Think About It!
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What is theistic moral apologetics, what is its aim, what is its rationale, how does it work, and how does it fit into the broader field of Christian apologetics and metaethics? I take moral apologetics in the following way.
Contemporary theistic moral apologetics is a specialized field in the broader field of Christian apologetics that seeks to work within, to draw from and contribute to the broader field of theistic metaethics. Metaethics, broadly considered, is understood to be the critical and comparative theory of various ethical systems. It is theory of theory and is understood as a 2nd order[1] discipline in the field of ethical theory and is a relatively modern development in the field of ethical thinking. Theistic meta-ethics is a God-centered metaethics.
Theistic moral apologetics seeks to critically engage non-theistic metaethical thinkers of all persuasions on all fronts at the level of technical philosophy. These thinkers might be historical and/or contemporary thinkers. This engagement typically requires answering standard objections that are often leveled against theistic metaethics as well as developing some version or element of the moral argument for the existence of God in the context of such critical engagement. This would typically be considered a venture in natural theology.
Theistic moral apologetics seeks also to critically engage 1st order ethical disputes by making explicit and laying bare the moral and metaphysical assumptions that are often unstated in such disputes and developing a reasoned case for a theistic ethical and metaphysical perspective concerning such disputes if such a reasoned case is relevant.
Christian Theistic moral apologetics also seeks to develop a distinctively Trinitarian and Christ-centered metaethical way of understanding things. Such work takes the Christian apologist beyond a generalized theism to a distinctively Christian metaethical theism. This should involve…
Working deliberately from the historical events of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ with the clear understanding that Christianity never reduces to a mere system of morality.
Working deliberately from the revelation of God in the Scriptures.
Engaging and thoroughly thinking through Christian ethical issues and questions that are unique to the believing Christian and Christian community.
Engaging and thoroughly thinking through the various distinctive areas of Christian ethical practice both within the church and within the world in which the church is situated.
These tasks should be undertaken at two distinct but related levels. First, they should be developed at the level of technical philosophy and theology, as required, and secondly, they should be developed at the non-technical lay level. This second level involves taking the complex things of the first level and making them accessible for a lay audience.
Natural Theology and Christian Apologetics
Natural theology and Christian apologetics are related but nevertheless distinct enterprises.[2] While natural theology arguably reaches all the way back to ancient Greek philosophy[3] and embraces a wider range of theological positions than traditional theism, Christian apologetics must trace its origins and purposes back to the beginnings of the person of Jesus Christ. Apologetics necessarily involves the defense of the veracity of the message and meaning of Jesus and the content of the Christian faith.[4] Theistic moral apologetics, although part of natural theology, is not necessarily distinctively Christian. It can certainly serve as an important step towards a distinctively Christian theism, but it deliberately limits its arguments to Theism proper.
This limit provides certain polemical advantages. As a part of natural theology the argument boasts a wide umbrella and could be endorsed by any theist whatsoever whether they are Jewish, Islamic,[5] even non-religious or non-traditional theists. In this respect the moral argument for God’s existence is broader than Christian theism and can be appropriated by a much larger audience. This makes the argument much more versatile and serviceable across the various areas of philosophy, metaethics, and various other disciplines. As such it can be pitted readily against various versions of atheism. It is versatile in that it can be joined with other arguments for God’s existence to generate a much stronger overall cumulative case for Theism. This also gives the argument a much wider applicability.[6] In any area wherein human moral concerns are central the moral argument for God’s existence is relevant; for example, in the various human sciences, as well as the field of political and economic philosophy. The argument fits well with questions involving the nature and basis for law and justice, or the basis for human rights, or endorsing human dignity, or our understanding of aesthetics and beauty, religious experience, and even engaging in the rough and tumble of the practice of politics and economics as well.
The moral argument, if successful, also fills in a considerable amount of detail concerning who God is and the kind of God the argument might endorse. A too vaguely thin Theism will not suffice for the moral argument. The thicker character and being of God that the argument leads to is strongly relevant to the whole content and nature of the human moral domain in which our lives and experience is immersed. Furthermore, given the intense debates concerning the moral order and the moral nature of humanity, it would be unconscionable that Christian philosophers would not challenge the current various secularist moral systems of our time as well as abandon our duty to guard fidelity, the content of the faith, and the pastoral responsibilities that are a regular and ongoing part of the life of the church in the world.
[1] The distinction between 1st order and 2nd order moral theorizing is a common but important distinction in metaethics. The focus of a 1st order moral proposition is the question, what is moral? An example of a 1st order ethical/moral/normative truth would be that murder is wrong; it is immoral to murder, it is moral to refrain from murder. 2nd order metaethics focuses on the question of the nature of morality itself; what morality itself is and not particularly on the content of 1st order moral truths. Typically, metaethics concerns questions of moral ontology (the nature of morality), moral epistemology (knowledge of moral truths), moral language (the meaning of moral terms), and a cluster of related questions like the connection between morality and rationality, or morality and motivation.
[2] For useful overviews of the history and concepts of natural theology, see Russell Re Manning, John Hedley Brooke, and Fraser N. Watts, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013); James Brent, “Natural Theology,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, n.d., accessed September 11, 2021, https://iep.utm.edu/theo-nat/; Andrew Chignell and Derk Pereboom, “Natural Theology and Natural Religion,” ed. Edward N Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA, Fall 2020), accessed September 11, 2021, URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/natural-theology/>; also see Charles Taliaferro, “The Project of Natural Theology,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 1–23. C. P. Ruloff and Peter Horban, eds., Contemporary Arguments in Natural Theology: God and Rational Belief (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021).
[3] Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers: The Gifford Lectures, 1936, trans. Edward S Robinson (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003/1936).
[4] See Jude 3, where Jude exhorts Christians to “…contend earnestly for the faith once for all handed down to the saints” (NASB). For a good overview of the history of Christian apologetics see Benjamin K. Forrest, Joshua D. Chatraw, and Alister E. McGrath, eds., The History of Apologetics: A Biographical and Methodological Introduction (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Academic, 2020).
[5] Robert R. Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011). Reilly has shown that some of the elements of orthodox Islamic theology make it very difficult to square with a strong moral argument; particularly the tendency of reducing Allah to sheer divine will as well as a tendency, as a result of this, toward impersonalism.
[6] For a very useful summary overview of the relation of the arguments concerning God and the moral order, see Anne Jeffrey, God and Morality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019); Peter Byrne and Stephen Evans, “Moral Arguments for the Existence of God,” ed. Edward N. Zalta, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford, CA: The Metaphysics Research Lab, Spring 2013).
