THE BIBLICAL MORALITY, ITS CONTINUING VALIDITY

CHAS. W. CARTER, M.A., Th.M.
(Professor Philosophy and Religion, Taylor University)

I. The Source of the Biblical Morality

The Biblical morality is based upon a fourfold assumption, or faith. First, it assumes the existence of a personal, supreme and sovereign God, a God so absolutely sovereign that He can afford to allow a high degree of freedom within His realms (to borrow the notion of Bruno). The absolute sovereignty of God with its allowance of moral freedom and consequent responsibility must not be confused with a limited dictatorship type of sovereignty, such as Castro's, that cannot afford to allow any freedom. Second, it assumes that God is Himself a moral being. In the third place it assumes that God has personally revealed His essential moral character and will to man. And, fourth, it assumes the ability of man to receive God's revelation of His moral character and will, and to act in accordance therewith.

The fourth assumption raises the question of the meaning of the divine image in which God created man: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Gen. 1 :26a, 27). Since the divine communication came to man through symbolized concepts in the form of words or intelligible language, it seems necessary that man also should be capable of symbolization in order to receive the divine communication. Man's ability to symbolize and thus think and communicate his thoughts, or receive intelligibly the communicated thoughts of others, distinguishes him from all other created beings. Thus in this respect he was created in the personal image of God.

Just as certain essential notes are necessary to the existence and definition of any entity, so they by necessity belong to personality. To illustrate: the essential notes of a circle are a continuous closed, curved line equidistant from a central point. Anything less would not be a circle. Likewise, personality may be thought of as spiritually existent, intelligent, emotional, morally volitional, and morally responsible being. If these are the essential notes of finite human personality, it is reasonable to suppose, and it is scripturally revealed that the infinite divine personality also bears these essential notes. Thus man's personality would have been created after the pattern of the divine personality, though not of the essential nature of God. And thus man is constituted a personal moral being capable of receiving the divinely communicated moral directives for his life.

Such a human-divine relationship is as essential to man's very being as is the object to the existence of the subject in the simple sentence. Herein lies the significance of Martin Buber's I-Thou relationship. If it be argued that conscience is essential to human ethics, then let it be noted that conscience per se is not something acquired or added to man's moral equipment-not in fact something that man has. Rather man is a conscience. Conscience is man's mind judging in moral matters, his will implementing his mind's moral decisions, and his emotions approving or disapproving his moral judgements and actions with a sense of consequent moral responsibility. Paul said of the Gentiles who were without the Law that they "do instinctively the things of the Law [because they] are a law unto themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts [or in their moral constitution], their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending themselves" (Rom. 2:14, 15, NAS).

Thus we may conclude, in a figure of speech, that God is the divine broadcaster of His moral nature and will, while man is the divinely constituted moral receiving set for that divine moral broadcast.

II. The Effect of the Fall Upon Man's God-Given Moral Constitution

Had the entry of sin into human experience resulted in intensive total depravity, as some hold, then, in the light of our foregoing definition of personality, man would have ceased entirely to be a person and thus would have become as incapable of morality as an animal or any other sub-human creature-he would be capable of neither morality nor immorality-he would be amoral. Herein lies a serious fallacy in Karl Barth's earlier thought when he applies to man the principle of intensive total depravity, but at the same time considers him a guilty sinner before God.

However, if we regard the Fall as producing extensive, rather than intensive, total depravity, then man's moral personality is not annihilated, though it is seriously corrupted and subject to perversion. Through the Fall man broke his relationship with God and lost his divine frame of reference, and consequently his external moral norm and, thus weakened by the effects of sin, his moral personality became subject to perversion by reference to false norms. Thus man was left adrift on the dark, turbulent sea of moral chaos.

III. The Decalogue as God's Provision of a Moral Norm for Fallen and Indeterminate Man

In the Ten Commandments (Exod. 20:3-17) God gave to fallen man a twofold moral norm. The first four commandments give man a vertical moral norm. They direct him to a right relationship with and conduct toward God. They constitute his religious moral norm. The last six commandments of the Decalogue afford fallen man a horizontal moral norm. They direct him to right relationship with and conduct toward his fellows. They constitute his socio-ethical directives-his social moral norms.

The revealed moral law made possible again what man had at the beginning, but lost in the Fall, namely, the subject-object, the I- Thou, relationship. It gave man a new frame of reference and thus a basis for self-identification. In this new frame of reference he could identify and know himself; he could realize the Socratic ideal of self-knowledge-"Know thyself."

On the basis of the foregoing considerations, the Decalogue was designed by God to be the objective moral norm and directive for the remnant of man's fallen, perverted, subjective moral nature, which without such an objective norm would have left him subject to the response of his perverted moral nature to every conceivable objective appeal to that nature, and thus the resultant situation that James describes when he says: "Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust or strong desire. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death" (Jas. 1:14-15, NAS). Without the moral law as a norm for his conduct man is ethically, as well as spiritually, lost and his destruction is inescapable.

However, the Decalogue was never intended as an end in itself. Rather', as Paul says in Galatians 3:23-26; 4:4, "Before faith came, we were kept in custody under the Law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor [better, mar., a child-conductor, or perhaps truant officer] to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith, but now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor or child-conductor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus . . . when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons" (NAS). Further, Paul declares that "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believes" (Rom. 10:4, NAS). It hardly need be emphasized that the word end is from the Greek telos which signifies goal, ultimate purpose, completion, or fulfillment. Christ said of Himself, "Do not think that I am come to abolish the Law... I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say unto you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished. Whosoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others [mar., "men"] shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps [mar., "does"] and teaches them, shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:17-19).

It is perhaps the author of the Hebrew Epistle who makes most explicit the relationship of the moral law, as given by Moses, to its completion in Christ. "But you have come. . . to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant" (Heb. 12:22, 24, NAS).

IV. The Transfer of the Moral Law from Objective Tablets of Stone to the Subjective Tablets of Men's Spiritual Beings

The author of Hebrews is explicit. "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My Laws into their minds, and I will write them upon their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" (Heb. 8:10; cf. Heb. 10:16, NAS). As we have seen the Decalogue to be all embracing of man's moral relationship to God and society, so is the inwardly implanted moral law. This fact seems to be made most explicit by Luke. In chapter 10 of his Gospel he records that one who was expert in the Mosaic law attempted to ensnare Jesus with a question concerning the requirements necessary to inherit eternal life. Jesus turned the question back upon the lawyer by asking for his own answer. The legal expert proceeded to quote, in summary form, from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18 as follows: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27, NAS). Christ immediately replied, "You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live" (Luke 10:28, NAS).

A careful examination of the sources in Deuteronomy (6:5) and Leviticus (19:18), from which the Jewish legal expert quotes these words, in summary fashion, which elicit Christ's approval, indicate that Moses well understood the true significance and purpose of the Decalogue as being love and not legalism per se.

The first part of this twofold love commandment comprehends the totality of man's relationship with God, as that relationship is expressed by the first four commandments of the Decalogue. However, whereas the Decalogue is objective, largely prohibitive and thus negative, this love commandment is subjective, positive and inwardly compulsive. Matthew represents Jesus as replying to the lawyer that "This is the great and foremost [mar., "first"] commandment" (Matt. 22:38, NAS).

Three things must be noted concerning the second part of this commandment, love "your neighbor as yourself" (Luke 10:27 b, NAS). First, it is a summary and an epitomy of the last six commandments of the Decalogue which are social in their nature and application. Second, it too is subjective and positive as opposed to the objective and largely negative Decalogue. Third, Jesus equates it with "the foremost or, "first" commandment" when He says, "and a second is like it" (Matt. 22:39, NAS).

Furthermore Jesus makes this twofold love commandment the very foundation and fulfillment of the entire Old Testament revelation when He says, "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 22:40, NAS). Jesus seems to have equated this conclusion with the so-called Golden Rule when He said, "Therefore whatever you want others to do for you, do so [or mar., "you too do so"] for them; for this is the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 7:12, NAS). Thus Jesus makes this twofold moral law of love the foundation and the fruition of all morality in principle, character and conduct. And he further epitomizes it and states it positively in the Golden Rule.

That the moral law of love is not only subjective is attested by two important facts. First, in distinction from the sensual love, represented by eros in the Greek, and the love of common friendship, represented by filia, the word used for love in the great commandment is agape, which seems best understood as the believer's reciprocated love divinely implanted in his heart at conversion. But since none of the attributes of God are separable from His personality, this simply means that agape, in the context of the Great Commandment, is divine love generated in the believer's heart by the indwelling Spirit of God. Such was what Christ promised His disciples when He said, "you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you" (Acts 1:8, NAS); what those disciples experienced when "they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:4, NAS); and what Paul meant when he said, "God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27, NAS). The second attestation of the objective norm, or standard, of the believer's love-motivated conduct is the fact of Christ's personal objectivity. Paul states that "He [Christ] who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things" (Eph. 4:10, NAS). Likewise the author of Hebrew says, "Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us" (Heb. 9:24, NAS). Thus the Holy Spirit within the believer quickens the remnants of fallen man's moral nature and motivates him to act in conformity to the objective principles of the moral nature of Christ who abides at the right hand of God in heaven, as well as in the believer's heart. Thus the believer has both the inward impulse of divine love and the external moral norm in the objective Christ.

Paul makes clear the foregoing principle in the Roman letter when he says, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you [perhaps "me"] free from the law of sin and of death" (Rom. 81-2, NAS). The word nomos, which Paul uses for law, apparently alludes to the body of moral and ceremonial enactments which formed the basis of Judaism as set forth in the Old Testament: thus "a power to legislate, a sense of law, something with legislative authority," as in Romans 7:23, 8:2; Galatians 6:2; or an ordinance, as in Romans 7:2, James 1:22 and 2:8. However, as used in the New Testament this word nomos, or law, seems to be better understood as a "pattern, principle, system, or rule," or perhaps better, a norm. One has suggested that the meaning of the passage might be clearer if it read, "The principle, or rule, of the Spirit -i.e., of life in Christ Jesus-has set me free." (1) Thus, not the letter of the law, which kills (II Cor. 3:6), but the living Spirit of the law which makes alive the moral consciousness and directs the moral conduct of the individual, is here indicated. This "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" affords a pattern of morality for man, plus the spiritual power or enablement requisite of man's moral conformity to that divine ethical pattern (cf. Rom. 1:14).

Should the question be raised as to the moral state of the unregenerate who have neither the indwelling Spirit of God nor faith in the ascended objective Christ, it may be answered, first, that every man is obliged to recognize and yield to the claims of Christ upon his life. Second, in the meantime even the unbeliever has both the remnants of his fallen moral nature to prompt him and the revelation of God's nature and will in the Christian Gospel to direct his ethical conduct. For those who are without the Law of Moses or the Gospel of Christ there is the less distinct but non-the-less real objective revelation of God's righteousness in the moral structure of the universe. This objective revelation in nature answers to the remnants of fallen man's moral constitution and thus affords both the subjective moral prompting and the objective moral directives. The Psalmist observed that "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language; there voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Ps. 19:1 -4a, ASV). Paul adds his testimony to that of the Psalmist when he declares of the pagans: "because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse" (Rom. 1:19-20, NAS). The evidence of this is seen in the lives of all people, even to the most primitive. Some kind of personal, social, and political ethics are necessary to the preservation of society. Without some kind of ethics anarchy would occur, and anarchy would of course destroy society. But all societies exist and thus testify to the prevalence of ethics.

To all of this may be added the divine appointment of civil law as an objective moral norm, as treated by Paul in Romans 13, which answers to the remnants of fallen man's subjective moral nature. It is when man subjectively answers yes to the demands of the objective civil law that civil justice, or righteousness, is recognized and established.

The continuing validity of the Hebrew-Christian morality is suggested by the words of John: "Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you" (I John 2:7-8a, NAS). What John seems to be saying is that the old commandment, which was the objectively revealed moral law, given through Moses, is the same moral law as that which is in the very moral constitution of man, and which in the believer is awakened and renewed by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Thus the subjective and the objective moral laws are but the two sides of the same coin, and both are essential to the genuineness of the coin.

V. The Absolute and the Relative

Neither a thoroughgoing absolutism, nor a thoroughgoing relativism, is valid in ethical theory or practice. The first leads to legalism, the second to libertinism, as is witnessed by the recent adoption of the committee's report on "sex morality" by the British Council of Churches. (2) Ultimate ethical principles are the revelation of the righteous character of God, and thus they are as absolute as God Himself. However, the applications of those principles are as relative as the human situation may demand at any time or place. Love is no less love when it is manifested in severe discipline with a view to correcting the misguided and possibly self-destructive disposition and conduct of an individual than when it bestows favors or rewards for approved conduct. In fact discipline is often the greater manifestation of love. Likewise, justice is no less justice when it is manifested in mercy than when it demands full penalty. The moral principles are the revelation of the unchanging nature of God. The moral practices are the rational application of those principles for the continuing welfare and preservation of man and society.

The situational ethic per se relieves man of all responsibility to any ultimate authority, and the new radical theology destroys the transcendence of God and reduces the human situation to a pure secularistic monism where black merges with white to form an amoral grey. Adlai Stevenson said, most significantly, of a certain person: "If he were a wicked man I would not fear him so much. But he has no principles; he doesn't know the difference between right and wrong." (3) Bishop Robinson's Honest To God removed all clear distinctions between good and evil, and now the published report on "Sex and Morality" by the British Council of Churches approves all sex conduct within and outside of marriage which does not exploit the sex partner, with the exception of rape and homosexuality. Approval of even these "minor innocent" amoral remnants will doubtless be forthcoming soon. Thus, no longer can "sexless saints sit in judgment upon passionate sinners." (4)

In our society today we have a strange irreconcilable contradiction and conflict. We seem to want the absolute autonomy or freedom of a Jean-Paul Sarte to do as we please, and at the same time we want the absolute naturalistic determinism of an Arthur Schopenhauer to relieve us of all responsibility for what we do. The Christian ethic stands alone in offering man freedom in Christ that at the same time affords him the restraints and directives for the highest and fullest realization of his life here and hereafter.

Documentations

1. Gerold R. Cragg, Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1954), IX, 506

2. Time, Oct. 28, 1966.

3. Saturday Evening Post, "What's Happening to America."

4. Time, op. cit. p. 44.