The Moral Argument and Christian Theology, Part III: Glorification

The Moral Argument(s) and Christian Salvation.png

In earlier installments we discussed our deep need for forgiveness and moral transformation—justification and sanctification, respectively—but there is one more step: Not just to be wholly forgiven and radically transformed, but for the process to culminate. We need the good work that has been begun within us to be completed, which God promises to do at the day of Christ Jesus for those who trust him. And so what we are talking about now is the Christian category of glorification, when we are entirely conformed to the image of Jesus, morally beautified to the uttermost, every last vestige of sin having been excised and expunged.

This answers to a deep intuitive recognition of a third basic moral drive or need, or maybe aspiration—yet one, once more, beyond the reach of our own capacities without divine grace—the hunger to be perfected, turned into the best versions of ourselves, delivered entirely from the power and consequences of sin. Christianity assures us, and we have principled reasons to believe, that this is no Pollyannaish pipe dream, but a reality we can look forward to with a hope that will not disappoint.

Interestingly, Immanuel Kant thought that human beings would never achieve a “holy will,” which he considered reserved for God alone. The process of moral perfection was thus something at best approached asymptotically—we get closer and closer throughout eternity but never fully arrive at it. It is a process that is never completed, he thought, so this served as the basis of his argument for immortality, since the process must continue forever.

Christian theology, I suspect, suggests that Kant was both right and wrong. He was wrong to think we will not be perfected. The Christian doctrine of glorification is about the process of sanctification reaching an end point. Ultimately sin will be completely defeated within us, and we will find complete deliverance from its power and consequences. That is a glorious hope.

Still, Kant was also likely right that there will remain a movement, a dynamism, even after the point of glorification. For one thing, the prospect of beholding the glory and beauty and goodness of God is an unending process. For another, once full deliverance from sin comes is when the fullest life for which we were created can really begin, which even the present life already intimates at.

A. E. Taylor wrote eloquently about this in his Faith of a Moralist. Here is just one example:

The moral life does not consist merely in getting into right relations with our fellows or our Maker. That’s only preliminary to the real business: to live in them. Even in this life we have to do more than unlearn unloving. We have to practice giving love actual embodiment. This is continuous with what is morally of highest importance and value in our present life…. Heaven must be a land of delightful surprises. We should have learned to love every neighbor who crosses our path, to hate nothing that God has made, to be indifferent to none of the mirrors of His light. But even where there is no ill-will or indifference to interfere with love, it is still possible for love to grow as understanding grows.

Combining all the discussions of our last three installments, what we have here is a three-pronged moral argument based in God’s grace. It is by God’s grace we can find the forgiveness we desperately need for having fallen short of the moral standard, which we all do. It is by God’s grace we can be set free from both our subjective feelings and objective condition of guilt, and it is by God’s grace that we will be eventually entirely conformed to the image of Christ and delivered completely from sin’s power and consequences. From first to last, what answers our deepest moral needs—for forgiveness, for change, and for perfection—is the astounding grace of a good God perfect in holiness and perfect in love.