Christian Theology --- Right, Wrong and Command
A few years ago I wrote something titled Does God Decree What is Right or is it Right Because God Decrees it? I deleted it because I thought it said too much, more than my understanding of the subject justified. Nonetheless I was a bit hasty in abandoning the subject altogether . What I was tying to establish was that while God creates all things, judgments of Good (right) and Evil (wrong) are not judgments of things; they are, simply, value judgments. God has created a mind in the human species which understands what is good and what is not.
Though philosophers have wrestled with the question whether God decides arbitrarily what is good, and something which He now calls good He might just as well have called bad, or whether something is good simply because it obviously is good. Can any rational being believe that gratuitous cruelty is 'good' or that kindness and a charitable disposition are 'bad'? Even if you can argue that under some circumstnce theft may be justified, the concept itself always denotes something which is bad, simply by definition, not because it is a bad thing, but because it is, simply, bad. Period.
If gratuitous violence could be rendered a good thing, or at least morally acceptable, because God so decrees, our religion would be based solely on command. There would be no concepts of honour or decency, kindness or charity, right or wrong, only arbitrary commands. That is apparently the view of political extremists and jihadists. However, they are wrong. God is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe who has given man free will while informing him through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ that He wants His creatures to conform to the pre-established standard of good. He is not telling us what is good because we already know that, the knowledge having been built in us, so to speak. So if we do not do good we "have no excuse" as Paul wrote. As the ability to understand the difference between good and evil is embedded in the human mind, there is a basis for judging the atrocities of Nazis and radical Moslem jihadist to be evil --- actually evil in fact, not just contrary to someone's commands or whims. In other words, the Nazis and Jihadist extremists "have no excuse". In the case of God alone, of course, the good coincides precisely with what we know that God is, so that Christianity is in the fullest sense both a command religions and a faith religion.
I did not, however, set out to write a library full of words, nor will I attempt it now. There are many subjects which this analysis does not cover --- definitions, moral dilemas, "what is the good life" and on and on. I leave that to another time, or to others.
Though philosophers have wrestled with the question whether God decides arbitrarily what is good, and something which He now calls good He might just as well have called bad, or whether something is good simply because it obviously is good. Can any rational being believe that gratuitous cruelty is 'good' or that kindness and a charitable disposition are 'bad'? Even if you can argue that under some circumstnce theft may be justified, the concept itself always denotes something which is bad, simply by definition, not because it is a bad thing, but because it is, simply, bad. Period.
If gratuitous violence could be rendered a good thing, or at least morally acceptable, because God so decrees, our religion would be based solely on command. There would be no concepts of honour or decency, kindness or charity, right or wrong, only arbitrary commands. That is apparently the view of political extremists and jihadists. However, they are wrong. God is the Creator and Ruler of the Universe who has given man free will while informing him through the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Christ that He wants His creatures to conform to the pre-established standard of good. He is not telling us what is good because we already know that, the knowledge having been built in us, so to speak. So if we do not do good we "have no excuse" as Paul wrote. As the ability to understand the difference between good and evil is embedded in the human mind, there is a basis for judging the atrocities of Nazis and radical Moslem jihadist to be evil --- actually evil in fact, not just contrary to someone's commands or whims. In other words, the Nazis and Jihadist extremists "have no excuse". In the case of God alone, of course, the good coincides precisely with what we know that God is, so that Christianity is in the fullest sense both a command religions and a faith religion.
I did not, however, set out to write a library full of words, nor will I attempt it now. There are many subjects which this analysis does not cover --- definitions, moral dilemas, "what is the good life" and on and on. I leave that to another time, or to others.
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