The Constraints of God’s Holiness

A Twilight Musing

Alternative Scenario for Immediate Post-Lapsarian response by the Creator

(see authorized version in Gen. 3):

God looked down in sorrow and disappointment at Adam and Eve chewing on the Forbidden Fruit and noted their being chagrined at the first thing their newly-opened eyes saw—their nakedness.  They didn’t realize yet why it was a problem, but of course God knew, and He was ready to help them fix it.  Poor babies, they had truly bitten off more than they could chew.  So God came down and stood beside them (though He had to hold His nose to do it—the stench of corruption had already set in), and He set about making them garments to replace the pathetic stitched leaves they had cobbled together to cover their newly embarrassing private parts.*  He then sat down and held their hands and chided them for being so foolish, but He also encouraged them to buck up and learn from their error.  They wept on His shoulder and vowed they would never repeat their mistake, and both they and God saw it as a growth experience.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As fallen human beings in the lineage of Adam and Eve, I think many of us might be inclined to say, “Yeah, why couldn’t God have cut Adam and Eve (and us) some slack?  After all, He sort of set them up for failure by planting that Forbidden Tree and then letting the Tempter in the Garden.  Why make such a big deal of their failure and then pass it on to all human beings afterward?  We all make mistakes. It wasn’t fair; the penalty far outweighed the offense.”

Such sentiments, though understandable, fail to consider the implications of God’s immutable, innate, essential qualities, such as Goodness, Love, Justice, and—most relevant to this discussion—Holiness.  Strange as it may seem to contemplate, the biblical picture of God indicates that His immutability constrains His choices in ways that are not true of fallible mortals doomed to the ultimate form of mutability, death.  It is expected that humans will achieve only relative degrees of goodness, love, justice, and holiness, since even though we cannot know perfectly, we have nevertheless to act on the limited knowledge we have, i.e., we make choices.  But God, of course, has perfect knowledge and wisdom, and there is no excuse, as it were, for Him to act in any way contrary to His immutable, innate qualities.  He “cannot,” to put it in human terms, do anything that is not in accord with who He Is.  His very name, He tells Moses, can be expressed in human terms only as “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14).  James 1:17 describes God as “the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to turning.”

So it is that God could not have merely overlooked the sin of Adam and Eve and reset the program to give them another chance.  When their disobedience broke the bond of identity and oneness between them and God, it became impossible for God in His Holiness to walk with them in their sin—not because He “chose” it so in the way that we use that word, but rather they had removed themselves from the realm of His Holiness.  He could, in perfect justice, have separated Himself from them entirely and left them to the unmitigated consequences of their sin; but, in fact, He not only spoke to them of the negative consequences of their rebellion, but He clothed them and hinted at a mortal blow that would be dealt to their Adversary in the future by Someone born of woman.  God already had a plan by which He could overcome the barrier between sinful mankind and His holiness.  It was a radical and unbelievably costly solution that only He could implement.   That brings us to the Incarnation, in which He let a part of Himself, with the essential qualities of divine Holiness and Justice intact, be injected into the morass of the death-bound fallen world and emerge from it having fulfilled Divine Justice and paid the penalty of death so that forgiveness could be extended without violating God’s Holiness.

Chapters 8-10 of the book of Hebrews present the Incarnation as the culmination of God’s plan to bridge the gulf between His holiness and sinful humans.  After establishing the special priesthood of Jesus according to the order of Melchizedek  (Heb. 7:11-17), the writer makes clear that Jesus as priest has entered into the eternal Holy Place at the right hand of God, not merely into the earthly space into which the Aaronic priests enter once a year to offer the sacrifice of atonement (8:1-2). These Old Covenant priests served only “a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (8:5) prescribed by the Law of Moses.  In the same way, Jesus’ entry into the eternal Holy of Holies and the sacrifice He made there was not merely “gifts and sacrifices   . . . that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, but deal only with regulations for the body” (9:9-10).  Rather, “he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (9:12) and establishing a New Covenant through His self-sacrifice.

This New Covenant, in contrast to the Old Covenant, went beyond physical purification that provided temporary access to God’s Holiness and Presence:

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.  (Heb 10:12-14 ESV)

Through the patient development of His plan over the millennia between the first Adam and the Second Adam, God overcame the necessary separation of His Holiness brought about through the Fall with the loving sacrifice of a part of Himself.  As the first Adam fell, so the Second Adam descended into the wounded world and ascended to the Father to make it whole.

*See “And They Realized They Were Naked” in the poetry archives of Moral Apologetics.

Image:By Carl Heinrich Bloch - www.the-athenaeum.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25990900

Summary of Chapter 6, “The Emotional Aspect of God’s Love” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

The Love of God: A Canonical Model

In chapter six of The Love of God, Peckham explores “The Emotional Aspect of God’s Love.” God’s love is more than emotion and includes the qualities of volition and evaluation (as developed in previous chapters), but the emotional aspect of divine love uniquely reflects its passion and intensity. Peckham argues that “God’s love for humans is ardent and profoundly emotional” (p. 187). He further elaborates on the range of divine emotions reflected in the biblical portrayal of God, “Scripture presents God as affectionate and loving, devotedly interested and intimately concerned about humans, affected by the world in feeling joy and delight in goodness, yet sorrow, passion and intense anger at evil, alongside profound compassion and the desire to redeem humans” (p. 189).

This aspect of divine emotionality raises the question of whether God can be affected by the actions of humans. Because of the intensely emotional nature of divine love as portrayed in Scripture, Peckham rejects a view of God’s immutability that incorporates belief in his impassibility, the idea that God is not emotionally affected by the world or that he cannot be affected by anything outside himself. Peckham instead argues that God’s love is passible in the sense that “God is intensely interested in and affected by humans, and may be pleased or displeased by their response to him such that the quality of his life is affected by the state of affairs in the world” (p. 187). At the same time, Peckham acknowledges the very real differences that exist between divine and human emotions.

The Biblical Portrayal of Divine Emotionality

Peckham’s presentation of the biblical portrayal of divine love is both exegetical and devotional. He begins by exploring the most prominent terms for love in the OT and NT—the word groups for ’ahav and agapao respectively. Both terms denote a type of love that is “affectionate, passionate, warm, compassionately concerned with and interested in its object(s); love in the sense of high regard, value and appreciation for its object(s); and love that includes enjoyment pleasure and fondness” (cf. Col 3:9; 1 Thess 2:7; 1 Pet 1:22; 4:8) (p. 149). Jesus had a deep love for his followers (John 13:1) and even for the rich young man who would make the choice not to follow him (Mk 10:21). God takes genuine joy in his people (Zeph 3:7), and familial images of various types particularly reflect the emotionality of divine love. The Lord loves Israel as his bride (Isa 62:4; Jer 2:2-3; 16, 23; Hos 1-3) and has adopted Israel as his son (Hos 11:1-4). God’s compassion even exceeds that of a nursing mother for her newborn child (Isa 49:15). The Hebrew word for compassion (racham) is etymologically related to the noun for “womb” and thus likely reflects “a womb-like mother love.”

God does not merely will to love volitionally; he loves with “an emotion that is stirred and roused, responsive to the actual state of affairs” (p. 151). One of the primary NT terms for compassion (splagnizomai) belongs to a word group referring to the inward parts of the body as the seat of emotion and thus depicts compassion as a visceral emotion and a “gut response.” Jesus often reflected this type of compassion as he encountered people in need (cf. Mt. 9:36; 14:14; Mk 1:41; 6:34). The “yearning” of God’s heart (Jer 31:20; Is 63:5) in the OT reflects the churning of internal organs as God is touched by the pain and grief of his people. All of this language conveys “profoundly passible and intense emotionality” (p. 153).

God’s emotional love is particularly reflected in those times when he relents from sending judgment because of the entreaties of his people for grace and mercy. The Lord is moved to pity even at the plight of his rebellious people. The revelation that Yahweh is “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger” so that he shows mercy and forgives iniquity (Exod 34:6-7) is foundational to the OT portrayal of God. The Lord continues to “bestow compassion beyond all reasonable expectations” throughout Israel’s history when they betray him and turn to other gods (cf. Judg 10:13; 1 Sam 8:8; 1 Kgs 11:33; 2 Kgs 22:17; Neh 9:7-33). The Lord relents from judgment when humans cry out to him for grace and mercy (cf. Exod 32:9-14; 1 Kgs 21:25-29; Amos 7:1-6; Jon 3:6-10). At the same time, God is not obligated or compelled to show mercy and he may not relent from sending judgment, and he may also withdraw his mercy when humans persistently rebel against him (Jer 16;5; Hos 9:15). The Lord’s “lovingkindness” toward Israel was unconditional in terms of his enduring commitment to the relationship, but conditional in that the blessings and benefits of that lovingkindness were for those who reciprocated with love and loyalty toward the Lord (Deut 7:9; Matt 18:27-35; Rom 11:22). God does everything that he can to avoid the outcome of judgment and destruction, but divine mercy may be forfeited by persistent human rebellion. Jesus lamented over those he desired to save but who were unwilling (Matt 23:37).

God’s compassion is complemented by his passion. God’s jealousy (qana’) in the OT conveys a passionate love and concern for his people and name (cf. Deut 4:24, 31; 5:9; 6:15) without the negative connotations associated with human jealousy. God is provoked to jealousy by Israel’s unfaithfulness (Deut 32:3`; Ps 78:58) and is often portrayed as a scorned husband (Isa 62:4; Jer 2:2; 3:1-12), but this aspect of divine emotionality reflects his protectiveness of the exclusive covenantal relationship he has with his people. God is not jealous in a manipulative, controlling, or envious way but in a manner that reflects the depth of his passionate love for Israel and his desire to protect his people from the consequences of their sinful choices.

God’s love manifests itself in both positive and negative emotions, but these negative emotions are never arbitrary or unmotivated. They always come in response to sin and evil, and God’s wrath is so terrifying because it is the divine response to the rejection of his powerful love. Even when humans sin, God is constantly pulled toward forgiveness and mercy. God is also deeply pained by human sin (Gen 6:6), because he can see the terrible consequences that will follow.

The Issue of Passibility Versus Impassibility

In light of the biblical data, Peckham concludes that maintaining divine impassibility and supposing God’s impassible passion and/or feelings fails to do justice to the many biblical passages in which God experiences responsive emotions. There are simply too many passages like Hosea 11:8-9 that “use passionate, gut-wrenching language” to depict God’s intense emotions, and this pervasive canonical witness argues against imposing an ontological presupposition of God’s impassibility onto the text that leads to reinterpretation of the biblical data (pp. 161-62). Impassibility is particularly difficult to maintain in light of texts that place God’s emotionality within the contexts of give-and-take-relationships where God reacts to unfolding events and human responses to his various initiatives. Based on his analogical understanding of language about God, Pekcham concludes that God’s emotions are real but not identical to human emotions. Nevertheless, there must be similarity for this language about God to have any real meaning. Because of his canonical approach, Peckham particularly seeks to establish a view of divine emotionality that prioritizes and is consistent with the canonical depiction of God. This approach recognizes anthropomorphism in the biblical portrayal of God, but also insists that divine emotionality should not be viewed merely as metaphorical language unless there are canonically derived reasons for doing so.

While rejecting the idea of impassibility, Peckham sees validity in the qualified impassibilist attempts to maintain divine transcendence and the ontological invulnerability of God to the effects of his creatures. God’s passibility is voluntary. God’s emotions may genuinely be affected by the free choices of his creatures and he may feel emotions in response to the free actions of his creatures that he does not causally determine, but God is not involuntarily invulnerable to these effects. God experiences emotions differently from humans because his experience of emotions is “entirely flawless” (p. 180). He is never overwhelmed by his emotions or manipulated by others because of some form of emotional codependency. God has freely opened himself to being affected by his creatures. While God maintains the sovereign freedom to remove himself from this arrangement, he also elects to remain constantly committed to it as an expression of his faithfulness (p. 181). In concluding the chapter, Peckham summarizes: “While none can overpower God, he is affected by worldly events because he has willingly opened himself up to reciprocal love relationship with creatures (p. 189). God loves in highly emotive ways but not in ways that are beyond his divine control.

Image: "The Return of the Prodigal" By Michel Martin Drolling - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19222829

Two Sides to Every Story? How Triviality Obscures the Truth of Domestic Abuse

Editor's Note: In this slight departure from our standard subject matter, we explore some of the implications of justice and charity in cases of domestic abuse, specifically in light of recent statements by a notable Christian leader. The importance and gravity of this issue merit its coverage here at Moral Apologetics.

Imagine the following: A woman lives for years in a volatile situation, never knowing when a word or circumstance will enrage her husband causing him to unleash emotional or physical pain on her. She tries desperately to manage the environment, to forestall these chaotic and traumatic outbursts—for her own and her children’s sake.

This woman’s home life is toxic; it has strangled her spirit, and what little outside support she has dwindles as the situation worsens. She accepts the blame assigned by her husband, she sees hope for change in small gestures of remorse, and day by day she becomes increasingly anxious, depressed, and demoralized.

Suppose this woman seeks counseling for her anxiety and depression. In this process, she realizes, first, that her situation is not normal and, second, that she is not to blame for the emotional and physical violence perpetrated on her. After laboring so long under the impression that she and her husband were equal partners in creating their destructive home environment, she embraces the truth that her husband has wielded unchecked and unjust power over her. Control, not love, animates their relationship.

Although the journey toward healing and freedom ahead of her is long and difficult, she has taken the first step by appropriating this truth.

Women like this, unfortunately, are all too common, even within the church. Controllers like this exist, too; yes, even within the church. In fact, the church—with its insistence on marital fidelity, its teachings of mercy and sacrifice—often provides unwitting cover for perpetrators like the husband of the woman above. Research shows that Christian women are more prone to stay longer in an abusive environment and to endure far worse abuse than their non-Christian counterparts. Unfortunately, pastors are often ill-informed about, and ill-equipped to deal with, the wicked realities of domestic abuse.

Take, for example, Franklin Graham’s recent Facebook post appealing to Christians to withhold judgment and, instead, pray for Saeed Abedini and his wife Naghmeh. Abedini, as many know, is the recently released American pastor who was jailed in Iran for close to four years, charged with proselytizing and undermining Iranian national security.

After working tirelessly to publicize her husband’s wrongful imprisonment and to pressure Washington to obtain his release, Naghmeh halted her advocacy in November 2015, telling supporters that she had endured “physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse” from her husband and didn’t have the resources to soldier on any longer under such circumstances.

During Saeed’s imprisonment Franklin Graham rallied many Christians around his cause. Upon Saeed’s return to America last month, Graham welcomed him to the Billy Graham Training Center for rest and recuperation. While this outcome was the one so many prayed for and sought for so long, Naghmeh’s claims of abuse hung oppressively over any celebration, complicated further by her filing for legal separation on the day Saeed returned to their hometown in Idaho.

And so through his Facebook post Graham attempted a hopeful framework for responding to the murky affair. Wishing to remain impartial, he spoke of the marital troubles facing the Abedinis, called for prayer to ward off Satan’s continued attacks on their family, and reminded readers that “[o]ther than God, no one knows the details and the truth of what has happened between Saeed and Naghmeh except them.”

Although Franklin Graham is not the Abedini family’s personal pastor, as head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and leader of Samaritan’s Purse relief organization, he wields considerable societal influence. How he handles this situation matters beyond the case of this particular family; it speaks to the broader Christian community’s understanding of the realities of domestic abuse. And many will follow the example he sets here.

Graham’s statement seems designed, understandably, to keep rumors in check and encourage Christians to think redemptively on this matter. The charges Naghmeh levied are weighty; no one wants a false claim to shatter an innocent man’s life, especially a man who has endured so much and been a model of Christian faithfulness for so many. And yet Graham’s admonition, evenhanded as it tried to be, reveals a profound naivety about domestic abuse, a naivety that is sadly all too prevalent in the church.

Consider the seeming truism that punctuates Graham’s appeal: “there are at least two sides to every story.” When applied to the situation of the woman described at the outset of this piece, this claim is revealed as nonsense. A man who would inflict physical and emotional violence on his wife probably does have a perspective to share, but what of it? An opportunity to present his “side of the story” would only make way for more manipulation and deceit, this time drawing allies to his side and increasing the pressure on his wife to capitulate.

“There are at least two sides to every story” is valid only in a world governed by fair play, insistent on honesty, and committed to honoring the dignity of others. “There are at least two sides to every story” works for run-of-the-mill marital challenges: how to communicate better, getting finances straight, agreeing on child-rearing techniques. “There are at least two sides to every story,” only when those stories are populated by honorable people behaving honorably.

Conversely, “there are at least two sides to every story” is a monstrous retort to the situation described above. The world of that woman’s oppression is defined by a pattern of unrepentant sin, controlled by someone who has only his own interests in mind. For this woman’s sake and the sake of the many women like her, Graham’s platitude must be rejected and replaced by more sensitive and informed replies.[1]

“There are at least two sides to every story” is an offense to any victim speaking the truth about her mistreatment; it’s an offense to our God who cares about the downtrodden. Rather than bringing light and hope to an emotionally-fraught situation, trotting out this banal expression at such a crucial moment enables actual and would-be perpetrators and further disadvantages victims. Redemption cannot bypass truth.

If there are two sides to every story, in any substantive sense worth emphasizing, is the suggestion that a rape victim has her story and her rapist his own? A sexually molested child his story and the pedophile her own? Holocaust survivors their story and their cruel captors their own? ISIS victims their stories, the terrorists their own? Martin Luther King, Jr. in a Birmingham jail his story, his pious segregationist critics their own? Such claims are patently misguided: either trivially true or wickedly false. In situations terribly warped and twisted by sin, unspeakably deformed by darkness and inhumanity, the worst casualty of the polite words of morally tone-deaf evenhandedness is often the sober truth.

I don’t know that Naghmeh’s situation falls into that category. Nor does Franklin Graham know that it doesn't.

Notes:

[1] Several Christian institutions and professionals offer training and guidance for pastors on domestic abuse, including the following (along with links to their resources): Lifeway, Focus on the Family, Ministry Matters, and Leslie Vernick.

Image: "Broken Glass" by Holger. CC License. 

Severe Mercy

Recently we had to make sudden arrangements for our disabled adult daughter to be removed from our home and placed elsewhere.  She had to be taken traumatically by force from our house to a hospital mental health ward, since her behavior had become very belligerent and dangerous to herself.  This came after our having cared for her from infancy, through a normal delightful childhood and the insecurities of early adolescence, to the last five years in which her psychological and physical health has deteriorated from the effects of Huntington’s Disease, which is invariably fatal after years of decline.  We had wanted to care for her until the end, but now she’s gone from our house, and she won’t be coming back.

In the few days immediately following her departure, my wife and I both commented on how radically different the house was—I described it as “eerily quiet.”  I think our feelings about the necessary removal of our daughter from our care are somewhat like the feelings one has after having had an amputation, or the removal of an internal organ.  If pain is relieved or our life is saved as a result of the operation, we rejoice; but there is also some sadness at having to give up an integral part of us that at one time functioned well and contributed to our overall health.

This experience put me in mind of a book from several years ago by Sheldon Vanauken, entitled A Severe Mercy, which is a phrase from one of C. S. Lewis’s letters to Vanauken.  He and his wife had close contact with Lewis for a few years, both through letters and through their visiting him in England, so he knew the couple well.  They started the relationship as unbelievers, but ended up being converted to Christ.  However, they struggled to get past what had become, according to Vanauken, an all-absorbing pagan bond of love between them, which left no room for children or even God.  When his wife unexpectedly became ill with a fatal disease, and they were forced finally to submit their love to God, Lewis was bold enough to say that it was a severe mercy, a deprivation that perhaps had saved their souls.

In the past, my wife and I have experienced a number of changes in our lives and in the lives of others which were appropriately described as “severe mercies.” The concept is definitely helpful in understanding the necessity of our daughter’s being transferred from our care to the care of others who are better able to see to her needs at this point.  The trauma of separation is severe, but God’s mercy is showing through the pain of giving her up.  The familiar hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way,” expresses beautifully this form of God’s provision and teaching, especially in stanzas 3 and 5:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break

In blessings on your head.

His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding every hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower.

           (William Cowper)

The writer of Hebrews also articulates this principle of profit encased in pain in speaking of God’s discipline of His children.  He first quotes from the Book of Proverbs, and then expands on that passage.  (Read in each occurrence of “son” a gender-inclusive “child.”)

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him.  For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” [Prov. 3:11-12].  It is for discipline that you have to endure.  God is treating you as sons.  For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?  If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons . . . .  For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.  (Heb. 12:5b-8, 11, ESV)

Here lies the core of the difference between how believers and unbelievers view the things that are taken away from them.  Without faith in God’s love and providence, we focus on what has been lost, but the eyes of faith see God’s benefit overshadowing what has been lost, and we may even recognize that sometimes the enforced loss was necessary for us to experience the benefit.

Finally, when the thing lost was a good thing from God and not something harmful to us, we have a treasury of memories of God’s blessings during that time.  In our case, my wife and I are thankful that we were able to take two long trips requested by our daughter in the last two years, which, in spite of some blips involving her behavior, were rich and rewarding times together.  The memories of those trips, and the ways in which God made them possible and fruitful, will never be taken away.  And we hope that our cognizance of God’s goodness, past, present, and future, will always absorb any sense of loss.

Image: "Grace" by R. Alexander. CC license. 

Summary of Chapter 5, “The Evaluative Aspect of Divine Love,” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

As Peckham progresses in his evaluation of the remaining canonically informed aspects of divine love, he continues by delineating its evaluative component. In an attempt to strike a scripturally-based position over and above the transcendent-voluntarist and immanent-experientialist models, Peckham begins by voicing his dissatisfaction with their understanding of God’s love and its evaluative nature. While the former position holds that God is incapable of ever benefitting or taking pleasure from his creation (rendering his love thoroughly gratuitous), the latter holds that God feels everything along with the world as he is intimately connected to everything in it and depends on it for his essence. In contrast, Peckham argues that God’s love is evaluative, not because he is essentially united to creatures, but because he freely chooses to love in this way.

Objections Addressed

There are three main objections to this theory that Peckham must address if he is to defend his canonical model. First, there are those who emphasize God’s perfection to the extent that they believe he cannot receive value (as he is already completely valuable). Peckham calls this the theo-ontological objection. To these Peckham calls attention to the myriad of passages that suggest God is capable of being pleased with his creatures. John Piper and Anders Nygren have to assume a metaphorical interpretation of these copious passages and in the place of more literal meanings provide more figurative alternatives. To be sure, Piper and Nygren go to these efforts to protect the self-sufficiency and glorious perfection of God; however, Peckham reminds them that his foreconditional-reciprocal model allows God his sovereignty in freely choosing to be affected by his created world as he pleases.

The second objection states that pure love never receives, but only gives. Those who hold this view insist that receiving love and its derivative values is ultimately selfish and that this is unbecoming of a perfect God. However, what of those passages that affirm self-love? This moral objection to Peckham’s model is shown not to be based on canonical data as much as on a false dichotomy that pits altruism against self-interest. Is it not possible that in acting for the good of others, God is serving himself and vice versa? The two cannot be so easily divided. In fact, one cannot even responsibly imagine a world in which pure and pervasive altruism works in any practical way.  Rather, the world that God created was willed by him to include love that is both self-interested and others-centered in that the unselfish self-interest of genuine love includes the best interests of all others.

One final objection Peckham must address is one he calls the anthropological objection. This objection holds that humans are incapable of generating value or eliciting God’s delight. In other words, mankind is so far below the divine that nothing men or women can do can elicit God’s praise. However, this position does not take into consideration the semantic overlap that exists between both Old and New Testament words pertaining to love, delight, pleasure, approval, and acceptance. Not only that, but in many places, God is shown to enjoy his people and care for them more deeply than, for example, the birds. While Peckham agrees that the sinfulness of humans makes it impossible for us to generate value independently of God, he directs attention to the mediation of Christ through which even the most meager offerings of humans can be acceptable and pleasing to God by faith.

Questions Answered

Is divine love essentially self-sacrificial?

Similar to what Peckham addressed earlier about selfishness, many believe that the highest virtue of love involves self-sacrifice. Why, if this is the greatest virtue, does it not make sense then to assume this of God at all times? The answer can be most completely addressed when one considers the nature of the world. Christ’s self-sacrifice, for which he is most famous, is necessary in the world as it presently exists because of an intrusion of evil.

Not only that, but it would not make ontological sense for God to sacrifice everything about himself for the sake of the world as everything that exists is contingent on his existence. Some might argue that any sense of self in God is unbecoming as it would mean he acts in self-interest; however, it is this very [unselfish] self-interest, according to Peckham, that renders any sacrifice God makes possible and even more incredible. If God possessed no interests in and of himself, what could, one might ask, he sacrifice in the first place?

[Editor’s Note: C. S. Lewis argued, in The Problem of Pain, that self-giving touches “a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being. For the Eternal Word also gives Himself in sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when he was crucified He ‘did that in the wild weather of His outlying provinces which He had done at home in glory and gladness’. From before the foundation of the world He surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity in obedience. And as the Son glorifies the Father, so also the Father glorifies the Son…. From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by the abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever.”]

Does God only love the worthy?

How God’s love is especially applied to the righteous reiterates its evaluative nature even more. Surely, while passages like John 3:16 and others teach that God loves everyone, it is equally true that God is also, at the same time, displeased by universal evil, and finally saves only those who accept his love. How can these ideas be true at the same time? Peckham demonstrates that God is able to love unworthy human beings by temporarily suspending judgment. Though humans do not deserve God’s love, the extremely negative judgments they do deserve are, at present, significantly tempered by his patience and grace which responds with delight when people repent and exercise faith (resulting in salvation).

How is God justified in loving human beings?

However, how is a perfect God able to get away with loving humans in spite of their multitudinous imperfections? The answer exists in two parts. First, God wills to bestow his prevenient grace and foreconditional love upon the world, rendering, as described above, the possibility for people to repent. Second, when imperfect people do repent, Christ’s mediation is able to make up for the deficiencies of those who are in Christ by faith (Romans 8:1). In other words, God makes it possible for people to desire God and, when they do, Jesus makes up the difference. This difference will continue to be satisfied until the eschaton in which the temporary and partial suspension of the effects of evaluation will be over and those in Christ will be glorified. This will successfully render them worthy of God’s positive evaluation.

Conclusions Reached

According to Peckham’s canonically-informed foreconditional-reciprocal model, God not only evaluates his creatures, but he both delights in and is displeased by them. This he does, not because he is in any way dependent on his creation, but because he chooses to love in this way. The system God has put in place has suspended deserved wrath for the time being in an effort to give people a chance to accept his prevenient grace and love. When people do so, Christ’s mediation renders them objects of God’s special and saving affection—an affection that will ultimately result in glory forever.

Image: "The Prodigal Son" By Pompeo Batoni - [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4628046

Mailbag: What Can God Do?

Editor's Note: Thanks to Dr. Michael Jones for answering this mailbag question. If you have a question that you would like answered, contact us on Facebook or at moralapologetics@gmail.com. 

Hello! I'm desperately searching for an answer to a question that my Mormon friend posed to me earlier this week. He asked me if God has freedom given that He cannot choose evil. I replied by telling him that God could choose any number of good things, not just evil. The inability to choose A, B, & C doesn't mean God can't choose D, E, and F, but he stopped me there. "God can't just choose all that is good, He must choose the most perfect choice since He is perfectly good Himself. Thus, God can only do one thing. He does not have free will." I really have no idea how to answer this, do you? If not, could you direct me towards someone who would? Thanks!

Patrick

Greetings. This is an interesting question. It’s also a familiar one, to me: one or another of my students raises this question almost every year. Perhaps it comes up so regularly because there’s some truth behind it. And that’s actually a good thing: if your goal is to win the confidence of your friend (I get the impression that it is) then I think it would be helpful for you to begin by acknowledging those points about which you agree.

For example, you’d probably grant that there are some things that God cannot choose to do, wouldn’t you? We’re often tempted to think that if God is omnipotent (all powerful) then he can do anything that we can imagine – and perhaps even things that are beyond our imagination. But that’s neither biblical nor very logical. The Bible indicates several things that God cannot do. For example, he cannot lie (Titus 1:2) and he cannot be tempted (James 1:13). God can’t do these things because they go against his own nature. Similarly he can’t cease being God, he can’t become finite in his knowledge, power, or goodness, and he cannot cease to exist, any more than you or I could do things that go against our nature, like sprout wings and fly or be in all places at once.

Likewise there are things that God cannot do because they are truly impossible, and therefore no one could do them. It’s impossible to make a square triangle, to make two plus two equal five, and things like that. Not being able to do these things is not a shortcoming on God’s part: no god, no matter how powerful, could do these things, for they are truly impossible.

There are choices that God cannot make because making them would go against his nature, and there are choices that God cannot make because they involve something that is simply impossible. These closely parallel what was said above. This is not a shortcoming on God’s part: it’s just the nature of things. Your friend may simply be pointing this out, and if that’s all he’s trying to say, then you may want to thank him and be done with it.

From what you wrote, however, it seems like your friend is saying that God isn’t free at all. I would disagree with that. Your friend seems to be making the argument that God’s perfect knowledge of all the options and their results combines with his perfect goodness to prevent him from choosing anything but one option in every situation. There’s a lot that could be discussed here, including Molinism, Open Theism, metaphysical views of time, history, God’s relationship to time, etc. Since I can’t address all of these, I’ll focus on just one: the presupposition that in any given situation there is always one option that is superior to all of the others.

It may be true that in some or perhaps in many situations there is one option that is decisively better than all of the others. I think that your friend is right that in those situations God’s nature constrains him to choose that option that is best. (I must add, though, that here we’re talking as if God experiences time and choosing just like we mortals do, which may be too anthropomorphic. We’ll leave that issue aside, though.) But that should not be viewed as a shortcoming, any more than God’s inability to sin, lie, or create square circles is a shortcoming (which it’s not, in my opinion). Furthermore, some theologians believe that there’s a sense in which this is still a form of free choice on God’s part, for in such a situation God’s choice is not constrained by anything outside of himself. God chooses in harmony with what God is and what he knows about reality. He can’t choose otherwise because doing so would contradict his nature and the nature of reality. Perhaps that’s not a problem at all, though. The alternative would seem to be to say that God can make choices that are not consistent with who he is, as an omniscient and omnibenevolent being. I’m not sure that you should want to affirm that.

All of that is predicated on the assumption that in any given situation there is always a single best option. However, that’s a pretty big assumption. In fact, there may be many situations wherein there are many very good options none of which is clearly better than the others. The other day my wife asked me what I wanted for breakfast and then proceeded to list a number of very tasty options. Each had its advantages, to be sure, but to me any of them would have been great. Something similar may happen to God quite often: he may know that choosing option A will have 10 beneficial consequences and 3 detrimental ones, that B would have 12 benefits but one hugely detrimental consequence, that option C would have 9 beneficial results but also 9 fairly minor negative results, etc. Knowing exactly how each option balances good and bad, he would know if and when there are options that, all things considered, are equally preferable. In those situations there is no one best option. That being the case, it makes sense that God would be free to choose between those options, don’t you think?

It’s great to think deeply about the nature of God. It can be inspiring! But let’s keep in mind that there are many ways in which the nature of the infinite, perfect God transcends finite human understanding. We should marvel at his greatness but not be discouraged if he’s hard for us to wrap our minds around.

May God bless you as you seek to follow him,

MSJ

Image: "Mail" by Bogdan Suditu. CC License. 

Dwelling in God’s Temple

Then someone starts asserting that a single concern or virtue is of the most value or importance, we usually brace ourselves for someone who is narrow and shallow at the same time.  But when the God’s faithful servant King David speaks of limiting himself to “one thing” he desires from the Lord, it’s worth listening to:

“One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27: 4, ESV).

 There are three experiences referred to here: (1) an intense desire to be in God’s Presence, (2) the reward of seeing the Lord’s Beauty, and (3) the reward of learning His Truth.   The intense desire conditions the writer to receive and be blessed by the emanations of Beauty and Truth from God’s Presence (“the house of the Lord”).  For David, of course, the “temple” would have been the Tabernacle, and by extension the Temple that his son Solomon built as the divinely designated fulfillment of the design of the Tabernacle.  By even further extension, the house of the Lord is the Church and the heart of the individual believer, inhabited by the Holy Spirit; and ultimately, it is the New Jerusalem, the final home created by God so that His people of all generations and all Covenants could be eternally in His Presence.

In a couple of other places in the Psalms, David expresses even more poignantly his intense desire to dwell in God’s Presence :

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. (Ps 84:1-2 NIV)

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.   My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When shall I come and appear before God? (Ps 42:1-2 ESV)

Here is more than mere curiosity or formal piety.  Here is the cry of one who has felt the Presence of God palpably, and from David’s history we know that he experienced it in times of great need.  But his desire is that of a lover for the deep embrace of One who has already shown that He wants to envelop His beloved in the arms of transcendent Love.  So when David states that he has settled on that “one thing” that outweighs all other imaginable benefits, he conceives it as the unlimited perpetuation of what he has already experienced in limited measure.  He didn’t have a clear idea of an afterlife of being with God, but he knew that there was nothing sweeter than dwelling in the Presence of a God who has no limits on His radiation of Beauty and Truth.

Certainly we under the New Covenant have a much clearer picture of the eternal potential of our earthly experience of God’s Presence, but we have in common with David the opportunity of emotional and intellectual intimacy with God.  We are told that the pure in heart (those who long single-mindedly for God) will see Him, and that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (knowing and doing the will of God) will be filled.

David more than once associated being in the Presence of God with seeing His beauty.  In addition to the loveliness of the Lord’s dwelling place referred to in Ps. 42:1, the hymn of praise in Ps. 96 urges the singers to acknowledge that “Honor and majesty are before Him; Strength and Beauty are in His sanctuary . . . .  Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!  Tremble before Him, all the earth” (Ps. 96:6,9 NKJV).  The somewhat paradoxical juxtaposition of beauty and holiness indicates that David realized his “gazing on the beauty of the Lord” was not merely earthly aesthetic appreciation, but a direct experience of holy Beauty that reached back into earthly experience to sanctify all physical beauty as generated by God.

The pairing of gazing on God’s Beauty with inquiring into His Truth may seem a strange match at first, since the first is an emotional experience and the second is a rational exercise.  However, I believe that these two are actually complementary to each other and feed one another, reflecting the fact that being in God’s Presence brings together the unified satisfaction of all of humankind’s deepest longings.  The war within us between reason and emotion leads people to emphasize one at the expense of the other.  We tend either to distrust emotion as being unstable, or to view reason as cold, calculating, and calloused.  Yet God gave us the ability and the inclination to look at things and identify them as good, even as God did concerning His creation.  We are blessed by the ability to look beyond the flaws in a fallen world and to see (irrationally, some might say) God’s beauty.  We are also blessed by the ability to use our minds to seek out Truth, thereby finding a way to perceive and describe the moral and physical order that God has put in place.

My perception is that we in the evangelical community are often more comfortable with “inquiring in the temple” than with “gazing on the Lord’s beauty.”    But we need to let them both work on us, and we do so by intensely desiring to come into the Presence of God, where we will experience both the intimacy of His Beauty and the thrill of understanding His Truth.

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Summary of Chapter 4, “The Volitional Aspect of Divine Love,” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model by John Peckham

With the design of the argument established (a canonical model) and the preliminary linguistic work accomplished (successfully removing overly rigid distinctions between different biblical words for “love”), Peckham is well positioned in chapter 4 to begin his analysis of the different scripturally rooted attributes of God’s love for the world. The first of these is the volitional aspect of divine love. While the transcendent-voluntarist concludes that divine love is totally free, sovereign, and unmotivated (as witnessed in election), and the immanent-experientialist supposes that divine love is essential to God’s nature and therefore universal, sympathetic, and indeterministic, Peckham is going to advocate in this chapter for a foreconditional-reciprocal model of divine love that understands God’s love for the world as voluntary and yet not merely volitional.

God’s Volitional Love

As mentioned above, the transcendent-voluntarist model has happily endorsed the voluntary nature of God’s love; however, it is prone to delimit God’s love to mere volition. This comes as a result of an un-nuanced adherence to God’s impassibility, absolute sovereignty, and aseity. Inevitably, many (from Vanhoozer to Barth) conclude that God’s relationship with the world is not necessary. However, Kevin Hector’s interpretation of Barth affords an alternative position which states that humanity is contingently necessary to God inasmuch as God determined from eternity past to be God-with-us.

These and other  interpretations of divine love are accused by Peckham of making claims based on what God might have done rather than what Scripture clearly presents. This is why Peckham lays out, as promised, his canonical answer to the following question, “Does God love freely and, if so, what does that mean?” From the Scriptures, Peckham is able to demonstrate (with T. F. Torrance) that God did not have to create anything and, as a result (and in agreement with Richard Rice), the world owes its existence, both past and present, to God’s free choice. Applied to God’s love for humanity, it must be said that this too is freely bestowed by God in election.

To illustrate this phenomenon, the Bible uses images like marriage and adoption to reiterate that divine love is always instigated by God. Not only that, but the fact that love is shown in Scripture to be taken away (in some sense) demonstrates that divine love (in that specific sense) is inessential to God. These and other proofs both affirm the transcendent-voluntarist position and undermine the immanent-experientialist belief that God is somehow compelled to love because he is in some way dependent on the world.

However, Peckham departs from strict voluntarists when he suggests that God’s love is not merely volitional. Instead, he believes divine love is also evaluative, emotional, foreconditional, and ideally reciprocal. One example of this took place when God’s people rebelled by erecting a golden calf in the wilderness and, in response, God offered them a choice to either repent and enter back into his love or forfeit God’s mercy. In this episode, though God’s love is shown to be freely given to a people who do not deserve it, Peckham believes that it is not merely a product of his choice, but, in some ways, contingent on how his people respond and reciprocate. If they repent, they will experience God’s love in special ways; if they do not, they forfeit God’s free and sovereign offering.

Love and Election

A discussion very closely related to the volitional aspect of God’s love is the relationship between love and election. For those adhering to a strict transcendent-voluntarist model, election and love go hand-in-hand (see Leon Morris and Anders Nygren). In fact, some, as revealed in chapter 3, even equate Old Testament words for “love” with choice. This is not so with Peckham’s foreconditional-reciprocal model. Instead, Peckham suggests that while election is a manifestation of love, it is not equal to divine love. In fact, divine love is shown in the Canon to be so much more than mere election.

Scripture teaches that divine love is not only the basis for divine election (Deut. 4:37; 7:7-8; 10:15), it is unmerited, evaluative, conditional, and must be maintained by appropriate human response. In addition to passages that describe God’s sovereign freedom to bestow love as he pleases, a host of passages reveal God’s hatred toward humans that is prompted by their evil actions, thereby proving his love to have an evaluative component. Also, the pervasive covenant language in the Scriptures implicitly suggests certain underlining conditions associated with the benefits thereof and the love bestowed therein. Not only that, the elect are described throughout the Canon as those who, upon receiving a divine call, answer it appropriately by reciprocating the love bestowed in the context of a growing relationship.

Love and Bilateral Significant Freedom One final consideration Peckham includes in this presentation involves what he calls bilateral significant freedom, or the ability of both God and man to will to act otherwise than they do. According to Peckham, if this was not affirmed, especially when it pertains to God’s love relationship with the world, so many passages through the Canon would not make sense. The pervasive offerings of love from God and the many commands to love God both suggest that divine love, though freely bestowed, cannot be forced upon someone by sheer will. In other words, mankind is not casually determined to love God according to the Scriptures. Therefore, the love between God and man is, in some ways, a phenomenon that occurs when both God chooses to offer it and humans choose to respond appropriately. As Peckham concludes, the love relationship between God and man is neither unilaterally deterministic nor an ontological necessity. Instead, it is mutually (though not equally) volitional and contingent.

Ultimately, [similar to] the transcendent-voluntarists [in this respect], Peckham believes that the love of God [for the world] is volitional and free. Not only that, but he affirms that love [in relationship to the world] is neither essential to God’s being nor necessary to his existence. However, Peckham believes that reducing divine love to pure volition is too limited given how the God—man relationship is portrayed in the Scriptures. God’s love seems to be experienced most completely by those who respond to his offer appropriately in the context of a bilaterally free, volitional relationship—not as a result of a reductionist interpretation of God’s election alone.

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A Critical Review of Is Goodness without God Good Enough?

Editor's note:  "Sloan Lee has been one of my [David Baggett] dearest friends since we attended graduate school together at Wayne State in the 90s. He's as passionate as he's brilliant when it comes to philosophy and we're thrilled to welcome him to MoralApologetics.com as a contributor."

In 2001 William Lane Craig and the late Paul Kurtz met at Marshall College (in Huntington, West Virginia) to debate the question: Is goodness without God good enough?  Craig argues “no” and Kurtz argues “yes.”  The transcript of that debate serves as a jumping off point for scholars of various persuasions to weigh in on the issues and offer some analysis of the original exchange between Kurtz and Craig.  The outcome is a book edited by Nathan L. King and Robert K. Garcia entitled Is Goodness without God Good Enough? A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: Lanham, Maryland, 2008).

While we will not deal with every issue raised in the debate, we will address some of the critical points – and other issues will be explored further when examining the responses to the debate by the other authors.

Chapter One: Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig, "The Kurtz-Craig Debate"

Opening Statements

Paul Kurtz interprets the question of the debate as asking: Can someone without belief in God behave morally?  Can they be a moral person?  He mentions a number of historical individuals who rejected belief in the existence of God, but who were nevertheless moral.  Unfortunately, he gets some of his facts wrong.  As it turns out (despite what Kurtz says) Hume, Kant, and Socrates all believe in the existence of God (and Immanuel Kant even makes the supposition that God’s existence is a requirement for the rationality of ethics).  Further, the founders were not all deists as Kurtz suggests (though a few of them were), given that most of them were devout Anglicans.  He says that while a great many non-believers have lived moral lives, we are told by propagandists for religion that atheist and skeptics must be immoral (but he doesn’t say who these propagandists are).  He then turns from a defensive strategy to an offensive strategy by raising a number of questions and objections to the idea that belief in God is needed to be a good person.  He says that people who believe in God disagree as to what things should be considered moral and what things should be considered immoral (e.g., on the issues of divorce, polygamy, contraception, and abortion).  Further, he suggests that basing morality on an unchanging and inflexible religious authority is not well suited for a world that is rapidly changing and creating new moral problems and dilemmas.  He adds that secular humanists are aware of their moral responsibilities and that the best way of solving moral problems is the method of ethical intelligence – and that we should not rely on ancient religious books to help us think about moral issues.  Unfortunately, he neither says anything about this method in the debate (not that one expects a full exposition of the method in a debate format) nor why one cannot learn moral truths from a book just because it happens to be ancient.

William Lane Craig begins by agreeing with Kurtz.  He says that those skeptical of God's existence can (and often are) impressively moral people – but that the question of importance is not whether one has to believe in God’s existence in order to be moral, but whether there is such a thing as goodness without God.  In short, he is saying that non-believers are moral, and that their morality counts as evidence for the existence of God (because there would be no foundation for morality if God did not exist).  More specifically, Craig advances two central claims.  Craig’s first central claim is laid out in the following proposition:

[A] If theism is true, then we have a sound foundation for morality – because:

1. Theism gives us a basis for objective moral values (because God’s nature, he contends, is the source of objective moral values).
2. Theism gives us a basis for objective duties (because God’s commands – stemming from God’s nature – constitute our duties).
3. Theism gives us a basis for moral accountability (because God will ensure that evil is punished and that righteousness is vindicated).

Craig’s second central claim is expressed as follows:

[B] If theism is false, then we do not have a sound foundation for morality – because:

1. Atheism gives us no reason to think that humans are the basis for objective moral values (because without God, there is nothing special about humans and no reason to think that humans are any more moral than other animals – and what we call “morality” is just a method adapted as a survival strategy and nothing more).
2. Atheism undercuts the idea that there are objective moral duties (because mere animals attempting to survive have no obligations – and it doesn’t matter what you do for there is no objective right or wrong).
3. Atheism undermines the notion of moral accountability (because, given the finality of death, harming or helping others will neither be punished nor rewarded).

Kurtz and Craig's First Rebuttals

Kurtz highlights Craig’s concession of his first point – namely, that skeptics about God’s existence can (and often do) live moral lives.  He adds that such individuals have lives which they take to be personally satisfying and meaningful.  Unfortunately, while all this is correct, it misses Craig’s point – namely, that there are no objective grounds for living a moral life on those terms.  Therefore, while a person may choose to live a moral life, there is no objective obligation to do so.  Further, while a person might find their own life satisfying and meaningful, there is no objective sense in which their life is significant or meaningful.  Kurtz’s argument strikes closer to home when he points out that Craig has not explained how the theist is supposed to choose between the many different religions or between the many different conceptions of God.  Further, even if we determine which God is the right God, we still have the difficulty of trying to determine what that God commands.  The fact that God exists, says Kurtz, doesn’t solve the problem of moral disagreements – even where everyone involved in that moral dispute agrees that God exists.

Kurtz then turns his attention to the claim that God exists.   He claims that the problem of suffering is the “Achilles heel of the classical notion of an omnipotent and beneficent God” and that theism is riddled with “contradictions.”  More formally, Kurtz’s argument can be presented as follows:

1. If God exists, then there would be no suffering in the world.
2. There is suffering in the world (for example, the 3000 people that died in the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11).
3. Therefore, God doesn’t exist. [from 1 and 2]

The problem with Kurtz’s argument against the existence of God here is that he did not keep up with the philosophical progress on this issue – specifically, Alvin Plantinga’s book, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974).  There, Plantinga shows that it is at least possible that God have a good justifying reason for permitting evil to occur.  So, instead of saying that God would permit no suffering in the world, the theist can say that God permits no unjustified suffering in the world.  Given this, the theist does not have any reason to think that premise (1) of Kurtz’s argument is true.  Those who want to know more about advances made on this issue should consult Daniel Howard-Snyder’s anthology, The Evidential Problem of Evil (Indiana University Press, 2008), or the more accessible work of Michael L. Peterson, God and Evil: An Introduction To The Issues (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1998).

Kurtz concludes by returning to the theme that humanists have obligations in terms of their relationships to other people and that they can “abhor” inhumanity and refuse to treat others in degrading ways – and that, further, Craig is wrong to say that humans would act like “despots” without the existence of God.  However, this misses Craig’s view completely, because Craig neither said that people would act like despots without God nor did he say that people would treat each other in degrading and inhumane ways if God did not exist.  What Craig said was that we have no objective grounds for choosing to behave morally without God – given that wickedness can go unpunished and that righteousness can go unrewarded (and given that there are no obligations beyond what we arbitrarily choose).  Craig, again, did not say that we would lack “moral sensibilities” without God.  Instead, he holds that those sensibilities would have no objective grounding.

Craig’s rebuttal consists in reiterating just these points – namely, that Kurtz has apparently not given us any objective account of morality or moral obligations on humanism.  So, what we are left with is nihilism (that is, the view that there are no enduring and objective values upon which we can base our lives).  Craig also goes on to point out that they are not debating the existence of God.  So even if Kurtz is right (when he incorrectly suggests that suffering is logically incompatible with the existence of God), that will have no bearing on Craig's claim that the nonexistence of God entails that there are no grounds for objective obligations.  In short, Craig is arguing that objective morality is simply an illusion (at best), if there is no God (and that this is true whether or not God exists).  Craig says much the same thing concerning the question of how one decides which conception of God is correct – namely, that this is a secondary issue to his central claim (and that one can try to figure out which view of God is correct at some later point).  He concludes that while there may be standards that are relative to human desires, on Kurtz’s view, there are no “unconditional, objective, categorical moral principles or standards…” – and just as evolutionary processes have produced no “guinea pig morality or horse morality,” those processes are incapable of producing an objective morality for humans.

Kurtz and Craig’s Second Rebuttals

In his second rebuttal, Kurtz claims that how we know what is right or wrong is a question that comes before the question of what the objective grounds of morality are.  In short, moral experience must precede moral ontology.  This is an interesting claim, but one would like to see it developed further and its impact on the debate made explicit.  Beyond this, Kurtz simply repeats the questions and claims of his first rebuttal when he asks Craig which version of theism should be endorsed.

Craig responds by saying that the question of which account of God is correct “is not the question of the debate.”  In short, it is off-topic.  He says that he is happy to come back to Marshall College again to face Kurtz in a debate on the existence of God but that this is not the debate they are currently conducting.  Unfortunately, Craig does not respond specifically to the claim that Kurtz makes concerning moral epistemology being prior to moral ontology. (Ed.--Craig could have replied that such epistemic priority does nothing to undermine the ontological primacy of God; this site has explored such issues before in explicating the way the order of being can be different from the order of knowing.)

Kurtz and Craig’sConcluding Statements

The concluding statements add nothing new – with Kurtz saying that many who deny the existence of God live exemplary moral lives, and Craig responding that this is not the point.  Instead, Craig says, atheistic humanism is a “noble lie” that helps those who hold it avoid the nihilism that unavoidably and undesirably follows from that view.

In the following installments, we will examine how various philosophers respond to the claims made by Kurtz and Craig.  Fortunately, both Craig and Kurtz were also provided with the opportunity to reply to these essays at the end of the book.  Joseph Joubert made a telling point: “It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it" [Pensées of Joubert, edited by Henry Attwell (London: George Allen, 1896; page 35)].  Whether or not Craig, Kurtz, and the other authors settle the issues broached in the course of this discussion, they at least do us the service of engaging the debate.

God’s Cosmic Wormhole

Science fiction fans will know what a wormhole is: a time-warp portal from one place to another, a breach in the usual space-time barrier between galaxies, parts of a universe, or even different dimensions of existence.  In the field of physics the idea is merely a speculative projection into the unknown, but when I was thinking about the mutable world of human suffering, I found a fruitful analogy between wormholes and the Incarnation.

The question that led me into this train of thought was, “Why is it, in the nature of things, that we often encounter God most profoundly in suffering?  And how does this mystery relate to the supreme suffering of our Lord Jesus?”  Previously I have written about the contrast between OT and NT views of suffering (see Musing # 8 for 10-30-15), and of the full development of a theology of redemptive suffering in the NT.  The watershed between these two views is, of course, the voluntary but utterly undeserved suffering that Jesus accepted in going to the cross.  God’s relationship with mankind was radically altered by that event and its redemptive completion in the resurrection and ascension of Christ.  When we find closeness with God through joyfully accepting unjust suffering for Him, we experience a reflection of the Grand Purpose of the Incarnation, the forging of a meeting place between the Holy God and fallen mankind.  Only on God’s side could there be an effective initiative to create that door, to blast a hole in the impermeable barrier between Holy Heaven and corrupt Earth.  Since mankind could not come up to God, some part of God Himself had to enter into the world of mortality. And that point of entry had to be where fallen humans found God least accessible and most horribly absent.  It was through the unanswered mystery of suffering that the great “wormhole” had to be created.  God opened this Portal first from the Heaven side through the birth of Jesus, and it was finished from the other side with the Ascension, which  reunited  the resurrected Son with the Father.

The Incarnation can be seen as God’s final answer to Job.  When Job demanded that he be granted a divine hearing, God essentially said, “Although In my sovereignty I cannot be called into court by you to answer for your undeserved suffering, I will acknowledge the virtue of your enduring that suffering without renouncing me, and I will restore double all that I allowed to be taken from you.  Beyond that, you and all humans who accept my Goodness will simply have to trust that in the end my Goodness will produce the Justice that you long for.”  The door that Job found closed to him has now been opened.  As it is written in Hebrews 10:19-22, we now

. . . have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened up for us through the curtain, that is through His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.

Image information.

“Cherish one another.”

“Cherish one another.”  My wife reminded me the other day that I often give this aphoristic piece of advice to married couples, especially younger ones and those who are struggling to overcome marital conflict.   She was asking, if I may paraphrase, “Why do you consider those words a starting point in marital relations?”

As I thought about how to enlarge on “Cherish one another,” I considered the difference between that admonition and merely saying, “Love one another,” which is rather the more expectable wording of the idea, and one used often in the New Testament to apply to all human relationships (see, e.g., I John 4).  Since we are talking about marriage, we should refer to the passages in which the husbands are commanded to “love your wives, as Christ loved the church” (Eph. 5:25) and to “love their wives as their own bodies” (Eph. 5:28).  Although the word “love” in these passages (agape, the absolutely selfless love that Jesus shows to His bride, the church) is deeper and more comprehensive than “cherish,” I believe the latter word, just because it is more focused and precise in denotation and more warmly personal in connotation, conveys an idea of core value in marital relationships.

The word “cherish” comes from a root meaning “dear,” both in the sense of “held affectionately close” and “appreciated for its value.”  (In British English, the word “dear” is often used to mean “expensive,” as in “That’s too dear for me.”)  So the appellation “dear” when talking to one’s beloved can be seen as more than a casual term, carrying with it both the joy of companionship and an appreciation for the great value of the one to whom it is addressed.  The cherished one is perceived as a treasure, to be held close and protected.  And the spouse so regarded will be presented to others with all of her/his good qualities showcased, as one deserving to be cherished.

In practical terms, cherishing your wife means, first of all, listening to her intensely and consistently, with both your ears and your heart, in a way that shows you value knowing and understanding her more than anything else that calls for your attention.  Turn off the ball game, put down your newspaper or your tools, quit bending over the work you brought home from the office.  Wives, if you want your husband to feel cherished, understand and acknowledge what gives him joy.  If you don’t value it already, ask him to explain to you why it engages him, and participate in it with him if you can.  When the two of you engage in conversation, even if it becomes an argument, avoid put-downs or condescension or contempt at all costs.  Take for granted the value of hearing what the other one wants to say, and even if it irritates you, glean from it some building blocks of understanding.  The scriptural admonition not to go to bed angry is especially important in the aftermath of a heated disagreement.  Cherishing means offering forgiveness on a standing-order basis, for cherishing and anger can’t occupy the same bed.

Cherishing means giving gifts, especially when they’re not expected and the only thing they celebrate is affirming the value of your spouse.  Attach a note that ties the gift to some quality of your spouse that you really appreciate.  Of course, the affirming of your wife or husband can (and should) be a constant flow of “Thank you’s” and frequent acknowledgements of her/his good traits.  (Caution to husbands: make sure your pattern of showing attention doesn’t elicit the mental response, “Oh yeah, I know what he really wants!”  Make your cherishing much more often manifested than your appetites—keep her guessing!)  Wives, be appreciative of the qualities your husband actually has, not just the ones that fit the Procrustean bed of your wishes and expectations.  Many an effort at cherishing has foundered on the desire to create rather than find qualities to admire.

Mutual, consistent, intentional cherishing builds a relationship strong enough to withstand a lot of trouble.  Indeed, it’s in the midst of trouble that mutual cherishing can become even more entrenched.  And it’s that entrenched cherishing that makes a mature marriage rich and still capable of development.  The breeding soil of cherishing is thankfulness for God’s gifts, the chief of which, in a truly committed covenant marriage, is the gift of a spouse who is willing to participate in the exhilarating exercise of progressive cherishing.

While I was writing this article, I fortuitously saw a review of the latest of the Mitford novels by Jan Karon, Come Rain or Come Shine.  The reviewer quotes a comment by Father Tim, who is conducting a wedding, as he tries to answer a question from the bride, “How do we cherish someone?“  Father Tim answers, “A good marriage is a contest of generosities.  Our happiness is ensured when we seek the happiness of another.  The other person always has a choice.  It is our job to generously outdo, no matter what, and discover that the prize in this contest of generosity is more love.”  That reconfirms my conviction that the best succinct advice I can give to two people whom God has brought together in matrimony is, “Cherish one another.”

Image: "Love... just that" by Sippanont Samchai. CC License. 

John Peckham, summary of Chapter 3, “Agape Verses Eros?: The Biblical Semantics of Divine Love,” from The Love of God: A Canonical Model

Before setting out to delineate the love of God by means of its consistent and wide-ranging attributes as supported in the Canon, Peckham decides first to address the issues surrounding the polysemy and multivalency of the word “love” as it appears in the Scriptures. In so doing, Peckham confronts an exegetical fallacy that unfortunately pervades both popular and, in some cases, academic scholarship concerning theologically charged verbiage in general and “love” in particular. This fallacy is known by Grant Osborne as the lexical fallacy and/or the illegitimate totality transfer and identified by D. A. Carson in his discussion on problems surrounding synonyms and componential analysis. In both of these presentations and in that of Peckham’s, it is concluded that the entire semantic range of any word should not be read into every occurrence of the aforementioned term nor should a particular meaning/nuance in one context be thrust on all other contexts containing the same locution.

Proving this to be true of the word “love” in its many forms (agape, eros, phileo, etc.) is fruitful for Peckham’s broader argument for two reasons. First, if Peckham cannot demonstrate that there is at least some semantic overlap between different canonical terms for love, then he might be required to treat each individual term to its own robust study. Second, proving that there is at least some lexical and semantic parallelism between different terms for love from the beginning will allow Peckham to move more freely within the Canon toward an understanding of divine love without becoming too preoccupied with unnecessary and overly particular lexical exercises which, as mentioned above, have the potential of yielding fallacious conclusions.

The Theological Inflation of Agape over Eros

Perhaps the most popular distinction drawn in this discussion is between agape and eros in which those like Anders Nygren argue that agape pertains to a unilateral beneficence limited to the realm of God’s own volition while eros describes an emotional, acquisitive, and desirous love witnessed within the human race. However as Peckham reveals, agape is used in the Scriptures both positively and negatively to convey a host of meanings ranging from the holy love of God (connotations more in keeping with popular ideas about agape) to fleeting lusts (which is more in keeping with common considerations of eros). Therefore, what Peckham is able to demonstrate seems to undermine the conclusions of Nygren and others of his ilk.

That said, Peckham does concede that with divine agency, the agapao word group only refers to perfect, virtuous love, but not in a lexically limited way. Instead God’s agape love in many contexts involves conditions, evaluations, emotion, and reciprocity. Therefore, to delimit agape to the perfect and yet cold volition of God is to rob it of its nuance, biblically rooted connotations, and the subsequent implications thereof.

The Theological Inflation of Agape over Phileo

A similar phenomenon is witnessed in considerations of agape alongside phileo. Those wearing lexical blinders often conclude that while agape speaks of Christian love witnessed between God and man, phileo connotes a friendly and therefore inferior kind of love that is given and reciprocated between two equals in a relationship. Many in favor of this distinction point to the conversation recorded in John 21 between Jesus and Peter for support.

However, as Peckham points out, the meanings associated with these two terms in the New Testament overlap in nearly every respect as both describe the Father’s love for the Son, God’s love for his disciples, Jesus’ love for sinners, mankind’s love for Christ, human love for other humans, and love of one’s own life. Additionally, similar conditions are often involved in contexts containing both agape and phileo, as are emotions and reciprocity.

For the reasons described above, Peckham concurs with Carson in concluding that there is no biblically supported rule that ultimately or completely isolates agape love to the realm of God and limits his affection to volitional and emotionless beneficence. The best proof of this is witnessed in the obvious semantic overlap between agape, eros, and phileo.

The Wider Semantics of Love in the Scripture

The same can be said of words used for “love” in the Old Testament. For instance אָהֵב (the forerunner of agape) with divine agency always connotes perfect love. With this in mind, Eugene Merrill (as Nygren has done with agape) delimits אָהֵב to a unilaterally willed and unconditional kind of love—the kind demonstrated most succinctly in arbitrary election. However, Peckham argues that while love might serve as a basis for election, the two are not pure synonyms. In fact, according to Old Testament usage, אָהֵב is evaluative rather than the result of arbitrary choice. Elsewhere, God expects אָהֵב from human beings (albeit not symmetrically) for having bestowed אָהֵב on them.  Not only that, but Peckham shows that אָהֵב is decidedly emotional in certain contexts as well.

חסד ( “steadfast love and mercy”) is also understood by many to be relatively singular in meaning—denoting the relational love of God that allows for his loyalty and mercy. However, even this term is multifaceted. Occurring primarily in contexts dealing with God’s covenant with His people, חסד includes a voluntary (volitional) act toward another that is unmerited and yet not altogether unconditional (as it may be forfeited and withdrawn). חסד also naturally assumes responsiveness from those to whom it is bestowed (reciprocity).

Finally, רחמ (and New Testament counterparts pertaining to compassionate love) is also teaming with potential meanings and nuances. Though primarily רחמ is used in referring to intense emotional love, its reception is often described in the Old Testament as contingent on the maintenance of an ongoing divine-human relationship (foreconditional).

Implications

Peckham has thus been able to demonstrate that biblical words for love are not nearly as distinct as they are often presumed to be and that they share many of the same attributes (volition, evaluation, emotion, forecondition, and reciprocation)—especially in contexts dealing with God’s love for the world. This study is well positioned to develop its understanding of divine love on a canonical level without having to delimit itself to or preoccupy itself with overly reductionist lexical studies.

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Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, “Moral Faith,” Part IV: The Volitional Aspect of Moral Faith

Probably all belief involves the will. To have faith is always to be for what one has faith in. Moral faith involves being for something in a special way. Like religious faith, it involves commitment.

There is surely moral and religious belief that does not amount to faith and does not involve commitment. Simply believing what one was taught, or holding one’s beliefs too tentatively, for example. Holding one’s beliefs tentatively can be quite appropriate, but not all the time. “Probably it’s wrong to torture innocent children” is hardly recognizable as an expression of a moral stance.

Kierkegaard was a pioneer in exploring the aspect of faith that we touch here. Kierkegaard is as emphatic as Calvin that an opinion held as merely probable can’t constitute faith, but he does not speak of faith in terms of feelings of assurance. On the contrary, the faith that interests him is one that coexists with an acute awareness of the “risk” that it is wrong.

For most people in the modern world, a confidence amounting to subjective certainty seems neither possible nor desirable. We need to retain the attitude we might be wrong; on this issue about the nature of faith—moral as well as religious faith—Kierkegaard seems likelier than Calvin to speak to our condition.

How, then, can we be committed to an ethical or religious outlook and way of life? Kierkegaard sees commitment in terms of decisiveness, and while in some ways his view is probably too voluntaristic, I think his emphasis on decisiveness is more importantly right than wrong. The attitude of the will, broadly understood, is crucial to commitment. The possibility that one is wrong may be recognized, but at certain points it must be disregarded in one’s decisions and actions and way of life, and one’s “bets” must not be “hedged.” This is the heart of Kierkegaard’s account of faith.

While tentativeness seems quite appropriate in some ethical and theological opinions, a moral life, like a religious life, requires a core of commitment, and in relation to that core we are not prepared to accept attitudes toward probability and doubt that seem perfectly appropriate, or even praiseworthy, in relation to most other topics. It is not morally acceptable to “hedge one’s bet” on morality. A moral person will have a degree of commitment to some central ethical beliefs that is more than proportionate to the strength of the evidence or arguments supporting them. It does not follow that the beliefs to which a moral person is committed can’t all be favored by reason, in preference to alternatives. It is just that reason’s support for them is not likely to be as solid as morality’s.

Closely related to the central role of commitment in faith is the phenomenon of struggles of faith, or striving for faith. That we strive for faith is connected with an important point that Adams thinks American pragmatist philosophers got right, namely, that our cognitive project is one of developing a system of beliefs that can be integrated not only with experience but also with the living of the moral life, and more broadly a good life. The striving often takes the form of clinging to faith. A moral person has reason to cling to moral faith, with some tenacity, when it is tried by doubts.

If impartial desire to believe whatever is true is likelier to lead to true belief than the desire to cling to one’s present belief, then the influence of the latter sort of desire may well corrupt the reliability of one’s belief formation process. But is the impartial desire more likely to lead to truth than the desire that strives for faith? In ethics, Adams does not think we have truth-finding faculties independent of our desires. Whatever may be the nature of ethical truth, it is not plausible to suppose that those whose hearts are in the wrong place are as likely to find it as those whose hearts are in the right place. He doesn’t suppose his ability to grasp moral truth is independent of the way in which their content moves his feeling and his will; and to be moved in the relevant way is in part to want to hold the convictions; it is not independent of volitional commitment to them. To suppose that our thinking in such matters would be more reliable if we did not care which conclusion we come to, so long as it is the correct one, is to propose an implausibly coldhearted conception of what would constitute reliable thinking in ethics.

A humane and reasonable moral faith will include the belief that we all could be more enlightened ethically than we are, and will therefore demand an openness, as unprejudiced as we can manage, to certain revisions of our ethical opinions. But which revisions are those? Are some of our moral judgments of moral faith, to which we should cling, whereas others are mere moral opinions, to which we should try not to be attached? Or ought we to be as open as possible to revision of any of our beliefs about particular ethical issues? Surely not; there are some moral judgments that it would be a betrayal of morality, or of humanity, to think seriously about abandoning. If it seems to us that giving up a particular moral conviction would amount to an abandonment of other human beings, or of a significant part of the moral meaning of our lives, those are certainly reasons for regarding the matter as an issue of faith. The line between moral faith and moral opinion may fall in different places for different people with different histories.

A question Adams regularly addresses is whether moral faith is still a virtue when it is faith in the wrong cause. Adams thinks it can be, though not if the cause is too indefensible. Conflict is dehumanized when we lose the sense that our enemies can be admirable in opposing us, even though we think them wrong. It is a sort of self-righteousness to think that nothing matters by comparison with being on the right side. Epic poets and professional politicians have known that respecting one’s enemies is commonly of at least comparable importance. Recognizing and admiring in one’s antagonist such virtues as courage, loyalty, and faith is a major ingredient of that respect.

Like courage, like loyalty, faith is a dangerous virtue. We may rightly refuse to call them virtues at all where they are part of a pattern of moral depravity. But if we refuse them the title of virtue wherever they are implicated in understandable moral error and contribute to guilt or disaster, we deny appropriate recognition to the frail and fragmentary character of our grasp of moral and other truth.

Find the other chapter summaries here.

Image: "Kierkegaard 20090502-DSCF1492" by Arne List - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kierkegaard_20090502-DSCF1492.jpg#/media/File:Kierkegaard_20090502-DSCF1492.jpg

John Peckham, summary of Chapter 2, “Toward Addressing the Conflict: A Canonical Approach,” of The Love of God: A Canonical Model

Having delineated the disjunction and subsequent impasse between the transcendent-voluntarist and immanent-experientialist models of divine love in chapter one, Peckham continues his work by describing the means by which he has arrived at his canonical alternative. Instead of presupposing a robust ontology and moving toward an understanding of love, the author instead presupposes a sophisticated view of Scripture and then considers what it elucidates about divine love in light of Scripture’s principal character—Christ.

As in any argument, the canonical approach employed for understanding divine love (as endorsed by Peckham) is well within its epistemic rights to select its starting point a priori. Taking advantage of what is allowed on epistemic grounds, the canonical approach in this work endorses the following foundation: (1) a robust view of revelation, (2) a dual-authorship understanding of the produced text, and (3) a primarily grammatical-historical hermeneutic (although Peckham’s iteration of this concept is sympathetic to how any one text fits into the entire Canon). These endorsements reveal that the canonical approach promulgated in this work desires to uncover what about divine love is depicted in the text. Additionally, what is sought is not what any one passage has to offer on the matter, but what the Canon reveals as a whole.

This decision is in keeping with what is encouraged by many hermeneutical scholars who believe that much of what is reached on an interpretive level depends on context. Reaching a responsible understanding of a passage/topic requires an investigation of the immediate context (i.e. the passages that surround the verse/idea in question) for anything that might offer aid in interpretation. Better, continue the analysis by observing how the verse/topic fits into the argument of the book in which it is placed. What is even better is exploring how a verse or passage comports with other passages in the Canon that deal with the same concept or contain similar language. Investigating a topic as broad as the love of God merits (and even demands) an approach that extends this kind of contextual analysis Canon-wide because it is only in the purview of the entire Scriptural account that something as pervasive and significant as God’s affections can be properly informed and elucidated.

Peckham’s canonical approach assumes that in spite of its plurality of authors and contexts, Scripture was written in a single vein that informed, guided, and even corrected the human participants in the writing process.  In other words, the Canon itself has a direction and objectivity to it that is greater than the sum of all of its parts.

Additionally, Peckham’s program is sympathetic to hermeneutical critical realism (i.e. that meaning exists before interpretation). However, his hermeneutic pushes exegesis beyond any specific text and toward an interpretation of the entire Canon. Such an approach is able to appreciate both the rich nuance of any text along with its meaningful relationship to the rest of Scripture and its history. Put another way, the canonical approach described above is characteristic of both phenomenological exegesis (considering interpretations which mean something on both a specific and canonical level) and hermeneutical exegesis (considering the philological and historical dimensions of the exegetical method).

These commitments keep Peckham from missing the forest for the trees and losing the trees among the forest. As much as possible, Peckham is trying to understand love by means of applicable texts (bottom up), while simultaneously analyzing these texts alongside each other given their relationship to canonical and historical considerations (top-down).

Although while interpreting data exegetes and theologians are encouraged to cancel out all previously inherited theories and/or presuppositions that could in some way color the text, the canonical approach delineated here is honest about its commitment to an orthodox view of revelation, authorship, and a singularly focused canonical framework that is only fully appreciated when both phenomenological and hermeneutical investigations are allowed to transpire. Peckham chooses to presuppose this over and above a sophisticated ontology. Instead of beginning in the realm of systematic theology and understanding Scripture in light of well-organized systems, he chooses to begin with the raw data, correctly interpreted, and then proceeds to build a canonically sound view of divine love.

One of the concessions that Peckham makes before proceeding is that this work is not prepared to report an exhaustive analysis of every passage on divine love along with its meaning and relationship to the entire Canon. Therefore, the analysis will be in large part feature a report of the trends discovered following a more exhaustive exercise conducted before this work was produced. One of the means by which the raw data was limited for the purposes of this project involved delimiting God’s love to his concern for the world. This naturally establishes Jesus Christ as a special subject worth careful consideration as he is the very incarnation of God in general and God’s love in particular.

For Peckham, it is not just the Canon, but the Christ of the Canon that reveals God primarily and his love especially. Therefore, with the Canon as the body of data and Christ as the example par excellence discovered therein, this canonical approach is able to yield an understanding of the love of God that is more sophisticated than both the transcendental-voluntarist model and the immanent-experientialist model.

In a preview of coming attractions, Peckham concludes this chapter by outlining several specific attributes of God’s love resulting from the canonical approach described in this chapter: (1) volition, (2) evaluation, (3) emotion, (4) forecondition, and (5) reciprocity. These will be delineated in future summaries.

Image: By Carl Bloch - http://www.carlbloch.org/The-Last-Supper.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10115340

Summary of Robert Adams’ chapter on Moral Faith, Part III, from Finite and Infinite Goods: The Cognitive Aspect of Moral Faith

Is it really correct to speak of believing in these contexts, or is something less cognitive demanded in moral faith? Adams chooses to concentrate on some of the concrete features of moral faith that incline him to speak of “belief” here. For no theory on metaethical issues is likely to attain a very high degree of certainty. Moral faith is therefore a stance we will have to take, if we are reasonable, in the face of the recognition that any metaethical theory we may hold could rather easily be mistaken. So it would be good to have an understanding of the stance that does not presuppose very much metaethics.

Adams thinks both will and feeling are involved in moral faith, but he does not think that moral faith is merely will and feeling, or that believing another person’s life is worth living is merely caring about that life. It’s not just a volitional matter; an intention central to moral faith is an intention of respecting something more commanding, more external to the self than mere personal preference and feeling.

This is the most important reason for speaking of moral faith as a sort of “belief,” and it is connected with the possibility of error. Faith confronts a temptation to doubt precisely because such possibilities of error must be recognized, and in a way respected.

Emotions too can be mistaken, but it’s far from clear that we can understand how an emotion of faith in the value of life can be inappropriately related to reality if we can’t understand how faith can be, or involve, a false belief that life is worth living. In any event, the possibility of an objectively appropriate or inappropriate relation to reality is precisely the aspect of moral belief most subject to metaethical doubts, and also the aspect that seems to Adams most important to the nonegocentric character of moral faith.

Connected with the possibility of error is the giving of reasons for and against beliefs. In thinking about items of moral faith one uses logic, one aims at consistency and at coherence with one’s beliefs on other subjects, and one is responsive to one’s sense of “plausibility,” as we sometimes put it. All of that provides grounds for classifying moral faith as a sort of belief.

Particular interest attaches to the question of responsiveness or unresponsiveness of moral faith to the evidence of experience. Our faith in the value of particular human lives, in the value and the possibility of a moral life, and in the possibility of a common good, can be put under strain by particular experiences. Indeed, adverse experience is precisely what gives rise, as Adams has argued, to a problem of evil for moral faith.

There is thus a considerable empirical element in faith in moral ends. But Adams does not believe that science, or social science, could devise a definitive empirical test of the truth of faith in any moral end. Objects of faith have vaguer contours that permit reformulation in the face of adverse experience, so we can’t identify experiences that are unequivocally predicted or excluded by such items of faith as that so-and-so’s life is worth living. So faith is not normally subject to definitive proof or refutation by any specifiable finite set of experiences. And from the perspective of moral faith, this is as it should be, for moral faith is supposed to be resistant to adverse evidence.

Empiricists may take offense at this feature of faith. Faith as such is indeed resistant to adverse experience, and is apt to revise itself before simply accepting refutation. Flew is right that faith is in danger of evacuating itself of content if its resistance is undiscriminating or absolutely unconditional. Nonetheless, Adams believes that resistance to adverse experience, and to refutation in general, is an appropriate feature of faith; and he will argue this with specific reference to moral faith.

Our interest in items of faith is importantly different from our interest in scientific hypotheses. Conclusive falsification of a hypothesis is progress in science. But falsification of an item of faith is not progress—at least not from the perspective within which it is an item of faith. To think that falsification of the belief in morality itself, or of the belief that a moral life is worth living, might be pure progress is already to hold an amoral view, a morally bad view. A loss of moral faith would be the loss of something precious.

When we resist refutation of an item of moral faith, we may, and should, be thinking of the danger of being misled into giving it up while it is true. From a moral point of view that would be a worse mistake to make than the mistake of clinging to moral faith while it is false. Even if an item of moral faith is false, moreover, we are not likely in abandoning it to attain anything corresponding to the moral value of believing it if it is true. This is an important asymmetry.

The balance of potential payoffs is much more equal when it is a question of revising moral faith, rather than abandoning it. We can hope that revision of moral faith will be progress from a moral point of view. This is a further reason for thinking it is good for moral faith to combine a variable, revisable form with a vaguer but more enduring core, so that self-critical growth and development may be combined with constancy of commitment.

Items of faith are not hypotheses to be tested by experience, though we may well want their formulations to be tested by experience. Items of faith may in fact be tested by experience, but we are not trying to refute them. We are trying to live by them. It’s not that moral faith is wholly unempirical, let alone noncognitive, but that it involves a different way of accommodating thought to experience.

Maybe this suggests too stark a contrast between morality and science. Notoriously, the reliability of induction and more broadly of empirical scientific methods has been doubted by reasonable persons and it may not be possible to set the doubts to rest in a completely satisfying way. Yet a refutation of the reliability of induction would not be scientific progress in the same way that a refutation of the meteorite explanation of the extinction of dinosaurs might be. So perhaps there is a place, or even a need, for faith in the highest level beliefs of science, but for now Adams is content to make a point just about moral faith.

Believing and Hoping

A Twilight Musing

Two related contrasts came up in my devotional times this week:

1. the distinction between optimism and hope (particularly Christian hope); and
2. the profound difference between the popular saying, “Seeing is believing,” and the reverse of that, “Believing is seeing.”

The first of each pair is an expression of a secular, humanistic interpretation of reality, and latter of each pair embodies reality seen through the eyes of faith.  I would like to expound a bit on both pairs.

Optimism and Hope

Both optimism and hope go beyond the visible facts of the situation to which they are applied, but whereas optimism is a chosen attitude, hope is the embracing of confidence in what somebody has said.  Optimism can be merely the expression of a sunny disposition, or perhaps of a kind of naiveté; but hope is the conviction, based on a reliable source, that things are being engineered in a certain direction.  We can choose to be optimistic that the stock market will go up and the economy will prosper, but we can have hope for these developments only if we have inside information that we trust.  Optimism is subjective, whereas hope is grounded in the assurance that a promise will be fulfilled.

When the Bible speaks of hope, it is always connected with faith, and it is never merely a subjective choice to see things in the most positive light.  The Psalms are full of references to hope based on trusting God.  (All biblical passages are from the NIV.)

  Ps 33:20-21

 We wait in hope for the Lord ;

he is our help and our shield.

 In him our hearts rejoice,

for we trust in his holy name.

Isa 40:31

 but those who hope in the Lord

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not grow weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

Rom. 4: 18-22 shows the extreme of hope that perseveres because of belief in God’s faithfulness and the surety of His promise:

 Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, "So shall your offspring be."  Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead — since he was about a hundred years old — and that Sarah's womb was also dead.  Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

Heb. 6:17-19 makes clear that our hope in God’s promises is anchored in the Absolute Truth of Yahweh Himself:

Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath.  God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.   We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

Seeing is believing/Believing is seeing

All of us have encountered, at some time or another, the practical skepticism of someone who says, “Well, seeing is believing” (or some expression of that sentiment).  Applied to some situations, such as hearing the promises of someone who has proven himself to be untrustworthy, this response is appropriate and understandable.  But for some people, it becomes the expression of a materialistic epistemology, based on the assumption that the only questions worth asking (or answering) are those subject to rational, scientific investigation.

For a person of active faith, this aphorism has to be inverted: “Believing is seeing.”   The contrast between the two statements is very instructive about what is involved in living a life of faith.  At the center of this contrast is the implicit assertion in the first that only seeing can validate and inform believing, while the inverted statement affirms that believing is the foundation for truly seeing.  Augustine articulated the contrast by saying, “I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but rather, I believe in order that I may understand.”  Later, Anselm reinforced this idea with his maxim, “Credo ut intelligam,” which is a reflection of the scriptural statement that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7).  The core meaning of the biblical idea is that one must go beyond the narrow boundaries of what can be established merely by human observation and analysis and accept that the Source of all knowledge is the God Who gave us the power to think.  If we are to have a deep understanding of Truth, we must be grounded in a simple act of faith that accepts possibilities beyond what we can see.

As Paul says in Rom. 8:23-25, we “groan inwardly” in hope of “the redemption of our bodies.   For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?   But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”

Image: "Hope" by P. Herjolf. CC License. 

Summary of Chapter 1, “Conflicting Models of Divine Love,” of John Peckham’s The Love of God: A Canonical Model

While the concept of a loving God has been firmly established within the theistic community for centuries, delineating how God’s love is applied to mankind in general and the lost and saved in particular continues to generate discussion. Most recently, those joining this conversation on divine love have found themselves endorsing one of two general positions: a transcendent-voluntarist position (held by classical theism) and an immanent-experientialist model (representative of panentheism). In chapter 1 of The Love of God, Peckham provides a brief analysis of each position and a description of how they answer several significant questions. Ultimately, this first discussion will lay the groundwork for the discussions that will take place later in the work as it reveals an unfortunate dichotomy in need of a canonical rejoinder.

The strident differences between transcendent-voluntarism and immanent experientialism can be traced historically and understood as the result of an ever-evolving theology on the love of God. Peckham begins by tracing the evolution of transcendent-voluntarism.

Transcendent-Voluntarism

Augustine, perhaps the forefather of the classical theistic model of divine love, was the first to endorse something akin to the modern transcendent-voluntarist position. For Augustine (a pseudo-neoplatonist), God loves men as objects of use in a top-down program of unilateral beneficence. When man loves God in return, this is determined voluntarily by God who requires nothing (as he is already perfect) but wills everything (as he is totally sovereign). With Augustine, Thomas Aquinas conceded that God is, in fact, an immutable and passionless deity. However, Aquinas warmed the free will of God into a kind of divine friendship (again top down and requiring no reciprocity), believing that God chooses to befriend mankind in different ways for his own purposes. Martin Luther applied these foregoing concepts to his revitalization of the doctrine of grace and framed God’s love as actively and freely bestowed on men who are unable to truly love except as passive agents of divine love in them. It wasn’t until Anders Nygren that attention was given to different words for love (agape and eros especially). Though later his conclusions were largely refuted, Nygren believed that a strict dichotomy existed between eros and agape and only God was capable of agape love (sacrificial, sovereign, and gracious) while the love of men was predominately understood as eros (acquisitive, upward, contingent, and effort-based).

This brief survey highlights the major classical theistic players that eventually coalesced in the work of one recent figure—Carl Henry. Henry amalgamated many of these considerations and further nuanced them into what is understood as one the most robust delineations of the transcendental-voluntarist position. With Augustine, Henry believed that God lacks nothing and therefore requires nothing from his creation. With Aquinas, Henry asserted that God is totally free to show love in different ways to different people. With Luther, Henry recognized the gracious nature of divine love that exists solely for the benefit of the recipient. However, though like Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther, Henry confirmed God’s divine impassibility, and also affirmed God’s ability to feel—arguing that these feelings were, as all of God’s attributes, purely self-determined. Similarly, though Henry adopted his forefather’s confession of God’s transcendence above creation, he did not deny God’s pervasive immanence in creation as witnessed in his preserving it and working out his purposes in it.

Immanent-Experientialism

On the other side of the aisle, immanent-experientialism affirms that God, while dissimilar from the world, is essentially related to the world and thereby dependent on the world for his existence (see panentheism). This concept is largely constructed on the premise that the continual and temporal process of change is the basic form of reality. Therefore, all reality is indeterministic and interdependent—including the reality of God. Inasmuch as the world changes, as it is part of God, God changes with it. Hartshorne applies these concepts to love in the following ways. First, since God includes the world, he feels what the world feels and is therefore acutely sensitive to the world’s concerns. His subsequent love for the world and concern for it is therefore superior to the love of all others because he knows all that there is to know and feels all that there is to feel. However, though his love for the world is as perfect as it can be, it is incomplete as the world is in a constant state of flux.

Both of these positions hit an impasse when they confront several important questions in need of cogent answers.

Does God choose to fully love only some, or does he choose to love all, or is he essentially related to all such that he necessarily loves all?

For the classical transcendent-voluntary theist, God’s love originates in his divine decision to love all generally but only some unto salvation. However, Hartshorne and others believe that the determinism of the transcendent-voluntarist model is unacceptable because it denies meaningful creaturely freedom, thereby excluding true love. As an alternative, Hartshorne and others posit that God’s love is universal, sympathetic, and indetermininistic. However, Henry and other classical theists believe that this makes God’s love contingent, thereby diluting God’s magnificence.

Does God only bestow and/or create value, or might he also appraise, appreciate, and receive value?

Classical theists subscribing to transcendent-voluntarism believe that inasmuch as God is perfect and self-sufficient, he is only the benefactor and never the beneficiary in the exchange of love (he is unchanged by the world). Conversely, immanent-experientialism says that God feels everything and, as a result, benefits and suffers along with the world. Ultimately, while the former affirms God’s self-giving agape love (altruism), the latter believes that God loves in an effort to bring about his own fulfillment (egoism).

Does God’s love include affection and/or emotionality such that God is concerned for the world?

Henry and others who affirm the impassibility of God believe that while God has feelings, these feelings are self-determined (as is every one of God’s attributes). Hartshorne and others who affirm the passibility of God believe that God’s emotions are thrust upon him in a passive way as he sympathizes with what he observes in the world. While the former view is criticized for cheapening real emotions (as many argue that impassibility rules our genuine love in God), the latter avails itself of the idea of a needy and therefore deficient deity.

In what sense is divine love unconditional or conditional, ungrounded or grounded?

Both positions concede that divine love is unconditional; however, they affirm this in different ways. Henry argues that God does not need to love. Instead, he has determined himself to be a God of love and chooses to love as a result. Hartshorne, in contrast, believes that God’s love is unconditional because of his dependency on a world that manifests itself in sympathy for that world—sympathy that manifests in love that he cannot help but demonstrate. However, neither position seems to be able to explain instances in which conditions are assigned to love in things like covenant promises.

Can God and humans be involved in a reciprocal (and unequal) love relationship?

For the transcendental-voluntarist, only God can give love and does so in both general (common grace) and particular (salvific) ways. For the immanent-experientialist, God’s love is universal—i.e. given to all, not just a few, and at all times—and reciprocal. Henry and others wonder if this does not lead inexorably to a mutable being unworthy of worship. Still others along with Hartshorne decry Henry’s transcendent God, believing him to be cold and ultimately unrelated to humanity in any compelling way.

In lieu of these questions and others like them, many have begun to wonder if there is not an alternative to these mutually exclusive conceptions of divine love. Peckham believes that there is, and in the following chapters he will work toward a canonical rejoinder to these positions.

Find the other chapter summaries here as they come available.'

Image: "He loves you" by _mogi. CC License. 

His Truth Is Marching On: Selma’s Clarion Call

Editor's note: This article was originally published at Christ and Pop Culture. 

“The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

There’s a poignant scene towards the close of Ava DuVernay’s new film Selma, a scene made all the more compelling by its prescience. John Doar, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, warns Martin Luther King of credible threats against his life that await him in Montgomery, the destination of the Selma march protesting barriers to African American voter registration.

Doar implores King to drive—rather than walk—into the capital and to nix the planned speech, to minimize his exposure and prevent any possible harm. “Don’t you want to protect yourself?” Doar asks. King’s response here is telling, as it speaks of his convictions and highlights the worldview animating the film and, more importantly, the nonviolent resistance movement whose story it portrays.

I’m no different than anyone else. I want to live long and be happy, but I’ll not be focusing on what I want today. I’m focused on what God wants. We’re here for a reason, through many, many storms. But today the sun is shining, and I’m about to stand in its warmth alongside a lot of freedom-loving people who worked hard to get us here. I may not be here for all the sunny days to come, but as long as there’s light ahead for them, it’s worth it to me.

The specific threats of violence against King echo the egregious wrongs perpetrated throughout the film—the disenfranchisement of black citizens, the murders of innocent children and protesters, the brutality of local and state police against unarmed marchers. And yet the activists refused to be intimidated. “We go again,” Dr. King says after so-called Bloody Sunday—the brutal attacks by police and posse alike on the protesters during their first attempted march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

[su_dropcap]T[/su_dropcap]he injustice on display in Selma is heart-wrenching. Few will leave the theater dry-eyed after witnessing the powerful using their positions and privilege, their weapons and words, to dehumanize others. Again and again, the protesters are at the receiving end of such abuse. They suffer indignity after indignity in exercising basic human rights—registering to vote, checking in to a hotel, protesting peacefully.[su_pullquote]This process—resisting the impulse to respond to injustice in kind, to daily wait on the Lord to set wrongs right, to proclaim truth without fear, to stand in solidarity with the downtrodden—is hard. It is in fact beyond hard; it is impossible in our own strength.[/su_pullquote]

The scenes projected on the screen provoke outrage and disgust. And yet, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led by King rejected retaliation in kind, however tantalizing the temptation. After one particularly humiliating and damaging attack, several protesters plan to round up some guns, only to be reminded that the police and government force will always be much greater than theirs. “We have to win another way,” SCLC leader Andrew Young counsels.

Resisting the logic of lex talionis—an eye for an eye—seems counterintuive and countercultural at best, foolhardy at worst. Achieving victory by turning the other cheek seems impossible. Conceived in secular terms, victory over subjugation requires defeating one’s foes by force—be it legal, corporal, psychological, economic. But justice in Selma goes well beyond tactics; it points to a radical conception of reality itself.

[su_dropcap]J[/su_dropcap]ustice in the minds of the Selma freedom-fighters is a metaphysical fact, a real state of affairs promised and being worked out by a good God who is setting the world aright at the incalculable cost of his own son. And driven by their Christian convictions, the SCLC embraces the privilege and responsibility of participating in this process, of co-suffering with Christ.

While the scenes of outrageous abuse will infuriate viewers, the resolve of the protesters not to multiply evil through retaliation will inspire. What Marilyn Adams writes in a different context is attested to by the protesters’ courageous example: “To return horror for horror does not erase but doubles the individual’s participation in horrors—first as victim, then as the one whose injury occasions another’s prima facie ruin.”

Without granting its theological foundations, King’s campaign was worse than foolish. Knowingly placing himself at the mercy of those who would oppose with appalling force the truths he preached took courage, courage borne from the conviction that justice is the natural bent of the universe. The values of the kingdom of God turn those of this world on their head.

As Selma testifies, King understood that his real enemies weren’t government officials assassinating his character, racists and segregationists who thought themselves superior, nor even the man who would eventually kill him. No, he fought instead “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). And he knew that in the face of an all-powerful and all-loving God, these spiritual forces of darkness and entrenched systemic evils would not and could not stand.

[su_dropcap]S[/su_dropcap]elma gives us a glimpse into how this redemption works in our own lives here and now; it’s terrifying, convicting, and inspiring all at once. This process—resisting the impulse to respond to injustice in kind, to daily wait on the Lord to set wrongs right, to proclaim truth without fear, to stand in solidarity with the downtrodden—is hard. It is in fact beyond hard; it is impossible in our own strength. In our personal lives we all face indignities, abuses, and wrongs—all of which Selma magnifies in horrifying detail. We can thus sympathize with King’s weariness, his call for support, his pleas for divine intervention, his temptation to give in and give up.

In the crucible of this maelstrom, we see, too, the resurrection of hope, the power of community, the hardiness of righteousness, an enactment of the gospel. We see the church at work, Christ’s body setting the world to rights little by little, through the most powerful weapons there are, and the only truly efficacious ones—faith, hope, and love.

The saga of Selma echoes its clarion call to Christ’s body today to be faithful heralds of truth and justice, to live and labor in the hope of what we still can’t see except in fleeting glimpses and furtive glances. It is a glorious and sober reminder that if Christ be raised we have seen manifest the first-fruits of a coming victory so resounding, and a glory so amazing, that it will dwarf and eclipse any and all of this world’s sufferings. Like Dr. King, let this blessed assurance inspire us to proclaim truth with boldness, battle injustice with hope, and daily carry our cross with courage.

Creation and Re-creation

A Twilight Musing

1:1-18 is justly regarded as one of the foundational passages in the New Testament, since it could be called a hymn of praise summarizing the awesome picture of the eternal, ineffable God interacting with His physical and temporal creation.  There is a beautiful rhythm in the language of this passage, which manifests the economy and evocative imagery of poetic diction.  It begins by identifying the Creative Force in Genesis 1 and 2 as “the Word,” and ends with that Word becoming a part of the physical (and now darkened) world that He has created.  Just as “In the beginning was the Word,” so also in the end is the Word: the Alpha is also the Omega.  When the Creator became a part of His own creation, He reintroduced the original Light of creation, which operates to return the fallen earth to its pristine beginnings.

As I considered this way of seeing the Prologue to John’s Gospel, I began to wonder what it might look like to “translate” the embedded poetry of the passage into overt poetic form.  I present to you below my attempt to do just that, hoping that it provides a fresh approach to the text, while reflecting faithfully the essence of the Holy Spirit’s profoundly succinct theological summary given us through the Apostle John.

“The Alpha/Omega Word”

Beginning Word

Spoke Light to Chaos;

Light pushed Life from sod,

And God through Word

Made forms to walk on sod,

And finally man to trod

On finished earth.

But darkness pierced

The perfect pearl of Paradise:

The Word no longer heard,

Nor known the fellowship with Light.

In darkness, tyrannous Time was lord,

But Time was also womb of Light renewed.

Word of Light

Re-entered world He made,

Took on a mortal mould

That showed the face of God,

Unshadowed by shade.

Heralded by John He came,

Following in flesh

But eternally before;

Jordan-witnessed Lamb of God,

Light to be extinguished

So that Light could shine once more.

Time redeemed

Became a womb again:

Spirit spawned

Brothers of the Son,

Children owing naught to fallen flesh,

But reborn through God-in-Flesh,

The Light of Life.

New Covenant of Life,

Bought with blood,

Became God’s family,

Receiving grace and truth

Transcending Law of Death.

New breath breathed in

Through timeless Word,

 Beginning and also end.

                    --Elton D. Higgs

                       Jan. 12, 2016

Image: "The Creation of Adam" by Jessica Branstetter. CC License. 

Chapter 5, Part 2b, C. Stephen Evans’ God and Moral Obligations, “Constructivism”:

MORALITY AS AN IDEAL SOCIAL CONTRACT

Perhaps one might think the objectionable features of Harman’s view come from his decision to treat moral obligations as the outcome of relativistic social bargains that individuals freely enter into. It’s thus worth investigating whether moral obligations can be understood as the result of a social agreement that is ideal and perhaps for that reason universal.

Ronald Milo has proposed a view that he calls “contractarian constructivism.” It holds that moral truths are most plausibly construed as truths about an ideal social order. On this view, a certain kind of act is wrong just in case a social order prohibiting such acts would be chosen by rational contractors under suitably idealized conditions. This introduces a number of questions. For example, are the decisions based on making possible some good? And if so, isn’t this an abandonment of contractarianism, since it’s the good the guides the contractors’ decisions? Milo tries to avoid this by saying the practical reasoning of the contractors will be shaped by “means—end” reasoning as to how best to satisfy our desires. The aim is to improve the satisfactoriness of our lives. But Evans notes that this stance still involves a theory of the good, namely, a desire-fulfillment theory, and such an account of the good is as realistic as any other, since it seems committed to the claim that it is objectively good for humans to satisfy as many of their desires as possible. It’s also a controversial theory, but there is a more fundamental problem with the whole project.

What authority do the decisions of these hypothetical contractors have over actual individuals? Even if we decided that there are true counterfactuals of this type and that we could know what they are, why should the decisions of these non-actual people be binding on actual people? If I don’t accept their view of the good, then there is no reason to think I would agree with the views about right and wrong that they base on their theory of the good. One might try to avoid this by saying the contractors have no theory of the good at all, but this should only make us more suspicious.

The best attempt Evans knows to resolve this problem of authority is provided by David Gauthier in his Morals by Agreement. He tries to motivate a social contract approach to moral theory by seeing such an agreement as a way of trying to resolve “prisoner’s dilemma” situations. In these scenarios, two accused criminals—call them Ed and Fred—have the chance to confess to a more serious offense. The situation is stipulated such that it appears that whatever Fred does, Ed will be better off confessing. If Ed and Fred, though, could somehow count on each other not to confess, then each would get a small penalty. It looks like the best strategy for both of them would be to reach an agreement not to confess, but there is little reason for them to behave in this way without some assurance the other will keep the agreement.

Gauthier believes that such prisoner’s dilemma situations are not simply unusual possibilities, but capture many features of actual human social interaction. There are many situations in which, if every individual in a group pursues his or her self-interest, the outcome for everyone in the group will be much worse than would be the case if the individuals accept some restraints on their self-interest. Without an agreement regulating our behavior, in the actual world we are doomed to “non-optimal outcomes that, in ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma-type’ situations, may be little better than disastrous.” The solution is an agreement that creates duties that limit our quest for self-interest, though in the long run the agreement actually furthers our self-interest. Duty overrides advantage, but the acceptance of duty is truly advantageous. The authority of the agreement lies in the advantages the agreement makes possible, along with the fact that those who are party to the agreement will withdraw their cooperation towards those who fail to comply.

Is the agreement actual or hypothetical? Evans thinks Gauthier thinks that both can be true. The agreements may be implicit rather than explicit, but they are not a “mere fiction” since they give rise to new modes of interaction. Gauthier thinks that the authority of actual agreements depends on the degree to which they resemble an ideal agreement. He argues that ideal agreement is one that adheres to the “principle of minimax relative concession,” in which the maximum that each party is asked to concede is as small as possible, thus giving everyone reason to commit to the agreement.

Gauthier’s attempt to see morality as a solution to the disasters that stem from unfettered pursuit of self-interest is powerful, and it’s a creative effort to get beyond Harman’s relativism. But Evans thinks many of the same problems beset Gauthier’s solution. For example, it’s still not clear why an agreement that would be made by ideally rational agents under certain conditions (which in fact do not hold) is binding on actual individuals. It seems unlikely that the agreement that it would be reasonable for an individual to keep if other people could be counted on to behave morally is binding on actual individuals, who know that in the real world people frequently lie and cheat.

It’s true that those who are known to violate the agreement can be penalized by others who keep the rules, but this only gives a reason to keep the agreement when breaking it is likely to be detected and the offender is likely to face some serious sanction if it is detected. Gauthier admits he isn’t claiming it’s never rational for one person to take advantage of another, never rational to comply with unfair practices. But Evans points out that this is simply to abandon key elements of the Anscombe intuition, since on such a view moral obligations are not always overriding and do not apply with equal force to everyone.

Perhaps to solve such a problem Gauthier suggests another response to the problem of why individuals should keep their agreement to behave morally. Morality can’t really survive if we are purely self-interested individuals who behave like “economic man.” What must happen is that we must strive to be like the “just man,” whose feelings are engaged by morality and adheres not because of self-interest, but because he simply loves the ideals he is committed to. But this limits the authority of morality to those with the relevant feelings.

The last difficulty Evans raises with Gauthier’s theory concerns the scope of the moral obligations as these are understood. Evans has argued that moral obligations are universal in scope: applying to all humans, and at least some obligations extending to all humans. It’s hard to see how an agreement grounded in self-interest could be the basis for obligations of this type. Gauthier concedes that animals, the unborn, the congenitally handicapped and defectives fall beyond the pale of morality tied to mutuality.

Nor is it easy to see why people in one human society should have obligations towards people in some distant land, particularly if the people in the distant land are too poor and weak to threaten or benefit the people in the first society.

Gauthier imagines such cultural contact between privileged purple people and impoverished green people, and gives three reasons why the purples might decide to treat the greens in a moral way. First, it may in the purples’ self-interest. Second, the purples may have become the kind of people who are so disposed to kind and compassionate treatment that they literally have no choice but to treat the greens well. Evans says this would only be plausible if human nature were completely transformed.

Third, the purples may possess a certain measure of sympathy for all whom they consider human. Evans replies, though, by saying it’s hard to see how such feelings of sympathy by themselves could be the basis of real moral obligations. All of the considerations to which Gauthier appeals manifestly fail to provide a foundation for genuine moral obligations that are overriding, binary in character, motivating, and universal. The contrast between such a view and a divine command account of moral obligations is clear.

Find the other chapter summaries here. 

Image: "Construction Time Again" by Victory is Mine. CC license.