What is moral absolutism?

Concerning right and wrong, the Christian does not cave in to secular humanist or postmodernist claims that there are no absolutes and that all truth is "relative" - that is, whatever is good for you is fine, and whatever is good for me is fine, too. Moral truth, in particular, is absolute because God has pronounced it so. The Ten Commandments are not the "ten suggestions." Not only do we need to learn God's commandments, but we also need His constant reminders of what is right and wrong because of our innate human capacity to be deceived, not only by other people but by Satan, who "masquerades as an angel of light" (2 Cor. 11: 14; see also Eph. 6:12).

I do not overstate the result. For granting that conscience may be much influenced by education, and therefore, putting aside for the moment the consideration of what is judged right or wrong, there plainly remains the existence in men of the power or capacity of discernment of these opposite qualities, even though things wrong may be put for right, and vice versa. As then the capacity to discern these essential qualities exists, the question undoubtedly is, Is there a standard of abstract right and wrong, of morals, by which our ideas derived from education or habit are to be tested? It will not do to say because, with the Spartans, what we call stealing was a virtue, or because the Corinthians deified what we know as lust, or because among savage people what we are taught to call murder is commended, that therefore theft and adultery and murder exist only as relative ideas in our minds. This is really, as I have said, to deny the existence of virtue or goodness, either in the abstract, or absolutely in God. Man's moral nature, except when degraded, scouts the absurdity, and demands as a necessity the existence of abstract moral virtue, and, not only so, but insists that there must also be a perfect and absolute measure of that in God Himself. And therefore conscience leads us directly to the fact of having to do with Him.

But this is not the point. All true Christians receive, with devout thankfulness, the precious statement that, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God." And, further, they rejoice in the assurance that "Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope." And, finally, they believe that the morality of the law is of abiding and universal application. Murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness, are wrong — always wrong — everywhere wrong. To honour our parents is right, always and everywhere right. We read, in Ephesians 4, "Let him that stole, steal no more." And, again, in Eph. 6, we read, "Honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth."

52 To say that duty ought to be followed, is only saying there is duty. But two straight lines enclosing space is somewhat different; it means if two do not approach they do not meet. God knows good and evil, that is, He recognises relationship as it exists. I know good and evil now (that is, my will apart). I recognise these relationships as they exist; but what has this to do with God's nature? His morality, speaking reverently, would be based on the relationship. He is in Himself; but He is in none, as we have seen, unless He pleases to put Himself in one: I am by virtue of my place. He recognises mine, and judges, but is not in it. I deny eternal morality save as an idea; it has no relation to Him at all. Absolute morality is nonsense. God did not create morality, but the relationship without which there could be none. If one supposes only the absolute God, there is no morality. Morality in respect of what? I cannot suppose it but with created responsibility, that is, creatures and consequently relationship.

Moral duties then are absolute in so far as that they do not depend on ideas as formed by any means at all, but are the judgment of an internal capacity; they only subsist in known relationships and last as long as they. But they belong to relationships; they are the expression of one's consistency with it. And as long as I conceive it, I conceive the duty. Right and wrong did not exist for Adam in themselves (that is, without a command). It is not merely responsibility personally to God; that there was. God forbade. Man might not eat; but there was no sense of a thing wrong in itself, because inconsistent with a relationship, he being able to judge of it itself. There was nothing inconsistent in Adam's mind with his relationship to God; his mind followed it without a question. He could think of nothing in itself inconsistent with it; that nature of thought was not in his nature.

In this sense it is, though the expression be very incorrect, that morality is eternal. First, if we consider as morality our own (or, to use the modern word, our subjective) state (to which the term is hardly properly applied), the love and holiness which become a man are the communication of the nature of God Himself, and are eternal in their source and character. But secondly, morality, properly so called, drawing its source from the claims attached to certain beings with whom I am in relationship, in virtue of which they are in that relationship, is as unchangeable as the relationship itself. For "eternal" in this case has only the meaning of absolute and unchangeable when the relationship exists; that is, the relationship being known, the duty attaches to it essentially. Thus, father and son, for example, is a known relationship. The relationship of father and son cannot exist without certain relative duties necessarily arising. The obligation is inherent to the relationship of father and son amongst human beings, and so in other cases.

It is plainly also in the moral sphere that the commission applies; and this at once makes known its limitations. In nothing so plainly as in the moral sphere is every thing based upon the character of God Himself. Every thing here is fixed, therefore, and unchangeable. The Church cannot so much as define what good or evil is. Every conscience here is subject to God alone, and the only appeal to it is as the appeal of light to the eye ― the appeal of self-evidence. The eye may be diseased, the conscience hardened, the appeal useless; but this is always a result of rejecting the light: the light itself is divine, not human; and brings the soul before God, not man, not the Church. The rule of conscience means in result the rule of God, just as that of the eye would mean that of the light. Though light and the eye are very different things, yet the "light of the body is the eye."

The Lord's words cannot surely be less binding upon Christians of the present day; Christianity cannot be content with a lower morality than He enforces here, not as a national or ecclesiastical regulation; but just as morality. What was adultery then to Him must ever be adultery; and no human law can alter this in the slightest degree. Let the Lord's people look to it, in a day when men are doing their own wills with continually more audacity.

It will be alleged, however, that there are certain immutable principles of right and wrong, an eternal law. But the question presents itself, Do not the duties flow from an ever-subsisting relationship? is not the obligation to love God and our neighbour as ourselves the consequence of our relationship to God and our neighbour? There may be — creation being assumed — necessary and constant relationships, or at least such apprehended by reason of it, which are thus always the rule of our duty. The fact of the character of the relationship involves the duty, the name of the relationship is the name of the duty. Conjugal affection, conjugal submission, parental love, filial obedience, all express this great truth. But the relationship and the duty cease together; if the relationship has never existed, the duty cannot. If it ceases for all, the duty ceases in fact absolutely as to the persons. The idea of God, even of Adam, excludes the idea of a neighbour, and makes the duty of love to his neighbour an impossible one, if I think of God or even of Adam; of God absolutely because He is God, of Adam in fact because he was created alone. These obligations or duties may be of inferior to superior, or between equals, or of superior to inferior, but implying (I think) a superior to whom the relative inferior is subject, a created superiority. They may be thus so far complicated that the duty may be to an equal, or to an inferior, or even to a superior, yet the responsibility in the relationship be to another. This results from created relationships which form duties, and a Creator's authority, to whom we are besides responsible to maintain them. This gives in itself a sanction; or a positive sanction, as it is called, may be attached to the law and obligation of the relationship, but the measure of duty depends on the relationship itself. But it becomes obedience, and legal obedience it may be. From a creator to a creature I cannot draw a duty as a necessary result of the relationship as duty or obligation. God's supremacy is the first of all rights. He is in His nature supreme. He will act, if good, according to the relationship.

170 But another principle as to good and evil presents itself here, the display of a nature or character; and we conclude (not from duty, but) from character to acting in consistency with it. We have no title over any we are in relationship with — save in the measure and limits of that relationship, as a father, a husband. But a Creator has an absolute title and place, and hence we cannot speak of duty, or it is not absolute. But though imperfect judges, we do judge rightly in principle in another way.

Because of the lie Rahab told, cavillers would cast a slur on the veracity of the whole story. But God tells the truth about her character and her ways, as about everything; it is man who hides what is not to his credit. "By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace" (Heb. 11:31). Her faith, not her falsehood, is commended. Easterns are proverbially addicted to lying; not that it is intended by this remark to imply that a national characteristic is an excuse for sin; on the contrary, so much the worse for the nation thus characterised. The testimony of the old poet of Crete was, the Cretans are liars, sluggish gluttons, savage beasts to which testimony the apostle Paul added his own evidence, thus giving the necessary twofold witness to a fact; and so the record stands of a people being liars. Whether of west or east, lying and deceit are hateful to God; "rebuke them sharply" was the word to Titus, because of their national characteristics. No one need suggest that the word of God makes light of a lie, because it tells the truth about everybody, Rahab included. But why should the infidels of Christendom expect morality from believers in God? Their objection, founded on Rahab's lie, to the truth of this part of the word of God, is a testimony that they believe God is true and cannot countenance falsehood, and that He will do what He says He will. He will surely execute judgment on this world, and on its infidelity and its liars, as He has said. Rahab had no right to tell her king a lie any more than a man has liberty to tell a lie to the father of lies. Had her faith in Jehovah gone further, she would have trusted in Him, instead of in her deception, for deliverance. A soldier of Christ telling a falsehood in Christ's name is simply a traitor to his Lord.