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Secular Ethics and Christian Witness: Using the Broken Assumptions of Secular Ethics As a Gospel Inroad

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Secular Ethics and Christian Witness: Using the Broken Assumptions of Secular Ethics As a Gospel Inroad Secular Ethics and Christian Witness: Using the Broken Assumptions of Secular Ethics as a Gospel Inroad Kit Johnson Senior Pastor, Life Point Baptist Church, Apple Valley, CA I. Why should we talk about ethics in a conference on apologetics? A. For many people today, their most passionate objections to Christianity are moral, not logical, scientific, or historical. B. Most people are concerned about ethics. “We live in an age in which people are greatly concerned about ethics. Every day, the news media bring to mind issues of war and peace, the environment, the powers of government, abortion and euthanasia, genetic research, and so on…Many people seem very sure of the answers to these ethical questions. But when you probe deeply into their positions, you find that their conviction is often based on little more than partisan consensus or individual feeling. But the Bible gives us a basis for ethical judgments…So discussions of ethical questions open a wide door for Christian witness…People are far more open to discussing ethics than to discussing theistic proofs…Philosophy does not excite many people…But they do care about right and wrong. Christians who can talk about ethics in a cogent way, therefore, have a great apologetic and evangelistic advantage.”1 C. When we engage unbelievers about ethics, we are bringing them onto our turf where we have the advantage. “All ethics is religious, even when it tries hard to be secular. In the end, all ethics presuppose ultimate values. It requires allegiance to someone or something that demands devotion and governs all thinking.”2 II. Three Challenges for Secular Ethics A. Why are we ethical beings?3 Secular Explanations 1 John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg, PA: P&R, 2008), p. 5. 2 Ibid. 3 This section is taken from Philip Gorski, “Where Do Morals Come From?” in Public Books, February 15, 2016, www.publicbooks.org//nonfiction/where-do-morals-come-from (accessed 11 September 2017). 1 1. Morality is a social construct. a. Theory: In ancient history unenlightened cultures believed there were moral absolutes, and they codified ethics for their culture. Ethics were the product of man’s ignorance and false religious notions. However, in the modern age, cultures crisscross frequently. When man began to experience other cultures, he noticed vastly different ethical values. As a result, we came to understand that there are no ultimate ethical values that stand outside of man or that are inherent to man. b. Problems • Morality is not nearly as diverse as some would lead us to believe. • No one honestly believes that morality is truly relative. • Scientific studies indicate that babies are born with a sense of morality. 2. Morality is a product of evolution. a. Theory: Some groups of early humans learned that if they worked together to collect food, they would be more successful. Once they began to look at things from the perspective of others, they had a platform to develop moral awareness b. Problems • Evolution cannot provide a basis for moral absolutes. • Gorski acknowledges that it is impossible for us to live as consistent moral relativists in the real world. He ends the article by stating, “We cannot escape ethical life. Nor can we find peace in it, either. That…is our predicament.”4 • “Our contemporary culture has a schizophrenia about moral commitments, has no good way to impart them to our children, and does not even have a good explanation about why we have such convictions. Modern people say they do not believe in moral absolutes but can’t function without practically assuming them. And they won’t admit they are doing it.”5 B. How do we arrive at ethical conclusions? 1. Natural Law a. Definition: “According to natural law theories, the end (the goal toward which it strives) of each thing in the natural order is built into the thing itself. Thus by observing an object in nature, one can discern easily its intended purpose…In addition, built into the structure of things is a set of laws governing conduct. Those laws will be closely related to each 4 Ibid. 5 Timothy Keller, Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical (New York: Viking, 2016), p. 184. 2 object’s intended end or goal…Such laws of conduct are universally known by reason apart from special revelation.”6 b. Examples: Plato, the Stoics, Immanuel Kant c. Problems • If natural law is so obvious, then why do people come to such differing ethical conclusions? • Natural law cannot answer many important ethical questions including what is the ultimate goal of ethical living. Is the goal survival, is it the good of society, or is it happiness? 2. Consequentialism a. Definition: “What is morally good or bad, right or wrong, obligatory or forbidden is determined by the non-moral value produced when the act is done. If the deed generates more non-moral good than evil, the act is considered morally good.”7 b. Utilitarianism is assumed in most secular, contemporary ethical discussions. For example, most secularists don’t really care if abortion is murder. All that matters is that it advances people’s happiness. c. Problems • How do you define the highest happiness? Is it immediate gratification or long-term? Is it societal happiness or personal? Is it mental or physical? • Consequentialism eliminates the ethical significance of self-sacrifice, which all of us naturally value. In so doing, it creates tremendous ethical challenges regarding caring for the weak or minority groups. 3. Existentialism a. Definition: “The existential principle links ethics with character and in general with human inwardness. But when non-Christian philosophers use this principle, they tend to absolutize human subjectivity and make it, not only essential to ethics, but the ultimate source of ethical norms. So the secular existential ethicist seeks to avoid any suggestion that ethical decisions must be based on an external, objective norm.”8 b. Examples: David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Postmodernism c. Problems 6 John S. Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World, 2nd ed. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), p. 31. 7 Ibid., p. 34. 8 Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, p. 76. 3 • No one actually believes morality is just a matter of the heart, at least not when the consequences of your actions hurt me. • Existential ethics places a very optimistic amount of trust in the human will to reach sound ethical decisions. Think about how much evil has been done by Communist regimes that embraced Marxism. C. How do we enforce ethics in society? “The non-Christian ethicist would like to believe, and would like others to believe, that he has moral standards and that it is possible to have moral standards without God. But he does not want to be bound by any rules. He wants to be autonomous. So he arrives at the paradoxical notion of absolutes without any content: an appearance of moral principle, without any real moral principle at all.”9 III. A Christian Response A. The Christian worldview provides the only solid foundation for ethical discussion— God’s self-determination. 1. We believe that God stands above all other realities and is sovereign over them. “The basic difference then that distinguishes Christian from non-Christian ethics, is the acceptance, or denial, of the ultimately self-determinative will of God. As Christians we hold that determinate human experience could work to no end, could work in accordance with no plan, and could not even get under way, if it were not for the existence of the absolute will of God.”10 2. Because God is absolute, he defines morality. Morality does not stand beside or above him. “The good is good because God says it is good. As such it is contrasted with non-Christian thought which says that the good exists in its own right and that God strives for that which is good in itself. We do not artificially separate the will of God from the nature of God.”11 3. Therefore, we have a solid foundation on which to have ethical discussions. Our ethics are not based on the limited, faulty opinions of people; they are based in the authoritative, all-knowing purposes of God. We have the high ground! B. The Christian worldview provides the only clear purpose for guiding ethical discussions—God’s glory. 1. A fundamental flaw of secular ethics is that it cannot define the ultimate purpose for ethics. Is it my own wellbeing, the wellbeing of society, or morality for the sake of morality? 9 Ibid., p. 46. 10 Cornelius VanTil, The Defense of the Faith (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1955), p. 62. 11 Ibid., p. 52. 4 2. The Christian worldview doesn’t have this struggle. God’s glory is our clearly defined purpose. C. The Christian worldview provides the best explanation for man’s moral nature—the image of God. “This then is the most basic and fundamental difference between Christian and non- Christian epistemology, as far as it has a direct bearing upon questions of ethics, that in the case of non-Christian thought man’s moral activity is thought of as creatively constructive while in Christian thought man’s moral activity is thought of as receptively reconstructive. According to non-Christian thought, there is no absolute moral personality to whom man is responsible and from whom he has received his conception of the good, while according to Christian thought God is the infinite moral personality who reveals to man the true nature of morality.”12 1. Man’s moral conscious is evidence of the image of God.
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