The Case for a Personal God from Morality: Guilt[1]

The universe and everything contained within it is either the result of a personal God (or gods) or a non-personal essence, force, or set of natural processes. Ultimate reality is either personal or non-personal, and everything within the universe flows from one or the other. This leads to the question: What best explains the observable data in the universe, such as cosmological constants, DNA, human personality, and morality? Are these things the result of a personal God or a non-personal essence, force, or set of natural processes?

Although this article cannot reasonably tackle all of these data points (cosmological constants, DNA, human personality, and morality), it does look at one particular component of morality—namely, guilt—as evidence for the existence of a personal God. In what follows, we will examine the personal nature of guilt, how guilt points toward a personal God, and the connection between these matters and Christian theism.

The Personal Nature of Guilt

Guilt is a nearly universal experience that involves painful feelings of remorse following a moral failure of some sort. What about the nature of guilt: is it personal or non-personal? Generally speaking, non-personal rules and principles, such as mathematical formulas, do not elicit feelings of guilt within individuals; only when one human person has wronged or harmed another person (or group of persons) in some way does guilt arise. As John Henry Newman avows, “Inanimate things [such as rules and principles] cannot stir our affections; these are correlative with persons.”[2] Similarly, H. P. Owen posits, “Why should the failure to enact [values] engender guilt? I can betray a person and I know that I deserve the guilt I feel. But I cannot see how I could betray values if they are impersonal.”[3] Likewise, R. Scott Smith notes,

[W]hen we experience moral failing, we often feel guilt or shame. However, it does not make sense to feel that way in light of some nonspatial, timeless abstract entity with which we cannot even interact. Instead, we have those feelings in the presence of a person. This view does not make sense if morals are just abstract principles that do not have some connection to us.[4]

Presumably, as Newman, Owen, Smith, and others suggest, it would be odd to feel guilt before an abstract, impersonal moral code.[5] Therefore, there is reason to think that the moral code is personal.

How Guilt Points Toward a Personal God

There are many occasions where guilt can be explained solely in relation to human persons. However, there are times when no human person is in view and one still feels guilty. For instance, individuals sometimes feel guilty for failing to use their talents and abilities properly, and other times when persons experience guilt when they sense that they have wasted their lives.[6] Additionally, there are times when the person who has been wronged is no longer around to confer forgiveness, and still other occasions when the wrong seems to be so grievous[7] that no human person seemingly has the authority to offer forgiveness.[8]

In situations like these, before whom is one guilty? It becomes increasingly understandable that many would suggest nothing less than a personal God who bestows such talents and abilities to human persons. As J. P. Moreland says, “[I]f the depth and presence of guilt feelings is to be rational, there must be a Person toward whom one feels moral shame.”[9] Moreover, who is in a position of authority (besides God) to offer forgiveness in moments like these? For these reasons, if the cause of conscience and the One before whom humans are ultimately guilty cannot be completely accounted for in the visible world, then perhaps when individuals fall short they have not merely broken a rule, but rather, as A. E. Taylor claims, “insulted or proved false to a person of supreme excellence, entitled to whole-hearted devotion.”[10]

Christian Theism

In a previous article, I suggested that the moral value of justice gestures in the direction of a personal God, and that on the Christian view, God is intrinsically personal and therefore accounts powerfully for the personal nature of justice (and the personal nature of morality in general). In this article, I claim that the personal nature of guilt provides further evidence not only for the existence of God, but of a God who is personal. Here, the beauty of Christian theism is that God does not leave us floundering in our guilt; rather, he makes a way (through his Son, Jesus Christ) for us to be forgiven (of our sins and guilty state), restored (in right relationship to him), and ultimately transformed not only into better people, but into new people (2 Cor. 5:17).

Stephen S. Jordan (Ph.D.) is currently the Campus Pastor at Liberty Christian Academy in Lynchburg (VA), where he previously served as a high school Bible teacher for nearly a decade. He is also a Bible teacher at Liberty University Online Academy, an Associate Editor at www.moralapologetics.com, as well as a Senior Research Fellow and curriculum developer at The Center for the Foundations of Ethics at Houston Baptist University. Prior to these positions, Stephen served as a youth pastor in North Carolina for several years and taught courses at a local Seminary Extension for a year. He possesses four graduate degrees (MAR, MRE, MDiv, ThM) and a PhD in Theology and Apologetics. His doctoral dissertation was on the moral argument, where he argued for the existence of a personal God from morality. Stephen and his wife, along with their four children, reside in Goode, Virginia. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family, being outdoors, fitness, sports, reading, and building relationships with people over good food.

[1] Portions of this article adapted from my unpublished doctoral dissertation at Liberty University.

[2] John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (London: Burns, Oates, & Co., 1874), 109.

[3] Interestingly, immediately after this quote, H. P. Owen boldly claims, “Personal theism gives the only explanation by affirming that value-claims inhere in the character and will of God. In rejecting them we do not merely reject an abstract good; we do not merely reject our own ‘good’ (in the sense of our ‘well-being’); we reject the love which God is in his tri-une being.” Admittedly, this may be moving a bit too fast here, but it is interesting to consider how Owen invokes the Trinity in order to explain the personal nature of value-claims and the guilt one experiences when failing to keep them. H. P. Owen, The Moral Argument for Christian Theism (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965), 80.

[4] R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 317. More directly, H. H. Farmer claims, “[Sin] is something through which a man is set against God, the word God standing not for an impersonal Moral Order or Creative Life Force, nor for a man’s own Better Self, nor for the Totality of Social Ideals, but for the Eternal as personal will which enters into relation with the will of man in a polarity or tension of personal relationship.” H. H Farmer, The World and God: A Study of Prayer, Providence and Miracle in Christian Experience (London: Nisbet & Co., 1933), 173.

[5] Paul Copan, True for You, But Not For Me (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1998), 62.

[6] This usually occurs later in life or when one is on his or her deathbed.

[7] Similar to the way A. E. Taylor describes the indelibility and dirtiness of guilt, Lewis explains one’s response to grievous actions in this way: “Much, we may feel, can be excused to human infirmities: but not this—this incredibly mean and ugly action which none of our friends would have done, which even such a thorough-going little rotter as X would have been ashamed of, which we would not for the world allow to be published. At such a moment we really do know that our character, as revealed in this action, is, and ought to be, hateful to all good men, and, if there are powers above man, to them.” C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2001), 51.

[8] David Baggett and Marybeth Baggett, The Morals of the Story: Good News About a Good God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018), 180.

[9] J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City: A Defense of Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1987), 88.

[10] A. E. Taylor, The Faith of a Moralist (London: MacMillan and Co., 1951), 207.