Theoretical Ethics

by M. Valentine

Christianity Recognizes Ethics.

1. Christianity fully recognizes these truths and all the essential principles which ethical science formulates and certifies. It does more. It magnifies their importance by building upon them its own divine view of moral requirement and the way of its realization. All that ethical science shows to be true in the moral constitution of man, in the reality of moral law for the free regulation of his conduct, and in respect to the source and immutable authority of that law, abides as fundamental presuppositions in the divine superstructure of religion and duty presented by Christianity. Redemption starts and works upon the basal facts of human nature and man's condition, relations, duties, responsibilities and needs. If Christianity assumes the existence and rulership of God, a moral constitution of human life, and the existence of conscience with its perceptions of duty and sense of obligation; if it assumes man to be a free agent and yet bound in the exercise of his autonomy by laws of obligation and responsibility; if it assumes the law of right to be essentially unalterable and irrepealable, a reality to which God himself conforms, all these are great truths fully certified in the rational conclusions of ethical science.

Contributions to Ethical View.

2. But Christianity contributes immensely to the ethical view. It is, indeed, a great misconception to think that supernatural revelation has been given simply to teach morality, or to look on Christianity as merely a code of ethics. But though its first great object is redemption, presenting God to our view in redeeming love and activity, and offering deliverance from the guilt and life of sin, it necessarily also aims to recover men to personal righteousness. Indeed, both forgiveness and renewal look to this as the goal to which redemption is to bring its subjects. While primarily Christianity is a religion and redemptory, its ultimate aim is the establishment of men in obedience to God, righteousness, and excellence. The very summit of its purpose, the Alp that rises above every other Alp, is character and right life. So the very law of its movement is supremely ethical. Forgiveness of sin, justification by faith, stands as only the first step in the application of redemption, and beyond this Christianity pre-eminently means a life, the increasing recovery and perfection of human nature in its ethical character and action, enthroning the principles of duty, love, and righteousness in the conscience and the heart, and bringing personal conduct into rhythmic harmony with eternal righteousness and goodness.

And the science of ethics has not properly completed its view until it has fully included the distinctive teaching of Christianity. For beyond all question the data of this teaching have produced the purest and loftiest moral life that the world has seen, the best product of the moral history of mankind. Its ideal is confessedly the highest and the best sustained. Even apart from the question of the well-proved supernatural claims of Christianity, its ethical work lifts its moral teachings to the most authoritative place, the supreme court, for the decisions and formulations of the complete scientific view.

The total contribution of Christianity to morality comes along two lines of help: 1. In the way of fuller disclosure of moral principles and of essential duties; and 2. In the way of furnishing an efficient dynamic for their fulfilment. The first of these two topics claims attention in this chapter; the second must be left for the next.

The need of larger knowledge, than that furnished by simply naturalistic ethics, for the perfection of moral life, has everywhere been evident. The debasement of moral thought and the worse debasement of moral life frequently found among peoples outside of the atmosphere illuminated by Christian truth, is sad proof how crying this need of right knowledge may become. The strife of conflicting opinions as to the root and validity of moral principles, even among many in Christendom who look at the subject with faces averted from Christianity, is perpetual remembrancer of the room for more and better information. And the perplexing phenomenon of wide diversity of moral judgments in daily life, to which we have had occasion several times already to refer, resulting from the different degrees of correctness with which the relations of life are understood and interpreted, enforces the same truth. The moral power is educable. It sees its objects in the light, not in darkness, nor fully in dawn. It acts best when flooded with the fullest knowledge. Men can discern duty accurately and fully only when they comprehend all their relations to God above them, their fellow-men around them, their destiny before them, and the significance and moral demand of these relations. From the high origin of their nature, "in the image of God," they may carry some impress of the moral law from God in their hearts, in the inner order of insight and spiritual vision, and in measure "read God's thoughts after Him" about love and justice and truth and other essential virtues. But this rational reading of duty from the law of right within them and from the moral constitution about them, is grandly helped when revelation throws its illumination on the nature and relations of men, the meaning of life and the reach of its responsibilities. Whatever has been the short-coming of Christianity's professors in exemplifying its moral teaching, the history of its work is full proof of its containing the best ethical direction and power the earth has yet seen. In individuals and communities in which its teachings have been worthily turned into character and life, it presents an inspiring suggestion of what it is capable of doing for human exaltation when its instruction is truly followed. It is the completing factor for moral guidance, and the scientific view is false to itself when it fails to include the teachings and the phenomena of the Christian consciousness and life. Since Christianity has come and given the world its highest civilizations and elevations, its grandest progress in philosophy, science, art, literature, invention, enterprise and prosperity, all the purest and most beautiful amenities of life, and is still leading the best nations onward and upward, it is surely worse than idle to think of forcing ethical science back to a pagan or merely naturalistic standpoint. This would ignore the greatest moral phenomenon of history and the most impressive facts in the present condition of the world. "Christian ethics is ethics in the highest—ethics raised to the highest power—the last and fullest moral interpretation of the world and its history."[64]

3. The Christian ethical view has its special moral conceptions from two sources. The one is primary and principal; the other secondary and auxiliary.

Sources of Christian View.

(1) The principal source is the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Along with their distinctively religious purpose and teaching, these pages of God's supernatural revelation, from first to last, look to ethical ends, and are replete with principles, laws, and precepts for duty and righteousness. As for a knowledge of Christianity as a religion we must come to these writings as its own accredited records, presenting its truths and requirements, so also for a knowledge of its moral teachings. Whatever help may be obtainable from other sources, say from study of the Christian consciousness or of the effects of Christianity on personal and social life, the chief and highest source is these Sacred Scriptures. For the best Christian life falls short of the ideal standard of conduct there presented. It would be unfair to study it or judge it only in the partial, fragmentary, one-sided, imperfect illustrations of it. Every ideal thus gained must be corrected and greatly up-raised before it can stand for the complete divine ideal that shines out from the teachings of the Scriptures and the life of the Christ therein revealed. The perfect image of Christian ethics has never been fully reflected by either the inward or outward life of the believer. The Sacred Scriptures, therefore, are the only infallible normative authority for Christian ethics, as they are for Christian theology.