The uncompromising compromiser

By calling me a moral subjectivist, Hays and Chan are identifying me with the position that objective moral facts do not exist. But as I pointed out, this is false. I have always argued in ethical matters based on a robust ethical objectivism. For example, in my article “Let Nothing that Breathes Remain Alive” (Philosophia Christi, 2009) I critique moral defenses of biblical genocide by appealing to the intuition that you ought never ever bludgeon babies (the NEBB intuition). I argued that the NEBB principle is an objective fact which is known synthetic a priori: “It is not simply that I cannot see how bludgeoning a baby could be a morally praiseworthy act; rather, I can see that it cannot be.” (34)

 

Given that I am an uncompromising moral objectivist, why would Steve be saddling me with moral subjectivism?

i) Rauser can distinguish between ethical subjectivism and ethical objectivism on paper, but in practice his position is purely subjective.

ii) His Philosophia Christi paper is a perfect illustration. In that paper he makes no effort to argue for the intrinsic evil of certain OT injunctions. Rather, he simply declares them to be in violation of universal absolute moral axioms.

It’s one thing to say something is axiomatically wrong, quite another thing to show it. Rauser’s position on this and other moral issues reduces to his personal feelings. He invokes moral intuition to rubberstamp his radical chic opinions. And much of that time there’s nothing very “universal” about his intuitions. Rather, they are strikingly culturebound and ethnocentric.

Second, Steve fails to recognize that he is hoist with his own petard. You see, we all have moral intuitions. And the Christian tradition has explained those intuitions as our grasping of a natural moral law through a form of general revelation (see, for example, Romans 2:14-15).

i) Rom 2:14-15 is, indeed, the locus classicus for natural law. However, that interpretation has been challenged by scholars like Jewett, Cranfield, Wright, Gathercole, and Zahn. Therefore, Rauser’s prooftext is not a given. He needs to do the exegetical spadework before he can lay claim to that passage.

ii) Moreover, even assuming the locus classicus, St. Paul would never cite natural law to say certain OT injunctions were intrinsically evil.

iii) Furthermore, a paradigmatic natural theologian like Aquinas would never cite natural law to say certain OT injunctions were intrinsically evil.

iv) For that matter, given Rauser’s notion of “inspired errors,” why does he even bother to cite Scripture? That’s the point of using one Scripture to disprove another Scripture? What’s the standard of comparison? Not Scripture.

Steve might look to C.S. Lewis’s famous appendix to The Abolition of Man for a succinct statement of what Lewis called “The Tao of Religious Morality”. In that appendix Lewis provides ample evidence for the universal recognition of moral norms through culturally formed intuitions.

The commonality is deceptive. For instance, you can say Hindus disapprove of murder. Yet that didn’t hinder them from burning widows alive (until Christian missionaries intervened). That’s because they didn’t classify sati as murder.

Likewise, you can say Muslims disapprove of murder. Yet that doesn’t prevent them from massacring the “infidel” or executing rape victims. That’s because they don’t classify jihad or honor-killings as murder.

This leaves Steve Hays on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, he could continue to insist that he has no innate moral intuitions at all, in which case he finds himself on the horn of psychopathology. On the other hand, he could admit that he does have moral intuitions and they play a role in his moral reflection, in which case he finds himself in the same boat as the rest of us.

 

It’s your choice Steve. Are you a morally deficient psychopath or do you also reason ethically in part based on a moral intuition of the natural law?

i) I don’t have an antecedent objection to moral intuition or natural law. What I object to are Rauser’s purely promissory appeals to natural law and moral intuition. He doesn’t do the hard work of actually making a case for his ascriptions.

ii) And one of the problems with his flaccid appeal is that it cuts both ways. Proponents of abortion (to take one example) also use intuitive appeals.

iii) To the extent that I think moral intuition or natural law is sometimes valid, that’s only because I can embed that in the revealed doctrines of Scripture. If the Biblical God exists; if he designed man to function is certain ways, in harmony with his environment; if he endowed man with some tacit moral knowledge, then we at least have the underpinnings for ethical objectivism or natural law ethics.

Mind you, even that is purely programmatic.

iv) By contrast, Rauser is treating natural law or moral intuition as a free-floating criterion, sheared from revelatory foundations, to evaluate revelation. Not only does it lack the necessary grounding, but it actively uproots the only grounding it could possible have. 

Rauser flies by the seat of his pants, but his airplane is on fire.