Author: Lee M.

Earlier I suggested that the moral law is the means God provides us for restoring our broken relationships with him and each other. Let’s explore the implications of this a little more. One consequence is that the moral law is not an end in itself. It is the route we take back to God, but it isn’t the destination.

What does this mean?

One common account of morality, derived from Kant, stresses the opposition between duty and inclination. Duty is what I ought to do in a given situation. Inclination is what I’d like to do if I had my druthers. Only those actions that involve choosing duty over inclination have moral worth, according to this view.

I think the conflict between duty and inclination certainly describes a common feature of our moral experience. However, according to Christianity, this is not our natural state. Ideally we would be inclined to do the good. The fact that there is a fissure in our moral selves indicates that we’re in need of healing. This fissure is the symptom of our sin, our alienation from God.

Because of sin, we need an external standard to direct us toward our true good. This is one of the functions of the law. It shows us where we need to resist inclination for the sake of duty.* But Christianity teaches that this shouldn’t be our permanent state.

A saint could be defined as someone in whom the conflict between duty and inclination has been fully healed. This is what Christians mean by sanctification. If union with God is the goal of human life, the saint is someone who has traveled so far down that road that he spontaneously does what the moral law requires. He has no further need of it. In heaven there will be no law because all the saints will spontaneously love God and one another without needing to be directed by the law.

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*We also, according to Christianity, need God’s grace in order to resist disordered inclinations and do what is right.

Will Saletan has a good article over at Slate debunking some of the myths and half-truths that are being peddled to drum up support for the Democrats’ position on stem-cell research. To wit:

The stem-cell movement has become political. “Three years ago, the president enacted a far-reaching ban on stem-cell research,” Kerry asserted in his radio address. Repeating a pledge made by Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention, Kerry promised twice that he would “lift the ban on stem-cell research.” But no such ban exists. Embryonic stem-cell research is unrestricted in the private sector. State and local governments can fund it as they wish. The federal government spent nearly $200 million on adult stem-cell research last year and nearly $25 million on research involving the roughly 20 approved embryonic lines. As today’s Washington Post observes, what Bush actually did was “to allow, for the first time, the use of federal funds” for embryonic stem-cell research.

Why does Kerry call it a “ban on stem-cell research” instead of a ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell lines derived after Aug. 9, 2001? Because the shorter phrase, while scientifically inaccurate in four egregious ways, is more politically effective.



Moreover, polls have found that support for stem cell research jumps when respondents are asked if they would support it to find cures for diseases like Alzheimers. Trouble is, there’s scant evidence that stem cell research holds much promise for curing Alzheimers:

The trouble is, the Alzheimer’s hype isn’t true. On June 10, the Post’s Rick Weiss reported that “given the lack of any serious suggestion that stem cells themselves have practical potential to treat Alzheimer’s, the Reagan-inspired tidal wave of enthusiasm [for stem cell research] stands as an example of how easily a modest line of scientific inquiry can grow in the public mind to mythological proportions. It is a distortion that some admit is not being aggressively corrected by scientists.” Why don’t scientists dispel the myth? “People need a fairy tale,” NIH researcher Ronald McKay told Weiss. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”



Saletan makes the same point I made the other day, namely that science by itself doesn’t provide us with moral guidelines:

Kerry’s appeals to faith and prayer don’t end there. He asks voters to believe, on the same spiritual basis, that science will create ethical boundaries for itself. “We must look to the future not with fear but with the hope and the faith that advances in medicine will advance our best values,” he pleaded in a recent speech promoting stem-cell research. “I have full faith that our scientists will go forward with a moral compass,” he added. All we must do, he advised, is “pursue the limitless potential of science—and trust that we can use it wisely.”



I want to have faith, John. I want to hope and dream. I want to believe in the magic and the miracles and the power of prayer. But if you want to preserve trust in science, stick to the evidence.

(link via Amy Welborn)

Keith Burgess-Jackson asks what theists imagine the connection between morality and religion to be. It’s a question that deserves pondering since so many of us unthinkingly assume that God and morality must be intimately linked. Keith rightly points out that it’s quite possible to be an atheist and still believe in an objective morality. And one needn’t be a theist for moral beliefs to motivate one’s actions.

So what, if anything, is the relevance of theistic belief for morals?

My answer would be that theism (specifically Christian theism) provides the most compelling answer to the time-honored question “Why should I be moral?”

Christians believe that God has created us for loving fellowship with himself and each other. But, somehow, we have fallen out of whack in our relationships with God and our fellow man. We call this condition sin. To correct this state of affairs, God provides humankind with the moral law.* The law is a tool for putting things back in order.**

Now, it’s important to realize that the moral law, on this account, is not a set of arbitrary rules unrelated to human well-being. Rather, the moral law, from one angle, can be seen as simply a description of what human life looks life when it is lived in harmony with God and neighbor. So, the reason we should be moral, according to theism, is beacause our highest flourishing consists precisely in living the kind of life our Creator intended for us.

But as Keith says, “If I conform to God’s rules not because I understand and accept them but out of love for or a desire to please their maker, I would seem to drain my actions of moral worth. This also makes God seem vain, insecure, and selfish.”

I would suggest that the conflict here is merely apparent. Theists say that God is supremely lovable in virtue of his preeminent goodness. To love God is to love the Good. So there is no necessary conflict between acting out of love for God and for the Good. God only appears “vain, insecure, and selfish” if we suppose that his commands are abritrary or whimsical rather than being the commands of a loving God.

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*I refer here both to the “revealed” law (e.g. the Ten Commandments) and the “natural” law that humans can know by reason.

**Obviously, Christians believe that the law is insufficient for putting things back in order. For this the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is necessary. Nevertheless, most Christians maintain that the law remains a reliable guide to living the kind of life God wants us to live.

The new edition of the eclectic online Christian journal The New Pantagruel has been posted. There are two articles that look particularly interesting: “Realism Against Reality” by Eric Miller and “Christianity and Liberalism: Two Alternative Religious Approaches” by David T. Koyzis. (Incidentally, I also highly recommend Prof. Koyzis’ book Political Visions and Illusions.)

Oh, God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of travail. — St. Basil of Caesarea

For the idea that the voter himself is making the decision to have any real validity, it would be necessary for the options presented to the electorate to include all possible choices. In a two-party system this is never the case. The voter chooses not a position of principle but the less objectionable of two competing oligarchies. — John H. Yoder, The Christian Witness to the State

At this rate VI threatens to become all Kerry-bashing all the time, but some things just cry out for comment (perhaps I’ll make a point to bash President Bush some more just to keep things fair and balanced).

Anyway, this past weekend Senator Kerry gave a radio address wherein he promised, if elected, to lift the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research that President Bush has put into place. As CNN reports:

“This is not the way we do things in America,” Kerry said in the Democrats’ weekly radio address. “Here in America we don’t sacrifice science for ideology. We are a land of discovery, a place where innovators and optimists are free to dream and explore.”

“We know that progress has always brought with it the worry that this time, we have gone too far,” Kerry said. “Believe it or not, there was a time when some questioned the morality of heart transplants. Not too long ago, we heard the same kind of arguments against the biotechnology research that now saves stroke victims and those with leukemia.”

Such work, Kerry said, is too important to risk for an ideological base and must be “a priority” in the nation’s medical community.

“People of good will and good sense can resolve the ethical issues without stopping life-saving research,” he added. “America has long led the world in great discoveries, always upholding the highest standards, with our breakthroughs and our beliefs always going hand-in-hand. And when it comes to stem cell research, we will demand no less.”

What I take issue with here is not so much Kerry’s position on stem cell research (which is defensible, though, I think, wrong). Rather it’s the way he tries to hide the fact that he’s taking a moral position by wrapping himself in the mantle of “science.”

Kerry sidesteps the moral argument by setting up a false dichotomy between “science” and “ideology.” Science as such doesn’t give us moral guidance. It tells us what we can do, but not what we should or shouldn’t do. Moral norms have to come from elsewhere. So “science” can’t tell us if it’s right to destroy human embryos in order to harvest their stem cells. Surely Kerry knows this. Heck, I know it, and I didn’t even go to Yale.

I’ve had people tell me that despite the campaign rhetoric, they know that “in his heart” Kerry opposed the war in Iraq.

This theory appears to verge on the unfalsifiable. For instance, you have to ignore things like this from Sunday’s Washington Post:

Knowing then what he knows today about the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Kerry still would have voted to authorize the war and “in all probability” would have launched a military attack to oust Hussein by now if he were president, Kerry national security adviser Jamie Rubin said in an interview Saturday. As recently as Friday, the Massachusetts senator had said he only “might” have still gone to war.



Of course, it’s possible that Kerry does oppose the war despite what he says, how he votes, etc. But what exactly does it mean to oppose something “in your heart” when it seems to have no effect whatsoever on your actions? And aren’t actions all we have to go on in judging political figures?

“There is one consideration [in political philosophy] which has something like the position of absolute zero or the velocity of light in current physics. It cannot possibly be an exercise of civic authority deliberately to kill or mutilate innocent subjects.” — G.E.M. Anscombe

About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning. Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters–one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (He did not know what he was saying.) While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. A voice came from the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen. (Luke 9:28-36)