What is moral truth?

339 "Morality and truth are principles in human nature both older and more wide-spread than Christianity or the Bible," says Mr. N. Now that man has a conscience, and judges right and wrong, is most true — knows good and evil, as the scripture expressly teaches; and so it is, that the divine word addresses and acts on this. But it is not true that this is truth, or a standard of moral truth; because, though it recognizes the authority of God, yet as we are sinners impressed with fear, we do not really know God thereby. It craves, though it fears, that knowledge. It does judge men's acts, but it does not reveal God's nature, ways, thoughts, and purposes. Revelation (and oh what grace to have it!) is the answer to its need. Conscience deals with man as man, and man subject to God in judgment; but it does not reveal God as God, though it dreads the authority it has despised. Now, if God does thus reveal Himself (and how immense the privilege!) that becomes the standard of moral truth. Thus Christ was born under the law; but He was God manifest in the flesh. He became the standard of moral truth, and the pattern of divine ways in man. Others may, through grace and "partaking of the divine nature," have followed him — He may graciously call them His companions. The day that comes will mark out some one in this walk, proximus at longo intervallo. It was reserved for Mr. N. alone, not to delight in the blest resemblance in those who followed Him, but to shew his own state — to proclaim his capacity for discerning divine perfectness in man — to raise (what horror would it have occasioned him!) the devoted and gracious Fletcher to a level with Jesus. We may thank Mr. N. for this: a man's tastes shew, not what that which he likes is, but what he is. A Rousseau could see farther than this. We have a tolerable specimen of the standard of moral truth in Mr. N.'s mind. It is true that Fletcher was not, as Mr. N. makes the blessed Jesus, an impostor. That would make some difference in excellency, though it appears not a great deal with Mr. N; for, after all, it is this imposture which, even for Fletcher himself, "has vindicated the purity of God's moral character."

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).

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.

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.

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.

On this subject the speculations of men's minds are numerous in these days, but for the most part all such seem to me to proceed on principles which are exactly the reverse of the truth. There are in the main two distinct directions in which these speculations are found to run. In pursuance of the first of these men seek to lessen the importance of conscience by trying to make out that the knowledge of right and wrong is in us a mere matter of thought, because our judgment of what is right and what is wrong is entirely the result of education or of prejudice. This, when examined, resolves itself plainly into a denial that there is morality, or an abstract moral standard, and as a necessary consequence denies an absolute standard of morals, that is, denies God. It is well to look the full result in the face, and it would be far better for all if men in general did so, and spoke plainly out, so that all might know what is the true issue before them. Concealment is certainly not of "the truth," whether it is voluntary or involuntary, as far as man is concerned. If we are to deny God and morals, then we know what is before us, and must prepare to see the world deluged in violence and corruption, such as have in degree prevailed wherever the "reason" which teaches these doctrines has held sway, and that even of late years.

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.

Everything has its true nature, its true character, in the eyes of God. That is the truth. It is not that He is the truth. The truth is the right and perfect expression of that which a thing is (and, in an absolute way, of that which all things are), and of the relations in which it stands to other things, or in which all things stand towards each other. Thus God could not be the truth. He is not the expression of some other thing. Everything relates to Him. He is the centre of all true relationship, and of all moral obligation. Neither is God the measure of all things, for He is above all things; and nothing else can be so above them, or He would not be so. It is God become man; it is Christ, who is the truth, and the measure of all things. But all things have their true character in the eyes of God: and He judges righteously of all, whether morally or in power. He acts according to that judgment. He is just. He also knows evil perfectly, being Himself goodness, that it may be perfectly an abomination to Him, that He may repel it by His own nature. He is holy. Now the new man, created after the divine nature, is so in righteousness and holiness of truth. What a privilege! What a blessing! It is, as another apostle has said, to be "partakers of the divine nature." Adam had nothing of this.

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."

It is one of the distinctive marks between heresy and any advance in true divine knowledge, that the latter always holds the moral foundation fast, the difference of right and wrong immovable and fixed, as it is in the divine nature and revealed in the word; the heretic slights or loses sight of it. This is remarkably shewn in Rom. 2:6-10, found at the outset of an epistle where justification by faith and by grace is so largely, methodically, and blessedly insisted on. The apostle does not stop to enquire there how the good is to be arrived at, or to weaken fundamental principles by explanations to prove their consistency with other doctrines, so as to enfeeble them. Other scriptures may teach us this, and do, I doubt not, clearly, and these we have to compare; but there is the great truth, in all its immovable and unalterable firmness, founded in the nature of God and responsibility of man. The divine fines bonorum et malorum (if I may use a heathen expression in divine things) are not to be overpassed. I may see that in myself I must, in my state of nature, be condemned on this ground, and flee for refuge to the hope set before me, and find a life which does continue in well-doing, as is here demanded, and find righteousness in Christ, and know I can find these things nowhere else; but immutable righteousness is there to make it necessary I should find them, however unspeakably the grace and glory which I do find may be beyond the measure of the responsibility which has forced me to seek them. These will never destroy nor enfeeble that. My objection to the way in which the moral law is spoken of, where Christians are put under law, is not the maintenance of moral obligations (this is all right); but that, by using the term moral law, and then referring to law as spoken of by the apostle, the teaching of the apostle is subverted and set aside, and that in practically most important points. And as this will lead me to some very vital truths, I desire to take the question up, which for mere controversy's sake I should not.

Even in the old creation the law did not enter till about two thousand years after creation, but this by no means implies that men were not in duty bound to fulfil all the moral obligations which the law, when given, codified and prescribed to the Jews. Cain, Abel, Seth, and their contemporaries, were as much under moral obligation to have no other gods beside Jehovah; to make no images to worship; not to fail in reverence to His name, as Moses and Aaron or any other Jew after hearing the voice from Sinai; because these duties are the natural consequence of God's being what He is, and they His creatures. In the same manner they were under as much moral obligation to honour their parents, and to respect the various rights of their neighbours, both openly and as to the desires of the heart, from the simple fact, that these duties were the legitimate and natural consequence, of the relationships in which God had set them towards their neighbours, placing them on a footing of equal rights.