In a previous apologetics series on this blog, In Defense of Christian Ethics, I responded to a number of common objections to the reasonableness of Christian morality. These next few posts will supplement that series, responding to a number of additional objections to the coherence of Christian ethics.
Divine Command Theory
Critics of Christian morality frequently take aim at the coherence of Divine Command Theory (DCT), the idea that things are morally right and wrong simply because God has commanded it to be so. In a previous post, I noted that it is highly questionable whether DCT is really an accurate description of Christian theological ethics, but then went on to argue that, in any case, DCT is, in fact, coherent. It perhaps would have been more fruitful to explain in more detail why DCT is really not an accurate description of Christian theological ethics.
Christian theological ethics does not begin with God giving abstract moral commands to all of humanity. It begins with God forming a covenant relationship with a particular covenant people, Israel. It is in this context of a covenant relationship of love between God and His people that God gives them commands, communicating to them His expectations for them being faithful in carrying out their covenantal obligations. God’s Holy presence dwells in the midst of His covenant people, making them holy, and God’s commands to them are instructions for how they are to live out this holy identity.
In Jesus, God reveals Himself more fully and dwells with His covenant people more intimately, as one of them. Through His death and resurrection, Jesus wins the victory over the powers of sin, death, and evil on behalf of humanity, and inaugurates God’s new creation. All who put faith in Jesus are united to Him, and share in this victory, becoming the firstfruits of God’s new creation. The members of the Church, God’s renewed holy covenant people, are then called to live out their identity in Christ by being conformed to the image of Christ, following Jesus on the way of the cross and living in light of God’s new creation.
This is a very brief summary of the basics of Christian moral theory. Even from this very brief summary, it is quite obvious that a “thick” theological account of Christian moral theory is not accurately expressed by DCT. Thus, even if it can be shown that DCT is incoherent, this does nothing to call into question the coherence of Christian morality.
Theistic Fanaticism
Some have tried to argue that having one’s moral beliefs based on theism is inherently problematic. They argue that believing that one is absolutely right, that one possesses ultimate values, and that God is on one’s side, as Christians do, just leads to dangerous and destructive fanaticism. But faithful Christians do not believe that they are absolutely right; rather, they humbly seek to do God’s will, and are open to learning from others, even from non-Christians, how to do this better. The strength of conviction that faithful Christians possess as they seek God’s will is not “dangerous”; it is what enables great moral heroes such as Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to remain steadfast and uncompromising in the face of great evil. It is this strength of conviction, and not relativistic compromise, which is needed if any true moral progress is to be made in the world.
Christian Disagreement
Some critics have pointed to the widespread disagreement among Christians about various moral issues as evidence that the moral teachings of the Bible and of Christian theology must be muddled and incoherent. But disagreement among Christians about major moral issues is not a result of God’s word being unclear. It is a result of the thinking of many Christians being corrupted by various social, political, and ideological forces, leading to unbiblical thinking about various ethical issues. Since the visible Church has many nominal Christians within it, and since even genuine Christians are imperfect, it is inevitable that sin will manifest itself in the visible Church in the form of Christians disagreeing about major moral issues. This does not mean that God’s word is unclear; it just means that Christians need to do a better job of listening to God’s word.
Biblical Ethics
It is quite obvious to any reader of the Bible that there is significant moral discontinuity between Old Testament ethics and New Testament ethics. Critics of Christianity often point to this as proof that there are direct contradictions in the Bible, and thus that Christianity is incoherent. However, as I have argued in this previous theology post, there is nothing at all incoherent with God giving different commands to His covenant people at different points in salvation history. Just as parents give their children quite different commands when they are toddlers, teenagers, and young adults, God gives His covenant people different moral commands at different times, while still being the same God. Old Testament ethics was not an ultimate expression of God’s moral will for humanity, but only a preliminary stage, leading up to God’s ultimate revelation of Himself and how human beings are supposed to live in Jesus Christ.
There is thus nothing incoherent about the fact that the New Testament has higher moral standards than the Old Testament. Nevertheless, critics of Christianity often argue that certain Old Testament teachings are so morally repugnant that there is no possible way that they could come from the same loving God of the New Testament. So, I will respond to some of these arguments and show why some of these Old Testament teachings are not as bad as critics try to make them out to be.
There are many examples in the Old Testament of God using violence to punish people (Gen 7; Ex 11:4-5; 2 Sam 24:1-15; Ps 137:9; Jer 19:1-9). Critics argue that this makes God a “moral monster,” and encourages human beings to be violent as well. However, there is nothing at all incoherent with saying that God has a right to end the lives of human beings He created, but human beings do not. The New Testament actually depicts God as just as wrathful as in the Old Testament, using Divine violence to smite evildoers, while at the same time teaching that Christians should love their enemies and refuse to use violence. The apostle Paul teaches that Christians should love their enemies and never take revenge, but leave that to the wrath of God (Rom 12:19-21). There is no contradiction at all in this. God is wrathful because He loves His creation, and so is passionately opposed to those who harm, corrupt, and destroy it. But Christians are not supposed to take it upon themselves to try to act as agents of God’s wrath.
Some critics have tried to argue that the Bible promotes the spiritually and morally repugnant idea of making human sacrifices to God. God commanded the Israelites, “The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me” (Ex 22:29), which some have claimed is a reference to human sacrifice. However, God later says, “I have taken the Levites from among the Israelites in place of the first male offspring of every Israelite woman. They are mine” (Num 3:12). The Levites, of course, were not sacrificed, but put to work assisting the priests with the religious rituals of the tabernacle, which shows that being “given” to God is not a reference to human sacrifice. There are numerous references in the Old Testament to pagans offering human sacrifices in their religious rituals. But this practice is always condemned, and God makes it clear that He does not want the Israelites to do imitate this practice in their worship of Him; such an idea never entered His mind (Deut 7:30-31, 18:9-10; Jer 7:30-31, 19:3-5, 32:35).
God did command Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, but He never had any intention of allowing Abraham to actually go through with it (Gen 22). God was merely testing Abraham’s faith and devotion in terms that would have been familiar to him from his pagan context. By stopping Abraham from going through with it, God revealed to Abraham that, unlike the gods Abraham was used to, God does not desire human sacrifices.
The only instance in the Old Testament of someone offering a human sacrifice to God is when Jephthah foolishly vowed to sacrifice whatever met him when he came home as a burnt offering to God, and then followed through with it, even though it ended up being his daughter (Judg 11:29-40). However, the biblical narrator does not in any way commend Jephthah’s actions; he just describes them. The entire book of Judges is the story of Israel sinking deeper and deeper into spiritual and moral depravity, and Jephthah’s actions are just one example of this. Since the Old Testament Law clearly commanded the Israelites never to do such an abominable act, Jephthah obviously should not have followed through with fulfilling his foolish vow.