What is the origin of morality, and what right does anyone have to make moral judgments?
Until fairly recently (a few centuries ago), the answers to these questions were generally settled in western civilization. From Aristotle to Cicero to Aquinas and to even modernist atheists like David Hume, most believed that moral law is universal, originating from a place outside of any person or experience. In other words, they believed in a version of natural law.
This by the way is quite shocking. It is not surprising that Aquinas believed in natural law. But Hume? Hume was a radical empiricist who believed that there was virtually nothing that could be known outside of experience. He would be radical even by postmodern standards. And yet, he believed in instinctive morality. That Hume was sort of a natural law guy is an indication of just how dominant the natural law theory has been for the past 2,500 years.
By the way, if you believe in natural law, you have an argument for a deity. If natural law exists, arguably, it has to come from somewhere. Or, to put it another way, someone or something had to create it. And if someone had to create it, that someone is God, because only a deity has the power to create a universal. This argument from morality is still widely used in debates between religious apologists and atheists today.
So what changed a few centuries ago? In short, natural law went out of fashion and new theories of morality were introduced. Here are perhaps the three most prevalent:
- Moral code can be developed by reason alone. Kant was the major influence in this area, and his work was undeniably impressive. He, for example, developed a somewhat complicated form of the Golden Rule using just reason. I am not going to spend any time talking about this here, but it is worth studying. On the surface, living by the Kantian moral code would be admirable, but unfortunately, few can really understand it. (Put me in the group that really does not understand it, and I have spent a great deal of time trying.)
- Moral code is based on a utilitarian formula. John Stuart Mill was probably the biggest influence in utilitarianism, a theory in which people should make moral judgments based on the predicted outcomes. In other words, the action that creates the best result for the most people is the most moral. Modern political libertarians in particular are heavily influenced by this kind of thought.
- Morality is relative and developed through experience. This approach is postmodern and is based on the idea that a culture will develop its own moral rules based on whatever works. For example, a culture may decide that murder is wrong because a culture where people murder each other just does not work very well. So, in the end, moral rules are a result of the conditioning of a culture and applicable only to that culture.
So why does the dominant theory of natural law, once a settled idea, now have this kind of competition? Are there weaknesses in the idea of natural law? To me, clearly, the answer is yes. I believe in natural law myself, but here are two nagging problems that I see.
Problem 1: At best, natural law is non-specific and leads to relativistic applications.
If you take the position that a deity puts the capacity for making moral decisions inside humans at birth, you are forced to try to answer the question of why that real-life decision-making is far from easy and the right answers are often elusive (if even obtainable in the first place). What good is a natural law that is useless except in the most obvious situations?
By way of example, proponents of natural law say that murder is clearly wrong, but they cannot agree on what constitutes murder. How about killing in a war situation? Or turning off life support for a patient in a vegetative state? How about thorny self-defense situations? What about abortion when the mother’s life is at stake? You simply cannot answer these questions with natural law alone.
Of course, I could also bring up similar situations regarding lying or stealing. A big problem with natural law is that it just is not specific enough to provide help for a great deal of what constitutes real life.
Even worse, two different people with two different life experiences can come to two very different moral judgments about the exact same situation. In other words, while natural law may be universal, the application of natural law cannot escape relativism.
The common pragmatic solution to these kinds of problems is civic law (government and a court system). This solution is nothing new; Cicero was one of the first to discuss the distinction between civic and moral law. However, civic law is an admission that natural law is insufficient in itself.
Problem 2: Natural law changes over time. There are clear changes in the perception (at least) of natural law over time and across cultures.
Proponents of natural law have to deal with the reality that moral ideas have changed over time, sometimes for the worse, but very often for the better.
For example, it would be hard to argue that we have not progressed in a positive way in regard to the value of human life. The barbarism of the Bible’s Old Testament or Homer is distasteful to our modern sensibilities because we now know better.
Or, of course, we could point to slavery. Western civilization widely accepted slavery through the late 1600s until the Quakers began to mobilize against it. The Greeks loved slavery as did the Romans. The Bible condones slavery, even if it did attempt to make the practice a bit less barbaric. The early church fathers such as Augustine had their chance to speak against it but failed to do so.
I am not here to bash on the past or all the people that were wrong about slavery. But they were indeed wrong. Every religion including Christianity was wrong.
And that begs a question: was natural law itself wrong? Or, do we have a different version of natural law today?
It is easy to see why moral relativists like the example of slavery…
These are real and significant problems. However, I am not saying that the alternative theories about the origins of morality do not have problems; they all have them too.
It is interesting to me that natural law is making a sort of comeback. You are starting to hear more about it, especially within the realm of Christianity. I have a theory about that, but first want to talk about how Christianity deals with natural law.
First, I want to dispose of the Judeo-Christian term you often hear in regards to this topic. I intentionally do not use that term because it is just a political invention of the last century as the United States grappled with the atrocities that Jews suffered in WWII. Today, it has become a sort of trump card that represents a so-called superior moral ethic resulting from a combination of Jewish and Christian ethics. It is a loaded term and useless.
Original Judaism and Christianity moral laws may have heavily overlapped but do not really go together. Any objective observer has to come to the conclusion that the morality of the Bible’s OT and NT are quite different. As I have written before, the teaching of Jesus was radical in its scope in areas such as love, charity, and forgiveness, and that kind of teaching made a huge impact on ethics. So, what I am about to speak about is specific to Christianity and the NT, not Judaism and the OT.
Essentially, the Christian twist on natural law is sometimes referred to as common grace, which Christians believe is an inherited knowledge of morality that every human possesses. Obviously, in real life, both Christians and non-Christians have moral failures, and Christians believe this is due to the fact that we all have a sin nature which prevents us from doing what we know we should do.
When Christians talk about the influence of Christian ethics, things get complicated. In general, they are referring to natural law/common grace given to everyone, but in addition to that, the teachings of the Bible (particularly the NT). The latter is an additional moral code specific to Christianity, and in many cases, only possible for Christians to really understand and practice.
To me, it is fairly obvious that Christian ethics have improved civilization. That Christianity had moral blindspots both in teaching and practice from the very beginning is undeniable, but it is also hard to deny that early Christian ethics was at worst a significant improvement when compared to other cultures of that time. So, while I am not going to sweep the problems under the rug, I am not going to bash Christianity either.
However, Christianity is not exempt from the two problems of natural law I mentioned above. So, let’s touch on that a bit.
How do Christians deal with my first problem with natural law regarding its vagueness and relativistic application? For starters, they take the same pragmatic approach as everyone else: government and courts. In addition, they establish church authority to help individuals make difficult decisions and also believe in the concept of an indwelling Holy Spirit that guides Christians through everyday moral dilemmas.
As people say, the proof is in the pudding. Whether this approach has actually worked throughout history is debatable.
As far as the second problem goes (my assertion that natural law seems to change over time), Christianity really struggles in that it is forced to either defend the indefensible or try to explain why a natural law from an unchanging God is changing. That is true even if you ignore the enormous inconsistency between the ethics of the OT and NT.
For example, it is very hard to explain today how almost an entire religion could be wrong about slavery for 1,500 years, and especially hard to explain why the Bible itself condones slavery. The same can be said for the various brutalities that Christians have inflicted on each other and other religions throughout history. I certainly know and understand the Christian explanations for these kinds of things, but find them unconvincing. There is certainly a lot about Christianity that I have no interest in defending.
In closing, let me say that problems withstanding, I think the concept of natural law is beneficial. It is especially useful because it creates a common ground between people even of different religions. For example, I believe abortion is a moral judgment, or more specifically, I believe that at least some of the time, abortion is an immoral choice. It is quite easy to discuss the issue from a natural law rather than Christian perspective, and in fact, make more productive arguments from that perspective.
I mentioned that natural law is making a comeback, even in Christianity. In my opinion, the current Christianity morality crisis is driving Christians to fall back to the concept of natural law from the lofty ideal of a superior Christian ethic.
Perhaps it is sad that this retreat is necessary. On the other hand, perhaps this renewed focus on natural law is not a bad thing. Natural law has always been a common ground that crosses all religions and cultures. We could use more common ground these days.