral theory to work.

Hare further thinks that Barth has misunderstood Kant’s view of divine revelation and grace. Contrary to many of his interpreters, Kant did think that divine revelation was possible, but that it must be justified from pure reason. Further, Kant held that divine grace was necessary for moral transformation. These misunderstandings of Kant are major reasons for Barth’s rejection of Kant. Barth did appreciate Kant’s recognition of radical evil, but Barth thought Kant’s acknowledgement of human depravity resulted in a contradiction and the complete failure of Kant’s system. Hare again thinks Barth has misunderstood. Kant begins with the reality of radical evil and works out from that point and so his system, when read charitably, is consistent with this reality. Hare works as a peacemaker, suggesting that many of Barth’s objections are mistaken and that the real difference between Kant and Barth is epistemological. Barth inverts Kant’s “concentric circles,” where pure reason lies inside the circle of revelation to reason. In this way, Barth takes up Kant’s role of “biblical theologian.” Where Kant thinks that divine revelation must be justified by pure reason, Barth thinks that revelation is fundamental and undergirds human reason.

Despite Barth’s criticism of Kant, both Barth and Hare agree that Kant’s account isn’t intended to be reductive; Kant wants to retain a “vertical” or theistic element. This non-reductive element can be seen in Kant’s view of conscience. In Kant’s discussion of the conscience, he argues that to make moral judgments, we must imagine that there is a third party (or parties) who serves legislative, executive, and judicial roles. These figures serve as our inner voice or conscience, prescribing the moral law, enforcing it, and omnisciently judging the heart. However, Kant held that these roles cannot be fulfilled by a mere human. As judge, he must scrutinize all hearts. As legislator, he must legislate all obligation, and as executive, he must enforce the moral law. These are not human capacities. Thus, Kant thinks we must imagine that this person speaking to us about morality is God, who is uniquely qualified to serve in all three roles. This imagining of an actual God who serves these roles is God as a regulative concept and makes morality accessible to us by reason. Phenomenologically, Kant holds that this view of morality is necessary to explain the weighty feeling of our moral duty. But Kant thinks that we must conclude that God actually exists in order for there to be the possibility of the highest moral good, which is the union of happiness and virtue. Reason requires God to exist as a constitutive principle.

For Hare, the key difference between Kant and Barth with respect to our access to divine command is that Kant thinks our knowledge of the commands is discerned by pure reason and Barth thinks that they are given by revelation. Hare carefully nuances Kant’s view on this point. Kant did not think God could not give commands by way of revelation, only that we would never be justified in believing that these commands, if they are so given, were from God. The problem for Barth is to answer how we know when God has commanded us. People claim to be commanded by God when they are not and some divine commands, like the command to Abraham to sacrifice his son, would be difficult to recognize as a divine command. To solve this dilemma, Hare argues that Barth provides phenomenological features of genuine divine commands.

First, the command will have a “certain kind of clarity or distinctness.” By this, Barth means that the command will have specific content. This does not mean we will always be able to discern the content easily. But the command will be persistent and will resist our effort to ignore it. Genuine commands, in a sense, pursue us and direct us in specific ways.

Second, the command will present itself as “having an external origin, either immediately or mediately.” Here Hare finds resonance between Barth and Kant. The command imposed on us must come to us from the outside; it is revealed and not invented.

Third, the command comes “in a familiar voice.” Barth’s central idea here is that we learn the “voice” of God through the practice of instruction, where instruction is grounded in both the individual meditation upon the Word of God and communally thinking together about God and his Word as is done in the church. The entire Christian tradition and one’s own history with God provide a knowledge of what God is like and shapes our expectations about what God will command and when he might do so.

Fourth, the command comes with “a sense of conviction or authority.” Barth thinks that genuine divine commands will carry a certain kind of weight. They make claims on us. Barth says that the divine command “must lay upon me the obligation of unconditional truth—truth which is not conditioned by myself. Its authority and power to do so must be intrinsic and objective, and not something which I lend to it.” Divine commands have the sense of obligation to a Person of immense authority. They are substantial, heavy things.

The fifth and most important phenomenological feature is that “the commands appear to be from a loving or merciful source.” For Barth, the chief exemplar of goodness and mercy is Jesus Christ. In the Incarnation, God has both acted rightly for us and to us. Jesus demonstrates God’s grace and mercy, and in the teaching of Jesus, especially in the Sermon on the Mount and in the Golden Rule, God has clearly articulated the shape of the good. All of God’s commands should be ultimately consistent with the revelation of Jesus Christ.

At the end of the day, argues Hare, these phenomenological features of the divine command do not show that God has so commanded us. If one imagines he is commanded by a good God, her imagination may generate all the relevant phenomenology. However, on the assumption that God commands us, Barth’s five features of phenomenology can help us discern whether and when God has commanded us.

What’s a Body to Do? (Part 2)

A Twilight Musing

Theological Principles Based on Jesus’ Example and Teaching on Submission 

1. All submission to others must be a direct outgrowth of, and subordinate to, our submission to the Lord. (Rom. 13:1-7; I Cor. 10:28-33; I Pet. 2:13-16, 18-19).

When we submit to civil authorities, it is not only out of fear of punishment, but "also because of conscience" (Rom. 13:5). As Peter puts it, "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every authority instituted among men" (I Pet. 2:13). When Paul urged the Corinthian believers not to eat meat offered to idols out of deference to the tender consciences of others, it was not that he was allowing himself to be coerced by the "tender conscience" people ("why should my freedom be judged by another's conscience?" [I Cor. 10:29]), but that he chose to uphold an underlying spiritual principle: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. Paul seeks not to cause anyone to stumble, but to “try to please everybody in every way.  For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved" (I Cor. 10:31-33).

The same principle is made explicit in Ephesians: "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.  Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord" (Eph. 5:21-22).  Children are to obey their parents "in the Lord" (Eph. 6:1), and servants are to obey their masters "wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men" (Eph. 6:7). In the most explicit admonition to submit to spiritual leaders (Heb. 13:17), the rationale is that as these men "watch over you," they "must give an account" to the Lord of us all for the discharge of their responsibilities, and submission to them is to the "advantage" of the whole Body.

In many of the exhortations to submission in the New Testament, the people being submitted to were not necessarily worthy of the submission, and that was not the reason for the requirement; rather, the principle was to be voluntarily subject to them as a part of our submission to the Lord. Who of us in our right mind would contend that we are worthy of being submitted to? Since only God is worthy of our ultimate submission, we run the risk of a kind of idolatry if submission to another is not a direct consequence of our being submitted to Him. In that context, an act of submission becomes a manifestation of trust in God, and not primarily in the human being to whom secondary submission is being rendered. Accordingly, those being submitted to are given instructions focusing on their need of humility, sensitivity, and a special awareness of the awesome responsibility connected with the position that God has allowed them to occupy. The next principle shifts the spotlight from the submitters to the people exercising authority.

1. New Testament admonitions to submit are balanced by instructions to those being submitted to, urging them to act with tenderness, compassion, and loving care toward those under their authority, seeking always to build them up and affirm their value, and never to exercise authority in a demeaning or self-exalting way (Eph. 5:21-33; 6:1-9; Col. 3:18-4:1; I Tim. 6:17-19; James 5:1-6; I Pet 3:7-8; 5:1-3)

The most detailed and emphatic teaching of this sort is to husbands, coming after an unambiguous admonition to wives to submit to their husbands (stated twice--Eph. 5:22, 24). Taken out of context, this adminition is often seen as a liability for wives and a license for husbands; it is neither, as the subsequent instructions to husbands make clear:

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. (Eph. 5:25-28)

As a preacher friend of mine tells couples he counsels, for a husband to be the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church means that, like Christ, the husband is to be first in line for the cross; or as C. S. Lewis refers to it in his marvelous little book, The Four Loves (in the chapter entitled "Eros"), if the husband wears a crown, it is a crown of thorns. Far from authorizing a man to demand and enforce the submission of his wife, Paul instructs the husband to give himself up for his wife as did Christ for the church, even going so far as to cover her faults, if necessary, in order to present her "without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless" (Eph. 5:27). That doesn't sound like a license to be lord and master in any worldly sense of the exercise of power.

In I Peter 3:7 is another balancing command to husbands, following six verses on wifely submission beginning, "Wives, in the same way be submissive to your husbands"; the writer continues, "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers." The next verse, moreover, is another admonition to mutual submission: "Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers [and sisters], be compassionate and humble" (I Pet. 3:8). The rationale here is that the husband is to be especially considerate of his wife because of her societal and physical vulnerability to being abused, and respectful of her because she is a "partner" and is as much an heir of God's kingdom as he is. Describing wives as "the weaker partner" does not imply any kind of inferiority of intelligence or character or ability, for in these areas women often prove to be superior to their husbands, and even to men in general; but rather it refers to physical, emotional, and social vulnerability. It would seem evident that the ease with which women have been mistreated by men throughout history indicates that they are in many ways inherently at a disadvantage in dealing with men, from having less physical strength to their function in the structure of the family, in which their special responsibility for the bearing and nurturing of children creates the need of special support in these activities. In our own society, the large number of single mothers shows the susceptibility of women to being abandoned.  So the obligation of the husband as set forth in this passage is to be especially aware of how his physical, emotional, and social advantage needs to be used for his wife's benefit and support (not for boosting his ego), so that both of them can experience shared and unhindered prayers as fellow-heirs of the Kingdom of God (3:7).

I have concentrated on the counter-balanced divine instructions to wives and husbands both because they are the most detailed of such instructions and because there is so much misunderstanding and controversy surrounding them. But the principle of mutual submission is reinforced in the New Testament teaching regarding other relationships in which power might be (and often is) exercised in an ungodly way. Immediately following the husband-wife passage in Ephesians are two such teachings (which are also set forth in the same pattern in Col. 3:18-4:1):

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"--which is the first commandment with a promise -- "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that He who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him. (Eph. 6:1-9)

Even though children are unequivocally instructed to obey their parents, and elsewhere parents are given the charge to require such obedience, there is nevertheless the caution to fathers (as those ultimately responsible for enforcing parental authority) not to "exasperate" their children, but, "instead," to "bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Training and instruction are processes that require patience and understanding, and whatever firmness may be required to keep children at the task of learning, they are always to be encouraged and valued in such a way as to engender and build on the hope that they are both capable of learning and worth the trouble of teaching. Any heavy-handed use of authority that would demean them or deprive them of hope (or embitter and discourage them, as in Col. 3:21) is prohibited. In the slave-master relationship, masters are to eschew the impersonal and devaluing treatment ("Do not threaten them") that might be tolerated or even expected in the worldly view of things, but that has no place in the Body of Christ, since slave and master stand as equals before God.

Abuse of the poor by the rich is scorchingly attacked in the book of James (2:5-7; 5:1-5), and, in a more positive way, the rich are encouraged by Paul to act responsibly and generously with the wealth and power that God has given them (I Tim. 6:17-19). Even the duly appointed spiritual leaders of the Body of Christ are not to "lord it over" those in their charge, but are to be examples to the flock (I Pet. 5:2-3).

Seven Reasons Why Moral Apologetics Points to Christianity

Various moral arguments for God’s existence are usually deployed for the purpose of arguing for the truth of God’s existence per se, but they strongly hint at a more specific conclusion. Namely, they are plausibly taken to be evidence that Christianity in particular is true. The claim isn’t that by moral apologetics alone one can somehow deduce all the aspects of special revelation contained in Christianity, but rather this: in light of Christianity having been revealed, moral arguments for God’s existence point quite naturally in its direction. The following list is far from exhaustive, but offers a few reasons to think this is so.

First, one of the great virtues of moral arguments for God’s existence is that they point not just to the existence of God, but to a God of a particular nature: a God who is morally perfect. A. C. Ewing once said that the source of the moral law is morally perfect. Such a notion is described in various ways: omnibenevolent, impeccable, essentially good, and the like. What does it look like when omnibenevolence takes on human form? Jesus is a powerful answer. Moral apologetics works best when it’s Christological.

Second, to conceive of God as essentially and perfectly loving requires some sort of account. The right account, again, isn’t the sort of idea that we’re able to generate on our own; we depend on special revelation to tell us what it is. But Christianity has provided us with an account of the divine nature that’s Trinitarian in nature. C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, “All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s Trinitarian.

Third, Christianity has a demonstrated track record historically in reaching people of every race and ethnicity, and every socioeconomic background, and radically transforming their lives. In a book chronicling the spiritual lives of various Christian saints called They Found the Secret can be found this description: “Out of discouragement and defeat they have come into victory. Out of weakness and weariness they have been made strong. Out of ineffectiveness and apparent uselessness they have become efficient and enthusiastic. The pattern seems to be self-centeredness, self-effort, increasing inner dissatisfaction and outer discouragement, a temptation to give it all up because there is no better way, and then finding the Spirit of God to be their strength, their guide, their confidence and companion—in a word, their life.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s individually transformational.

Fourth, Paul Copan speaks of an historical aspect of moral apologetics: the historical role played by Christ and his devoted followers to promote social justice. Morality demands deep cultural transformation too. Copan cites specific cultural developments that can be shown to have flowed from the Jewish-Christian worldview, leading to societies that are “progress-prone rather than progress-resistant,” including such signs of progress as the founding of modern science, poverty-diminishing free markets, equal rights for all before the law, religious liberty, women’s suffrage, human rights initiatives, and the abolition of slavery, widow-burning, and foot-binding.

Jürgen Habermas, who isn’t a Christian himself, writes the following: “Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than just a precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and a social solidarity, of an autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in light of current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s culturally transformative.

Fifth, Christianity holds out the hope for total moral transformation. Morality upholds a standard that all of us fall short of all the time, yet there’s nothing about morality that hints at accommodation or compromise. The right ultimate explanation of morality should be able to make sense of our aspirations for radical moral transformation, and even perfection as something more than a Pollyannaish pipedream. Christianity offers, by God’s grace through faith, moral hope instead of moral despair, forgiveness and liberation from guilt, and the prospect to be totally conformed to the image of Christ, in whom there’s no shadow of turning. The resurrection offers the prescription from both death and sin: abundant and everlasting life. Moral apologetics works best when it is soteriological (offering both forgiveness and transformation, both justification and sanctification).

Sixth, Christianity offers principled reason to think that the glory to come will not just outweigh, but definitely defeat, the worst evils of this world. Christian philosopher Marilyn Adams writes, “If Divine Goodness is infinite, if intimate relation to It is thus incommensurably good for created persons, then we have identified a good big enough to defeat horrors in every case.” Moral apologetics works best when it’s eschatological.

Seventh, Christianity gives compelling reasons to think that every person possesses infinite dignity and value. To be loved by God, the very archetype of all goodness—each of us differently, but all of us infinitely—and to have been made a person in his image is to possess greater worth than we can begin to imagine. And humanity isn’t just valuable in the aggregate, according to Christianity. Rather, each person is unique, each is loved by God, each is someone for whom Jesus suffered and died. And in the book of Revelation, for everyone who accepts God’s overtures of love, a white stone will reveal a unique name for each one of them—marking their distinctive relationship with God and vocation in him. Moral apologetics works best when it’s universal.

The way a labyrinthine maze of jumbled metal filings suddenly stands in symmetrical formation in response to the pull of a magnet, likewise the right organizing story—classical theism and orthodox Christianity—pulls all the moral pieces of evidence into alignment and allows a striking pattern to emerge.

John Hare’s God’s Command, 5.2, "Three Pictures of Freedom"

Having discussed the theme of particularity and universality in God’s commands in the previous section, Hare now sets his sights on Barth’s account of human freedom. Barth emphasizes the sovereignty of God throughout his work and, in the case of human freedom, Barth does not make an exception. For Barth, God elects man and this means God determines what he will be. But Barth simultaneously affirms the reality of human freedom. This has led many readers of Barth to take him as affirming a paradox (or even a contradiction) at this point.

However, Hare does not understand Barth this way. Hare thinks that when we apply Barth’s own distinctions to his writing, we can see how the freedom of God and man harmonize in a logically consistent way. On some conceptions of freedom, the freedom of God and man are thought to antagonize one another. But Barth rejects this notion. The Barthian solution to this notorious issue is to make an ontological point. God is the creator of humanity. It is God who places within man all of his capacities and powers, and thus human freedom supervenes on God’s freedom. Man has genuine freedom so that grace is not irresistible, but that freedom is derivative. By electing us, God has determined what we will be in Christ, but “we have to acknowledge this, or determine ourselves in correspondence to this” (p. 158).

In sketching out Barth’s view of freedom, Hare offers three different pictures. First, he asks us to imagine a mediocre piano player playing along with a master. They play a piece that requires two people. The master’s rhythm and artistry provides a context in which the lesser player can extend his skills beyond what he would be able to do on his own. The master does not force cooperation; her partner could stop at any moment. Still, the partner’s execution of the piece depends on the master. Her playing empowers his, but he must correspond to her artistry for there to be harmony.

Hare thinks this picture helps illustrate two conceptions of freedom. There is mere freedom, which is the ability to choose between two alternatives. If we are offered the choice between the evil maxim and the good maxim, or the choice between self and duty, we will always choose the evil maxim, according to Kant. But true freedom is freedom to obey the good maxim. This feat can only be accomplished through divine grace, or when God empowers our abilities by inviting us to play along and correspond with him.

The second picture comes from Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard’s concern is to say how it is that human beings can love as God loves. To answer, Kierkegaard offers a picture of a lake which is fed by a spring deep below the surface. Kierkegaard asks us to think of ourselves as the lake and the spring as God. In the same way the lake depends on the spring for its existence and status as “living water,” so we too depend on God. The dependence includes the moral dimension. If we are able to keep God’s commands, it is only because, beneath the surface, we are fed by God’s power and love, given to us as God condescends to us. Our will can cooperate with God’s because as the paradigm of love, God enters history and makes intimate, life-giving connections with human beings.

The final picture comes by way of Barth’s view of prayer, specifically invocation. In invocation, we ask God to help us correspond to his divine command. However, this prayer can only be made with God’s help because of the bending inward of our will. If we are going to pray as we ought, we need God’s help. Hare finds echoes of Paul’s teaching of the Spirit’s intercessory role in prayer in this Barthian view. Thus, prayer is a dynamic and real interaction between God and man, where God is both the agent (the one who prays in the person of the Spirit) and the one who hears the prayer. But a real condition of this sort of prayer is the cooperation of man.

In the final part of this section, Hare retells the story of the Canaanite woman. In this story, Hare sees Barth’s model of human and divine cooperation realized. The opportunity of the woman to interact with Jesus only occurs because of his deliberate act of seeking her out. When the woman requests that Jesus heal her daughter, Jesus does not immediately respond. And when he finally does, his answer is negative; he will not heal her daughter. In these tense moments, Hare sees Jesus as peering into the soul of the woman in order to help her see the truth about himself, herself, and their relationship to one another. Though it may not seem this way on the surface, each response from Jesus is intentional and for the woman’s good. Humility and repentance are required to experience healing and that is what Jesus wants the woman to see. Jesus does not simply want the woman to outwardly acknowledge him as Lord. Rather, he wants to transform and heal the woman and this can only be done if the woman cooperates with Jesus, if she conforms to his will for her. Jesus wants the woman to see that his blessing only comes by way of complete divine freedom and grace, but he also wants her to submit to what he is doing in her soul. Her cooperation with the will of Jesus can only occur when Jesus comes to her, sees the condition of her soul, and lovingly provides the opportunity for her to participate in what he is doing.

Image: 

The Water of Life Discourse between Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well by Angelika Kauffmann, 17–18th century

What’s a Body to Do? (Part 1)

(The following is the first part of an article I wrote several years ago that I think goes along with my recent thoughts on preserving and cultivating harmony between Christian brothers and sisters.  The remaining three parts of the article will be posted in succeeding weeks.)

“What’s a Body to Do?”

The Example and Teaching of Jesus

Tensions and conflicts within social organizations develop because people have desires and objectives that clash with each other. Because different groups and individuals feel that they have an absolute right to satisfy those desires and pursue those objectives, even at the expense of others, the outcome of such conflicts is usually determined by which group or individual most effectively exercises power over the others. In one vein of worldly wisdom, this enforcement of a hierarchy is the only way to bring order to the society. There is another vein of worldly wisdom, however, that is less cynical, and that, indeed, expresses a kind of egalitarian idealism, based on the humanistic principle that "all men [read 'people'] are created equal" and "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" as individuals. This Enlightenment ideal, soaringly and memorably expressed in our country's Declaration of Independence and associated with the throwing off of tyranny, has evolved in our society into a kind of free-standing, self-validating individualism that trumps every other value and concern. Although the principle of individual rights is generally seen as a noble challenge to the raw exercise of arbitrarily established power, its dominance poses a serious challenge to God's way of dealing with relationships between people in the church, the Body of Christ. God makes no apology for speaking of His people as His Kingdom, with an absolute ruler and subjects who are to submit completely to His authority and will. But how are we to deal with this uncompromising terminology for the society of God's people and the biblical principles that are drawn from it in an age where individual freedom and rights are assumed to be unchallengeable ideals? And how are the concepts of servanthood, obedience, and submission which are central to the New Testament church to be implemented without compromising the worth of individuals, which is also a vital part of the Gospel message?

An organism, not an organization

Perhaps close to the core of the problem is that the designation "church" has been attached to Christian societies in such a way as to define them as primarily political entities; it seems rather natural to speak of "Church polity," but it is awkward to speak of "Body polity." There is certainly nothing wrong with the word "church"--it is a biblical term that describes the aggregate of those who belong to Christ—but the word has been appropriated and applied in ways that picture the church primarily as an organization, and not as the organism it truly is, i.e., the Body of Christ. I think it is necessary to emphasize the Church as Body in order to correct the impression that the dynamic of politics that obtains in human social organizations is appropriate and applicable to the Body of Christ. Within Christ’s Body, people relate to one another according to the model of their Master and King, and not according to the wisdom of the world.

Let me set out first what I see to be the implications of New Testament teaching on relationships in the Body of Christ for dealing with the seemingly contradictory principles of hierarchy and submission to authority, on the one hand; and assertions of the equality of all Christians on the other.   In Part 2 of this article, I will make some applications of this teaching to practical difficulties commonly experienced in the Body of Christ, based on the primary principles in the headings below.  I shall begin, though, with the foundation truth upon which all of those applications are built:

Jesus is the model for free and positive submission and obedience.

When the boy Jesus was found in the Temple by his parents after a three-day search, he gently chided them for not knowing that they would find Him there; but afterward, "He went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them" (Luke 2:51). Even this early, He established the practice of being in voluntary submission in a circumstance where He had more understanding than those who had temporary authority over Him. I wonder if Jesus didn't find it increasingly incongruent to be under the governance of Mary and Joseph.   Although they had been chosen for their dedication to God, they were subject to human limitations which must have been apparent to Jesus as He grew up.  His obedience in this situation must have been preparation for the profound obedience to His Father in Heaven which, the writer of Hebrews tells us (Heb. 5:7-10), He had to learn through suffering, even though He was the Son of God.

Toward the end of His ministry on earth, Jesus had occasion to demonstrate graphically to His disciples the lesson of achieving greatness through being a servant. Having already remonstrated with them about their competing for superior position in God's Kingdom (see Matt. 20:24-28), He gave an object lesson at the Last Supper to underline His previous statement that "whoever wants to be first must be your slave--just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve"  (Matt. 20:27-28).  John tells us that

Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him!  When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. "Do you understand what I have done for you?" he asked them. "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13:3-5, 12-17)

The contrast between what Jesus was (the almighty Son of God) and what He voluntarily became (a servant to sinful mankind) is strikingly spotlighted in the prelude to the foot washing scene, which states that He was acutely aware "that the Father had put all things under his power." The fleshly mind finds it hard to understand and accept Jesus's lesson here: that voluntary submission to others in servanthood is not an act of weakness, but of strength; not a surrendering of individual worth, but an affirmation of it in a more profound way than any human exercise of power and prerogative could establish.

Jesus's final act of submission came in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He prayed to be delivered from the bitter cup that He was about to drink, but ended with the words, "Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matt. 26:39). As Paul says in Philippians, though Jesus was one with God, He

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death --even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:6-11)

Thus, Jesus's voluntary submission to the will of the Father, and His humble and obedient servanthood, led to the fulfillment of God's plans for Him and for mankind: that Jesus Christ be exalted and honored as God's anointed King and the savior of the world. Even at the end of time and the eternal consummation of all things, Jesus will "be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all" (I Cor. 15:28). He is both our model of positive servanthood and obedience, and the One who enables those who follow His example to experience the fulfillment of God's purposes in their lives--to be exalted in God's way, not in the way of the world.

The life of Jesus, then, is the foundation of biblical teaching on submission, and from this foundation flow several other theoretical principles of Body life.

John Hare’s God’s Command, Chapter 5: Introduction and 5.1

In the previous chapter, Hare argued that it is not possible to deduce the human good from human nature. But if the human good cannot be determined this way, then where should we look? Hare suggests that those who believe in God may find that God’s commands provide a rationally satisfying and sufficiently specific account of the human good. Therefore, in chapter 5, Hare takes a theological turn. Hare utilizes the insight of the prodigious theologian Karl Barth to flesh out some of the implications of God’s commands.

Hare emphasizes that though Barth is a theologian, he ably interacts with key philosophical ideas (especially Kant’s ideas) and he brings an awareness of the whole Christian theological and philosophical tradition to bear in his works. Barth thus provides Hare with a synthesis of exegetical, theological, and philosophical reflections on the commands of God.

Hare focuses on three themes in Barth’s treatment of God’s command: “the particularity of God’s commands, our freedom in response to the command, and our access to the command.” Barth suggests that the simple fact that we are commanded implies several things. First, God’s commands are given to particular people at a particular time. They are given to “responders,” who are “centers of agency.” Being commanded further implies that we can be obedient and bring about change in the world. We must also persist through time, through the hearing of the command to the realization of it. God’s command of us also suggests that we are sufficiently free to obey or not. And, if God commands us, we must be competent users of language to be able to understand the command.

The first Barthian theme that Hare explores is the particularity of the command (and this is the subject of section 1). Though there is a universal command to respect life, God commands specific persons. This respect begins with respect for one’s own life. But what does it mean to respect one’s own life? Barth rejects the notion that the substance of this command can be fleshed out through autonomous human reason. To attempt to establish what one must do on her own steam is both a denial of what she is (a finite and fallible creature) and a denial of who God is (utterly sovereign). Further, Barth holds that God’s has a highly specific form of life for every person. It is this form of life to which God calls us, and not to some merely general human good. Therefore, God’s plan cannot be captured in generalized statements about what humans ought to be. Rather, God has intimate and specific desires for each individual. We relate to God not only as a species, but person to person in the mode of “Thou-I.” Barth thinks we ought to allow God to completely determine for us what we are to do in every situation because of who he is and what we are in relation to him.

Hare argues that in this regard Barth stands more in the tradition of Scotus than of Aristotle and Plato. Rather than think that all humans have the same essence, Barth holds that each human being is a unique essence and this distinguishes them from other human beings (each person is a “haecceity”). Humanity shares a common nature, but we each have a distinct essence. Hare quotes the passage from Revelation that teaches that God has a name for each human written on a white stone. Hare suggests this name is a representation of God’s purpose for our life and our haecceities. It is something only God knows and if we are going to live according to it, we must rely on God’s commands to us. For Barth, the end of man is to love God and others in a particular way as a reflection of the love in the Trinity.

Kant thought that all our moral obligations could be captured in terms of the categorical imperative, which is universally applied to all humans in all cases. No reference to particular people (either as subject or object) could be allowed or else the imperative could not be universalized.

Hare thinks this universal morality is too restrictive because there are clear cases where moral obligations rightly are limited to particular people in specific circumstances. To help support this point, Hare distinguishes four positions in moral judgment: addressee, agent, recipient, and action. Any of these elements may take on a specific, non-universal character. God may, for example, tell Joshua (the addressee) that the priests (the agent) should march around Jericho seven times (the action). Hare also points out Jesus’ greatest commandment, which is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind,” is not universalizable in the recipient position. Jesus is not saying, “love whoever or whatever is God with all your heart.” He is saying, “Love this specific God, who has a historical connection with Israel, with all your heart.” Thus, there seem to be cases where we have moral obligations that cannot be captured in all universalist terms. Of course, if these are genuine moral obligations, then Kant’s formulation, that “we have to treat humanity, whether in our own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end in itself, and never merely as a means,” would need to be qualified.

To further support his case for qualifying the categorical imperative, Hare produces the hypothetical case of his friend, Elizabeth, who needs a bat removed from her house. Hare argues that he does have a moral obligation to help Elizabeth, but that this obligation is not generated by an appeal to Elizabeth’s humanity. In other words, it does not obtain by appeal to the Kantian maxim as stated above. If it did, then Hare would be obligated to help anyone who needed bats removed whoever they were. What grounds the obligation is Hare’s relationship to Elizabeth in her particularity. The obligation exists just because Elizabeth is Elizabeth and Hare stands in special relation to Elizabeth that he does not share with humanity in general. Hare adds that he loves Elizabeth for her haecceity (her unique essence), and not merely because she is human. And since loving another for her own sake is characteristic of a moral relation, then it would seem he does have an obligation to Elizabeth just because of who she is and his relation to her. Of course, the particularist nature of this moral obligation does not mean that morality reduces to particularities. Usually, universal moral judgments accompany the particular. For example, “One ought to help one’s friend” accompanies “Hare ought to help Elizabeth.”

Finally, Hare wants to show how Barth’s view of God’s commands can be understood to be both particular and universal. So far, the discussion has emphasized the particularity of God’s commands to specific people, but Barth also thinks that many of God’s commands have universal validity.

To help show the consistency of Barth’s view, Hare lays out some important distinctions. First, Hare notes that Barth makes a distinction between instruction and reflection. By “instruction,” Barth has in mind something like the Ten Commandments. These commands give instruction and provide an opportunity and context for us to think through what we know about God and ourselves. After instruction comes reflection. In reflection, we take what he learned from instruction and apply to our own case; we hear God’s command to us in our place and time. Though the instruction is given to a particular people in a particular place, instruction provides the basis for our knowing what God is like and preparing ourselves to act as he wishes.

The narrative of the Bible in which the commands are embedded are to shape our moral sense. Hare clarifies Barth’s discussion of this by introducing the distinction between the good and the obligatory. All of God’s commands are good, but God does not command all that is good. So in every case of God’s commanding, he commands something good and this connection to goodness is universal. All of God’s commands are objectively and universally good. God’s commands as instruction show us what God values and they teach us the character of the good. The commands of God in the Bible, then, are not abstract laws that admit of no exceptions. Instead, they are didactic, shaping our moral sense. We can through instruction, know goodness in advance and that goodness is universally required, per Barth, but we cannot know what our obligation will be in a given case. This is because we need God to tell us “which good kind of thing we are now to realize, to which particular recipients.” Knowing what we are to do in a particular case requires reflection and dependence upon God and his Word. (One may wonder, given this dependence, what need we have for moral deliberation. Hare promises to address this later in the chapter.)

Hare sees some similarities between the morality of Barth and Kant. Both Barth and Kant agree that our obligations come to us independent of what we desire, though this does not mean desire and obligation are ultimately in conflict. But more importantly, both Barth and Kant have a “public” morality. For Kant, the formulation of the categorical imperative must be endorsable by all members of the kingdom of ends. For Barth, the act of obeying a divine command means making the claim that the “commander whose commands establish the covenant obligations for all human beings.” Further, Barth says that all divine commands are given to members of a body, humans in a community. This community provides accountability and a way to test the commands, through the communal hearing of the instruction and through reflection, whether the commands are from God or not.

What’s Most Important to Know? Who’s Right? or Who’s Hurting?”

A Twilight Musing

I feel the need for something of a follow-up on last week’s commentary on a church devastated by controversy.  It could take the form of asking the question above: What’s most important to focus on in the midst and in the aftermath of a split: “Who’s right?” or “Who’s hurt?”  Giving priority to “Who’s right?” means limiting the scope of concern, since determining the answer to that question assumes that the most needed response to the situation is to assign blame and give comfort to the injured party.  This approach necessarily narrows the scope of concern for whose pain should be recognized and ministered to.  On the other hand, starting with discerning “Who’s hurting?” emphasizes the need for healing in the whole community, including those who may be considered manifestly in the wrong.

“But,” you might respond, “Should we not be concerned with justice?”  Yes, if we regard the conflict as primarily judicial.  But Paul makes it clear that treating disputes between Christians as law-court matters is scandalously wrong and harmful to the church.  “When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? . . . .  Why not rather suffer wrong?  Why not rather be defrauded?” (I Cor. 6:1, 7b).  Paul’s objection here is not concerning merely the technicality of where a case is heard, but rather addresses the entirely different principles applying to disputes in a court of law and conflicts between Christian brothers and sisters.  In a civil court, the whole point is presenting evidence for and against each claim of being injured, determining where the truth lies, and meting out judgment to compensate the injured party and to punish the offending party—i.e., determining who’s right.  Among Christians who have differences, the emphasis is not on determining justice and assigning rewards and penalties, but with showing healing deference to one another, being willing even to accept personal injury rather than allow injury to the church.  We see the same emphasis on gentleness over justice in Paul’s instructions to the Galatians: “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:1-3).

Jesus repeatedly showed people that the priority of his concerns was with the hurting, rather than with those who were “right.”  When he entered conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, she responded with a reference to the differences between them.  "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" she asked (John 4:9), anticipating the question she will ask later regarding which of the two groups is right religiously.  In response, Jesus diverts her attention to an even deeper spiritual need than determining the proper geographical place to worship God, that is, the soul’s need for the “water of life” that satisfies forever.  Jesus’ disciples also needed to reassess their principal concerns.  When they returned with food for the Master and themselves, they “marveled that He was talking with a woman,” and, they no doubt thought, especially with a Samaritan woman.  If they wondered at that, how astounded must they have been when Jesus chose to be with the Samaritans for two days, exemplifying to the disciples what it meant practically to pay attention to the “fields that are white for harvest” (Jn. 6:35), rather than only to the Jews, who were right about the rules.

We can all call to mind several other times that Jesus chose to give priority to the hurting, rather than to those who insisted on emphasizing the rules.  Later in the Gospel of John, the Jewish leaders bring to Jesus a woman taken in adultery, and they put pressure on Him to join them in enforcing the rules, for the woman is clearly in the wrong (Jn. 8:3-11).  He turns their professed concern with “righteousness” against them by proving that they cannot judge her without also judging themselves.  He then turns to the hurting woman and restores her to spiritual health.  In Mark 3:1-6, Jesus found in a Sabbath synagogue gathering a man with a withered hand, whose condition cried out for healing.  But the only concern of the Pharisees was to see whether Jesus would once again heal on the Sabbath (breaking the rules in their eyes).  Jesus made clear His priority by healing the man and reproaching the Pharisees, who then went off and plotted how to kill the man who was troubling their nation (and their power as authoritative law-enforcers).  There is in Luke 5:1-6:11 a whole group of examples of Jesus choosing to heal the hurting, whether it fitted the accepted “rules” or not.

Choosing to pursue justice rather than mercy, punishment rather than reconciliation, and self-vindication rather than gentle partnering to restore the community of faith that the innocent Son of God died to make His bride.  Can we be so set on anybody’s rights as to forget that we are all subject to One who gave up all of His rights to save all of us?

How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What can be Done about It

Is it possible to be over-committed to the Bible? In this thoughtful and challenging article, Moreland suggests that Evangelicals may sometimes misunderstand the purpose and intended function of the Bible. Given the Bible's critical role in moral transformation and moral knowledge, Moreland's article can provide some helpful guidelines for using the Bible in moral apologetics. "How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What can be Done about It" by J.P. Moreland.

Church Bombing

A Twilight Musing

Our church was bombed last night.  Everybody in it was injured; time will tell whether there were any fatalities.  I’m sitting in the rubble, stunned at the damage, as I suspect many others are.  Even those who were not in the building at the time experienced collateral damage from the bombing.  It’s hard to sort out the extent to which any individuals or any group of people were responsible for the damage, but we are all corporately culpable for not adequately defending against it.  Although the maker and dropper of the bomb was outside the church, the church had adequate warning of his intentions.  Such things are disturbingly ordinary in the history of the Church and its individual congregations, and it’s disturbing that in spite of that instructive history, too few congregations are completely armed to defend against the implacable and always active Enemy.

The physical building occupied by the church is still standing, and passers-by will not see that anything has happened.  The destruction was wrought on the spiritual building made up of God’s people.  As a part of that group, I share the group’s failure to defend adequately against what happened to us.  As I told my wife this morning, I am very tired of dealing with human frailty and inadequacy, including those qualities in myself.  In my deep sorrow at what has happened, I feel a desire for God’s release from the battle, since I’ve had such limited success against the Adversary.  But even if we are merely survivors of the Enemy’s bomb, as long as we are alive, we must assume that, although God must be as tired of working with us as we are with ourselves, He means for us to continue.  The question is, how?

I will speak for myself, and others must judge by the Spirit of God whether my convictions have wider applications.

• First, I must severely examine my own motives and actions and acknowledge any specific instances of manifesting pride, defensiveness, self-righteousness, self-interested slanting of information, or assuming the worst rather than the best in the motives of others.
• Secondly, I must be so saddened by the outcome of all the strife that led to the “bombing” that my governing and overwhelming attitude toward the outcome is deep sorrow for the pain and injury that people on all sides of the issues have experienced. It is incumbent on me to suffer with those who suffer, even if I think that their opinions and motives are wrong.  Nobody won last night.  We all lost, and the only victor was the Adversary.
• I must try to get past determining who was (or is) right or wrong. In the midst of high emotions and the compulsion to draw clear lines, I must acknowledge that only God knows the hearts and minds of people and can sort out their motivations.  And even if I am thoroughly convinced that the evidence supports a clear indictment, I must be careful not to take over either God’s role as judge or the Accuser’s role as prosecuting attorney.  If I am obligated to pray for my enemies, how much more must I pray sincerely for a brother or sister whom I believe to be in error.
• Finally, I must not assume that any rupture in fellowship is beyond repair, if the estranged parties submit mutually to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I am not allowed to assume that attempted reconciliation is entirely the responsibility of the person or persons I am at odds with.  Whatever led up to it, alienation between God’s people is not something that can be merely accepted as irresolvable.  If we take the risk of moving toward mending the breach, God will take it from there.

Groaning Together

A Twilight Musing

One day when I was reading the familiar passage in Rom. 8 on our hope for the final deliverance from sin through the resurrection of our bodies, I was struck with the recurrence of the verb “groan” in the space of eight verses:

20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Rom. 8:20-27)

There is an interlinking in these uses of “groaning,” with the first occurrence referring to the whole of creation, the second referring to all of God’s people, and the third to the agency of the Holy Spirit interceding for us with God.

This section of chapter 8 was introduced by the affirmation that as believers in Christ we have been certified by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit as children of God and heirs of His kingdom.  However, our walk in the Spirit as sons and daughters of God entails suffering with Christ “in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).  Accordingly, both of the first two occurrences of groaning in this passage are associated with a particular kind of productive human suffering, childbirth.  The first, the groaning of the physical creation to be “set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v.21), is then linked to the inward groaning of each Christian for our “adoption as sons [and daughters], the redemption of our bodies” (v.23).  Our suffering with Christ is not meaningless, but like the pains of childbirth, it ends in great joy, so that, as Paul has assured us, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18-19).

But the final rebirth into eternal form that we share with the rest of creation is something that we must wait for in patience and faith, and while we endure in steadfast hope, we cry out to God in our weakness.  That is, we try to articulate our groaning as we find our spiritual resources taxed to the breaking point, and the same Holy Spirit that dwells within us and guides us in His way becomes an interceding translator, presenting our petitions “with groanings too deep for words” (v. 26).  What an abundance of mercy that God, in listening to our prayers, hears beyond our power to know just what to ask for and takes instead what the Spirit tells Him of what we really long for and need.  In a sense, the groanings of Christ on the cross have been transmuted as a form of grace to all of creation, including ourselves, and this earthly groaning is in turn transmuted into the groaning of the Holy Spirit on our behalf that transcends human capabilities.  And the Son who initiated the process partners with the Third Person of the Godhead to bring us redeemed, but as yet imperfect mortals into the Presence of the Abba Father to whom we pray.

Image: Pentecost Mosaic. Public Domain

Apologetics and the Fulfillment of Prophecies

Now a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man had been instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things of the Lord, though he knew only the baptism of John. So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately. And when he desired to cross to Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him; and when he arrived, he greatly helped those who had believed through grace; for he vigorously refuted the Jews publicly, showing from the Scriptures that Jesus is the Christ. – Acts 18:24-28

There’s a debate about apologetic methodology between evidentialists and presuppositionalists concerning the role of scripture in arguing for the faith. Although my proclivities run more in the direction of evidentialism, I concede there’s something of an important exception—a case where explicit appeal to scripture is altogether appropriate and not at all problematically circular. Normally the problem with this approach, in trying to convince someone that God exists, is that the person would obviously be skeptical of scripture as authoritative revelation. But the assumption this is always the case is largely because apologetics today is usually thought of in terms of convincing the skeptic, the unbeliever. Early Christians, however, were rarely confronted with that particular challenge. Atheists were rare. In fact, it was common that they themselves were called atheists because, in their exclusivism, they vociferously denied any and all of the state-sanctioned divinities in affirming the one true God. It would have been more than a little ironic if they were additionally tasked with taking on atheists!

Almost all of the earliest Christians were Jews, and initially their outreach was mainly to Jews. This would change in due course, but their audience early on was most often a Jewish one, and, for quite a while, they were wildly successful. Such outreach typically took the form of appealing to scripture—specifically, the Old Testament. (The New Testament hadn’t yet been written.) And quite often this took the form of early Christian witnesses, evangelists, and apologists trying to show that Jesus was the promised Messiah. The Jews had the expectation of a coming Messiah, and the Old Testament featured quite a number of prophecies about this figure. Steeped in the Old Testament themselves, the early apologists constructed their case for Christ by arguing that Jesus was the promised one, the expected Messiah.

After Saul’s conversion, for example, we’re told that he “increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is the very Christ” (Acts 9:22). Luke tells us that after his resurrection Jesus appeared to a few disciples on their way to Emmaus, saying, “’O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter his glory?’ And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:26-27). Note in the epigraph that Apollos vigorously “showed from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ” (Acts 18:28).

Those for whom the Old Testament little matters are usually and understandably unpersuaded by appealing to it, but the world contains billions of people from the Abrahamic faiths who claim to take the Old Testament seriously indeed. This may not exactly be an instance of presuppositionalist apologetics, but pointing to fulfillment of prophecies is an entirely legitimate and demonstrably effective apologetic, especially for those who claim to believe the Old Testament.

To this end, here’s just a smattering of examples for those who’d like to become better equipped to do just this.

Micah 5:2 says, “But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.” The Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. According to the New Testament account of the apostle Matthew, Joseph and Mary were living in Bethlehem in the southern region of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth and later moved to Nazareth in the northern Galilee region.

Genesis 49:10 says, “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.” The Messiah would be from the tribe of Judah. In Matthew 1:1–6 and Luke 3:31–34 of the New Testament, Jesus is described as a member of the tribe of Judah by lineage. Revelation 5:5 also mentions an apocalyptic vision of the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Zechariah 9:9 says, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” The Messiah would present himself by riding on an ass. Matthew 21:6-7, for one example, says the disciples did as Jesus commanded them, and “brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon,” as Jesus then entered Jerusalem.

Psalm 22 describes how the Messiah would be tortured. Numerous vivid passages are uncanny in their similarities to sufferings Christ endured. Among them, “they pierced my hands and my feet” (16b) and “they part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture” (18). John 19:23-24 relates what happened after the crucifixion of Christ: “Then the soldiers, when they had crucified Jesus, took his garments, and made four parts, to every soldier a part; and also his coat: now the coat was without seam, woven from the top throughout. They said therefore among themselves, Let us not rend it, but cast lots for it, whose it shall be: that the scripture might be fulfilled, which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they did cast lots. These things therefore the soldiers did.” Luke 24:39 features the resurrected Jesus saying, “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have."

Daniel 9:24-27 says the Messiah would arrive before the destruction of the (Second) Temple. In 66 CE the Jewish population rebelled against the Roman Empire. Four years later, in 70 CE, Roman legions under Titus retook and destroyed much of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 says the Messiah’s life would include suffering, silence at his arrest and trial, and death and burial in a rich man’s tomb. Origen recounted using Isaiah 53 in a discussion with some rabbis, who responded that the prophecies referred to the whole people as though of a single individual, since they were scattered in the dispersion and smitten. So Origen asked which person could be referred to in the texts: “This man bears our sins and suffers pain for us,” and “but he was wounded for our transgressions and he was made sick for our iniquities,” and “by his stripe we were healed.”

This is just a small sample. Passages from Ezekiel (37:26-27), Haggai (2:6-9), and Hosea (11:1) could be adduced, not to mention other passages from Isaiah (7:14; 8:23-9:2; 9:5-6; 11:12), Jeremiah (31:15), and the Psalms (2, 16, 34, 69, 110), and more besides. In his book Choosing Your Faith, Mark Mittelberg writes that there’s no less than something on the order of 48 messianic prophecies that were fulfilled in the person of Jesus, some with terrific specificity that defies naturalistic explanation.

Michael Green, Anglican theologian and priest, prolific author, and Senior Research Fellow and Head of Evangelism and Apologetics at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, recalls talking to an intelligent Jewish woman interested in discussing Christianity. “I showed her from the Old Testament Scriptures how closely Jesus had fulfilled the varied hopes of the prophets. She believed, and was baptized. . . . the zeal of my friend to reach others with the good news she had come to recognize for herself was no less reminiscent of the Acts of the Apostles. She studied Greek and Hebrew, with the intention of working full time among Jews.”

Green quotes her as writing him, “You know, it is so blatantly clear that Jesus died for our sins on the cross and rose from the grave—I just long to get it across to others, especially to my own people. I am longing to work among them and show them their Messiah.” [Michael Green, Evangelism in the Early Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 120.]

The Heady Cocktail of Righteous Indignation

A Twilight Musing

Recently I have been made aware of some confrontations between Christian brothers and sisters that highlight how easy it is for people who differ to retreat into opposing fortresses of righteous indignation, thereby effectively guaranteeing that there will be no resolution of their contentious differences.  Of course, this happens in the secular realm as well, as the present polarization of political groups in our nation illustrates.  But this kind of standoff is especially distressing in a Christian context, where humility and mutual charity are the prescribed norms for attitudes and behavior.  It’s worth examining why Christians are so easily led to indulge in the heady and dangerous cocktail of righteous indignation.

As in every human argument, the fleshly way of dealing with conflict is to concentrate on defending one’s own point of view.  Particularly is this true when the opposing point of view is seen to be unjust, unfair, or unscriptural.  That perception pushes us toward taking on the role of defender of the faith or champion of the oppressed.  Certainly it is sometimes necessary to launch bravely into these roles, but doing so always carries with it the danger of very easily slipping into the feeling that we are morally superior to those we oppose.  This attitude will lead quickly to the mutual entrenchment that leads to church splits and divorce, as well as to political deadlock in the secular realm.

How do we avoid getting to this kind of impasse?  A good place to start is the admonition of the Apostle James: “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:19b-20).  Anger is one of the first ingredients to go into the cocktail of righteous indignation, following immediately on the shock of learning that we or somebody we feel responsible for has been abused or treated unfairly.  Taking the trouble to listen carefully to someone we feel in conflict with slows down the kindling of anger, and delaying speaking provides time to examine whether we have correctly understood what we have heard.  Speaking too quickly tends to harden our position prematurely, to lock us into our words and make it more difficult to make concessions that can lead to a middle ground of agreement.

Another key element to avoiding intoxication from that “heady cocktail” of self-righteous rigidity is the cultivation of humility, coupled with its companion, a desire to think the best of others, so as not to assume that their actions or opinions necessarily indicate malevolent intent or perverse objectives.  As Paul puts it, “Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.  Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).  Humility enables each side in an argument to reaffirm that we are all fallible and subject to error, even when we behave with the best of intentions.  Humility is a retardant to assuming the worst about our opponents, because we value them as much as we do ourselves.   Humility makes us keenly aware that all of us are of equal value in the eyes of God, all equally in need of and receiving His love and grace.  Humility prevents the emotional detachment that enables us to demonize and depersonalize an opponent.

Finally, just as going into battle gets the adrenalin flowing, so sometimes the thrill of defending what we regard to be a just cause or belief tempts us to make an emotional investment in it that overcomes both our objectivity and any desire to do the hard work of maintaining or restoring harmony.  The battle assumes a life of its own that perpetuates and escalates the conflict, each side feeling increasingly justified by the literal or figurative atrocities committed by the other.  In other words, we imbibe in the emotional high of battle, rather than sipping on the profounder and more complex nectar of swallowing our pride and giving up our partisanship in order to pursue the sober work of being peace-makers.  We are instructed to be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph 4:3-4).

Although Paul’s words in Eph. 5:18 are addressed to literal drunkenness, they also apply as cautionary words against tippling in the heady cocktail of righteous indignation: “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit.”

Two Child Sacrifices

The account of Abraham being ordered by God to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering is shocking, not only to our natural sensibilities, but to our understanding of God.  The same God who issued this command to Abraham says through the prophet Jeremiah that Judah’s burning of its children as sacrifices is one of the “detestable things” they have done, something that God says never came into His mind to command (Jer. 7:30-32).  But as I was reading the Abraham and Isaac story in Genesis 22, it occurred to me that its deepest meaning is not just as a general foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus, but as an analogy of the relationship between God the Father and His Son when Jesus was crucified.  It may be that parallel with God’s purpose to prove the faith of His servant Abraham was His desire to enlighten us about what was happening when the Almighty Father refused to respond to the pleas of His Son to be delivered from the cup of suffering that His Father was asking Him to drink.

The scriptural account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac gives us one of the most poignant bits of dialogue in the Bible.

“And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.  And he took in his hand the fire and the knife.  So they went both of them together.  And Isaac said to his father Abraham, "My father!" And he said, "Here am I, my son." He said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"  Abraham said, "God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son."

The key words of this whole account are “God will provide,” which occur here and at the end of the story, after God has supplied the ram that Abraham can substitute for his son: “So Abraham called the name of that place, ‘The Lord will provide’; as it is said to this day, ‘On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided’" (22:14).  When father Abraham first said those words to his apprehensive son, there was no objective assurance that it would be so.  But as the writer of Hebrews says, “He considered that God was able even to raise [Isaac] from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back” (Heb. 11:19).  “God will provide” describes both the intangible faith before the fact, and the fact that fulfilled the faith when God provided His substitute ram.  God then commends him for not having withheld his “only son” from God.

That phrase “only son” was also used when God first issued His command to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering . . .” (Gen. 22:2), and of course that designation is appropriate for a story that foreshadows God the Father’s sacrifice of His “only Son.”  As in the case of Abraham and Isaac, there was a conversation between the Father and the Son about how the project underway perhaps needed to be reconsidered.  Abraham’s answer to Isaac referred to a Higher Power that could resolve their difficult situation, albeit in some way yet to be perceived by the two of them.  Abraham was not responsible for the outcome, but only for his acceptance of the outcome, since he was subject to God.  Jesus’ implicit question to His Father is, “Isn’t there some other way than the path you’ve set me on?”  And though an angel came to strengthen Him, the Father remained silent (see Luke 22:41-44), even when the Son renewed His prayer and sweated drops of blood.  Father God was in the position of Abraham, but there was no higher power for Him to defer to.  This Father is called to make the sacrifice of His Son through the necessity of His own great love for mankind, which supersedes even His love for His Son.  This fact is borne out in the words of the familiar passage in John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

God could spare the son of Abraham, but the ultimate cost of sparing Isaac and countless others from paying the penalty for sin was for His own Son to die instead.  What anguish the Father must have felt when He had to allow His Son to drink the bitter cup, and ultimately had to turn His face away while Jesus was on the cross.  The final meaning of the substitutionary ram provided to Abraham was to be played out in the  sacrifice of the very Lamb of God.

Women – Paragons or Pariahs?

A Twilight Musing

One way of describing the Fall is to say that Eve and Adam “bit off more than they could chew.”  They plunged into territory that they were utterly unable to cope with, and the end of their escapade had terrible consequences for all their descendants.  On a much smaller scale, one which I trust will cost my children nothing, I may nevertheless be “biting off more than I can chew” in trying to explain why, in the Bible and in Western culture, the depictions of the extremes of both virtue and perversity tend to cast them in feminine form.

The subject came up with my wife and me one morning as she was reading the description of the Great Whore of Babylon in Rev. 18.  “Why does this symbol of consummate corruption have to be a woman?” she asked.  That got us both to thinking of other feminine figures in Scripture which were seen in terms like those applied to the girl with the curl in the nursery rhyme: “When she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid!”  In just the book of Proverbs, we have the figure of the Seductive Adultress (Prov. 7), followed by Wisdom pictured as a woman (Prov. 8:1-9:12), followed in her turn by the woman Folly (Prov. 9:13-18).  In the succeeding chapters of Proverbs (as well as in Ecclesiastes), women are repeatedly seen in a negative light, so much that one is tempted to label Solomon a misogynist.  But in the last chapter of the book we have described the Excellent Wife, who is distinguished by her selfless service to her family, praised by her husband and her children.  And to balance out Solomon’s sour view of woman as sexually threatening, we have the idealized sensuality of the Song of Solomon.

This deeply ambivalent view of womanhood is reflected in the New Testament as well.  Over against the Whore of Babylon is the figure of Mary, mother of Jesus, who is chosen among all women to bear God’s Son, and who, in one tradition of Christianity came to be venerated as the paragon of all virtues.  Paul, when he wants to portray the church as perfected in Christ, describes her as “holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:27); and this picture is reinforced in the very book that presents the Whore of Babylon, as the New Jerusalem descends from Heaven “as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev. 21:2).  But Paul also refers to Eve as the archetypal “original sinner,” because of which she is to be in submission to men in general and to their husbands in particular.  In this passage and elsewhere, women are cautioned against using adornment to get attention, but are admonished to distinguish themselves by “good works” and to let their “adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.  For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their husbands,  as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord.   And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (I Pet. 3:4-6).

So here’s the part where I may have bitten off more than I can chew.  The alternate demonization and idealization of women in the Bible seems to come down to what appears to moderns as blatant sexism. Why should women on the one hand be seen in a worse light than men (the cause of the Fall, sexually dangerous and tainted ) and on the other hand be exalted in impossibly idealized ways (Lady Wisdom, the Perfect Wife, analogous to the Bride of Christ).  I think a possible answer lies (paradoxically) in the very passages that, on the surface, seem to demonize women.

The penalties imposed by God on Adam and Eve are different in ways that can be interpreted as gender-oriented, with the woman’s pain in childbirth and her being ruled over by her husband being consequences with sexual overtones.  In contrast, Adam’s penalty was focused on making difficult for him the task of providing food for his family, including the children that Eve would bear in pain.  The beginning of Eve’s life as a fallen creature established the precarious relationship between the sexes that all humanity has experienced since the expulsion from the Garden.  No longer was the couple’s sexual relationship natural and equal, but problematic.  First is the paradox that the natural result of intercourse would be pregnancy culminating in painful and perhaps dangerous birth, a situation which increases the dependence of the woman on her husband, while also increasing the responsibility of the man to provide for her and the children.  But with the birth of children came also a reward for the woman: through nursing the children she discovered a kind of intimacy with them that was denied the man; an intimacy that must have nourished a love that overcame any bitterness that she might have experienced at being punished by God through the pain of childbearing.

Which leads us to the enigmatic statement by Paul about the connection between Eve’s being the first to sin and her being “saved through childbearing,” if she endures it “in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.”  There is reflected here a potential of experience and character development that is greater and more subtle than the opportunities available to men.  It is commonplace to speak of women as natural nurturers, and though it can become a facile stereotype, there is deep truth to it as well, and in that truth lies perhaps some explanation of why extremes of virtue and vice are so often presented in feminine form.  Generally speaking, women have a greater range of moral potential than do men, because they are more vulnerable to suffering, which is the chief developer of moral character.  Pain in childbearing is symbolic of this vulnerability, and it is further manifested in a woman’s dependence on her husband (as mentioned in Gen. 3), and to some extent in her dependency on men in general.  A woman’s nurturing potential finds its most profound expression in birthing and breast feeding a child, but not every woman has to give birth in order to be saved, and there are other ways of manifesting the inborn instincts for nurturing that have to be consciously cultivated by men.  There can be no greater model for God’s love and willingness to sacrifice for a greater good than the love and nurturing that a woman is especially called to; and by the same token, there is no more monstrous a perversion than a woman who has gone against all her nurturing instincts and has hardened herself to all mercy and tenderness.  Thus the tendency toward polarization between feminine-based idealization and feminine-based demonization.

That’s as much as I know to say, but I feel I’m still chewing on the cud in this matter.

Jesus, the Bible, and Moral Knowledge

Introduction

Humanity can have some moral knowledge without encountering the written Word of God. People throughout the world know that the proposition, “it always wrong to torture children for fun” is true. The Bible itself says that at least some moral knowledge is available through general revelation (Romans 1:18; 2:14). However, this moral knowledge is deficient in several ways and requires the Bible for completion. I will argue that though there is natural moral knowledge, that it is deficient in its scope and authority and that the Bible, as the written Word of God, meets the conditions required for moral knowledge. And finally, I will specify how the Bible supplements the moral knowledge available through general revelation. My suggestion is that the Bible confirms what is properly known by nature and “pure’ reason, it corrects moral misunderstandings in moral knowledge, and it calls humanity to go beyond what can be naturally known to a complete vision of the moral life in Christ. The moral knowledge available in the Bible has the power it does precisely because it is the written Word of God under Jesus Christ for he is Lord and thus has the power to impose upon us moral duties and because as man he reveals, enacts, and makes possible eudaimonia or the good life. So why is the Bible necessary to compete our knowledge of the human good and human moral obligations?

Epistemology and Moral Knowledge

Though this question seems straightforward, it raises difficult and complex issues in epistemology. The question assumes that the Bible is a source of a particular kind of knowledge, moral knowledge, and that it is a superior source than any other available to humankind. This claim is controversial because many doubt the Bible’s credibility as a source of knowledge in general (the claim is that it is merely the work of men or that is has been severely compromised in its transmission), but many more doubt that adopting the ethics of the Bible would count as a gain in human moral knowledge. For example, Peter Enns argues that the morality of the Old Testament does not reflect the will of a good God, but merely adapts the “accepted cultural norms of the day.”[1] The Bible teaches a Bronze Age ethic which should be discarded in light of human moral progress. Not only is the Bible merely the work of men, it is the work of morally unenlightened ones; that is the idea. I will return to assess this claim later, but Enns’ view serves as an important and popular foil for the thesis I am proposing. What sort of argument can be given to support the idea that the Bible is a source of moral knowledge? Here the work of Karl Barth will provide some illumination.

Karl Barth argued that the “The Bible is the Word of God.”[2] Often, Barth is interpreted as meaning that the Bible becomes the Word of God only when God elects to use it as it is proclaimed in the Church. Further, the Bible itself does not communicate the Word of God, but rather, it is merely the vehicle by which divine encounter occurs (a view called “occasionalism”). However, John Morrison suggests that this view fundamentally misunderstands Barth. According to Morrison, Barth holds that the Word of God “always has the character of an event, and Scripture thus ‘becomes’ in/as an event.”[3] The “event” is God’s decision to speak in and through the Bible; this speaking is the result of divine decision and is “ever present.”[4] It is in this way that Barth identifies the Bible with the Word of God. But why should we think Barth’s account is correct?

Barth does not think that the veracity of the Bible can be established on the basis of authority external to it. Man does not grasp the Bible, “the Bible has grasped at man.”[5] What Barth is proposing is a Trinitarian worldview where God the Father speaks through his Son, the Word, and this Word is applied or realized by the power of the Holy Spirit. Man is a finite and limited creature and so knowledge of God comes only by divine grace. If this worldview is assumed, it does not make sense to try to establish the authority and veracity of the Bible as the Word of God on the basis on anything outside of the Bible.[6] Any endeavor like this would be contradictory to Barth’s view. More specifically, Barth’s answer to the question of how can know that the Bible is the Word of God is that he can know this because it is actually the case: “The possibility of revelation is actually to be read off from its reality in Jesus Christ. Therefore at bottom the individual explanation to which we now proceed can be only a reading and exegesis of this reality.”[7]

A superficial reading of Barth might lead to his dismissal as a fideist, but this would be a mistake. Showing why this would be a mistake will require the defense of another contentious thesis: all epistemological positions are inherently theological. If, for example, we adopt a view like Cartesian foundationalism, then we have made certain assumptions that have theological significance. Anthropologically, we have made assumptions about the kinds of things we are, along with the limits of our cognitive powers, and our relation to the world. Cosmologically, we have assumed that world is the sort place that is knowable and comprehensible, even if the comprehensibility extends only to our own thoughts. Morally, we have assumed that we have certain intellectual duties that must be fulfilled, namely we must establish all our beliefs on the basis of what can be deductively ascertained from within the mind of a human individual. In other words, epistemological methods imply a worldview or a view about ultimate reality and human nature. This is perhaps why Calvin argues that “Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.”[8] These issues are inherently theological and so one cannot help but beg the question for a worldview to some extent. Considering this, Barth should not be understood as a fideist, but as person who takes seriously the connection of epistemology and worldview. Barth has an honesty and clarity about his assumptions and their implications that few alternative views could claim.

But if epistemology and worldview share this deep connection, then how can we discern what account of our moral knowledge is correct in light of the challenges coming from scholars like Peter Enns? What I propose, then, is that the way to determine whether the Bible is necessary to complete our knowledge of the good and the right, is to apply two kinds of tests. First, is the worldview which claims to account for moral knowledge internally coherent? Does it make any assumptions that conflict with each other or its conclusions? Second, what account of moral knowledge best explains our most deeply held moral intuitions? If, for example, we find that the biblical vision of shalom more deeply resonates with us than Aristotle’s vision of the polis, then that is a reason to think that the biblical account is more likely the correct one.

Non-Trinitarian Accounts of Moral Knowledge

There are a variety of non-Trinitarian accounts of moral knowledge, but perhaps the most popular and viable are Aristotelian and Kantian accounts. Before briefly laying out these accounts and showing some of their short comings, we should note that Aristotelian and Kantian accounts have different targets. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle is not primarily concerned with spelling out the conditions for right action or the framework for moral duties. Rather, his aim is to provide an explanation of the human good.[1] What will make human beings happy; what realizes eudaimonia? Kant, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with accounting for the existence of the moral law  and its applicability to us.[2] A rough way of seeing the difference is this: Aristotle is concerned with the good and Kant is concerned with the right.[3]

Aristotle's Ethics

Aristotle begins with the a priori premise “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”[4] Any rational endeavor seeks some good. If human beings want to live rationally, they ought to seek after the good. But what is the human good? Whatever it is, it must be something chosen for its own sake and not for the sake of something else. Aristotle thinks that only happiness (eudaimonia) meets this requirement; “happiness is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.”[5] But saying simply that “happiness is the chief good seems a platitude.”[6] Therefore, Aristotle seeks to specify exactly what characterizes happiness. Aristotle suggests that the human good consists in proper function according to a telos. What a human being is will determine what counts as proper function as well as the conditions and nature of happiness.

Aristotle thinks that the essential nature of human beings can be discerned by empirical means. Through observation, Aristotle thinks he can detect two kinds of proper function or virtue. First, one can see the difference between man and lower animals. Man possesses a rational element which beasts do not.[7] Aristotle argues that a life of contemplation is the highest good because it is “the best thing in us” and reason is either “itself divine or only the most divine element in us.”[8] The virtues that allow for full utilization of the rational faculty (contemplation) are the intellectual virtues. But in addition to these, Aristotle says there are also the ethical virtues, or virtues of character.[9] Traditionally, the Greek virtues include, according to Thomas Aquinas, “temperance, justice, prudence, and fortitude.”[10] Aristotle thinks that these virtues of character can be discerned through the “doctrine of the mean.” A virtue is the balance between two vices. Temperance, for example, is the mean between self-indulgence and insensibility.[11]  Aristotle further thinks that the human good needs the right environment. Aristotle holds that it can be observed that man flourishes best when he lives in the Greek polis. The human good also requires certain material conditions, like physical health and monetary wealth. Happiness is not merely a matter of inward reflection and self-discipline; it also requires the right physical setting.

The upshot of Aristotle’s ethic for our purposes is this: Aristotle thinks that a full account of moral knowledge is available to us through the use of common sense and empirical observation. By considering the nature of human beings and their endeavors, and by observing how humans flourish, we can determine what the human good is.

Even in this brief sketch of Aristotle’s ethic, one can see how rich and multi-valent Aristotle’s account of the human good is. It strives to include all dimensions of embodied human life, and in this way, has some advantages over more Platonic accounts. The substantial nature of Aristotle’s conclusions along with his seemingly modest epistemological commitments may be why Aristotle’s model of ethics continues to be utilized. Philippa Foot, for example, argues for a naturalistic virtue ethic that attempts to justify moral realism and moral knowledge along Aristotelian lines.[12] Erik Wielenberg in his attempt to justify value and virtue in a Godless universe, suggests that Aristotle’s ethic provides “the most powerful response” to Christian morality.[13]  For many, an Aristotelian strategy provides a promising way to account for moral knowledge outside of the Bible.

While there is much to be commended in Aristotle’s approach, like his belief in the connection of facts and values, there are still some problems. One concern is whether Aristotle’s account of virtue actually follows from his insight about human beings. Kraut suggests that Aristotle’s argument in the Nicomachean Ethics may not establish the virtues, but merely shows a reason to be virtuous: “We may conclude that Aristotle proposes flourishing as the ‘ultimate justification of morality [why we ought to be moral].’”[14] In other words, Aristotle begins with the assumption that humans ought to be moral and his project, despite his intentions, only provides motivation to be moral rather than an explanation of morality itself.  Further, Aristotle’s project begs the question about the nature of the human good and the associated virtues; these values are assumed rather than demonstrated.

John Hare brings a similar charge against eudaemonist or Aristotelian ethics.[15] His contention, following Scotus, is that the moral law, or what humans ought to do, cannot be deduced from facts about human nature. Hare’s basic contention is that Aristotle’s account of moral goodness is too narrow. One piece of evidence Hare supplies comes in the contrast of Jesus and Aristotle’s view of “competitive goods.” Aristotle often thinks of the human good as requiring wealth and power; honor and magnanimity. For one to possess these qualities, others most have them in lesser degrees; they are competitive goods. Jesus, on the other hand, advocates for the virtue of humility. This is the inversion of Aristotle’s vision of the ideal man. As MacIntyre puts it, “Aristotle would certainly not have admired Jesus Christ and he would have been horrified by St. Paul.”[16] This deep disagreement about the nature of the human good, argues Hare, highlights the inscrutability of ethical virtue from human nature.[17] What facts about human nature and how we flourish could be produced to settle the disagreement? This is one reason why Hare thinks special revelation with specific divine commands is necessary for justified moral beliefs. While Hare does not take his conclusion explicitly in this direction, one could extend his argument to say that the Word of God is necessary to supplement what we can know about the human good by reason.[18] For if divine commands are required, then the Bible would be a good place to look for those commands.

Another concern with Aristotle’s approach comes from his view of God. As mentioned above, Aristotle thought that greatest possible ways of human flourishing were intimately connected with the divine. It is not altogether clear how Aristotle conceives of this relation, however. Is contemplation the highest good simply because it is the full realization of the highest element in humanity, or because it resembles the activity of God? In support of the latter possibility, Aristotle says that the value of all things is judged by reference to “God and the good.”[19] Aristotle frames this dilemma rather directly:

It is reasonable that happiness should be god-given, and most surely god-given of all human things inasmuch as it is the best. But this question would perhaps be more appropriate to another inquiry; happiness seems, however, even if it is not god-sent but comes as a result of virtue and some process of learning or training, to be among the most godlike things; for that which is the prize and end of virtue seems to be the best thing in the world, and something godlike and blessed.[20]

Aristotle seemingly wants to gloss over the relation of God and the human good, but this relation is critical to his theory in at least two ways. First, it raises the question of the nature of goodness itself to human goodness. If God is the highest good, then should not he be the telos of humanity? If all rational endeavors pursue the good, then this question is not trivial. Second, if the human good is God-given, then what does this imply about the connection of the human telos and God’s intentions for human beings? If God is both the standard of the good and the one who gives goodness or happiness to humanity, then it would seem that the question of human virtue would be primarily theological and not philosophical (assuming there is a sharp distinction between these disciplines). Investigation into morality would be a question of who God is, what he is like, and whether or not he has revealed himself and his intentions for human beings.[21] In sum, Aristotle’s approach to ethics does not actually succeed at what it sets out to do and it leaves important theoretical questions about the nature of the good, specifically the relation of the good to God and the human telos, unanswered.

Kantian Ethics

Kant’s approach to moral knowledge is different both in its method and its goal. Kant’s epistemology assumes a split between the phenomenal and the noumenal. There is a way that things appear to us which is determined by the mind and there is a way things actually are. We do not know external objects as they are, but only as they appear to us, as they are shaped by the categories of the mind. On the other hand, Kant says, “other possible things, which are not objects of our senses, but are cogitated by the understanding alone, and call them intelligible existences (noumena).”[22] God exists in the noumenal realm and is not directly accessible to us. Considering our epistemic situation, Kant thinks that the basis of moral knowledge must be established based on “pure reason.” Moral knowledge would not be knowledge of the Platonic forms, but knowledge of the entailments of reason. Pure reason operates only the analytic and a priori; it utilizes only those things known prior to experience and that are internal to the person. Kant thinks that one can postulate the existence of noumenal objects on the basis of practical reason. If some concept known analytically requires the postulation of some noumenal object to explain its existence, then this postulation is warranted. Seemingly, Kant thinks that the notion of the moral law is an a priori concept for in The Critique of Practical Reason, it is on the assumption of existence of the moral law that Kant, by use of practical reason, establishes the reality of human free will.[23]

Kant, like Aristotle, has an important role for God. But also like Aristotle, Kant’s search for moral knowledge does not begin with God. Rather, since God is in the realm of the noumenal, Kant says he “must, therefore, abolish knowledge [of noumenal objects like God], to make room for belief [in these objects]. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the presumption that it is possible to advance in metaphysics without previous criticism, is the true source of the unbelief (always dogmatic) which militates against morality.”[24] Despite this move, Hare rightly argues that for Kant, God has three specific roles, the legislative, executive, and judicial so that for Kant “God gives us the assistance required to live according to the law. And God sees our hearts, as we do not, knows whether we are committed to obedience, and rewards us accordingly.”[25] It is based on God’s necessary judicial function that Kant develops a moral argument for God by means of practical reason. Kant held that a person was always obliged to keep the moral law. However, one’s self-interest or happiness and keeping the moral demand can seemingly conflict so that it would not be rational to follow the law. To keep this seeming contradiction from becoming actual, Kant, as a postulate of practical reason, thought that God must exist to make sure that the moral law and happiness coincide.

Kant’s understanding of human epistemological limitations shapes how he thinks of morality in general and moral knowledge in particular. The full extent of our moral obligations must be discovered a priori, without appeal to any external authority or empirical observation. According to Johnson, Kant’s method is to begin with analyzing our moral concepts, like “good will,” “moral agent,” and “obligation” and their logical relationship to one another.[26] Since the moral law should be necessary and absolute, it cannot consider any contingent features. It is these analytic considerations that lead Kant to his second formulation of the Categorical Imperative: “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”[27]

This brief sketch of Kant’s account of moral knowledge does create some concern. One problem has to do with Kant’s understanding of the epistemic starting point. Hume may have awoken Kant from his dogmatic slumbers, but Kant seems to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Hume’s skeptical challenge leads Kant to embrace epistemological and ontological dualism, when he should have rejected the skepticism.[28] The result is the Kant believes an implicit contradiction. He says he cannot have knowledge of God, except by practical reason. But this is an a priori theological belief which is no better established than the alternative. A better response can be found in the work of Alvin Plantinga, which takes seriously the implications of the Christian worldview.[29] Kevin Diller suggests that Plantinga and Barth have similar positions on this front. When faced with the problem of skepticism, Diller argues that traditionally philosophers have seen the problem as a dilemma. Either one can embrace the skepticism or change the definition of truth and knowledge (anti-realism). Diller argues that both Barth and Plantinga “chart an escape through the horns of this dilemma by rejecting certain core epistemological assumptions of modernity. Plantinga identifies its origins in the unreasonable deontology associated with classical foundationalism. Barth heralds the pre-engaged givenness and self-grounding of divine self-revelation."[30] They, instead of buckling under the weight of modernism, opt for a critical realist position of knowledge that “strongly affirms the possibility of theological knowledge.”[31]

Here is a related problem to Kant’s view. If his ethical theory ends up affirming the necessity of God, then why would God be left out of the epistemic story? Surely, if God exists and he is personal in the way that Kant’s view requires, then perhaps he might, as Plantinga suggests, create us to know him, perhaps even in a properly basic way. Considering the earlier argument that all epistemology is inherently theological, it would seem to make Barthian and Plantingian accounts at least prima facie more plausible because they at least acknowledge the determinate relation of epistemology to worldview.

A Trinitarian Account of Moral Knowledge

Having now shown some reasons to be skeptical of Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of moral knowledge, we will now see how a Trinitarian and biblical account is superior. But first we must sketch out this Trinitarian account. A significant difference between a Trinitarian account and the other accounts concerns their respective starting points. We begin with theology rather than epistemological method (particularism over methodism). The first theological assumption relevant to moral knowledge is that God is the good and that, therefore, any moral knowledge we might have will in some way be dependent on him. That God ought to be identified with the good is widely held Christian belief shared among theologians from Augustine to Robert Adams.[32] If goodness is identified with God, then the goodness of all other things must be explained in terms of resemblance to God. Moral knowledge, then is a kind of knowledge of God, either of himself directly or derivatively in his creation. That moral knowledge would be available to us given the existence of God is internally coherent and plausible. Plantinga, in a discussion of the availability of knowledge of God in general says this: “[If it is true that God exists, then] the natural thing to think is that he created us in such a way that we would come to hold true beliefs as that there is such a person as God, that he is our creator, that we owe him obedience and worship, that he is worthy of worship, that he loves us, and so on. And if that is so, then the natural thing to think is that the cognitive processes that do produce belief in God are aimed by their designer at producing that belief.”[33]  The other assumption is that the God in view is the Trinitarian God of the Bible who is revealed primarily by his Word, Jesus Christ.

Considering these assumptions, the obvious concern given our aim is to say what moral knowledge God has revealed in his Word and how he has done this. God’s modes of revelation can be divided into two categories: general and special and God has made moral knowledge available through both means, though to varying degrees. God the Father, through his Word, who made all things, reveals some of morality in his creation (Col. 1:15-16; Rom. 1:18; 2:14). However, this moral knowledge is suppressed because of sin. Some limited amount of moral knowledge is available by this route, but it is fragmentary and clouded by what Plantinga calls “the noetic effects of sin.”[34] This means that the only ultimately reliable and full source of moral knowledge must come by way of divine grace and special revelation.

If special revelation is required for this sort of moral knowledge, which is a species of the genus “knowledge of God,” then written Word of God, the Bible, would be the place to turn. But if God primarily reveals himself in and through his Word, who is Jesus Christ, then this could create a problem. The problem arises if there is a disconnect between God’s primary and supreme mode of revelation, his Son, who is the Word, and the Bible, for as John writes, “No one has ever seen God. The only one [Who is the Word of God], himself God, who is in closest fellowship with the Father, has made God known” (John 1:18, NET). Carson concludes from this text that “the Word was simultaneously God and with God—has broken the barrier that made it impossible for human beings to see God, and has made him known.”[35] If this separation between written Word and Word of God were actual, then the implication would be that the only special revelation to which we have ready access would be inferior to the ideal revelation of God in Jesus Christ. To put the problem another way: If in the Bible we do not encounter the Word of God, who is the only one to make the Father known, then the Bible cannot be a reliable or full source of moral knowledge. The only sure source of moral knowledge is encounter with the Living Word, who is Jesus Christ. Therefore, if our moral knowledge is going to be the best kind possible for us, it must find its source in the Word of God; the Bible must be a revelation of Jesus Christ. Fortunately, Barth shows us the way to understand the Written Word and the Word as intimately connected.

Barth contends that Holy Scripture is composed of the prophetic and apostolic witness to Christ. In the Written Word, the Church is given “the promise of God's mercy which is uttered in the person of Him who is very God and very Man and which takes up our cause when we could not help ourselves at all because of our enmity against God.”[36] The promise of the Written Word is “Immanuel;” it is the working out of John 1:18. Barth adds that the Bible is the word of men “who yearned, waited and hoped for this Immanuel and who finally saw, heard and handled it in Jesus Christ. Holy Scripture declares, attests and proclaims it. And by its declaration, attestation and proclamation it promises that it applies to us also and to us specifically.”[37] For Barth, then, the Bible functions on two levels. First, its subject is Jesus Christ. All of the Bible either looks forward or back to the revelation of God in his Son. Second, God is at work in the Bible. The Bible is not a static object, but has the character of “event.” God speaks in and through the Written Word and what he speaks is his Word, who is the Son. Thus, the content of the Written Word points to the Son, and in the Written Word, we encounter the Word of God. In this way, the Bible can serve as the best possible ground for moral knowledge. It is this sure ground that allows the Bible to not only supplement the limited moral knowledge available via general revelation, but also to correct misunderstandings. What is implicit in creation, is made explicit in Jesus Christ and his Written Word.

Barth’s comment about the person of Christ being “very God and very man” also shows why the Bible is especially fit to be our source of moral knowledge. Jesus as “very God,” possesses the right kind of authority to place upon us binding moral obligations for, plausibly, God as the creator of humanity would ipso facto have moral authority over them.[38] If Jesus were not God himself, then God’s revelation of himself in Christ would be deficient and not self-authenticating. On the other hand, the fact that Jesus is “very man” is also relevant, for in the life and person of Jesus, we find the ideal moral exemplar.[39] Jesus authoritatively as God not only tells us what we ought to do, but he also shows how humans ought to function. He gives us a clear picture of the human good. It is Jesus’ status as both “very God and very man” that puts him in a position to set forth authoritatively and completely moral knowledge with respect to the right and the good. And the fact that he communicates through and encounters us in the Written Word means this knowledge is accessible to us. The Written Word, as Barth says, is the concrete realization of Immanuel.

What the Written Word says about the right and the good also provide reason to prefer the Trinitarian account over the alternatives considered. With respect to the good, Aristotle’s virtue ethic is deficient in two ways when compared with the ethic of the Bible. First, Aristotle’s account of the virtues is both incomplete and in error at certain points. The cardinal virtues, discoverable by general revelation according to Thomas Aquinas, are supplemented by the Written Word. The theological virtues are beyond “the capacity of human nature” to apprehend and therefore it is “necessary for man to receive [knowledge of them] from God.”[40] Second, Aristotle’s vision of the good life is inferior to the biblical vision. Aristotle’s conception of life in in the polis is based on a truncated view of the good for man. Fully realized human flourishing only occurs in shalom, where God and man live in love with one another and harmony with the whole of the created order (cf. Zeph 3:15;19-20; 8:3-12). With respect to the right, we also see that Kant’s account is inferior. While Kant argues that one ought to always treat others as ends and never merely as means, Jesus commands that we “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk. 12:31). While Kant may have intended to arrive at a conclusion like Jesus’, his insistence on basing moral knowledge of the deliverances of pure reason deemphasizes the central role that love ought to play in the working out of our moral obligations. One advantage of a Trinitarian account should already be evident: a Trinitarian account takes seriously the finitude of man and the inescapabilty of making theological assumptions (either implicitly or explicitly) in our quest for moral knowledge, but the other primary advantage is this: The central place of love in the Christian ethic and its deep, natural connection with the Trinity shows that the biblical ethic is both internally coherent and that it confirms our highest possible vision of what the ethical life  should be. This should count as evidence in favor of the credibility of the Bible as the source of moral knowledge for us.

However, we must not forget the kind of objection raised by Peter Enns at the beginning. Throughout Christian history, readers of the Bible have found certain elements of its moral vision to be abhorrent and incompatible with their understanding of a loving God. Some have seen the picture of God in the Old Testament to be the opposite of loving; they instead seem him as violent and vindictive. If the Bible presents an ultimately incoherent vision of ethics, then this would count as a defeater for thinking of the Bible as the source for moral knowledge. Therefore, some response to this charge must be made. Here are two suggestions. First, it may be that many of the objections to the ethics of the OT are simply based on hermeneutical error. For example, Copan and Flanagan argue that texts claiming the complete destruction of the Canaanites are hyperbolic and that all that God actually commands is that Israel drive them from the land.[41] The language of “total extermination” is an ancient idiom that should not be read literally. Second, we should not expect that our moral beliefs match univocally with what is actually the case about morality. There is also no reason to think our natural moral knowledge should be totally equivocal, either. Rather, we should expect that our knowledge of the good and the right is analogical and open to revision, but not that it would be totally overturned.[42] Lewis argues this view:

Divine "goodness" differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child's first attempt to draw a wheel. But when the child has learned to draw, it will know that the circle it then makes is what it was trying to make from the very beginning. This doctrine is presupposed in Scripture. Christ calls men to repent - a call which would be meaningless if God's standard were sheerly different from that which they already knew and failed to practice.[43]

If the Bible did not challenge, expand, and correct our moral beliefs, then would it would be superfluous to moral knowledge, but as we have seen, there are good reasons to think it is necessary. So, while this objection should be taken seriously, there are at least two promising ways of responding that will preserve the coherence of the Bible as our source of moral knowledge.

Conclusion

The aim was to show why the Bible is necessary for moral knowledge. It was shown that two of the most popular alternative accounts for moral knowledge beg theological questions, have internal inconsistencies, and present a relatively truncated vision of the ethical life. For this reason, these alternate accounts do not provide the best explanation of moral knowledge. However, the Trinitarian account is internally coherent, has considerable explanatory power, and presents an ethical vision that exceeds our highest expectations. This vision is communicated to us by the Word of God in and through the Written Word, which means that moral knowledge is readily accessible to us. In view of the possibilities considered, the Bible as the source for moral knowledge for us is the best explanation available.

[1] Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation : Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005). Kindle location 601.

[2] Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics (I,1), ed. Geoffrey William & Torrance Bromiley, Thomas Forsyth and Geoffrey William Translator: Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975). 513.

[3] John Douglas Morrison, Has God Said?, The Evangelical Monograph Series (Eugene: Pickwick, 2006). 155.

[4] Ibid. 156.

[5] Barth. 110.

[6]Though this does not mean that one could not confirm the veracity of the Bible in other ways. The point is that the Bible has its own authority as a source of knowledge; its has this authority both ontologically and epistemically. Ontologically, that authority cannot be supplemented by anything else. Epistemically, nothing else is required, but arguments that corroborate the Bible would be appropriate.

[7] Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics (I,2), ed. Geoffrey William & Torrance Bromiley, Thomas Forsyth and Geoffrey William Translator: Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975). 31.

[8] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Christian Classics Ethereal Library 1845). Chapter 1, section 1.

Image: "Grandma's Bible" by Andrew Seaman. CC License. 

Why Does New Year’s Day Come After Christmas?

There is no inherent reason that the celebration of New Year’s Day should be only a week after the observance of Christmas, but Westerners have accommodated quite comfortably to the opportunity to have an extended holiday.  Historically speaking, the juxtaposition of Christmas and New Year’s Day seems not to have been designed, but rather came about as a concatenation of institutional decisions.  The earliest Roman calendars set March 1 as the beginning of the year, and our names for September, October, November, and December came from the Latin numbers for seven through ten.  In 153 BC the Romans designated January 1 as the beginning of the new year because it marked the installation of the Roman Consuls to their year-long terms.  The name of January was particularly appropriate to this purpose, since it was named for the god Janus, who was pictured with two faces looking in opposite directions, forward and backward.  Jan. 1 as the beginning of the calendar year was continued by Julius Caesar in his reconstructed calendar in the first century BC and was adjusted by Pope Gregory in the late 16th century into the form we use today; but the church did not give Jan. 1 any religious significance, except that it was dedicated to the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus.  Protestant countries, especially England, didn’t adopt the Gregorian calendar until the eighteenth century, so they were even less concerned with any religious connection between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

However, I have been thinking this year of how there is a spiritual and philosophical dimension to this juxtaposition of the Feast of the Nativity and New Year’s, in that it lends itself to a consideration of the interaction of light and time.  God’s first act of creation was with the words, “Let there be light,” and His second act was to separate darkness from the light to create Day and Night—that is, out of light came time, even before the physical markers of time, the sun and moon.  Since all of God’s creation was seen to be good, there was no association of darkness with evil until sin entered the world.  In its unsullied form, darkness provides a time of rest for mankind and a meaningful rhythm between work and renewing sleep.  As a result of sin, God’s orderly balancing of light and darkness was thrown into disarray.  Thus, when Jesus, the Light of the world appeared on the scene, He was sent to pierce the darkness and to overcome it (John 1:4-5)—one might even say, to redeem it.  The birth of Jesus came at the proper time according to God’s plan and mankind’s need (Mark 1:14-15; Gal. 4:4-5).  Through the Incarnation, God re-enacted His original initial act of creation, the insertion of light into chaos.

So in this new beginning, the sowing of the seed of regeneration, we have also an incipient redemption of time, a covenant to translate us into a timeless New Heaven and New Earth, in which there is such perfect rest that there is no night, and no need of sun and moon, for the Light of the Father and the Lamb are perpetually banishing sin-blemished night (Rev. 21:22-25).  Thus, the new beginning represented in Christmas can lead us naturally into a celebration of our New Birth as children of God through the grace of the sacrificed Lamb of God.

Our human celebration of the New Year has something of the ambivalence of the God Janus for whom January is named.  When we look both back and forward in time, we experience a mixture of regret and hope, while recognizing our limited ability to do any better in the future than we have in the past.  But that double view has been redeemed and unified by the Perfect Link between past and future, our Lord Jesus.  It is that thought I have expressed in the following poem.

For the New Year

Would to God

That one of the faces of Janus

Were altruistic; but both,

So far as I can see,

Reflect the inability of mortal me

To espouse the good for its own sake.

I hardly make the turn toward love

Before I find my comfort

Has not been left behind.

There seems but relative difference

Between the good I choose

And the evil I refuse.

Thanks be to God that He makes

Neither too much of the backward aspect

Nor too little of the hopeful prospect.

He set the model when He looked

Two directions at once,

But with a single eye.

                              --Elton D. Higgs

Image: Nativity with a Torch by the Le Nain brothers, c. 1635-40, Public Domain

The Ambiguous Branch

A Twlight Musing

Two Messianic passages in Isaiah speak of the Savior as a shoot from an apparently dead source, but they are starkly different in tone.  In Isaiah 11 we have a mighty King:

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. . . .  [W]ith righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

(Is. 11: 1, 4)

Here the emphasis is on the Messiah as triumphal ruler, exercising divine power to bring justice and peace on the earth.  In contrast, the other passage, Isaiah 53, presents a despised and rejected Messiah who is put to death unjustly:  He

grew up . . . like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.  He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Is. 53: 2-3)

His role here is seen, not as ruler, but as one “wounded for our transgressions” (v. 5) and “oppressed” (v. 7).

I find it both startling and instructive that that there should be such contrasting uses of the same image of the Messiah as an unexpected offshoot or sprout.  Both applications of the image are, of course, true, but they depict different stages of the Messiah’s impact on the world, and they need to be seen in the proper sequence.  The presentation in Isaiah 11 focuses on the Davidic lineage of Jesus and on the ultimate rule of Christ on the New Earth when he reigns as David’s heir, exercising power over the “Peaceable Kingdom” depicted in Isaiah 11 and 65:17-25.  However, this manifestation of the Messiah was not to come merely as a renewal of the flawed political Kingdom of Israel, nor was it to be a direct outcome of the First Advent of the Christ, but as a component of His Second Coming.  Before the full fruition of Jesus as the Son of David must come the fulfillment of His mission as the Son of God, accomplished through His death as the perfect sacrificial Lamb of God.  Only in that way could the temporal throne of David be transmuted into the Eternal Kingdom.

Moreover, that is also the pattern for us as God’s children.  If we are to be glorified with Him, we must first participate in His suffering (see Rom. 8:17).  Reflecting that truth, and in the spirit of the Advent season, I present the following poem.

The Budding Stump

(Isaiah 11:1-3 and 53:1-3)

The Stump of David,

Cracked and grey with age,

Neglected, cast aside,

Now sprouts again, as God had said.

Not couched in beauty, or in power,

Comes this obscure and unexpected Branch;

Nor with glory sought by swords,

Drenching Israel's enemies in blood--

Though bloodshed nascent lies within.

O Lord of stumps,

Whose sapience informs

What men have cast aside,

And makes to grow again

What You Yourself have pruned away:

Take now the hopes of glory

Grown and nourished by our pride;

Reform them by Your promised Shoot,

That we may find the power

That lies in roots, and not in mighty trees.

Elton D. Higgs (Dec. 26, 1982)

Image: "Winter Bloom" by MelissaTG. CC License. 

Three Reasons Christmas Matters for Morality

At this time of year, Christmas images are everywhere. As we walk into the grocery store, we see Santa and his reindeer painted in the window, adorned by the phrase, “Peace on earth, good will to men.” As we drive by a neighbor’s house, we notice a brightly lit nutcracker. Close beside, a nativity. These decorations go up right after Thanksgiving, and by the first week in December, they just blend into the background. I think the lack of attention we pay to ornaments often extends to Christmas itself. We hear the sermons and sing the carols, but the reality they point to, we often overlook. The preacher says, “One of Jesus’ names is ‘Emmanuel.’ That means ‘God is with us.” We nod our heads, and we know that is a good thing. But why is it a good thing, exactly? And what is this business about “peace on earth and good will to men?” That’s a question I aim to answer at least partially by giving three reasons Christmas matters for morality.

1. Jesus’ birth reveals the metaphysical nature of human beings

Many atheists today think that human beings are merely biological machines. For example, Richard Dawkins has famously said, “We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. ... This is exactly what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living.” A similar idea is expressed by Daniel Dennett who thinks of humans as “information processing machines” created by mindless natural forces. Now, Dawkins and Dennett are likely quick to affirm the dignity and value of human persons. But difficulty arises when we ask, “How is it that a machine could have such value?” It does not seem the bare matter could ground real value. Besides that, what follows from such a view is that humans have no genuine free will. Instead, their actions are determined by physical necessity. Not everyone agrees this precludes free will, but the views of such compatibilists strain credulity and common sense. Another problem is that on such reductive materialist views, humans as humans don’t even exist. Instead what we have is a pile of parts arranged human-wise. Humans are, when we take the view seriously, a collection of elements hanging together due to natural forces. “Human” is just the term that human-shaped piles call other human-shaped piles. With a view like this, it easy to see why ethicists like Peter Singer have argued that very young babies or the mentally disabled are justifiably euthanized.[1]

Consider the contrast presented in the Christmas story. For one, there is a certain metaphysical view of human persons at work. God became a man.  We’ve got to keep in mind that God did not just appear to become a man. He really did become a man. If this is true, then humans could not possibly be mere machines. As Jesus tells us, “God is spirit” (John 4:24). Something that is essentially and necessarily spiritual cannot become only material and retain its identity. If God, who is spirit, became a pile of parts arranged human-wise, he could no longer be called God. Therefore, there must be something more to man than his physical parts. But what kind of thing must humans be for God to become one of us? It seems that, at the least, humans need to be souls.

Why is this so? First we must realize that the Second Person of the Trinity existed as a person prior to his incarnation. This person is a person without any physical parts. If this person continues to be a person in the incarnation, his personhood cannot depend on any physical parts or else he would not be identical with himself prior to incarnation. That is to say, the material parts of Jesus as the incarnate Son of God must be only accidental properties and not essential ones. If they were essential, it would mean there was an essential difference between Jesus incarnated and Jesus prior to his incarnation. The person incarnated would not be the same person as the Second Person of the Trinity. But, Jesus, who is an essentially spiritual person, became an actual human person. Consider what this must means for humans in general. If Jesus really became a human, humans must also be essentially spiritual persons. Humans, then, must essentially be non-material substances; humans must be souls.[2]

If humans are souls, everything they do is not determined by the physical laws of the universe. Having a soul also provides the “metaphysical goods” to ground a human nature. If humans are souls, they are not piles of parts. Instead, they are a unified substance endowed by God with personhood. These powers include the power of volition so that humans are able to direct their lives toward one end or another. So when we see Jesus laying in manger, one of the things we ought to perceive is a rejection of the reductive view of human persons proposed by Dawkins and Dennett. The incarnation tells us that humans are body and soul. As such, they have the capacity to transcend the determinative laws of nature and become agents, capable of directing their own lives.

1. Jesus’ birth demonstrates the value and dignity of human beings

Jesus’ birth also demonstrates the value and dignity of human beings. It does this a couple of ways. First, as we read in John 3:16, God sent Jesus into the world because he loved the world. God loved humanity and so he made a way for us to be saved from our sins. And he did this at very great cost. God could have loved us, but only a little. In that case, he might refrain from sending his Son, but feel very bad about doing so. Suppose you have a friend who you loved only half-heartedly. Unfortunately, some malicious criminals take your friend hostage. They are the kind of criminals that will slowly torture and kill your friend just for the fun of it. And then these criminals send you a ransom note saying that, if you agree, you can take her place. Now, only loving your friend half-heartedly, you feel empathy for her, but you don’t make the trade. You would have to love your friend deeply and fully if you were to trade your life for hers. And this is what Jesus has done for us.

For humans, though, we often love what we should not. We love things that are not good. However, God, who is maximally good, has no misplaced affections. When God loves us, he does so because we are his children and made in his image. We have intrinsic value and are therefore worth loving. Notice, though, that this worthiness is not autonomous from God, as if we could make ourselves worth loving. Instead, we are only worth loving because God graciously made us in his image, investing us with the worth we possess. As Mark Linville puts it: “God values human persons because they are intrinsically valuable. Further, they have such value because God has created them after his own image as a Person with a rational and moral nature.”

The fact that Jesus came as a man is another way his birth shows the value and dignity of humans. Not only were humans worth saving, it was also worth becoming a human to do it. Consider this proposition: “Being a human is good.” How could we know whether this was true or false? A reductive atheist would have real trouble here because (1) there are no such things as human beings, only human shaped piles, and (2) there is no clear way to make sense of “good.” David Bentley Hart, with his characteristic confidence and cadence, writes, “Among the mind’s transcendental aspirations, it is the longing for moral goodness that is probably the most difficult to contain within the confines of a naturalist metaphysics.” However, as Christians we know both that humans exist and that God grounds the good. We also know that God, being maximally great, only ever does what is good. Therefore, if God became a human being, being a human being must be good. That may sound like a trivial idea, but consider the implications. If being human is good, it means that our lives have meaning. We do not need to progress to the next stage of evolution, we only need to live as humans as God intended. It also means, contra the worldview of many, that there’s nothing inherently bad about the body; salvation includes the redemption of the body, not deliverance from it. If being human is good, all humans have dignity and value.

1. Jesus’ birth means it is possible for humans to live the moral life

If we consider the possibility of living the moral life on reductive atheism, we end up with some dim prospects. One worry is that there is no objectively good moral life. This is why so many atheists talk of making one’s own meaning in life. Though the universe is cold and dark, human ought to nevertheless pull themselves up by the bootstraps and choose to live a life of meaning. I am inclined to think this is just wishful thinking. Besides this, if humans are machines and have no free will, it seems impossible to live a moral life. It seems that for a choice to be moral, it must be chosen by an agent. We don’t think our computers are immoral when they crash (despite the temptation); neither are human biological machines when they do something destructive.

Further, unless the universe just happens to cause us to live a moral life by accident, we will have to work at becoming a virtuous person. We must act as agents who are capable of making moral progress. Atheist Sam Harris agrees and makes this suggestion: “Getting behind our conscious thoughts and feelings can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives (while knowing, of course, that we are ultimately being steered).”[3] But of course, to say that we can steer ourselves in any sense is to discard the idea that humans are machines. In order to steer ourselves, we must be something more than that. So reductive atheists seem to have no hope for living the moral life, whatever that might be. And the way Harris in such sanguine fashion affirms a contradiction as if doing so makes sense doesn’t eliminate the incoherence.

The birth of Jesus, on the other hand, suggests a very different outcome. To see why, we must go all the way back to the creation account in Genesis. There we see that God made man in his image and to rule and reign as his representatives on the earth (Gen. 1:27-28). Adam and Eve were, in a very real sense, responsible for realizing the kingdom of God. And God’s kingdom is what humans were made for, a place where God, humans, and creation live together in peace. It is important to understand here that peace means much more than we modern readers might normally think. We tend to think of peace as the absence of violence. But for the Jews, peace was much more robust than that. Peace, for them, was happiness and human flourishing—shalom. If we live in peace, we live according to the created order, enjoying and appreciating God and all that he has made, especially other humans.

However, humans chose to disobey God and thus sin entered the world. The effects of sin were so dramatic that humans could no longer live as God intended; the kingdom of God could not be established by these fallen humans. However, God did not leave us in this predicament. God set into motion a plan that would restore the kingdom of God to the earth and the story of the Bible is very much this story. God called Abraham and promised that through him, all the people of the earth would be blessed (Gen 12:3). Then, from the descendants of Abraham, God formed the nation of Israel. God promised Israel a King who would restore peace to the earth. God says this King will take away punishment and take great delight in his people. He will “rescue the lame” and “gather the exiles”; he will restore their fortunes (Zeph 3:15;19-20).  Zechariah records for us what God says it will be like when this King comes (8:3-12):

This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Once again men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.”

 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “It may seem marvelous to the remnant of this people at that time, but will it seem marvelous to me?” declares the Lord Almighty.

 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “I will save my people from the countries of the east and the west. I will bring them back to live in Jerusalem; they will be my people, and I will be faithful and righteous to them as their God.”

 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Now hear these words, ‘Let your hands be strong so that the temple may be built.’ This is also what the prophets said who were present when the foundation was laid for the house of the Lord Almighty. Before that time there were no wages for people or hire for animals. No one could go about their business safely because of their enemies, since I had turned everyone against their neighbor.  But now I will not deal with the remnant of this people as I did in the past,” declares the Lord Almighty.

“The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people.

The takeaway from this passage should be that this King will restore the robust, Jewish notion of peace to the world. Without this King, humans would be left without hope and the possibility of ever flourishing as humans. But, under the reign of this King, the effects of sin will be done away with and human flourishing will once again be possible.

We are also told by Micah that this king would be born in Bethlehem and from the tribe of Judah; his origin will be “from old, from ancient times” (Micah 5:2). So when Jesus, Son of God and from the family of Judah, was born in Bethlehem, we know this must be the King about whom we were told. We should understand that God has kept his promise to make the world right again. Now, while Jesus was still laying in a manger, how this would happen had not been made clear. That would come later. But we should be very happy indeed to know that God, our King, was born on Christmas some 2000 years ago because with his birth came the promise that humans can live as God intended – in peace.

[1] Singer thinks that the only thing that counts as a person is a rational, self-conscious person. Babies and the mentally disabled are therefore not persons and do not deserve the same rights as other persons. See for example his Should the Baby Live?: The Problem of Handicapped Infants (1988), Oxford University Press.

[2] This is not to say that having a body is not the ideal way for humans to exist. However, humans can apparently be separated from their bodies at least for a short while. Paul, for example, was caught up to the third heaven. Also, prior to the Second Coming, humans will apparently exist sans bodies while they await the resurrection. J. P. Moreland and Scott Rae defend this view in Body & Soul (2000) IVP Academic.

[3] Sam Harris, Free Will. Simon & Schuster.

Photo: "Nativity" by Jess Weese. CC License.