God in Moral Experience: Values and Duties Personified 1009423150, 9781009423151
The Apostle Paul defined the moral values of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness as 'the fruit of God's S
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Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title page
Imprints page
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Moral Experience Personified
Moral Impact and Response
God in Moral Values
Chapter Overviews
1 Moral Experience and Persons
Deciders with Dissonance
Values as Powers
Character and Will
Conscience and Valuing
Meaning in Values
2 Moral Experience and God
Values and God
God and Good Experienced
Reciprocity in Response
Assurance Grounded
Two Contrasts
3 Moral Experience and Moral Rapport
God in Human Images
God in God's Image
Motivating Divine–Human Rapport
Obstacles to Moral Rapport
4 Moral Experience and Moral Inspiration
Spirit in Creation
Spirit in Re-creation
Inspiration in Jesus and Paul
Gambit for Divine Inspiration
Reality Check in Moral Inspiration
5 Moral Experience without Philosophical Overlays
Divine Power and Evidence
Platonic Philosophical Overlay
Thomist Philosophical Overlay
Kantian Philosophical Overlay
Divine Evidence Personalized
6 Moral Experience and Co-valuing in Conflict
Genesis Revisited
Conflict in Moral Life and Wisdom
Trust in Divine Accompaniment
Conflict in Conscience
Accompaniment for Agape
Love's Judgment
Triumph over Moral Defeat and Death
7 Moral Experience Justified by God
In the Beginning
From Creation to Promise
God's Test and Job's Lesson
Paul and Jesus on Theodicy
God's Theodicy Justified
Perfecting Moral Experience
8 Moral Experience and Theological Inquiry
Competitors for Divine Revelation
Jesus on Theological Inquiry
Paul on Theological Inquiry
Moral Experience as Gift and Duty
Concluding Ongoing Task
Select Bibliography
Index
Citation preview
God in Moral Experience
The Apostle Paul defined the moral values of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness as “the fruit of God’s Spirit.” Paul Moser here argues that such values are character traits of an intentional God. When directly experienced, they can serve as evidence for the reality and goodness of such a God. Moser shows how moral conscience plays a key role in presenting intentional divine action in human moral experience. He explores this insight in chapters focusing on various facets of moral experience – regarding human persons, God, and theological inquiry, among other topics. He enables a responsible assessment of divine reality and goodness, without reliance on controversial arguments of natural theology. Clarifying how attention to moral experience can contribute to a limited theodicy for God and evil, Moser’s study also acknowledges that the reality of severe evil does not settle the issue of God’s existence and goodness. . is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice: Righteous Reconciliation in Reciprocity, Divine Guidance: Moral Attraction in Action, and The Divine Goodness of Jesus: Impact and Response (all Cambridge University Press).
. Loyola University Chicago
God in Moral Experience Values and Duties Personified
Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge , United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York, , USA Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, , Australia –, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India Penang Road, #–/, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ : ./ © Paul K. Moser This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Moser, Paul K., - author. : God in moral experience : values and duties personified / Paul Moser, Loyola University Chicago. : Cambridge, United Kingdom : New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, . | Includes bibliographical references and index. : (print) | (ebook) | (hardback) | (paperback) | (epub) : : Christian ethics. | Presence of God. | Ethics in the Bible. | Moral realism. | Providence and government of God–Christianity. : . (print) | (ebook) | –dc/eng/ LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ ---- Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents
Preface
page ix
Introduction: Moral Experience Personified Moral Impact and Response God in Moral Values Chapter Overviews
Moral Experience and Persons Deciders with Dissonance Values as Powers Character and Will Conscience and Valuing Meaning in Values
Moral Experience and God Values and God God and Good Experienced Reciprocity in Response Assurance Grounded Two Contrasts
Moral Experience and Moral Rapport God in Human Images God in God’s Image Motivating Divine–Human Rapport Obstacles to Moral Rapport
v
Moral Experience and Moral Inspiration Spirit in Creation Spirit in Re-creation Inspiration in Jesus and Paul Gambit for Divine Inspiration Reality Check in Moral Inspiration
Moral Experience without Philosophical Overlays Divine Power and Evidence Platonic Philosophical Overlay Thomist Philosophical Overlay Kantian Philosophical Overlay Divine Evidence Personalized
Moral Experience and Co-valuing in Conflict Genesis Revisited Conflict in Moral Life and Wisdom Trust in Divine Accompaniment Conflict in Conscience Accompaniment for Agapē Love’s Judgment Triumph over Moral Defeat and Death
Moral Experience Justified by God In the Beginning From Creation to Promise God’s Test and Job’s Lesson Paul and Jesus on Theodicy God’s Theodicy Justified Perfecting Moral Experience
Moral Experience and Theological Inquiry Competitors for Divine Revelation Jesus on Theological Inquiry
vi
Paul on Theological Inquiry Moral Experience as Gift and Duty Concluding Ongoing Task
Select Bibliography Index
vii
Preface
Shakespeare introduced talk of “for goodness’ sake” with a telling sentiment in Henry VIII: “For goodness’ sake, consider what you do, how you may hurt yourself, ay, utterly.” What we “do” often bears on the goodness that comes or does not come to us. Our “doing” in this regard includes the questions we pursue, as they can inform and reveal the focus of our lives in relation to what is good. This book pursues a demanding question that can be for goodness’ sake: Can we humans have lives with lasting meaning and value, and, if so, does God have any role here? This question is demanding because, going beyond short-term meaning, it asks about seemingly elusive meaning for human life that lasts – a tall order for most inquirers. If God does have a role here, which God, and how? Good answers do not come easy, but they still may come if we approach our questions responsibly. This book contends that they do come, if with important moral challenges for humans. Our culture at large may or may not value the questions to be pursued here, but, upon reflection, many members of our culture do value them. We shall see why our questions merit our careful reflection, even if some inquirers lack optimism about lasting meaning for our lives. We shall assess the importance of our questions in relation to God’s role, if any, in lasting meaning and value for human life. If God exists, God may seek to have all of us “educated” in a divine school of lasting moral makeover for us, for our own good, and thus “for goodness’ sake.” Whether we excel in this moral education remains to be seen, but we shall ask about its importance and its prospects for us as morally responsible persons. ix
Our inquiry bears on what we are entitled to hope for regarding human life, particularly a morally good human life. This matter differs from what we happen to hope for because it calls for grounded hope – that is, hope with adequate reason or support. This is hope that goes beyond wishful thinking to responsible hope, based on our relevant evidence. We will clarify what the relevant evidence looks like, thereby saving us from looking in the wrong places for lasting meaning and value. For goodness’ sake, we cannot afford to look for the living among the dead, or for God in what has no divine goodness. It is an occupational hazard among philosophical inquirers to look for God in the wrong places. We shall resist that hazard. Some inquirers agree with Albert Camus that we humans share the absurd, hopeless predicament of Sisyphus in Homer’s myth. The myth has Sisyphus doomed to rolling a rock up a hill, only to have the rock roll down, leading to a repetition of futile rockrolling, with no end or gain in sight. His life thus has no robust meaning or value, let alone lasting meaning or value. Even so, Camus praises Sisyphus as an “absurd hero” for his persistence in avoiding collapse from bitter despair. He remarks that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Many people concur, holding that we are Sisyphus, like it or not. We, however, shall entertain doubts about that spin on a tragic myth. Even if we face tragedy in life, and that seems unavoidable for us, we still must ask if our lives match the hopeless absurdity faced by Sisyphus. Perhaps there is a caring purpose-bearer and purpose-giver behind the veil of human tragedy. This would be a benevolent intentional agent who, however elusive, is capable of guiding the world for goodness’ sake, including for lasting good in cooperative human lives. That option seems imaginable, but is it just imaginary? We should ask whether anything indicates it to be a reality beyond a fantasy. The key, we shall see, is in our experience of some moral values and duties, including love, joy, peace, and patience, that arguably seek, as divine character traits, to guide us in distinctive moral ways for the sake of character formation. x
We shall examine the intended moral impact of the traits in question and our chosen response, considering that our attitude toward them may amount to our attitude toward God, even if we do not acknowledge God. The relevant evidence could be right before our eyes – or at least the eyes of our conscience – while we still overlook it. This book aims to challenge such overlooking by bringing a neglected kind of self-awareness and self-adaptation involving moral conscience to bear on moral values and duties that intentionally challenge us for goodness’ sake. Neglect of the moral values and duties to be identified, we shall see, entails neglect not only of God but also of crucial evidence of God’s reality and goodness in divine character traits disclosed in moral experience. God, we might say, hides and seeks, and even self-reveals, in these values and duties as they are intended to have a moral impact on us and to represent qualities of divine personality. More to the point, God self-reveals divine valuing and caring toward us with these values and duties when experienced, aiming to persuade us and to influence our wills without coercion to comply with them. The divine aim is to have us comply voluntarily, in order for us to become worthy beneficiaries and representatives of God’s moral character, thus building a community of God’s people. In this perspective, we are not in the hopeless predicament of Sisyphus; nor need we consider him to be happy. We are, however, in a context of ongoing moral challenge seeking our moral rapport with God for the sake of our character formation, even if we try to suppress this fact. In that rapport, God’s moral character is revealed to humans in direct ways that intentionally challenge and encourage us toward good lives in our sharing of divine character traits. This book’s examination of value, duty, and meaning in human lives takes the following broad steps. The Introduction draws from Leo Tolstoy to give a concrete example of moral challenge and selfadaptation in finding meaning for human life. It suggests that we often share Tolstoy’s kind of challenge in our moral experience to xi
become morally better persons. Chapter contends that persons as voluntary deciders typically have purposes (or intentions) for their decisions and broader actions, even if those purposes are subconscious and face dissonance in personal and social life. It identifies how some moral values revealed in moral conscience can offer worthy meaning for our lives, owing to their role in our becoming morally better as persons and in our personal relationships. Chapter asks whether some moral values and duties that influence persons reveal to them, perhaps only with glimmers in conscience, personal character traits of a benevolent purpose-bearing God seeking to lead them to moral improvement and character formation. Even so, some people could fail to recognize such potentially veiled divine activity, owing to various reasons. Chapter considers that moral experience from a caring God would seek moral rapport with humans for the sake of an interactive cooperative relationship in righteousness. Such rapport would call for their loyal cooperation with God’s moral will as expressed in their moral experience, including conscience. Chapter examines a kind of moral inspiration of humans by God for the sake of reaching their deepest motives for decision and action. Such inspiration takes moral decision-making beyond a self-help program to an interpersonal contribution from God to be received with loyal cooperation by humans. Chapter contends that moral experience and corresponding evidence from God do not depend on philosophical overlays of an abstract or speculative sort. It uses familiar Platonic, Thomist, and Kantian philosophical overlays to illustrate this lesson and to highlight the importance of direct moral experience of God’s righteous character and will. Chapter explores whether becoming a co-valuer for divine goodness in conflict could bring lasting meaning not only to an individual life but also to the shared life of a society, including a society that flourishes with national, ethnic, racial, gender, and religious diversity. Such a society could benefit with goodness and meaning by its chosen reciprocity in reflecting (to some degree) xii
a morally perfect God worthy of human worship and trust. Chapter asks whether a perfectly good God could justify or vindicate God’s ways of allowing and using severe suffering and evil in human moral experience and in the world. It looks for such a justification in divine promise and proximity that seek righteousness as rectitude fulfilled for humans in God’s preferred time. Chapter explores the relevance of moral experience to theological inquiry. It considers a potential divine concern for righteous intentions in inquirers about God. Overall, the book explains the needed role of God in human moral experience and character for the sake of building a righteous, morally good commonwealth in moral rapport with God. It argues that this role enjoys distinctive but widely neglected support from evidence of intentional activity in human moral experience and character. We shall see that this evidence merits our careful attention if we aim to understand a vital divine purpose behind moral values and duties and that purpose’s corresponding ethics for the common good. A potential result is a new appreciation of the profound significance of moral values and duties for the meaning of human life, individually and collectively, and in relation to God and intentional divine activity in human experience and moral character. This book has benefited from comments and suggestions from many people. For constructive remarks on earlier parts, I thank Simon Babbs, David Bukenhofer, Tom Carson, Harry Gensler, Todd Long, Chad Meister, Aeva Munro, Ben Nasmith, Clinton Neptune, Bernard Walker, and Tom Wren. I also thank students in my classes at Loyola University Chicago, and various anonymous referees. For excellent help at Cambridge University Press, as usual, I thank Beatrice Rehl, publisher. Parts of the book make use of revised materials from some of my recent essays: “Divine Self-Disclosure in Filial Values: The Problem of Guided Goodness,” Modern Theology (); “Faith, Power, and Philosophy: Divine–Human Interaction xiii
Reclaimed,” International Journal of Philosophy and Theology (); “Divine Moral Inspiration: Unity in Biblical Theology,” Biblical Theology Bulletin (); “Moral Rapport in Communion of the Spirit,” Pneuma (); “Biblical Theodicy of Righteous Fulfillment: Divine Promise and Proximity,” Irish Theological Quarterly (); and “God with Us in Moral Conflict,” The Expository Times ().
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Introduction Moral Experience Personified
We sometimes neglect questions about what is good for us, such as the question of whether our conscience at times shows moral goodness in intentional attitudes or actions toward us as persons. We thus can fail to notice some intentional goodness in our lives and how it functions toward us. We shall examine how our neglecting some moral questions restricts our understanding and appreciation of intentional goodness in our lives. We shall see, however, that a suitably responsive attitude to moral values and duties can shed new light on vital questions about the nature of moral goodness and life’s meaning. Such an attitude, involving selfadaptive attention to experienced goodness, can also figure in a person’s commitment to a role for a good God in human moral experience and life. We may think of moral experience generally as awareness of, or attention-attraction by, factors bearing directly on righteousness or unrighteousness.
Moral Impact and Response In The Death of Ivan Ilyich (), Leo Tolstoy imagines a troubled but inquisitive Russian judge, Ivan Ilyich, who reflects Tolstoy’s life in various ways. Downtrodden with physical injury, Ivan confronts the “inner voice” of his conscience in moral dissonance and struggle and, according to my reading, in moral responsiveness in selfadaptation to experienced moral goodness.
Initial Awareness and Challenge Ivan’s struggle and experiment begin with his awareness of inadequate moral goodness in his life (his main “suffering”) and a corresponding challenge in a question from his conscience. “What is it you want?” was the first clear conception capable of expression in words, that he heard. “What do you want? What do you want?” he repeated to himself. “What do I want? To live and not to suffer,” he answered. And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him. “To live? How?” asked his inner voice. “Why, to live as I used to – well and pleasantly.” “As you lived before, well and pleasantly?” the voice repeated.
This self-reflection leads to Ivan’s asking, for the sake of a good explanation, about the actual moral character of his life. He had assumed on the basis of his moral self-experience that his own role was morally good on balance. His self-reflection adds, however, to the moral challenge he faces by revealing moral dissonance and even conflict from within. His indicators in experience of his moral goodness now face discord from his experience of his moral failure. Such morally relevant dissonance leaves him troubled and perplexed.
Initial Response Adapted Tolstoy portrays Ivan as revising his initial understanding of his prior moral experience and life. As soon as the period began which had produced the present Ivan Ilych, all that had then seemed joys now melted before his sight and
Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, in Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy, trans. Louise Maude and Aylmer Maude (New York: Harper & Row, ), p. (hereafter DII).
turned into something trivial and often nasty. And the further he departed from childhood and the nearer he came to the present the more worthless and doubtful were the joys . . . Then all became confused and there was still less of what was good; later on again there was still less that was good, and the further he went the less there was.
Ivan is adapting himself and his self-understanding to the actual moral experience of his life, including its dissonance, thus leaving behind some earlier self-deception about his moral character. Such self-adapting to moral reality, although painful at times, provides an opportunity for moral candor and for further moral challenge on that basis. Ivan is learning about himself through trial and error in his responsive self-reflection on his moral experience and character, including their dissonance. His process of self-adaptation to moral goodness rests on the moral values he experiences and accepts as motivating qualities, albeit with some change in those values over time.
Fear of Moral Inadequacy and Despair Ivan expresses concern about his moral inadequacy in his life, and he fears what may be the painful truth about himself. “Maybe I did not live as I ought to have done,” it suddenly occurred to him. “But how could that be, when I did everything properly?” he replied, and immediately dismissed from his mind this, the sole solution of all the riddles of life and death, as something quite impossible. “There is no explanation! Agony, death . . . What for?”
The painful truth of Ivan’s moral inadequacy prompts his fear of despair (as well as of a lack of satisfactory explanation) regarding
DII, p. . DII, p. .
his moral character and life. His potential moral failure in life seems too much for him to acknowledge and handle. Tolstoy puts perceived moral failure at the center of Ivan’s moral struggle. He remarks: It occurred to [Ivan] that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false.
Tolstoy identifies in Ivan’s experience, perhaps in his conscience, morally relevant “impulses” felt but suppressed by him, thus indicating morally relevant dissonance in his life. He also gives a central role to Ivan’s self-adapting to the new evidence from his moral experience and character, which indicates that “he had not spent his life as he should have done.” Ivan’s self-adaptive change frees him from a harmful attempt to protect or to justify his previous moral self-image that suppressed the actual moral truth about his character and life. It also enables him to proceed, through self-adaptive attention, with moral inquiry akin to experiment to discover and to clarify what, if anything, lies behind the veil of his moral values directed toward a good life. Such values leave him troubled about the overall moral value and meaning of his life. Ivan’s search for moral self-justification includes his lashing out at God: “He wept on account of his helplessness, his terrible loneliness, the cruelty of man, the cruelty of God, and the absence
DII, p. .
of God. ‘Why have You done all this? Why have You brought me here? Why, why do You torment me so terribly?’” Ivan finds no relief in his attempt at moral self-justification for his life, even if the attempt seeks relief in his blaming the “cruelty of God.” He is thus stuck in moral suffering over his life.
Beyond Moral Self-Justification Tolstoy remarks that “Ivan was hindered from getting [relief from his moral suffering] by his conviction that his life had been a good one.” He also comments: “That very [self-]justification of his life held him fast and prevented his moving forward, and it caused him most torment of all.” The latter moral torment, according to Tolstoy, exceeds Ivan’s considerable physical suffering, and it invites despair over his life. He simply is not in a position to justify his own life, given his moral shortcomings. Upon relinquishing his dubious attempt at moral selfjustification, Ivan has a powerful experience: He “caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, ‘What is the right thing?’ and grew still, listening.” The “light” experienced by Ivan is more than heat and smoke, as it comes with a challenging moral purpose. It “revealed” something to him about how his life could be “rectified,” or made right, from a moral point of view. This revelation changes everything for Ivan. It opens the door to new hope for him regarding his overall life. Tolstoy has Ivan’s moral self-adaptation to goodness continue, with his listening for further evidence in moral experience that
DII, p. . DII, p. . DII, p. .
requires further adaptive attention, without his life being self-rectified or self-justified. We need to ask, then, exactly how it is to be rectified or justified. The moral experiment is thus ongoing throughout Ivan’s later life, until its end, owing to the ongoing emergence of new evidence and discovery in his moral experience, including conscience. We need to consider, then, such vital evidence and its bearing on the meaning of human life. Tolstoy builds into Ivan’s life an important personal source of moral experience and evidence: a peasant healthcare assistant, Gerasim, who impresses Ivan with his attractive moral character under stressful work. Ivan remarks to Gerasim: “How easily and well you do it all!” Tolstoy adds: “Gerasim did it all easily, willingly, simply, and with a good nature that touched Ivan Ilych. Health, strength, and vitality in other people were offensive to him, but Gerasim’s strength and vitality did not mortify but soothed him.” His “good nature, strength, and vitality” were morally grounded in goodness, in a way that was attractive to Ivan, even if they created some dissonance for him. They thus figured in Ivan’s not losing hope for his life and in his ultimately catching “sight of the light.” We need to consider, then, the role of moral goodness in other people for a person’s appreciation of the overall value and meaning of human life. Tolstoy has Ivan undergo a moral experience of God akin to Tolstoy’s own life-changing experience, noted in his Confession of : “Live seeking God, and then you will not live without God.” And more than ever before, all within me and around me lit up, and the light did not again abandon me. And I was saved from suicide. When and how this change occurred, I could not say. As imperceptibly and gradually the force of life in me had been destroyed and I had reached the impossibility of living, a cessation
DII, p. .
of life and the necessity of suicide, so imperceptibly and gradually did that force of life return to me.
So, Tolstoy’s own moral self-adaptation to moral goodness was ongoing and gradual, and it went against his initial effort toward his moral self-justification. Even so, it had a definite goal: to explain his actual moral experience, including its challenges, conflicts, and frustrations, with candor and illumination, for the sake of recognizing, appreciating, and self-conforming to the needed moral goodness in his life. Tolstoy links the needed moral goodness in the meaning of life with the intentional will of God, as does Ivan (if with more subtlety in the latter case): I returned to the conviction that the single most important purpose in my life was to be better, to live according to this will [of God for goodness]. I returned to the conviction that I could find the expression of this will in something long hidden from me, something that all of humanity had worked out for its own guidance; in short, I returned to a belief in God, in moral perfection.
Tolstoy thus was moved toward co-valuing with God and even agreeably cooperating with God’s will or purpose, as experienced by him, for him to “be better.” Such cooperating can exceed covaluing in that it adds inward commitment to outward action. It can include self-conformity in motive, action, and character to God’s perfectly good will or purpose. We shall explore how the kind of moral values recognized by Tolstoy and Ivan can motivate people settling on their attitudes, actions, and character. A critical issue will be whether such motivating by moral values is sometimes directed, perhaps intentionally
Leo Tolstoy, A Confession and What I Believe, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. Tolstoy, A Confession, p. .
by God, toward a goal rather than being “blind.” If it is, this calls for some careful explanation, perhaps in terms of an intentional, directing divine source beyond humans. Tolstoy, as noted, thought of the relevant goal in terms of the divine purpose to “be better.” We need to ask what exactly prompted Tolstoy’s controversial move to invoke God in relation to his moral experience, particularly in connection with his idea of “moral perfection.” We also need to ask whether that bold move was or can be well grounded, and, if it can, how so. This book explores such matters without being limited to Tolstoy’s or Ivan’s instructive moral experiences. It also allows for variable grounded responses to moral experience among humans. In doing so, it assesses the significance of this variability for the alleged reality of moral values and God. We shall see how moral experience and self-adaptation to goodness contribute to our discovery and understanding of moral values and perhaps even of intentional divine activity in our moral experience. The role of variable moral understanding among inquirers will contribute to our appreciation of motivating and voluntary factors in meaning for a person’s life.
God in Moral Values The book examines a controversial twofold question: Can we humans have lives with lasting meaning and value, and, if so, does God have any role here? The answer is grounded in moral experience of intentionally being led toward moral goodness through values and duties in conscience. A key feature of being led in this way is self-conformity to moral goodness, and the latter requires being duly inquisitive, responsive, intentional, and loyal toward such goodness in moral experience. The details required for such self-conformity will add clarity in due course, relative to moral motives, actions, and character. We shall see that God would aim for moral rapport or communion with humans, including a
relationship of volitional harmony in vital moral matters, for the sake of building human moral character and relationships. We do not beg the question of whether God exists. Nothing would be gained by such cheating in our controversy. Instead, in all cases, evidence has free rein to indicate the nature of a person’s moral or religious experience and the corresponding evidence it supplies. Given the variability in relevant evidence, we thus show mutual tolerance in characterizing our moral and religious experiences or their absence. This approach should save us from counterproductive dogmatism. It also seems to fit with the character of a good God who would be morally above coercing, manipulating, or intimidating inquirers. This strategy seems fair and fruitful for all concerned, and it seems to accommodate genuine responsibility for humans. The very word “God” invites controversy and caution, given its breathtaking diversity of uses. This book adopts a simplifying assumption: The word “God” is an exalted title requiring of any titleholder worthiness of worship and trust, and thus perfect moral goodness. It does not follow that God exists or even that using the title “God” commits us to the existence of God. The title “king of the USA,” for instance, is intelligible even though there is no such king. (There might have been such a king, of course.) Likewise, the title “God” can be intelligible in the absence of God’s existence. The meaningfulness of the title, then, does not settle the issue of an actual titleholder. So, the term “God,” as we shall use it, is not a proper name that logically requires a bearer or referent. The title “God” might fail to refer to any real object. Agnostics and atheists, then, can discuss matters of God without assuming that God exists or that the title “God” is meaningless. A nondogmatic approach to God should accommodate this lesson.
An illuminating discussion of the relevant notion of worship is H. H. Rowley, Worship in Ancient Israel (London: SPCK, ), pp. –.
Some people find hope for lasting purpose in human life via evidence in their experience of moral values as powerful qualities intentionally attracting and guiding them toward a distinctive Godward goal. Such values, they report, are “for goodness’ sake,” as they intentionally lead them, with due timing and fittingness, toward love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and faithfulness. These values are taken to be filial by them in being an interpersonal expression of and a means to God’s inviting, forming, and guiding a universal family of people reflective of divine goodness. Famously, the Apostle Paul takes them to be the “fruit” of God’s Spirit, being borne by God in divine character and action. He thus regards them as intentionally self-manifested character traits of God in human experience. We examine this prospect by attending to its suggested self-awareness of divine values that aim to challenge, support, and guide humans toward voluntary character formation for goodness’ sake. Moral self-adaptation and experiment, including trial and error, toward the reality and nature of experienced values and duties offer a responsible way to assess, and perhaps to discover, the reality and the goodness of a God worthy of worship. They do so from the perspective of human moral experience and response. The general idea is this: We self-adapt and morally experiment toward divine goodness and thereby God when we give our adaptive attention to any evident indication of such intentional goodness and thereby God in our moral experience of values, including our adaptive willingness to value God if divine goodness is suitably present in our moral experience.
This is an initial statement to be clarified in subsequent discussion. It does not specify a needed degree either of our willingness to value God or of the presence of divine goodness in our experience. In addition, it does not specify how divine goodness would or could be indicated or confirmed (or even disconfirmed) in human moral
experience. So, elaboration is needed. This statement nonetheless can add some clarity to the familiar injunction “Seek and you will find [God]” from the Sermon on the Mount. Constraints for needed confirmation (or disconfirmation) will be set by the kind of perfect moral goodness required by divine worthiness of worship. Part of the needed confirmation could be that people who persist in moral self-adaptation and experiment toward divine goodness tend to receive the moral power needed to cooperate with, and thereby to exemplify, the relevant filial values. They could receive such power even if they do not acknowledge that it comes from God. We shall consider, however, proposed grounds to entertain the reality of such power divine, coming intentionally from God, as well as alleged grounds not to do so. Whatever the outcome, we should allow for a need of repeated moral selfadaptation and experiment over time, beyond a single case, given that moral education and character formation for humans typically need some time. Experience and corresponding evidence, including in the moral domain, can vary over time and among people. Our approach to moral self-adaptation and experiment toward God accommodates this truth, which is confirmed by due attention to moral phenomenology. We thus should not expect a quick fix regarding alleged evidence for God in moral experience. In particular, we should not expect a single moral argument for God’s reality or goodness to capture the moral experience of all people. Instead, we should attend to the actual moral experience of an inquirer to see how it compares to the moral experiences of other inquirers. We may use inference to a best available explanation (that is, abduction) on the basis of moral experience, but we should expect variable results relative to variability in human moral experience, including in conscience. Many inquirers have neglected this important consideration that has a bearing on the elusiveness and the variability of divine evidence among humans. That evidence may include divine hiding from a human on occasion.
Our neglect of the filial values to be clarified, we shall see, would entail our neglect of suitable moral inquiry regarding God. It also could entail our neglect of God and crucial evidence of God’s reality and good character traits. Moral self-adaptation and experiment toward God can prompt us to consider that God may hide and selfreveal in filial values for purposes of benefiting humans and thus for goodness’ sake. An awareness of such intentional hiding and selfrevealing could lead to our improved recognition of divine moral expectations of us and of corresponding divine evidence. A divine expectation, if God exists, would be that we humans at some time give due self-adaptive attention, and thus needed reflective time, to the values and duties in question. Such attention would give God an opportunity to have a salient personal influence or impression on us through those values, for the sake of our goodness in character formation and relationships. God thus would seek to have us become co-valuers with God, thereby sharing in God’s moral values and life as we give due attention and time to divine filial values and duties. Only by giving our self-adaptive attention would we decide responsibly whether to value the filial values and duties in question and, going further, to cooperate with them. In this widely neglected perspective on filial values and duties, we might find an alternative to the hopeless predicament of Sisyphus. If we do, we need not follow Camus in considering him, implausibly, to be happy. We then could recommend a life of purposive filial values and duties in lasting meaning and happiness. This, however, is just a possible option now, in need of supporting evidence. The book presents needed evidence from moral experience. A key issue is whether we can sustain, with evidence, moral optimism about lasting goodness and meaning for human life. The answer is “yes” in an important sense of “sustain,” but “no” in another sense. God as well as the devil are in the detail here, as usual, but we will gain understanding by separating them sharply, in terms of moral goodness and badness in thought and practice.
God and evidence for God may be elusive, however, for the sake of avoiding divine promiscuity in giving evidence to humans. Such elusiveness could be fitting for divine work among us for goodness’ sake. It could challenge our uncritical expectations of divine evidence as well as our moral complacency, particularly if we feel a lost opportunity in divine absence, in contrast with what we initially expect of divine presence in our lives. God, if real, would not become an easy commodity for us, given what would be the significant contrast between divine perfect goodness and our imperfect goodness. We thus will consider the value of our needing to self-conform, if with difficulty, to divine goodness and corresponding expectations for us, for our lasting good in character formation and relationships. That option enables us to assess God responsibly in terms of divine goodness in worthiness of worship. It includes attention to the importance of the psalmist’s injunction to “taste and see” regarding alleged evidence of God. The analogy is with evaluating firsthand the gustatory goodness of a food on offer by tasting it, rather than by merely thinking about it. Moral self-adaptation and experiment toward divine goodness would allow an intervening God to attract our attention and thereby us with divine values and duties in our experience. As a result, we could face a divine challenge to have us commit needed time and self-adaptive attention to those values and duties in order to give responsible attention to relevant evidence of God. Such a response would include our willingness to “taste,” as “trying out” for goodness’ sake, any divine values and duties emerging in our experience for their actual goodness, particularly in our character formation. Our attentiveness to moral values and duties in relation to corresponding goodness would matter in apprehending relevant evidence of God in moral experience. It would not be the end of the story, however, for our moral self-adaptation and moral experiment toward God. Such self-adaptive attention and
experiment would respond candidly to confirming evidence in a way that ultimately values any divine values or duties on offer, in giving them a normative and practical priority. Being perfectly good, God would aim for us to have not only good experiences, but also good motives, attitudes, actions, and characters formed by our experiences of divine values and duties. Ideally, then, our valuing divine values and duties would lead to our agreeably cooperating in self-conformity to them. They thus would be “felt” values for us, owing to our sympathetic response to them. Our moral experiment toward divine values and duties and toward God asks how we measure up to the standard of the relevant values and duties, and whether we need a remedy, perhaps even a divine remedy, for our often falling short. We thus would start out as inquirers about God and our moral experience but end up, if divine reality emerges, with God inquiring of us regarding our moral status. This would be fitting for our inferior moral status relative to a God of perfect moral goodness. We shall see that divine inquiry of us would be for goodness’ sake, including our goodness’ sake in character formation and relationships. Being under such inquiry would have definite indicators of its reality and goodness, as it would be akin to a divine moral experiment regarding us, seeking to reveal our chosen moral standing in relation to divine values and duties and thus to God too. (The book of Job offers a good example, to which Chapter returns.) We shall examine the possible indicators in question and their potential influence on our moral life and character formation.
Chapter Overviews Chapter , “Moral Experience and Persons,” explains how persons as voluntary deciders differ from nonpersons in virtue of persons having purposes or goals. Their having purposes includes their intending to do things, which has people willingly resolving to
bring about something, typically in a context of moral dissonance and other people. Their being purposive thus sets them apart from purely physical objects devoid of a psychological makeup. It also makes them candidates for being morally responsible for their voluntary purposes, given the moral goodness they experience and the reality of other persons they affect. In addition, it makes individual persons irreducible to social groups. Moral assessment asks whether our purposes are morally worthy or fit overall for us to have, including in relation to other persons. Their moral worthiness or fitness requires their being integral to a righteous personal character and its conduct, where righteousness excludes evil in relation to oneself and other persons. Chapter explains how a challenge from righteousness is typical for reflective persons and is worthy of being welcomed. It acknowledges that people with purposes typically rely on values and respond to duties. It denies, however, that values and duties depend for their reality or importance on human beliefs, preferences, or feelings. In that regard, values and duties have a kind of objectivity relative to such human psychological realities. Values for humans are potentially motivating good qualities for them, and duties are requirements for satisfying or realizing some values in human lives. Values and duties can emerge in conscience without coercion of our wills. The chapter asks how these considerations bear on meaning for human life. It raises the question of how such meaning can be represented in human conscience, including in relation to divine activity in human conscience. Chapter , “Moral Experience and God,” asks whether some moral values and duties indicate God at work in human moral experience. The main issue is whether some values and duties represent God’s aiming to guide people toward righteousness and away from unrighteousness via divine personal character traits revealed in human moral experience. Many people oppose thinking of any values and duties as representing or including a morally perfect agent aiming to do something. This chapter takes exception
to such opposition. It contends that attention to the moral experience of some people yields evidence for a morally good agent aiming to nudge, prod, prompt, or attract them toward righteousness in character formation and relationships. It asks whether the agent in question is human, as Freud and some others have suggested, and it considers evidence that it is not. The latter evidence, according to the chapter, includes firsthand experience of God at work in human conscience for goodness’ sake in character formation and relationships. Conscience is not the voice of God. Instead, according to the chapter, God challenges and guides some humans at times through conscience. Any such process of successful guidance is not mechanical, however, because its development depends on human cooperation, even if God intervenes first. Humans can suppress divine intervention in conscience, and therefore their responsible agency is not at risk. The chapter examines what kind of evidence would be needed for the reality of divine intervention in human conscience and how such evidence would seek human cooperation with God. It explains how typical distortions of conscience would need to be corrected by God in a manner that accommodates persons as voluntary deciders. Chapter , “Moral Experience and Moral Rapport,” argues that God would want humans to reciprocate toward God regarding the divine goodness as righteousness shown to them. If that righteousness is self-sacrificing for good and thus self-giving toward humans, God would want humans to participate cooperatively in that goodness by committing themselves to God in trust, obedience, and loyalty. Such committing entails human self-sacrifice to God for the purpose of sharing in and reflecting God’s morally perfect character of righteousness. This theme is suggested by various biblical writers, and it merits attention in contemporary interpretations of divine expectations for humans. In yielding to God in cooperative trust, a person allows God’s unique moral power to come to fruition or maturation in a human
life. It thereby enables salient evidence for divine reality and goodness to emerge. Such cooperation as loyal moral rapport with God is a central feature of the meaning of human life by divine standards, but it does not come easy for humans. Even so, it underwrites a moral adventure for cooperative humans, as it includes their selfconforming, voluntarily and responsively, to lasting meaning from God. The chapter thus explains how evidence from God is intended to be redemptive through being reconciliatory, and not just informational, for humans. Its profound challenge to human tendencies to selfishness, according to the chapter, can lead to its rejection or dismissal by humans and thus to divine frustration and strategic withdrawal in divine hiding. Chapter , “Moral Experience and Moral Inspiration,” notes that the experience of moral inspiration of humans by God has received minimal attention. That neglect is striking, because such divine inspiration of humans is arguably a silver lining throughout the Bible. It is a source of robust unity for biblical theology, from the beginning of the Jewish Bible to the end of the Christian New Testament. This chapter contends that the moral inspiration of humans by God aims for their cooperative reconciliation toward righteous relationships in a divine commonwealth. This theme is a substantial unifier for biblical theology, despite its widespread neglect by scholars and students of the Bible. The chapter shows how its approach to cooperative moral inspiration confirms an interpersonal understanding of the fruit of God’s Spirit as divine filial values in human experience. It thus adds cogency to a main theme of Chapter . It also proposes a needed veracity check on its proposed unified biblical theology of moral inspiration. One important lesson is that moral inspiration, from a prominent biblical point of view, is cooperative in response to divine influence. It is not a mechanical process of coercion. Moral inspiration from God thus fits with the kind of uncoercive moral rapport with God discussed in Chapter . It also takes moral assessment to a level deeper than familiar human decisions and
conduct because it involves a person’s deepest motives. God would seek to work at that level in order to guide character formation, uncoercively, toward righteousness in relationships. In doing so, God would aim to have humans share in God’s perfect moral character for the sake of what is good for all involved. Chapter , “Moral Experience without Philosophical Overlays,” observes that many philosophers and theologians try to increase the credibility of faith in God by means of persuasive philosophical arguments and explanations. Given the perspective of the Apostle Paul on evidence for God, one might proceed in either of two ways for using arguments and explanations. Philosophers and theologians who hold that Paul has a contribution to make in this area can benefit by considering the relative efficacy of these two ways. The main area of contrast lies in the epistemic basis of philosophical arguments and explanations. They have, at least from Paul’s perspective, a basis either in the power of direct divine selfmanifestation or in philosophical claims. The latter basis will neglect or obscure the humanly experienced power distinctive of a perfectly righteous God and thus miss out on the foundational evidence characteristic of that God. The chapter clarifies what the relevant divine power includes, in terms of intentional divine self-manifestation as God’s self-witness to divine reality and goodness. This witness occurs in receptive human moral experience, including conscience, and in the resulting character formation. The chapter explains how such power, being intentionally interactive toward divine righteousness, serves as a significant alternative to such prominent philosophical overlays on faith in God as Platonism, Thomism, and Kantianism. The latter overlays, according to the chapter, improperly depersonalize key evidence in moral experience for God’s reality and goodness. Chapter , “Moral Experience and Co-valuing in Conflict,” identifies how a social, society-building aim would lie behind divine evidence aimed at renewing people in righteousness. The intended renewal would be social as well as individual, and this would bear
on the evidence of God appropriated by humans. It would give a central role to righteous love for persons in the appropriation of divine evidence, thus making human motives matter in the discernment and reception of that evidence. God would aim to have divine evidence benefit human moral character among as many people as are willing to cooperate with divine righteous love. This aim would seek a divine commonwealth motivated by righteous love for all people, and the commonwealth thus would transcend familiar racial, ethnic, national, and even religious boundaries. The divine love presented to humans, then, would underwrite a robust ethics for human relationships across typical boundaries. The desired commonwealth of righteous love would seek to include even enemies of the commonwealth, thus fulfilling the divine love commands and the command to love one’s enemy found in Jesus. So, human motives matter in relating to God and corresponding evidence, as they demand character change relative to typical human tendencies to selfishness and exclusiveness toward outsiders and enemies. The chapter explores how such change can arise in and guide a human life, with vital individual and social benefits. It identifies how it bears on what some biblical writers consider to be the good news of human restoration from God. That good news would aim to be universal, even if some humans are set on ignoring or blocking it. Chapter , “Moral Experience Justified by God,” considers whether God’s relation to the world, including the abundance of suffering and evil in moral experience and the larger world, can be justified by God from a moral point of view. The chapter contends that two factors can play a central role in a divine self-justification: a divine promise of fulfilling righteousness for humans at God’s preferred time, including due reparations; and divine presence available to them now under fitting conditions. The promise would have a basis in morally relevant experience of divine presence, as in the cases of Abraham and Job, but its fulfillment would await a future time.
The chapter explains how the relevant promise can be grounded in moral experience, given special attention to moral conscience. It also clarifies why such grounding does not demand a full explanatory theodicy, thus agreeing with the book of Job and the teaching of Jesus and Paul. God could give self-justification, then, without supplying a full explanation to humans of the divine purposes for allowing suffering and evil. A key issue is whether God would be morally blameworthy for postponing the elimination of suffering and evil among humans. A negative answer would be challenged by the human inability to identify all of God’s relevant purposes. Given that inability, we would not be in a position to fault God’s moral character for delaying the full establishment of righteousness among humans. Chapter , “Moral Experience and Theological Inquiry,” examines the relevance of moral experience to theological inquiry. It considers the role of a divine concern for experienced righteousness in inquirers about God, as suggested by Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul. This concern relates to whether theological inquiry, by a divine standard, takes us beyond mere assessment of theological information to the moral status of inquirers before God. We shall see that it does and explore some implications. The chapter considers whether evidence of God in human moral experience comes with the divine intention to have recipients voluntarily be conformed, with divine power, to divine righteousness. If it does, we should expect the moral attitude of an inquirer to be relevant to the evidence, if any, of God received. In that case, God would not self-present evidence of God in moral experience just to present evidence or information. The chapter identifies divine evidence in human moral experience as not only a gift of grace but also a duty to cooperate toward divine righteousness. A key role for humans in theological inquiry is to let God be God in leading them to loyal cooperation with divine righteousness. Overall, this book renews attention to the vital role of intentional values and duties in the meaning of human life and in relating to
the God who supplies such meaning. It contends that this renewed attention relies on distinctive but widely neglected evidence of intentional divine activity in human moral experience, including conscience. This evidence tends to be elusive, but it becomes salient as it comes to fruition in human cooperation as self-conformity to it. Such cooperation is an integral part of desired moral rapport with divine righteousness manifested in human moral experience. We miss out on crucial relevant evidence if we neglect the role of moral experience in much religious commitment, particularly if we hold the excessively intellectual view that “religious belief is the brainchild of intuitive thinking.” God initiates the moral rapport in question, and humans are responsible for responding with self-conformity, if with divine aid, to the intentional righteousness presented. In such rapport, a human moral character can find a new moral focus that can bring meaning to human life: the kind of meaning Tolstoy described as “to be better” as a person, in doing the will of God. We shall examine how such meaning can enliven people as voluntary deciders with moral significance, individually and collectively, in a society that is not altogether of their own making.
Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), p. .
Moral Experience and Persons
What are humans that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Psalm :
For our current purposes, we shall think of persons as voluntary deciders who make decisions with varying degrees of deliberation and rationality relative to their intentions or goals. They settle on chosen options and then proceed to try to bring about those options, with more or less success. Such decision-making has a creative aspect, at least in the chosen timing of exercise of a will, even if the decision is familiar or ill-advised. For instance, readers of this chapter are persons who have decided voluntarily to read it, and they could have decided otherwise. We have no reason to suppose that the laws of nature or of science or any other laws require their reading it, now or ever. We would need a nonscientific kind of explanation of voluntary deciders and their decisions, if an explanation is available. We would need an explanation that is irreducibly purposive or intentional. We shall find support for an explanation that acknowledges the typical context of persons involving their experience of good, evil, and other persons, often in cases of dissonance and direct conflict. This chapter asks whether humans have the power to resolve the moral dissonance and conflict they face. It also considers how values bear on their purposes and on the kind of meaning available for human life.
Deciders with Dissonance Given a familiar understanding of persons, they must have some purposes or intentions in their lives, regardless of the extent of their rationality. Perhaps they lack purposes for their lives overall or in general, but if they have no purpose, intention, or goal in their lives, they will fall short of personhood as typically understood. A purpose or an intention goes beyond a mere desire because it requires one’s being settled on an end. In the absence of a purpose, a physical body could be present, but that body would not be a person. We shall see that this approach to persons leads naturally to questions about moral responsibility, thus going beyond mere scientific objects. It opens up a domain of assessment of persons irreducible to scientific assessment. It is difficult to separate persons from purposes and our notion of persons from an idea of purposes. Even our denial of purposes or goals for persons would come with our having a purpose for the denial, thus bringing in a purpose for us as persons. Our intention to opt out of purposes for persons would be an intentional decision on our part, for some purpose or other, to opt out of being involved with purposes. A kind of practical incoherence regarding intention would thus arise, given the joining of a denial of intention with the presence of an intention in making the denial. This is a lesson about the denial of intention, if not about intentions themselves, but it suggests that persons have no easy escape from intentions as purposes. Our purposes organize and guide our lives, for better or worse, thus functioning as guideposts for the direction of our lives, at least at times. They distinguish us from the scientific objects of physics, chemistry, and geology, among other natural sciences. Atoms, molecules, and glaciers do not have purposes, although we humans typically do, even if they are not always good. We usually have various purposes or goals in our lives, however variable and frustrating, and we typically pursue them intentionally, if only at times. It is an open question whether there is an overarching purpose for this reality concerning persons.
Our intentional decisions contribute to who we are as persons and to how we direct our lives relative to our selected purposes. If I decide to be a professor of Ancient Greek philosophy, for instance, I will focus my professional life on classical Greek and some literature from Ancient Greece, for my purposes of research, writing, and teaching. My decision would be voluntary under ordinary conditions; nothing would coerce me to make it, and I could choose otherwise (as I actually did, as it happens). My accepted values underlie my decisions, and I am committed to relying on those values. In general, the values I accept are revealed in what I assume to be the worth of my actions. For instance, I assume that my writing this book is worthwhile, and I accept the value of worthwhile books. Our decisions are thus value-laden in a way that makes some sense of our lives. Even so, my assumed value and worth for my actions can go wrong in being misleading about what is genuinely good or worthwhile. So, we need to separate the genuinely good from the merely apparently good in values. The topic of the nature of persons is complicated not only by our personal experience of good and evil in conflict but also by our typical interpersonal experience of other voluntary deciders. Many people have a personal experience of instances of moral good and evil in relation to deliverances from their conscience, and this experience sometimes includes dissonance as discord and even direct conflict. For instance, as in the Introduction’s case described by Tolstoy, people examine their conscience and find instances of good and of evil, such as kindness and selfishness, presented to them, and those instances often resist a mutual reconciliation. Inward discord can result in conscience, and it can linger in human lives, with resulting complexities in moral decision-making. Some people are challenged in their conscience regarding, for instance, their selfish use of their available time solely for their own gain. They are disturbed, if only momentarily, by such selfishness reflected in conscience in a way that reveals a purpose they have: to
use their available time merely for their own benefit, disregarding other people. This disturbance in conscience need not be something they choose or desire. Indeed, they may desire not to have it, given that it creates some psychological and moral dissonance or turbulence in their lives. They also have experienced some unselfishness in their lives, perhaps approvingly via conscience, and they feel a conflict between it and their tendency to selfishness. Such conflict is common in human life, and it bears on our being voluntary deciders under a kind of morally relevant duress. Ignoring this duress, as much academic discussion of persons does, would distort our actual situation as intentional deciders. People have three options toward the reality of dissonance in their conscience. First, they can try to ignore it, proceeding as if it did not occur. Second, they can oppose it, opting to go beyond trying to ignore it to renounce or denounce its reality. Third, they can try to resolve the discord, by acknowledging it and seeking a resolution of it in attitude and action. Whichever option they adopt, their voluntary decision regarding it, however reflective or deliberative, shows that they are personal, intentional agents, and not mere machines. The reality of the dissonance does not force their hand on their response to it. They are left with a voluntary decision, at least in typical cases where human agency functions. As voluntary deciders, we operate in a world under moral duress, and we share in that duress, while opposing it at times. Keith Ward thus remarks: The natural world is a darker place than humanist and liberal morality pretends. It is this fact that makes morality not a matter of the humane and dispassionate calculation of maximization of compatible interests, but a matter of a relentless and passionate battle of the moral will against the insistent pressures of lust, hatred, aggression and arrogance that dominate human lives.
Keith Ward, Morality, Autonomy, and God (London: Oneworld, ), p. .
This fact is reflected in an insight of the Apostle Paul: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do . . . I see in my members a law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Rom :, ). If his talk of “sin” somehow offends, we can substitute talk of “unrighteousness” without loss. The challenge to us as voluntary deciders includes the reality of competing influences on us, going beyond our own “dispassionate calculation.” Those influences can leave us “not doing the good we want,” even if we know what is good. So, when we decide on our use of time, as we frequently do, we can be influenced by sources of selfishness, such as our own habits of selfishness or the selfishness of other people. We will do well, however, not to confuse those influences with our own decisions. We can decide to conform to influences of selfishness, thus favoring a selfish use of our time. Alternatively, we can try to resist the influence toward selfishness and decide for an unselfish use of our time. A third option would be to try to ignore the challenge between selfishness and unselfishness in our use of time. Even if persons tend toward selfishness or unselfishness in their use of time, they could try to avoid considering a conflict between the two. A motive could be their aim not to try to resolve that conflict, given the difficulty involved. We are, in any case, often influenced in our decisions by selfish tendencies, regardless of our attitude toward that influence or any conflict resulting from it. The dissonance we experience comes not only from inside us but also from outside. Voluntary deciders typically coexist with, and sometimes confront, other such deciders, including the volitional tendencies and actions of those other deciders. One result is conflict between deciders. They thus have a decision to make: whether to ignore, to oppose, or to cooperate with the other
Biblical translations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
deciders. We humans make this kind of decision on many occasions, often without much reflection or deliberation. This problem of conflicting deciders from outside raises the issue of whether there is a right way to approach the kind of interpersonal conflict in question. Suppose that I am at conflict with my neighbor over a proposed tax increase for our local schools. My conscience convicts me to value and to support paying higher taxes to benefit the local schoolchildren. My neighbor, however, insists that he should not be given a higher tax rate because he has no schoolchildren of his own. My decision on how to vote on the tax proposal faces conflict from the decision of my neighbor. What am I to do with this conflict? Does it challenge the goodness of my own planned decision to vote for the proposal? One important issue is whether the conflict between me and my neighbor, beyond our own initial aims, could be intended to work for something morally good. We would need to explore evidence for the potential instrumental value of such conflict. We face a vital issue for us as voluntary deciders: Do we have the needed power to correct bad influence and to resolve dissonance and conflict in moral experience for the sake of what is good? In particular, if we form a purpose or an intention to withstand dissonance and bring about something morally good, do we have the power to actualize that purpose? We shall ask whether such power is available to us. If it is not, we face a moral analogue of the futility of Sisyphus. We then shall be unable to bring about desired moral goodness in our lives. Our question about power does not assume that we must be able to be self-rightening or self-justifying in the way Tolstoy initially held. It allows that we could find the needed power in a source other than ourselves, such as in the place ultimately suggested by Tolstoy: in God’s power found in a divine purpose to have a person “be better.” The latter power, we shall see, would involve special values that can motivate people with uncoercive power to “be better.”
Values as Powers We shall consider the view that values are potentially motivating goods, such as being righteous or being caring, that merit approval from people in a position to give approval or disapproval. According to this view, values are not reducible to human beliefs, preferences, or feelings about value. Giving attention to one ordinary linguistic use, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) offers the following as a definition of “value”: “quality viewed in terms of importance, usefulness, desirability, etc. The relative worth, usefulness, or importance of a thing or (occasionally) a person.” Ordinary use captured by a dictionary typically does not settle a philosophical or theological issue, but it can illustrate a noteworthy semantic meaning. The use of the term “value” among philosophers and theologians varies widely, with emphases ranging from concepts to beliefs to preferences to feelings. We need not digress to the metaphysics of values, but it is important for this book’s position to allow for manifested values that have an independence of humans in a challenge offered by those values to human attitudes. In addition, it is important to allow for manifested values to go beyond abstract, static “Forms” or “Ideas” and causally influence humans in their moral experience. A manifested value, we shall see, is not reducible to a static concept of a value or to a mere belief, preference, or feeling about what is valuable. As a characterization of values, we may offer the following: Values are qualities with causal powers either to improve something or make it worthwhile or to attract someone to do so by the values’ empowering quality toward improvement.
This characterization does not make the reality of values dependent on human approval, favor, endorsement, belief, preference, feeling, or supporting reason. It thus avoids a common confusion of the
Here I dissent from Robert M. Adams’s suggestion that it is “probably impossible . . . to get value judgments out of the foundations of objectivity.” See Robert M. Adams, Finite
reality of a value with a human attitude or response toward it. Thomas Hobbes, for instance, fell prey to that confusion in remarking: “[Let people] rate themselves at the highest value they can; yet their true value is no more than it is esteemed by others.” Contrary to Hobbes, values (at least of the kind relevant to this book’s position) can exist without having any human response, and they can be discovered, without being created, by humans. They also can survive in the presence of false value judgments and misleading value beliefs, preferences, and feelings among humans. Values have a relativity not to a human response but to what their power can improve. For instance, the value inherent in salt water for improving the life of a whale does not apply in the same way to the life of a human. In addition, the value had by a college education for various humans does not extend to dogs and cats, or even to all humans. We thus may say that the scope of values can vary in potential beneficiaries, but this is not relativism about values resulting from variable beliefs, preferences, or feelings about values. Values differ from truth and factuality in having variability of scope. Truth and factuality do not vary depending on the scope of their beneficiaries. Even so, the reality of values, truths, and facts is not at the mercy of how people respond with their beliefs, preferences, or feelings toward values, truths, or facts. In this regard, a kind of objectivity stems from the belief-, preference-, and feelingindependence of values, as in the case of truth and facts. Being loving (or unselfishly caring), being honest, and being humble are examples of familiar values for humans, at least as
and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, ), p. . I also dissent, as we shall see, from his resulting epistemology of value based on what William P. Alston called “doxastic practices” and from his Platonic talk of God as “the Good.” I doubt that there is any such singular thing as “the Good,” even if many things are objectively good. I also doubt that established “doxastic practices” always agree with our best evidence, as illustrated in relation to some evidence from the sciences. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, []), I.X..
understood in their typical manifestations. They are real qualities with powers to make something better, or at least to attract someone to do so. Self-destructive condemnation toward a person, in contrast, is not a value in its typical manifestation, because it is not a quality with power toward improvement. In general, qualities are not values when they lack power either to improve something or to make it worthwhile or to attract someone to do so. What of hammers, saws, and other valuable physical tools? Are they values, or, instead, do they simply have value? We typically do not say that a hammer or a saw is a value, but we often say that they are valuable or have value, such as when they aid with our repairing a bookcase. The OED offers a relevant definition from ordinary use: “the quality of a thing considered in respect of its ability to serve a specified purpose or cause a particular effect.” It gives the following example from the Popular Science Monthly of : “Algebra and geometry have a high practical as well as definite intellectual value.” I shall follow this ordinary use and avoid talk of a hammer or a saw as itself a value, talking instead of the value had by a hammer or a saw owing to its having (rather than being) a quality with the causal power to improve something. Values as qualities with power have their negations in what may be called detractors of value. Some writers call these “negative values” or “disvalues,” thus suggesting that they are themselves values. Such talk of negative values, however, seems to rely on the idea that their being valued makes them values, even if negative values. The latter idea, I suggest, is inadvisable, confusing human valuation with actual values. An actual value, beyond valuation as a supposed value, is a quality with the kind of power indicated above. There are, of course, qualities with power to worsen or to degrade something, even a person. Selfishness, greed, and lust are familiar examples. They are detractors or negators of value, and thus, by the standard adopted here, they do not merit being called “values.” Values can be qualities with two compatible, nonexclusive kinds of power for improvement: intrinsic and instrumental. An intrinsic
value is a quality with the power to improve something without reliance on any other value. An example of an intrinsic moral value is the powerful quality, found in many people, of having morally good intentions or purposes. That quality can morally improve people, including people having the intentions, without relying on any other value in doing so. Such an intrinsic value does not depend for its being a value on any other value. It also can be, however, an instrumental value in contributing to the reality of additional values, in which case it is not merely instrumental or merely intrinsic. An instrumental value contributes to another value for the initial value’s power to improve. The instrumental value of my devotion to regular physical exercise, for instance, contributes to the value had by my overall physical health. The value of my devotion to exercise owes its power as a value to being a means to improve my overall physical health. It is thus merely instrumental, and not an intrinsic value. Values inhabit different domains: moral, aesthetic, epistemic, economic, political, legal, and so on. They are thus qualities with power to improve something in moral, aesthetic, epistemic, economic, political, legal, and other domains. The diversity of domains, however, allows for conflicts of values across domains. For instance, something can be a powerful economic value in improving our income while being morally harmful and thus in conflict with moral value. We see this kind of conflict in various manifestations of unbridled capitalism. People are morally harmed in a number of ways, such as being moved toward selfishness, for the sake of increased economic profit, even their own increased economic profit. As a result, many countries with a moral concern put restrictions on economic profit-making in order to benefit the common good. Some proponents of capitalism may prefer to let the “invisible hand” deal with this problem, but the dominant view among capitalist countries is that more is needed to protect the best interests of vulnerable groups. Economic value, then, can run afoul
of moral value, the latter being integral to righteousness, including righteousness of personal character. We face, inside or outside value conflicts, the unavoidability of the “ought” concerning what is required by goodness of some sort. Even when we deny the relevance of “ought” in a context, we plausibly can ask in that context: Ought we to deny the relevance of the “ought”? Whatever the answer, and whatever the specific sense or domain of “ought,” the question ultimately concerns not just what is obligatory but also what is good or valuable in a context. A familiar approach understands obligation in terms of what is required by goodness in a given context. Our question, in any case, does not go away, even when people want to avoid it. We humans are not the creators of the unavoidability of the “ought.” We discover it as having its own status, challenging us to consider what is good or valuable in a context. This places a challenge of potential accountability to us in any context, including moral accountability concerning righteousness in some contexts. Whatever we think of our accountability, we typically interpret the values and duties we confront in terms of their significance for our lives. A controversial issue is whether they are to be interpreted as indicating something beyond their human interpreters and their human lives. If they are not, we will be limited to an explanation of them that is psychological or sociological relative to humans. In that case, something about individual humans or groups of humans will be proposed to account for values and duties presented to us. Chapter considers cases of moral challenge to us that arguably do not arise just from our psychological or sociological lives.
Character and Will Persons as voluntary deciders are neither mere dispositions to act nor mere episodes of action. They have what we call “personal
character” or “individual personality,” and that includes a relatively stable volitional center for dispositions to act and for episodes of action. We need to clarify what this volitional center includes. The OED offers this definition of “character”: “The sum of the moral and mental qualities which distinguish an individual or a people, viewed as a homogeneous whole; a person’s or group’s individuality deriving from environment, culture, experience, etc.; mental or moral constitution, personality.” This captures what we are after now, as long as we retain a central role in a personal character for “a homogeneous whole” as “individuality,” beyond a mere collection of moral and mental features. We thus talk of “character witnesses” for people as we assess their personal characters as individuals in various ways, on the basis of moral, prudential, and epistemic considerations, for example. One unifier for the personal character of a voluntary decider is that person’s individual voluntary will, which is not to be confused with what that person wills. A person’s voluntary will causally influences what that person intends or decides to be and to do as a person, and it thereby can influence what that person’s character is. In addition, a person’s personal character can influence that person’s voluntary will, sometimes as a result of character tendencies or habits formed by one’s use of one’s will. For instance, my deciding to disregard other people in my decisions can result in a habit of selfish and exclusive treatment of others, and that habit can influence my current use of my will toward others. My intentional decisions, then, matter to the nature of my personal character because they can influence my voluntary will at the center of my personal character. Famously, some extreme empiricist philosophers, under the influence of David Hume and Bertrand Russell, have denied that we as persons have individuality of voluntary will beyond our being a collection of event-like phenomena. Persons, in their perspective, have no enduring volitional center, because they consist just of physical events, perhaps bundled, and their causal interactions in
time. This position is an expected result of extreme empiricism about persons, but it faces a problem from a familiar human experience. We sometimes experience our own enduring voluntary will in action as it guides us, with our experience of its causal influence, toward our intended goals. Right now, for instance, I experience my voluntary will guiding me to complete the writing of this sentence. In addition, I would suggest that you now experience your voluntary will guiding you to focus on the words of this sentence. In any case, it is doubtful that mere events can be voluntary deciders because they lack the needed volitional or intentional center. These considerations will take us beyond an empiricist metaphysics of mere perceptual events, but that does not count against these considerations. A plausible response, from the perspective of our familiar experience of our will, is: So much the worse for the extreme empiricism in question. We often care about the personal character of people, and not just their dispositions to act or their episodes of action. Parents, for instance, typically care about the personal character of their children, and they often try to influence their children’s character in positive ways, such as through education and broader social influence. Such caring about personal character usually includes caring about the psychological inwardness of people, including their deepest motives or purposes. We often feel such caring because we seek to understand and benefit other people at that level of their motivational lives. We thus assess what the personal character of another person actually includes when we need to know the motivational tendencies of that person. We may lack scientific laws here, but we sometimes can identify the inward motivational tendencies of another person in terms of overall character. As a result, legal proceedings sometimes rely on character witnesses for a person to gain reliable evidence about motivational tendencies. Even when a personal character is influenced by another person, that other person typically does not coerce the formation of that
character. The voluntary will of the person influenced typically precludes coercion by another person. How, then, does the influence of our character typically proceed, and how do we typically influence the character of another person? An answer can illuminate how a personal character can mature in development toward goodness, including the righteousness of moral goodness. Human deciders do not become righteous in a flash, and therefore attention to their maturation in development toward it can be illuminating. In the case of righteous influence on a moral character, a kind of moral persuasion or attraction is fitting, in either a discursive (descriptive or propositional) form or a nondiscursive (nondescriptive or exemplar) form. Either form will rely on some moral values, such as kindness or caring, to motivate via attraction a person’s maturation in development toward righteousness. An appeal to such values often seeks to have a person look to conscience for conviction by those values toward self-conformity to righteousness. We need to clarify the role of conscience in this regard.
Conscience and Valuing We need not digress into the metaphysics of conscience to identify how conscience functions in the development of maturation toward righteousness. For current purposes, we may regard moral conscience as an introspective means of moral awareness and conviction. Moral conviction from conscience, whether toward righteousness or against unrighteousness, is typically not coercive of a human will. It allows for the voluntary rejection of its opportunity for conviction in righteousness. Such conviction, when cooperatively received from God, is best described as “interconviction.” It includes passive and active components: “being convicted” uncoercively by God and “cooperatively receiving” that convictional challenge from God. This kind of interconviction can yield important convictional knowledge of God, whereby God’s moral
character begins to form a human moral character in righteousness. It enables God to guide while accommodating human autonomy. Interconviction works in tandem with divine assessment or judgment. Paul remarks: “I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me” ( Cor :–). As God assesses or judges a person’s conscience, that person is expected to share in the assessment or judgment, for the sake of inward righteousness. We thus may talk of “interassessment” or “interjudgment,” because it is interpersonal in how it is shared. It has passive and active features relative to a human will in relation to God’s will. God initiates the corrective process, and humans decide whether to cooperate and thereby make the process positively interpersonal. Conscience is fallible because it can be misleading about what is actually good or right. Reliance on conscience can lead to the mistreatment of other people, and it often has done so. Even so, we can discern, perhaps over time, what is righteous and what is unrighteous in the deliverances of conscience. We have a sense of righteousness, owing to some familiarity with it, and this can aid in the correction of conscience. For instance, we have a clear sense of the righteousness of genuine childcare and a clear sense of the unrighteousness of child abuse. Such a distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness does not result from human belief, preference, or feeling, but it can guide such belief, preference, or feeling. Freud has proposed a psychological account of the role of conscience as a “super-ego” in ethical and religious commitment: In the course of individual development, a part of the inhibiting forces in the outer world becomes internalized; a standard is created in the Ego which opposes the other faculties by observation, criticism, and prohibition. We call this new standard the super-ego. From now on the Ego, before undertaking to satisfy the instincts, has to consider not only the dangers of the outer world, but also the
objections of the super-ego, and has therefore more occasion for refraining from satisfying the instinct.
Any internal conviction regarding morality or religion, according to Freud, is merely the internalizing of outer influences on a person. As a result, Freud sees no need in this context for anything as mysterious as distinctively moral values or God. Freud proposes that human conscience has a straightforward social explanation in terms of the influence of a person’s parents, educators, and other relevant people. The super-ego is the successor and representative of the parents (and educators), who superintended the actions of the individual in his first years of life; it perpetuates their functions almost without a change. It keeps the Ego in lasting dependence and exercises a steady pressure. The Ego is concerned, just as it was in childhood, to retain the love of its master, and it feels his appreciation as a relief and satisfaction, his reproaches as pricks of conscience.
Parents, educators, and other influential humans thus replace any role for God in influencing a human conscience from early life. Those influential people form in a child, according to Freud, attitudes characteristic of ethics and religion. So he finds no need for anything more mysterious in conscience. It is an empirical issue whether all of the deliverances of conscience can be traced to the influence of parents and educators. Freud, however, does not bother to present the needed empirical evidence; instead, he simply takes his claim to have compelling support. Some people nonetheless testify to having convictions of conscience that were not taught by their parents or educators. For instance, they testify to being convicted in conscience to forgive
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Knopf, ), pp. –. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, p. .
and to care for an enemy, even when their parents and educators did not recommend such forgiveness and care. It is an empirical issue whether their parents and educators recommended this, but it is not a settled issue in the way Freud assumes. The role of original moral reformers also deserves attention in this area. They seem not to be guided by their parents or educators in their convictions for original reform; at least, our evidence does not indicate such guidance. We shall return to the role of conscience in Chapter , in connection with the prospect of divine moral influence and guidance. We often attend to conscience because it challenges us inwardly without coercing us, by presenting us with something to value – that is, to accept and follow as good. Our valuing, however rigorous, does not create either values or what is good, but it can relate us in an important agreeable and inward manner to values and to what is good. If I value my friend’s loyalty, for instance, that loyalty can attract appreciation from me and even my reciprocal loyalty toward my friend. In that case, my valuing can add to my motivation to be loyal and thereby aid in drawing me to righteousness. Valuing can go bad when committed to something unrighteous, such as selfishness. The goodness of valuing depends on the goodness of its object, and such goodness is not always present with valuing. Terrorists, for instance, typically value their terror, and their bad valuing persists despite their regarding terror as good. Valuing, like believing, can be at odds with reality. Ideally, it is grounded in a good feature of normative reality, such as a real value or real goodness. At times the ideal and the real come together for valuing, in agreement. Moral goodness in conscience can convict us about our being responsible to righteousness to be reconciled to it. Many people are convicted in this way and they feel guilty when they resist reconciliation with righteousness – that is, when they refuse to be self-conformed to it. If my conscience shows me my selfishness, then my feeling guilty about my selfishness would be good. Such a
feeling of guilt is often integral to self-conforming to righteousness as an alternative to something bad. As voluntary deciders, persons are typically valuers of what they intend to bring about, and they are righteous valuers when they value what is actually righteous. It does not follow, however, that their conviction in conscience logically entails their being held responsible by someone for righteousness. Even so, this option of potential responsibility merits our attention. We shall return to it in Chapter .
Meaning in Values If moral values emerge to awareness in a human life – perhaps via conscience, as they typically do – they can reveal and underwrite a purpose or meaning in that life. A purpose or meaning in and for that life then could be a person’s self-conformity to those values, if over a period of a lifetime. A voluntary decider thus could recognize meaning in life through self-conformity to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and related values integral to moral goodness. Tolstoy, as the Introduction noted, found a life-changing meaning for his life in the purpose to “be better,” and he had moral betterness in mind. He had his self-conformity to God’s will under consideration, and this goal included his self-conforming to the moral values represented by God’s perfect moral will (including what Paul called “the fruit of the Spirit”). What of values in relation to the grand inclusive idea of “the meaning of human life”? The matter is complicated because it involves “the meaning” for every human life, and not just for a life where an individual decider has settled on a goal, such as building a dairy farm or a nutrition corporation. Such universal meaning for human lives would go beyond mere “meaning in a human life” to a purpose that bears on every human life. It requires for its realization an agent who has a purpose for every human life and the status to
pursue that purpose. Without that status, we have no avenue to bring about the universal meaning in question; it will not arise by accident. In addition, no ordinary human has the needed status, even if some humans hope for such a universal good as the meaning of human life. Their hope, however encouraging, does not entail the reality of the needed purpose and status. An expectation of a universal meaning of human life is a tall order, at least in the eyes of many people, but it merits careful consideration. Even if there are moral values that are universally morally good (in relation to everyone, at least in some context), it does not follow that an actual universal purpose bears on all human life. Universal moral goodness does not logically entail a universal good purpose or any universal purpose for human life. Moral goodness can fall short of yielding a universal good purpose for human life. If there are no purposive agents beyond humans, we are left with moral values but no universal meaning of human life, because we then lack the needed purposive meaning-giver and meaning-sustainer for every human life. Many people hold that we confront moral values independent of human beliefs, preferences, and feelings, but they remain skeptical about a universal purpose or meaning for human life. We shall pursue the latter matter in subsequent chapters in conjunction with an examination of the nature of the moral values and duties we face. We shall consider whether moral values and duties sometimes yield evidence for a purposive source for them, and corresponding moral leading, beyond a human source. The topic is underdeveloped among philosophers and theologians, but it promises to illuminate some important matters about the morality and the meaning of human life.
Moral Experience and God
Do you despise the riches of God’s goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God guides you to repentance? Romans :
This chapter contends that divine self-disclosure to humans is best understood in terms of manifested filial values with a distinctive moral intention aimed at cultivating righteousness. It identifies a neglected problem of guided goodness and its significance for God’s self-disclosure in manifested filial values. It explains how God is related to manifested filial values in terms of God’s active and empowering moral character and will. Its approach illuminates how God can be experienced by humans through divine selfdisclosure in manifested filial values, including in morally searching interventions, such as nudges or prods toward goodness, in conscience. The chapter portrays reciprocity of human wills toward God’s moral will as central to human receptivity to divine selfdisclosure in manifested filial values. It thus clarifies how evidentially grounded assurance for faith in God can arise from divine self-disclosure when cooperatively received by humans. Answering the longstanding question of how God is selfdisclosed can benefit from asking whether values came before humans and were discovered later by them. If God exists along with divine values prior to humans, those values did not await the existence of humans. Values, in any case, seem able to exist without God. Certainly, the idea of values can exist without the idea of God.
Many people evidently have some understanding of what values are, although they lack a notion of God. Even so, God may figure in values in a distinctive way, as we shall see. If values do not depend for their existence on human valuers, they can be features of human-independent reality and thus can challenge human valuers, even in a way that opens a window to God’s reality and character. This chapter contends that some distinctive manifested values have this role and supply evidence for God’s reality and goodness while also allowing for divine elusiveness and hiddenness toward humans at times. Neglect of this position has left much discussion of the evidence for God at a stalemate at best. This chapter aims to break that stalemate, with attention to how some manifested values can be direct interpersonal evidence of God’s reality and redemptive purpose for humans.
Values and God We shall consider a role for God in resolving value conflicts with a priority ranking for value domains. Given this role, the moral domain has top ranking in divine priorities, as a reflection of God’s perfect personal character and corresponding moral will. From this perspective, the distinctively moral ideal and domain represent values for perfect interpersonal reconciliation in righteousness, ultimately between God and humans and, on that basis, between humans. This sets God’s moral domain of values apart from other domains of value, such as aesthetic, epistemic, economic, political, and legal domains. It does not follow, however, that the moral domain is allowed to disregard relevant evidence for what is real. The standard and the goal for the relevant moral domain are set by the perfect personal character of God (and its corresponding moral will) as worthy of worship and full commitment. The role of divine righteous character saves us from an unspecified, possibly
arbitrary will that figures in Plato’s Euthyphro problem for relating God to value. We shall see that divine perfection seeks – that is, wills uncoercively toward – perfect interpersonal reconciliation in righteousness among agents as a reflection of God’s perfect moral character. Such divinely grounded perfection arises in the Jewish Bible and in the teaching of Jesus. For instance: “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy” (Lev :; cf. Pet :). In addition, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus commands: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt :). God’s perfect personal character thus sets the ultimate moral standard for humans, even if they are unaware of this. Moral values and duties, we shall see, can emerge in human experience from the direct divine self-disclosing of qualities or traits of God’s perfect moral character to humans. The Apostle Paul points in this direction, while acknowledging the turbulence and even conflict that can arise in moral experience as a result: What the flesh desires [ἐπιθυμεῖ] is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed [ἀντίκειται] to each other . . . But if you are led [ἄγεσθε] by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh [ἔργα τῆς σαρκός] are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these . . . By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit [καρπὸς τοῦ πνεύματός] is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. (Gal :–)
On such a view, see Robert M. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, ), p. ; Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. My reliance on Paul for illumination in this area relies only on his undisputed letters: Thessalonians, and Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, and Philippians. For a
“Flesh,” in Paul’s thought, is the part of the world that can (but need not) go against God, whereas the “Spirit” represents God’s perfect character. As a result, flesh can create a conflict with God’s moral perspective and plan. That conflict can persist even among the people of God, despite Paul’s hope for a final resolution by God at God’s appointed time. Theologians and philosophers have not given due attention to the role of “the fruit of the Spirit” in divine self-disclosure and corresponding evidence for divine reality and goodness. We shall begin to correct that deficit, with new attention given to an intentional divine role in the manifestation of such fruit. James D. G. Dunn correctly notes that “the quality of character” indicated by the fruit of the Spirit, in Paul’s perspective, shows “the nature of God’s Spirit” and thus the personal character of God. The relevant moral qualities in Paul’s list of fruit are best understood as God’s moral values, as they represent God’s moral character in terms of features that are potentially motivating for humans toward righteousness of character and relationships. In Paul’s thinking, as Dunn notes, God’s moral character is “Christlike,” and “the Spirit of Christ” (Rom :–) perfectly represents the Spirit of God. Christ’s moral character in relation to God brings specificity to Paul’s talk of the Spirit of God, representing “righteousness from God” ( Cor :), thus saving it from being abstract and obscure and giving it further moral definiteness.
careful presentation of the relevant evidence, see Werner Georg Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament, revised ed., trans. H. C. Kee (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, ), pp. –; Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, Anchor Bible Reference Library (ABRL) (New York: Doubleday, ), Part III. In addition, I hold that Paul’s remarks must earn their keep, from an epistemic point of view, by their explanatory, abductive value relative to our overall evidence; they thus do not get a pass just because they are found in the New Testament. See James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ), pp. –. James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (London: A & C Black, ), p. .
Paul speaks of what the Spirit of God (actively) “desires,” and this includes what God’s Spirit intends to bring about among humans. In this perspective, the relevant fruit is borne by the Spirit of God, courtesy of divine intentions and interventions corresponding to God’s moral character. As this fruit includes God’s moral values, those values are borne by God’s Spirit on the basis of God’s moral character, and they are directed toward human moral experience, including in morally searching interventions, such as nudges toward moral goodness, in human conscience (Rom :). Paul holds of the children of God that “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom :). This is part of an intentional divine effort to guide cooperative humans uncoercively toward righteous character formation and relationships (Gal :, ; Rom :, :), whereby they (eventually) become “holy” or morally “perfect” as God is. Paul regards such interactive divine guidance of humans to be central to their “salvation” (Phil :–). The role of divine intentions in manifested moral values helps to explain the typical volitional pull, including its timing and fittingness, with morally relevant pressure from those values. The pull with pressure arises from the uncoercive influence, the moral nudge or prod, of a (divine) will on another (human) will for directed motivation toward something good. We thus should ask: Why are values motivating at all, in the empowering way they are, at least for many people? A role for divine will or intention with its uncoercive volitional influence aids in a needed explanation of moral experience,
On this basis, Paul regards the faithful Christians at Corinth, despite their ongoing shortcomings, to be an evidential letter of Christ: “You show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God” ( Cor :–). Paul thus finds evidentially grounded confidence for faith in the disciples’ character transformation, courtesy of God’s Spirit, toward the divine righteousness in Christ.
including moral conscience. Moral values typically have an uncoercive attractive power because God’s accompanying goal-directed will has uncoercive power to attract and influence in moral interaction, such as in conscience. Paul thus thinks of our conscience as something that “bears witness” to the moral values in God’s law, resulting in “conflicting thoughts [that] will accuse or perhaps excuse” people in due course (Rom :). We need not consider God to be a moral value by, for instance, identifying God with “the good.” I doubt, as suggested, that there is such a singular thing as “the good,” let alone God as that singular thing. We have, as the OED notes, familiar talk of “worth or worthiness (of a person) in respect of rank or personal qualities.” If values are, as suggested, powerful qualities, we have good reason for caution toward talk of God as a value. Personal agents are not reducible to qualities, however powerful. Their having self-directed wills makes them irreducible to the powerful, potentially motivating qualities we have recognized as values, even though personal agents can have and manifest values. As a result, I shall avoid an inference from “God is good” to “God is the good.” I also shall avoid talk of God as “the origin” of goodness, because if God is good, has the value of being good, and has no beginning, goodness does not have a temporal origin. Refraining from talk of God as “the good” raises no problem for the following suggestion from Wilhelm Herrmann: “Everyone who has come to be at all conscious of what is good may be led on to understand that God can be none other than the personal vitality and power of goodness.” The talk of “the personal vitality and power of good” may be understood in terms of divine goal-directed and potentially motivating uncoercive pressure on human wills from God’s active values. This perspective fits with following observation from H. Wheeler Robinson: “For those who believe that
Wilhelm Herrmann, Communion of the Christian with God, trans. J. S. Stanyon (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, []), p. .
there is no adequate explanation of morality which does not trace it back to the ultimate pressure of Spirit upon spirit, every act of moral choice becomes a new revelation of God.” The matter of an “adequate explanation of morality” is controversial, of course, and we need not exclude robust ethics without God. The key point is that the moral pressure in question may be revelatory of God, even when humans are unaware of that fact. We need to consider, then, how divine self-disclosure can emerge in divine values.
God and Good Experienced Perhaps we have failed to recognize God’s presence to our awareness at some time, even though God was present then, in virtue of attracting our attention (not to be confused with our focusing our attention on God or interpreting something as God). We can be aware of many things, including people, without recognizing them for what or who they are. Awareness does not guarantee recognition of its object for humans, even with regard to God as an object of awareness. So, however skeptical our perspective on God’s reality, we should be open, at least in principle, to new, previously missed recognition with regard to awareness of God. The fallibility of our recognition in awareness calls for this. A key issue is whether we have in our experience discernible guided or goal-directed goodness aimed at us but emerging from beyond a human source. This is a question about experienced goodness that has a recognizable purpose but exceeds mere human
H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit (London: Harper, ), p. . A distinction between God de re and God de dicto underlies this point; for discussion, see Paul K. Moser, “God De Re et De Dicto: Kierkegaard, Faith, and Religious Diversity,” Scottish Journal of Theology (), –. See also Paul K. Moser, The God Relationship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –.
goodness toward us. It thus is not a question just about moral values or principles, or any other normative features that omit an intention. Our question therefore is not about a moral law apart from a lawgiver, the latter being an intentional moral agent who intentionally gives a moral law to humans. Similarly, Platonic Forms as values, whatever their role in morality, are not to the point here, given their static nonintentional nature that lacks an intentional causal role in moral experience. If there is the intentional goodness in question, we can ask about its ultimate bearer. We also should ask why there is any such goodness in our lives at all – if, indeed, there is. We often take goodness as kindness in our lives for granted, for instance, as if it is no occasion for surprise or appreciation. As a result, we typically fail to probe or even to perceive the depths of goodness as kindness presented to us, including the prospect of its exceeding all merely human sources. We thus miss out on distinctive evidence for God and divine goodness. The reality of kindness and other morally relevant goodness presented to us with a goal raises an explanatory problem, especially if God does not exist. This problem is akin to the problem of evil for God’s existence, if God exists. Let’s call it the problem of guided goodness: Why is there such goodness at all in our lives? If God emerges directly somehow in human awareness, a key indication of God’s reality would be in some morally good quality or trait manifested in our experience, such as in the depths of felt kindness or similar goodness, despite broad neglect of this consideration by inquirers about God. It is easy for us to look for God in the wrong place or to choose not to look at all. We then fail to give God an adequate hearing. In that case, our agnosticism (withholding judgment about divine reality) or atheism (denying divine reality) would be deficient, owing to its inadequate coverage of relevant available evidence. If, as suggested, the term “God” is a title requiring worthiness of worship (including full adoration, trust, and obedience) and thus
perfect moral goodness, we have a hint of what to expect of God. We then should ask about the availability of unsurpassed moral goodness presented to us by God in our experience. The book of Exodus suggests as much in its portrayal of God appearing to Moses: Moses said [to the Lord], “Show me your glory, I pray.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” But, he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.” (Exod :–)
God’s unique “glory” and its power, according to this report, are in God’s distinctive goodness. Thus: “The Lord passed before [Moses], and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation’” (Exod :–). How, or in what ways, does God’s goodness “pass before” a person in experience? We need to ask what features or qualities such passing goodness would have in relation to human experience. Perhaps Moses experienced divine goodness to a special degree, but his experience need not have been unique, as if only he had it. Other people have testified to similar experiences of such goodness, thus suggesting that God and divine goodness figure directly in their experience. We can begin to evaluate this suggestion if we identify the qualitative-awareness content of the alleged experience of God. Without representation in the qualitative content of human experience, God would serve as a mere theoretical postulate from
On the importance of this title for responsible inquiry about God, see Moser, The God Relationship, pp. –, –. For discussion, see Terence Fretheim, Exodus (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, ), pp. –.
the standpoint of such content. In that case, God would not emerge in the qualitative content of human awareness but would leave it empty of divine presence. The result would be at most a purely intellectual or theoretical avenue to God, akin to postulating an unobservable entity in subatomic physics. God thus would have all the interpersonal attraction and guidance of a muon in physics – that is, none. Failing to find God in the qualitative content of experience can leave God in that impersonal role, similar to the personally absent gods of deism. This can leave some theists, individually and in groups, without firsthand awareness and recognition of manifested divine moral power and its benefits. Divine goodness emerges as multifaceted in the book of Exodus and related biblical writings, even in the case of the moral goodness that some biblical writers call “righteousness.” This righteousness includes at least divine love, mercy, grace, patience, and faithfulness toward humans. Such goodness can help to curb many human problems, such as guilt, shame, blame, anxiety, worry, grief, indifference, confusion, and distraction. To that end, it can give humans needed focus, forgiveness, and hope, thereby integrating otherwise disparate features of their lives. The different variations on guided divine moral goodness arguably have a common core: seeking the (full) reconciliation of humans to God in righteous filial cooperation and moral rapport.12 In that regard, they also include a divine moral challenge and even
On the main contours and moral relevance of righteousness in a range of biblical writings, see Sam K. Williams, “The ‘Righteousness of God’ in Romans,” Journal of Biblical Literature (), –; Arland J. Hultgren, Paul’s Gospel and Mission (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, ), pp. –. On the central importance of divine–human reconciliation in much biblical thought, see P. T. Forsyth, The Work of Christ, nd ed. (London: Independent Press, ), chapters –; Vincent Taylor, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, nd ed. (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –; T. W. Manson, On Paul and John (London: SCM Press, ), pp. –; Ralph P. Martin, Reconciliation: A Study of Paul’s Theology (London: Marshall, Morgan, and Scott, ). We shall return to the role of moral rapport in Chapter .
judgment toward humans for the sake of their embracing and following filial values such as righteousness. The values are filial in their being intended to be valued by humans in relation to God as their caring and correcting parent. The relevant divine judgment is not to be confused with the condemnation or destruction of humans. The adjective “filial” is used here to connote the kind of divine functional, familial role as parent that fits with a central teaching of Jesus. The parental challenge and judgment in question can emerge in human conscience, nudging people uncoercively toward God’s perfect righteousness and away from human selfishness. We should ask, then, whether our moral experience in conscience fits with this prospect. Conscience, however, need not be a substantial faculty or an organ. It may be a functional interpersonal process of moral challenge and reflection, perhaps toward a moral goal initiated and guided by God. If God is serious about encouraging human righteousness, we should expect some diversity in active divine intervention and representation in human conscience and experience. The diversity would correspond in some way to diversity in human tendencies to respond, or to fail to respond, to divine righteousness. We then should consider God’s option to self-disclose righteousness in human conscience and experience in various ways. Those various ways could create different variations on good turbulence and
For discussion, see Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgement of God, nd ed. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, ). Chapter returns to the role of divine judgment in Paul’s thought. For cautious discussion of the historical context of Jesus’s use of “Abba” for God, see Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Abba and Jesus’ Relation to God,” in À cause de l’évangile: études sur les synoptiques et les Actes (Paris: Cerf, ), pp. –; James Barr, “Abba isn’t ‘Daddy’,” Journal of Theological Studies (), –; Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, ABRL (New York: Doubleday, ), vol. , pp. –. They correct some sweeping claims in the scholarly literature about uniqueness in his linguistic use of the term. See also Paul K. Moser, The Divine Goodness of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
awareness of God in our moral experience. God thus could be involved in prompting an engaged human conscience with various critical and constructive features, aimed at having humans confront and struggle for divine righteousness firsthand, toward character formation and reconciliation with God. God could invite human guilt for our moral failure toward cultivating experienced righteousness. Such guilt could encourage our moral improvement, in relation to God and to other people. Human adults are typically familiar with a troubled conscience, including a guilty conscience, even if they do not recognize being guided by anything beyond human influence. Freud, as already suggested, thought that the input of conscience was the result only of human, rather than of divine, influence. The matter, however, is complicated. Psalm suggests how God could surface, in a morally searching manner, in the divine probing of human conscience and moral experience: O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways . . . You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. (Psalm :–, )
The psalmist refers to human thoughts discerned by God through the divine searching of a human. Such searching involves the inward moral life of a human, and it bears on human conscience.16
Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, trans. Katherine Jones (New York: Knopf, ), pp. – (as noted in Chapter ). James Denney has suggested that this is the best evidence available for God’s reality; see his Letters of Principal James Denney to W. Robertson Nicoll (London: Hodder and
Paul reported to the Roman Christians on the matter: “I am speaking the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience [συνειδήσεώς] confirms it by the Holy Spirit” (Rom :). In the same vein, he remarked to the Corinthian Christians: “By the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” ( Cor :; cf. Cor :, :). The claim here is not that conscience is always the voice of God or that it invariably confirms God’s presence. Instead, the claim is that God can and sometimes does intervene in human experience via conscience, verbally or otherwise. Upon being probed by God in a morally searching manner, human conscience can convey a divine intention to guide a person toward righteousness in various ways. In such a case, conscience represents goaldirected activity that includes guided divine goodness toward righteous character formation and even reconciliation with God. Such interpersonal divine activity would be significantly different from a static moral value, principle, or law. It would represent intentional moral guidance, with a righteous goal. It also would bear directly on what we have called “the problem of guided goodness.” Kant’s influential focus on the moral law within largely neglects the intentional activity in question, owing to a neglect of interactive
Stoughton, ), p. ; cf. James Denney, The Way Everlasting (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), pp. –. For a related probing discussion, see Thomas Erskine, “The Purpose of God,” in Erskine, The Spiritual Order, rd ed. (Edinburgh: David Douglas, ), pp. –. For an illuminating treatment of conscience and divine authority, see P. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority (London: Independent Press, ). For a range of positions on conscience in twentieth-century, particularly Roman Catholic, moral theology, see Matthew Levering, The Abuse of Conscience (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ). Broader surveys can be found in Paul Strohm, Conscience (New York: Oxford University Press, ); Mika Ojakangas, The Voice of Conscience (New York: Bloomsbury, ). We cannot digress now to the metaphysics of conscience or to the surrounding moral disputes.
moral phenomenology involving God and humans. Responding to Kant, John Baillie has remarked as follows: In the experience of moral obligation, there is contained and given the knowledge, not only of a Beyond, but of a Beyond that is in some sort actively striving to make itself known to us and to claim us for its own . . . For it is not merely that through our values we reach God or that from them we infer [God], but that in them we find [God].
We need to consider how such an approach has a bearing on evidence for a personal, intentional God beyond just static values. The main issue concerns what feature lends credibility to the claim that we find an active personal God “in” some manifested values. The best answer to our issue points to intentional qualitative directedness experienced in some manifested values. We need not generalize this lesson to all values or obligations, because value experiences can, and do, vary in their experienced intentional traits. Some value experiences, however, include repeated acquaintance with intentional goodness in conscience over time. They include a felt nudge, prod, or attraction toward becoming morally good, again and again, without coercing a person’s will. So, we should allow the relevant experiences to be diachronic, and not just synchronic, in a person’s life. A person can have a sense of being pursued uncoercively but invitingly by something good in conscience. This can be God in
John Baillie, The Interpretation of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ), pp. , ; also cited in John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (London: Oxford University Press, ), pp. –. A related approach, in terms of “value-resistance” is found in Herbert H. Farmer, Toward Belief in God (New York: Macmillan, ), pp. –. Value-resistance, however, will not yield by itself an intentional God. Value-guidance is needed to support intentionality, including its needed goaldirectedness, and hence a personal God at work. This lesson is neglected in the tradition of Kant and, in his wake, Albrecht Ritschl. For relevant discussion of Ritschl, see H. R. Mackintosh, “The Philosophical Presuppositions of Ritschlianism,” in Some Aspects of Christian Belief (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), pp. –.
pursuit of that person to support moral improvement of character in relation to divine righteousness. We may think of this as being pursued by God for filial moral improvement, under divine parental care. For instance, many people testify to being challenged in conscience to have and show self-giving caring toward an enemy, in a manner akin to their being shown such caring. They find this moral experience in conscience to be best explained, on their overall evidence, by a divine role of active challenge and support in their conscience for filial moral good for people, including themselves. Their ultimate evidence is their qualitative moral experience in conscience, and not the inference to an explanation. An explanatory, abductive inference, however, enables them to state the ground for their recognizing a divine role. It is a separate issue whether other people will be moved by their statement. We should allow for nonverbal intervention by God in conscience. In agreement with the psalmist, Paul speaks of “God who searches the heart,” which includes moral conscience. He adds: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (Rom :–). The morally relevant searching and sighs from God in human experience have a purpose, according to Paul. They aim to provide divine guidance for humans toward an obedient filial relation with God suitable to divine righteousness. Paul remarks: “All who are guided by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba!, Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom :–, replacing “led” [ἄγονται] in the NRSV with “guided”; cf. Gal :). The divine guidance, according to Paul (echoing the Aramaic “Abba” from Jesus), is to attract and develop, sometimes through prayer, our being faithful and obedient children of God as our Father. We thus have talked of divine disclosures in filial values that support familial
relationships based in God as Abba. (The next section identifies how experienced agapē from God figures in Paul’s approach.) Attention to conscience can reveal ongoing moral challenge and support for us. Typically, the content of conscience is not a merely aesthetic phenomenon, such as with the moving colors of a kaleidoscope. Instead, it often features burdens and affirmations, as if we are beckoned, invited, or called in a morally better direction. We thus can be challenged and supported toward righteousness, with the prompting of our self-reflection toward a voluntary, uncoerced response. The challenge could include what Paul considers God’s subjecting our anti-God ways to “futility,” to allow for the emergence of God’s distinctive power of righteousness (Rom :–). Paul expects faith in God to be based on such power as its supporting evidence ( Cor :–). (We shall return to that expectation below.) We can benefit from reflection on the ultimate source of the guided challenge and support in question. Paul held that the divine challenge and support come with a selfgiving presentation of God in human experience, courtesy of the Spirit of God. He thus cites the book of Isaiah to endorse the following claim attributed to God: “I have shown myself [ἐμφανὴς ἐγενόμην] to those who did not ask for me” (Rom :; cf. Isa :, LXX). Paul thinks of God as self-disclosing the divine character and will in the Spirit of God and of Christ to people for the sake of their being adopted as faithful children of God (Rom :–). This selfdisclosure is not reducible to the disclosure of propositional information, and it fits with a theme from Jesus in Luke’s Gospel: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke :). The Spirit in question includes the manifested power of God for righteousness in interpersonal relations. Such power, according to Jesus and Paul, motivates and focuses the kingdom of God, thereby representing God’s moral character and will (Matt :; Rom :). It also seeks positive, reciprocal responses from its intended recipients.
Reciprocity in Response God’s self-disclosure to humans, in Paul’s perspective, includes God’s self-offering as guiding Lord for their reconciliation to God. Its historical high point is God’s offering of Jesus as God’s blameless Son on behalf of wayward humans. That offering is a “sacrifice of atonement” (ἱλαστήριον) for reconciliation, in Paul’s language (Rom :–; cf. Rom :; Cor :). Going beyond ancient history to contemporary reality, God now offers the gift of God’s Spirit to apply and to extend the divine sacrifice of atonement in Jesus. That gift, in Paul’s thought, empowers cooperative humans to reciprocate toward God’s self-sacrifice by human self-giving in cooperation with God as guiding Lord. Paul remarks: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom :; cf. Phil :). Such a living sacrifice is central to the “obedience of faith” in God promoted by Paul (Rom :, :). It is the crucial means to “discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom :). It supplies human participation in the power of the righteous self-sacrifice manifested by God in Christ. In doing so, it has humans receive God’s power of righteous reconciliation in their lives, thus giving them needed familiarity with that power in its coming to fruition. Faith anchored in God’s righteous power enables a righteous life in filial relation to God. It thus is no merely intellectual or theoretical matter. Such faith, which is cooperatively and sympathetically receptive of divine power, is central to the direction of a human life
Paul’s language of reconciliation in Corinthians suggests that he does not reduce reconciliation to justification. He considers the Christians at Corinth to be justified before God but still in need of (further) reconciliation to God. Cf. Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ), vol. , pp. –.
toward cooperation with God in righteousness. Trust in God, then, is not assent to a conclusion of an argument. God thus seeks human participation in divine filial goodness, beyond mere intellectual assent toward it, and that participation includes self-sacrifice for good. Paul identifies a divine basis in human experience for hope and faith in God and thus for a righteous life: “Hope [in God] does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom :). Hope does not disappoint in that case, because it has a ground in divine love presented in the experience of receptive humans. Such love underwrites hope in divine goodness for the future, as it now indicates how God will work in the future for those receptive of that love (Rom :). Given that “our hearts” include “our consciences,” we should consider the experience of divine love as part of the divine challenge and support toward filial goodness in human conscience. Paul would apply a similar point to human faith in God (Rom :): It has its ground in experienced divine love that makes God worthy of human trust and hope. The experience of divine love, as suggested, does not coerce humans against their own will. They proceed instead on the basis of voluntary human receptivity when they cooperate. So, by divine concession, such presented love can be blocked or muted by uncooperative humans. They thus can “frustrate” the love from God (Gal :), to their own detriment. So, the question “Why does not God simply make humans good?” rests on a misconception of divine love and its honoring voluntary human responsibility. Humans receive divine love as they cooperate with it upon experiencing it, perhaps in conscience. Such human cooperation
On the widely neglected topic of human reciprocity with divine self-sacrifice in Paul’s thought, see Paul K. Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), especially chapters –. For support for this claim, see Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice, pp. –.
enables God’s love to come to fruition in human experience for what it is intended to be: a powerful divine invitation to faithful cooperation toward filial improvement and character formation in righteousness. Barring cooperation, a person may fail to see divine love’s unique power in its fruition. William Newton Clarke has identified a background assumption: “It is [ideal] that the flower advance to the fruit of which it is the promise, and the fruit is the character worthy of such a being. The character that is worthy of a human being is the lowly reproduction of the character of God.” The relevant cooperation, free of human earning or meriting, enables divine love to become formative and thereby salient in a human life toward filial improvement, perhaps with nudging from conscience. It thus gives such love a central role in defining the direction of a human life toward righteousness in relationships, divine and human. Lack of cooperation with guided divine goodness would result in a missed opportunity for receiving firsthand salient evidence of God’s reality and goodness. Divine love still could be on offer, seeking to be received among humans, but it then would find no motivating foothold for coming to fruition in redemptive cooperation. Nonetheless, a God who respects personal agency, a necessary condition for an interactive loving relationship, would allow for such rejection by humans. Their rejection of guided divine goodness presented to them would amount to rejection of God, even if they are unaware of this. The self-disclosure of guided divine goodness toward humans would be morally supporting but also morally challenging for them. There is a pressing issue: Will humans properly value the goodness on offer rather than neglect or oppose it? Complacency toward it would threaten due appreciation of it and be equivalent to rejecting
William Newton Clarke, The Christian Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ), p. .
it, at least from the standpoint of cooperating with it. As a test for whether humans properly care about experienced divine goodness, we can ask whether they seriously inquire about, attend to, examine, explore, or monitor it. This question can illuminate the issue of whether they value it for what it is, if they experience it. If they do, they would interact with it positively, candidly looking for its character, basis, and value. They thus would devote time to it, to avoid neglecting it. In that case, guided goodness may come alive as distinctively person-based and interpersonal for some people. It thus could become evidence for divine reality and goodness for some humans. A vital issue, as suggested, is whether some goodness experienced in conscience is either responsive or communicative to humans in a way that indicates its being intentional, guided toward a goal. Some people report their moral experience to include their being intentionally commanded, encouraged, or otherwise nudged to act in a certain direction. In that case, the experienced goodness represents a personal agent, and not an impersonal cause. It then is a candidate for being an intentional moral guide with a purpose. If some content of our moral experience shows no moral defect over time and is worthy of our trust for moral guidance, we plausibly can ask how it is related to God. Perhaps God is then at work in our moral experience, seeking to benefit us with the guided goodness presented. If we ignore or dismiss this prospect, we may overlook important evidence of God’s reality and self-disclosed goodness. (I see no reason to separate the two in typical moral experience.) We thus may block responsible inquiry about God while ignoring the problem of guided goodness. We can respond to guided goodness in conscience with either indifference, opposition, or cooperation. If we cooperate, we respond to it positively, with an agreeable motive or intention, even if we demand more evidence of its actual value and purpose over time. Such responding is a kind of positive repentance, because it includes our turning agreeably to the intentional goodness
offered. We gain nothing secure, however, if we quickly overinterpret goodness in conscience, jumping too fast to advanced theology that supports a particular intellectual tradition or system. Detailed theology can come later if it helps. Experience of God in guided goodness can expand and deepen over time, with new recognition in the process, and theology can proceed accordingly. Evidence of God’s reality and goodness in experience thus can start small and then grow over time as one cooperates with it and as the initial evidence comes to fruition. Attending to divine goodness in conscience over time, according to Paul, is part of “living according to the Spirit” of God and “setting one’s mind on the things of the Spirit” (Rom :). When such attending leads to cooperating, it enables our being guided by God in intentional goodness, thus allowing that goodness to come to fruition in forming our moral characters, relationships, and good lives. Paul holds that people can be called to respond to divine goodness through good news, the gospel, from God. He remarks: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith” (Rom :–). Paul identifies the power of God with divine righteousness or goodness, in keeping with the previous passage from Exodus on divine goodness confronting Moses. The gospel, in Paul’s thought, has God’s goodness confront its hearers by placarding the divine goodness in Christ crucified and raised. Paul thinks of the good news as God’s initiative and ongoing effort toward human reconciliation to God in filial goodness. In this good news, God self-discloses with guided divine goodness through Christ, aimed at leading people to reconciliation with God in righteousness. Humans are thus confronted with a decision: to
Paul appears to agree with this point (see Thess :; Cor :).
cooperate or not to cooperate with the divine filial effort. Responding with cooperation to the divine goodness on offer includes repentance and faith toward God. Doing so allows this goodness to come to fruition in an interpersonal relationship between God and humans in righteousness over time. Human faith that includes trust in God is intended to mature in a way that deepens reconciliation with God, volitionally, morally, and intellectually. A continued response to God’s goodness in cooperation advances such reconciliation, courtesy of increasing reception of the divine power of righteousness in character formation. Paul associates the latter power with the unique work of God’s (and Christ’s) Spirit among humans. Some people testify to finding the self-giving disclosure of God and Christ in their experience, particularly in conscience. Paul holds that, courtesy of the preached good news, it can be “near” to people, in their “heart“ (including conscience): The righteousness that comes from faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” But what does it say? “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Rom :–)
Given that the “heart” engages the conscience, Paul holds that the good news works on the human conscience, offering divine filial goodness aimed at human reconciliation to God. He thus reports that “it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil :). Paul has in mind divine moral attraction, not divine coercion. An ongoing issue is whether we humans are willing to find and receive God’s good news or other guided divine goodness in our
experience. Perhaps not all humans are, and perhaps no human always wants to find it there. In any case, Paul holds that people sometimes withhold honor and thanks from God for divine goodness (Rom :), thus deciding not to cooperate with God or to welcome divine goodness. Jesus had offered related remarks about human failure to cooperate with the good news, in his parable of the sower. He noted that such things as “the cares of the world, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things” can “choke” the good news, thereby disabling its power to renew people in cooperation with divine goodness (Mark :–). So, the success of God’s good news is not automatic; it depends on a cooperative human response. Humans can fail to allow divine goodness to come to fruition in cooperation with it; they thus can frustrate it in various ways. Following the book of Isaiah, Paul portrays God’s frustration and disappointment toward uncooperative humans, exhibited in this divine response: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (Rom :; cf. Isa :). This is divine patience, rather than rejection, toward people choosing not to cooperate with divine value disclosures. It is patience arising from a divine desire for people to cooperate with the good news and its divine goodness on offer. What, however, underwrites Paul’s assurance about the good news of guided divine goodness?
Assurance Grounded Assurance toward something can be either trustworthy or untrustworthy regarding the reality of what is affirmed. Not every assurance given to us is worthy of our trust. This consideration bears directly on any alleged assurance of divine reality or goodness as a basis for faith in God. A key issue is whether the assurance is grounded in a way that makes it trustworthy, or at least indicates that it is.
Faith in God can have a ground in direct divine assurance of God’s reality and goodness. In that case, God gives assurance to people by showing them God’s reality and goodness, as with the divine self-disclosure to Moses in his experience. This assurance, which we may call “moral assurance,” is given by God in an interpersonal manner that conveys God’s reality and goodness to an attentive person. We humans, however, do not initiate or control God’s giving assurance of or showing God’s reality and goodness, even if we sometimes mistakenly expect to do so. P. T. Forsyth comments on the interpersonal basis of divine assurance: The [assurance of faith in God] is a matter of direct personal contact and assurance . . . That is, it is an assurance not simply mine as a person, but of my personality as face to face with Another, and finally a communion with Him. It cannot be the relation of a person to an institution like the Church, nor to a group like an Apostolate, nor to a book like the Bible. The institution or book is valuable, but it is as a medium.
The needed interpersonal contact, we have seen, must involve God’s self-manifested moral character as intended guide. That personal character makes the contact morally robust and challenging. God’s guided goodness confronted and challenged Moses and Paul, and that kind of confrontation is a live option today, at least in conscience for suitably receptive people. Suitable reception requires human cooperation with the divine moral challenge and support from guided goodness in experience. It thus has a volitional component in humans that exceeds their mere reflection or belief about divine goodness. Assurance from God is to be received by humans in volitional cooperation, thereby allowing divine goodness to come to its intended fruition as morally
Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, p. .
formative in a human life. So, this assurance is not just a matter of divine power. God, as suggested, does not simply make people good or assured. Human cooperative responsiveness is a crucial part of the interpersonal mix, because that mix is divinely intended to accommodate and engage persons as voluntary deciders. We should expect God’s assurance of divine reality and goodness to be dynamic and intermittent in human life, rather than static or inert. It ebbs and flows relative to God’s redemptive purpose in relating to a human. Divine intervention thus could be occasional and even veiled in human experience, as God seeks to make contact at opportune times in a fruitful way, while avoiding counterproductive, promiscuous, or pointless contact at other times. Relative to divine intervention and human response, God would bob and weave toward humans, with divine hiding at times, for their own redemptive benefit. A divine aim would be to challenge humans not to take God for granted as just another dispensable object in their experience. In taking our attention away from guided divine goodness, we would remove our attention from God at work in our moral experience. Our assurance of divine reality and goodness could suffer accordingly. Some humans fault or disregard God for not intervening as they prefer and thus for not complying with their desires for divine– human interaction. For instance, they sometimes expect a spectacular intervention by God that would remove their doubts, regardless of moral benefit. In addition, they sometimes look for an argument for divine reality that would silence all dissenters, again regardless of moral benefit. If, however, God works at all in human experience, God does not work in those ways. God is more elusive
On the redemptive value of divine hiding at times, see Paul K. Moser, Understanding Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –; Paul K. Moser, “Experiential Dissonance and Divine Hiddenness,” Roczniki Filozofiozne (Annals of Philosophy) (), –. For an influential example, see N. R. Hanson, What I Do Not Believe and Other Essays (Dordrecht: Reidel, ), p. .
and unpredictable than the scenarios some people recommend or endorse, even if some apologists for theism suggest otherwise. God seems not to be primarily concerned with removing human doubt about God’s existence. The divine concern appears to lie elsewhere, primarily in moral matters of the human will and character. In all cases, God would self-disclose to humans at God’s moral discretion, sometimes with purposes and timings that are puzzling and even frustrating to humans. This should be no surprise, however, given extensive human limitations in knowledge of divine purposes. An argument, however rigorous or compelling, would not give people direct interpersonal experience or assurance from God. Only God would be able to give that, because only God would control and give qualitative content to direct divine self-disclosure. John Oman remarks: The unfailing vision of God is the vision of his goodness. God in argument avails little. It will . . . renew no will, enlighten no conscience . . . We cannot see the panorama of God’s glory, but we can live in the procession of his goodness. No distinction is more important in our knowledge of God.
Direct awareness of a self-disclosure of God’s moral character, then, would differ from knowledge of an argument for divine reality. In addition, such awareness should not be confused with faith, as if faith is always veridical, suitably grounded, or self-authenticating. To avoid being arbitrary or ill-conceived, faith in God needs a ground in suitable experience of God. Unlike faith, however,
John Oman, A Dialogue with God (London: James Clarke, ), pp. –. This lesson is missed by Donald M. Baillie, Faith in God, new ed. (London: Faber and Faber, []), pp. –; John Baillie, The Sense of the Presence of God (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ), pp. –; Alvin Plantinga, “Arguing for God,” in K. J. Clark (ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Religion, rd ed. (Peterborough, ON: Broadview, ), p. . John Baillie mistakenly characterizes trust in God as “selfauthenticating” (p. ); the latter feature belongs to God, not to human trust. A more
God can be self-authenticating to humans, owing to divine intervention with guided goodness in human experience. Some inquirers count some alleged effects of God (such as the apparent orderly causal chains in the physical world) as “evidence” for God’s reality. Even so, such evidence does not give anyone a direct experience, encounter, or assurance from God’s character worthy of worship. There is a gap between such evidence and a direct experience, encounter, or assurance from the divine character. Evidence from effects does not directly present God’s unique intentional moral goodness inherent to being God. Nothing less than such manifested goodness will adequately indicate a God worthy of worship and thus serve as needed evidence. Anything less will leave us with an open but vital question: Is God the source of this? In the absence of evidence for guided divine goodness, a recommendation of agnosticism (as withholding judgment on divine reality) is a live option. The present concern about primarily informational approaches to God applies straightforwardly to arguments, beliefs, and principles regarding God’s reality or goodness. The latter do not directly present divine reality or guided goodness. Without direct experience of guided divine goodness, we lack direct interpersonal assurance from God. God’s unique moral character of goodness will not then be directly presented to us. We thus have given our previous attention to guided divine goodness, despite neglect of it in much inquiry about God. As we humans are not in a position to create such goodness, we should think of it in terms of something presented, given, or disclosed to us.
cautious approach is found in Forsyth, The Principle of Authority, pp. –. See also Moser, Understanding Religious Experience, pp. –. For the bearing of this consideration on familiar arguments of natural theology, see Paul K. Moser, “Natural Theology: A Deflationary Approach,” in James K. Dew and R. P. Campbell (eds.), Natural Theology: Five Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, , forthcoming).
A unique, salient feature of guided divine goodness and assurance is God’s self-disclosure of enemy love. Paul remarks that God’s love for us was at work before we welcomed God, even while we were “ungodly” and “enemies” of God (Rom :, ). God’s guided goodness thus comes to (us as) enemies of God, who have no claim to merit it (cf. Rom :–). Jesus held a similar assumption, regarding God’s enemy love as integral to God and to being children of God: You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. (Matt :–; cf. Luke :–)
Enemy love, according to Jesus, is God’s unique signature, and Paul suggests a similar status for it (Rom :–, –; cf. Rom :, ). We have noted Paul’s talk of God’s love being poured by God’s Spirit into the hearts of receptive people (Rom :). This love includes enemy love as the signature divine love, setting it apart from typical human love. As a matter of empirical fact, ordinary humans lack proficiency with practicing enemy love and even with promoting it, and the same is true of many historical candidates for the title “God.” Jesus, however, portrays God as distinctive in enemy love, and thus we should consider God’s intervening Spirit to self-disclose divine love accordingly. When we have such love directed at us, at least at the start, it includes enemy love, as suggested by Paul. Divine enemy love can prompt people to undergo change from being enemies of God to become faithful children of God. Such love includes pardon in forgiveness (offered) without condoning wrongdoing. H. R. Mackintosh comments: “The self-giving of love in pardon with unqualified generosity is itself the most powerful incentive for the evocation of penitence such as makes a repetition
of the offense impossible.” Even so, this incentive is not automatically successful, because a pardon in forgiveness need not be received by an offender. Divine pardon is no exception in this regard. Humans must cooperate with God’s moral character and will if the forgiveness offered is to be forgiveness received, but the basic motivating power is divine love of enemies. Paul thus remarks, as one who previously had opposed God’s Messiah: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal :). Such divine love reoriented and guided not only Paul’s theology but also his life, particularly toward the Gentiles. It directed him toward the righteous reconciliation sought by divine forgiveness offered to all people. The divine love prized by Paul includes some other fruit of the Spirit. He writes: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth” ( Cor :–). Love, patience, and kindness appear on Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal :), and he claims that love includes patience and kindness. He adds that love is greater than faith and hope, perhaps because the latter two are to be grounded in love. In any case, love is second to none in Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit as God’s character traits. Guided divine goodness in human moral experience is an object of firsthand direct experience for some people. They do not rely on an argument to have such experience or to value it. Even so, they can reflect on it, and they can reason about it. In particular, as noted, they can ask if God’s guided goodness figures in a best available explanation of their having the experience in question.
H. R. Mackintosh, The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (London: Harper, ), p. . See Mackintosh, The Christian Experience of Forgiveness, pp. , –.
If it does, they can point to a best available explanation involving God as relevant for inquirers about the status of their experience and of their corresponding faith. At least, they can offer this kind of explanation as fitting for their own experience and corresponding evidence, without claiming that everyone shares the same experience or explanation. Experience and evidence can vary in that manner. It does not follow, however, that the evil in their experience must similarly be assigned to God. We have plenty of other, human sources to account for the evil among and within us. So, there is no easy analogy here that undermines the evidence in question.
Two Contrasts We can clarify the position of this chapter by contrasting it with the positions of Martin Buber and H. Richard Niebuhr on faith in God and its ground. We shall see that they miss some important themes from Paul that figure in this chapter’s position. Citing Romans :, Buber characterizes the approach of Paul as follows: The situation for Paul is that a [person] shall recognize Jesus with all the strength of faith to be the one whom he proclaims as the door to salvation . . . And this faith is a “belief that” in the pregnant sense of the word, which is essentially different from the faith of the Jews that on Sinai a divine revelation took place, as it signifies the acceptance of the reality of an event.
We should not jump to the conclusion that we have, or should expect to have, a full theodicy that explains all of God’s motives in allowing the extensive evil in the world. For a neglected approach to theodicy, see Paul K. Moser, Divine Guidance: Moral Attraction in Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter . See also Chapter below. Martin Buber, Two Types of Faith, trans. N. P. Goldhawk (New York: Macmillan, ), pp. –.
The center of Buber’s misgiving about Paul’s approach to faith is that it signifies not “the acceptance of the reality of an event” (as on Sinai), but information (“belief that”) about the resurrection of Jesus. On this basis, Buber takes exception to Paul’s approach to faith and its ground. Buber overlooks what is central to Paul’s understanding of faith and its ground: the distinctive experiential content, courtesy of God’s Spirit, that is ineliminable from genuine faith in God and its ground, in Paul’s perspective. This chapter has attended to that experiential content in terms of direct divine disclosure in selfmanifested filial values that are, in Paul’s language, “the fruit of the Spirit.” Buber rightly highlights the importance of something beyond information to ground faith in God, such as experienced events, but he overlooks Paul’s agreement with this theme. We have noted Romans : as particularly straightforward in connection with this theme, but other suggested passages from Paul confirm this reading. Romans , in addition, is clear that Paul thinks of faith as trust in God, even when no informational content is specified (Rom :; cf. Rom :). Buber therefore suffers from a misleading informational interpretation in his approach to Paul on faith and its ground. This chapter has countered such an interpretation on the basis of Paul’s undisputed letters. H. Richard Niebuhr has approached faith in God and its ground in a manner similar to some features of this chapter’s position. He speaks not of “the fruit of the Spirit“ but of “theological virtues”: Theological virtues . . . are given not as states of character but as relations to other beings and particularly as relations to God. They are given with and in the gift of the object toward which as actions of the self they are directed. Humility or thinking rightly of ourselves is given with the gift of God himself, and of the neighbors. The self does not think rightly or humbly of itself until God discloses himself in his majesty and graciousness and reveals the neighbor in his Christlikeness. Love is given with the gift of the
lovely, the love-attracting; it is called forth by the gift of God himself as the supremely and wholly desirable good; by the gift of the neighbor, as the one beloved by God, as lovely, and as loving the self. Hereby we not only know love but conceive love, that God makes himself known in his beauty . . . Thus the theological virtues, or virtues insofar as they are theological, have the character of response rather than habits. As responses they are personal both on the side of the agent and on the side of the object, that is, they are responses of a person to personal actions such as faithkeeping, love, promise.
The position of this chapter agrees with Niebuhr’s view that the theological virtues are “relations to God” and “have the character of response rather than habits.” It has emphasized the role of morally relevant relations and responses. I would qualify talk of “habits” as talk of “mere habits,” however, because a pattern of intentional response can yield good habits, on the basis of such a response. I also would propose, as suggested, that the “relations” in question do not require, de dicto, theological recognition from humans, given a robust de re status. Niebuhr’s position on theological virtues differs from that of Paul on two noteworthy points. First, as we noted in connection with Romans :, Paul explicitly identifies the key theological virtue of divine love as coming directly from God’s Spirit in a way that grounds hope and faith in God, thus removing disappointment about their evidential status. Niebuhr does not give due attention to this important lesson from Paul. His epistemology suffers as a result. Second, Niebuhr is less emphatic than Paul on divine intervention in a human’s moral experience without reliance on other humans. Niebuhr emphasizes the role of human social interaction in a manner different from Paul. This is a complicated topic,
H. Richard Niebuhr, “Reflections on Faith, Hope, and Love” [], Journal of Religious Ethics (), . For discussion, see H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsible Self (New York: Harper & Row, ), chapter ; James W. Fowler, To See the Kingdom: The Theological Vision of H. Richard Niebuhr (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, ), pp. –.
beyond the scope of this chapter, but it does indicate at least a difference in emphasis between Paul and Niebuhr. The position of this chapter is closer to the emphasis of Paul, while acknowledging that social influence can be crucial to some cases of religious experience. In his later work, Niebuhr refers to “the fruit of the Spirit” in terms of “emotions” and “feelings.” He thus recommends that we think of the result of this fruit as “the emotional life redeemed,” adding the following: “the scriptures speak from feeling to feeling about the objects that elicit feeling and cannot be known without feeling.” There is no reason to deny the bearing of the fruit of the Spirit on human emotional life. Paul thus links this fruit to “crucifying the flesh with its passions” (Gal :), and we may assume that the latter passions include emotions. Despite the relevance of emotions and feelings, we should avoid any suggestion that reception of the fruit of the Spirit is passive in the way many emotions and feelings are. This reception is typically volitional, involving the human will, and hence is irreducible to ordinary emotions and feelings. As a result, after characterizing the fruit of the Spirit, Paul remarks: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit” (Gal :). This injunction assumes a volitional role for humans in relation to the Spirit’s producing the fruit of divine righteousness in their lives. So, any emotional role here is joined with a key volitional role for humans, thus bearing on active human responsiveness and responsibility in relation to the relevant fruit. This theme fits with Niebuhr’s broader approach to the role of responsibility in theological ethics.
H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Cole Lectures: ‘Next Steps in Theology’” [], in Niebuhr, Theology, History, and Culture: Major Unpublished Writings, ed. W. S. Johnson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), pp. –. Niebuhr, “The Cole Lectures,” p. . See Niebuhr, The Responsible Self, chapter .
We now have a distinctive motivational and evidential basis in human experience for faith in God, at least for some people. Guided goodness of a unique sort in experience can save such faith from mere speculation, and it can give it a ground and an assurance with existential value that motivates human living, including through conscience. The variability of such experience among humans precludes its being a hammer against outsiders, and that is a benefit. The God acknowledged by Jesus and Paul does not need a hammer. Instead, the divine assurance comes, if at all, with uncoercive attraction by divine love, including enemy love, in God’s good time. It also shows divine patience when inquirers need more time or more experience and evidence. Human control fails here, but if God is morally impeccable, that is a gain and not a loss. The approach on offer brings a new learning curve for inquirers about God, but the resulting interpersonal assurance for faith is well worth the adjustment. It enables God to have priority with grace not only in salvation but also in the assurance of faith that receives the power of salvation in guided divine goodness. Such priority is fitting for a God worthy of worship and trust. It also is fitting for humans with real needs in the areas of goodness and assurance. Candor about such needs can lead to new appreciation of guided goodness and faith’s assurance. It can contribute thereby to our responding to the problem of guided goodness and to our understanding of divine self-disclosure in filial values within moral experience. We now turn to how this chapter’s approach extends to the importance of moral rapport.
Moral Experience and Moral Rapport
Their own conscience bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them. Romans :
The previous chapter highlighted the importance of the reception of divine righteousness in the “fruit of the Spirit” among humans. This chapter explains the centrality of moral rapport to participation in the koinōnia (communion or fellowship) of the Spirit, with benefit from the Apostle Paul and some of the Hebrew psalmists. It thus identifies a distinctive kind of evidence in moral experience for the reality and the goodness of God, in contrast with either a purely mystical or a purely intellectual approach to such evidence. Paul offers a perspective including “koinōnia of Jesus Christ,” pointing to his koinōnia with God in Gethsemane and thus confirming the central role of moral and volitional personal rapport with God. This approach gives moral and Christological depth to the koinōnia of the Spirit, enriching it with divine righteousness. It also figures, as this chapter and the next explain, in the moral inspiration of humans by God and in the meaning of life for them. Psalm acknowledges the skeptical question, “Where is your God?,” coupled with another doubt-driven question for God: “Why have you forgotten me?” The psalmist’s questions have persisted in subsequent history, even among people who believe in God. This chapter’s response will identify a widely neglected biblical answer that grounds and enlivens belief in God while underwriting morally robust ethics for the common good.
The ground to be clarified is moral rapport between God and humans: that is, a constructive interchange of moral goods between God and humans where humans intentionally cooperate with the divine moral goods on offer, such as the fruit of God’s Spirit. This chapter thus extends the theme of Chapter that some personal character traits, or personality qualities, of God are directly revealed in order to be found by receptive humans in some moral experiences, including in human conscience. We shall focus on such traits, including what Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit,” as moral features integral to being worthy of worship and thus to being God. Divine revelation in such traits can figure in a kind of moral rapport, and it can occur even in some cases where God is not acknowledged by humans. People can be aware of some divine character traits without being aware that they are traits of God in their experience.
God in Human Images Initial divine revelation can be ambiguous for humans, but salient divine power can be found in moral rapport between God and humans. This power includes distinctive evidence of God’s reality and goodness that can be a trustworthy experiential basis not only for resilient belief in God but also for ethics promoting love for the sake of the common social good. The divine power and its corresponding evidence have an interactive interpersonal feature between God and humans. This feature includes moral rapport between them that consists in a cooperative and loyal moral relationship.
A general analogue to this distinction can be found in Matthew :–, where Jesus sets an important standard for accountability before God. For discussion of the underlying de re–de dicto distinction, see Paul K. Moser, “God De Re et De Dicto,” Scottish Journal of Theology (), –.
It engages volitional, emotional, and intellectual traits of humans, in search of full commitment from them. The interactive feature in question includes the power to do God’s perfect moral will, beyond any other powers. We may prefer to secure other powers, but that could be a serious mistake in prioritization. If God is perfectly caring, however, an interpersonal relationship of moral rapport is to be expected and valued above all else. Indeed, it is God’s distinctive signature among receptive humans and it is offered even to God’s enemies, in keeping with ethics for the sake of the common good. Good news from God is thus available to humans in this area, despite their lingering doubts and confusions. Inquirers typically have neglected the key role of moral rapport between God and humans in evidence for God’s reality and goodness. This neglect stems from a distorting tendency of humans to represent God and evidence for God in their own desired images. For instance, philosophers tend to look for evidence of God in abstract philosophical arguments, such as those of familiar “natural theology.” So, they often talk about arguments for a First Cause, a Designer, a Fine-Tuner, or a Greatest Conceivable Being. They typically assume that the familiar tools of their trade, such as arguments and conceptual analyses, will be adequate for capturing the available evidence of God. We do well not to accept such an assumption uncritically. Following Jesus and the Apostle Paul, we should look to God’s unique personal character traits self-manifested to us, including the divine moral qualities of personality that qualify God as worthy of worship. In doing so, we retain an indispensable connection
For a challenge to familiar arguments of natural theology, from the standpoint of a perfectly righteous God worthy of worship, see Paul K. Moser, “Natural Theology: A Deflationary Approach,” in James K. Dew and R. P. Campbell (eds.), Natural Theology: Five Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, , forthcoming), cited in Chapter .
between evidence for God and what it is to be God – namely, a morally perfect personal agent worthy of worship. We also find an experiential basis for ethics of universal righteous love toward other people. To the extent that we neglect such character traits in evidence for God, as suggested, we neglect not only salient evidence for God but also God himself. Genesis , regardless of questions about historical authenticity, offers a serious lesson about distorting God in a human image. God gives Adam and Eve a command regarding what they may eat: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen :–). The woman, however, was challenged to disobey by a deceiver: “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. (Gen :–)
Eve chooses her own perceived avenue to “make one wise” over God’s will, and Adam follows suit in their joint disobedience toward God. They assume that their own desired path to become wise will save them from a divine deficiency, including God’s not wanting them to be “like God.” Adam and Eve undergo a failure of trust in God, and their disobedience is a result. They do not trust God’s goodness in
For an accessible examination of this point, see Helmut Thielicke, How the World Began, trans. J. W. Doberstein (Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg Press, ), pp. –; see also Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, revised ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, ), pp. –.
relation to the divine prohibition on eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We can ask why they do not trust God’s goodness, but the book of Genesis does not pursue this question. Human trust in God is challenged by the nature of God’s goodness, because divine goodness challenges certain human expectations for God. Such goodness sets a priority for righteousness that does not fulfill familiar human desires for health, wealth, safety, and so on. The center of God’s trustworthiness lies in the aim to establish and promote divine righteousness, and not in satisfying the previous human desires. This center can seem harsh and severe, but its value for humans depends on what they genuinely need, beyond what they desire. Adam and Eve appear not to give priority to divine righteousness. They seem to be afraid of missing out on something good for them, namely being “like God” in “knowing good and evil.” They try to hide from God in the wake of their disobedience, and their hiding arises from their being afraid of God: The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” (Gen :–)
God responds not by destroying Adam and Eve but by blocking them from access to the tree of life on their human terms: “At the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen :). We shall see that God, in divine mercy, has not given up on wayward humans. Instead, God seeks their restoration on terms suited to God’s unique moral character, coupled with distinctive evidence of divine goodness. A key lesson is that human distrust of God’s goodness distorts God’s wisdom for humans and leaves them fearfully alienated from
God and thus at odds with divine righteousness. Such distrust leads people to adopt their own alternatives in portraying and relating to God, and those alternatives miss the mark of God’s intended divine–human relationship of moral rapport. In their disobedience, Adam and Eve show that they are deficient in moral rapport with God, owing to an underlying distrust of God’s goodness. We need to clarify a divine way of correction for humans alienated from God.
God in God’s Image Paul presents, as suggested, a correction to “human wisdom” in relating to God: “My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God” ( Cor :–). A pressing issue concerns “the power of God.” What is this power in this context? In addition, how are humans to receive this power? Answers to these questions depend on God’s purpose in relating to humans. As a result, they should not give priority to human desires for power. Paul points to a divine purpose with a question: “Do you not realize that God’s kindness [or goodness] is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Rom :). He thinks of repentance as a person’s turning to God for a life of illumination, righteousness, and reconciliation in Christ ( Cor :–, :–). This goodness
For discussion of Yahweh’s righteousness in the Jewish Bible, see Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, trans. D. M. G. Stalker (New York: Harper & Row, ), vol. , pp. –; see also Jože Krašovec, God’s Righteousness and Justice in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ). On repentance in the thought of Paul, see Eckhard J. Schnabel, “Repentance in Paul’s Letters,” Novum Testamentum (), –. We should allow that Paul regarded repentance as typically part of human reconciliation with God.
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of God, according to Paul, emerges not only in Christ but also from divine activity in human conscience. It seeks the turning of humans to God in loyal cooperation. Paul thus comments on a divine witness to God in humans for whom “their own conscience bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Rom :). God thus self-manifests a witness to God’s reality and goodness in a human conscience that can approve or disapprove of human actions and tendencies toward actions. Paul speaks of his conscience confirming by the Holy Spirit the truth in Christ (Rom :; cf. Cor :). Since God renews the human mind in Christ, in Paul’s perspective (Rom :–), the renewal of conscience as a morally relevant part of the mind is a live option. P. T. Forsyth thus suggests a distinction between an “evangelical conscience” guided by God in Christ and a “natural conscience” without such guidance. The divine goal in this context is an ongoing interactive relationship of mutuality (but not equality) with God in intended righteous reconciliation, as God selfmanifests divine character traits to that end in moral experience, including conscience. God’s power is temporally prior and morally superior to any subsequent human power or wisdom. As Chapter suggested, the author of Psalm precedes Paul in giving God priority in human knowledge of God, via the priority of divine searching of humans: O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
For discussion of Paul on conscience, see C. A. Pierce, Conscience in the New Testament (Chicago: Alec Allenson, ), pp. –; cf. Mika Ojakangas, The Voice of Conscience (New York: Bloomsbury, ), pp. –. We may consider conscience as part of what various biblical writers call “the heart” as a person’s moral and spiritual center. I suspect that Paul spoke of conscience to give special attention to morally relevant experience and realities. I follow suit in that regard. P. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), pp. –; see also Jason Goroncy, Hallowed Be Thy Name: The Sanctification of All in the Soteriology of P. T. Forsyth (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ), chapter .
you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways . . . You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it . . . Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm :–, –, –)
The psalmist acknowledges that he cannot attain the desired powerful knowledge of God on his own. It is “too wonderful” and too “high” for his self-sufficient efforts. The relevant knowledge depends on God trying to set some moral boundaries for the sake of a righteous relationship with a human: “hemming me in.” Such boundaries do not require God’s coercing a human will. They can bring moral influence by moral attraction suited to voluntary human responses, as one’s “heart,” including one’s conscience, is searched. The same kind of intervention is acknowledged in Psalm , as part of God’s being “with” the psalmist: “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm :). The rod and the staff are those of a shepherd seeking to guide sheep toward what is good and away from what is bad. Divine moral searching of human conscience has that moral aim, and it seeks full human cooperation, individually and collectively. The extent to which God can successfully reveal knowledge of our moral standing before God to us depends on our receptivity to
On the relevant notion of “heart,” see Edward P. Meadors, Idolatry and the Hardening of the Heart: A Study in Biblical Theology (London: T&T Clark, ), pp. –, –.
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God in moral rapport. The matter is thus interpersonal and not mechanical. God takes the initiative toward the searching knowledge, and it engages the psalmist in a way that prompts his cooperation. His cooperative attitude is shown by his plea, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me.” A similar attitude of human cooperation arises in Psalm : “I bless the Lord, who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me (:–). Likewise in Psalm : “Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel” (:–). As God seeks to “be with” the psalmist, so also the psalmist, in voluntary cooperative response, seeks to be “with” God, despite the difficulties of life. The psalms in question indicate moral rapport between God and the psalmists, given the agreeable mutuality involved toward a righteous relationship. God initiates moral guidance, thereby manifesting divine righteousness and mercy. The psalmists respond with appreciative cooperation and loyalty toward God as their moral guide. Given such divine–human rapport involving human moral conscience, the desired knowledge from God is not just personal but also interpersonal and interactive. In addition, it is morally directed toward removing “any wicked way” within a person. In that regard, God’s morally purifying power resides in divine moral rapport with humans. Being purifying, this power can create discomfort and dissonance as well as comfort and harmony in humans. Paul, as indicated, advises the Corinthian Christians that faith in God be based on such power in moral rapport, and not on “human wisdom” ( Cor :–). Recognizing divine moral power in human experience, Paul states that “God . . . is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil :). In Paul’s perspective, God empowers humans in divine–human moral rapport by a selfmanifestation of divine righteous love in human experience,
including in conscience: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom :; see also Cor :). This divine love is a personal character trait of God, and we should recognize it as such, rather than as something abstract and amorphous. It empowers not only divine– human moral rapport but also unique evidence of God’s reality and goodness in human moral experience. Human experience of divine love is familiar, if often misdescribed, from the moral give-and-take in our conscience (no accident of nature there), and our conscience is a key part of what Paul calls our “heart.” As a result, Paul suggests, hope and faith in God do not leave us “disappointed” or “ashamed” from a viewpoint of evidential support. We thus have a concrete alternative in human moral experience to the abstract philosophical arguments of traditional natural theology. This alternative includes experienced divine love that grounds and promotes belief in God and thereby ethics of love for the common good. The psalmists cited assume that God’s moral character is selfrevealed directly to humans in the potentially motivating values of righteousness in their moral experience. Paul, as suggested, thinks of those values as the direct “fruit” of God’s Spirit, and not as abstract concepts or principles or as subjective human feelings or preferences: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal :–). Paul regards this fruit to be a direct expression in human experience of God’s character traits of perfect righteousness. He understands it in terms not of a remote effect of God but of direct divine self-manifestation to humans. This is in keeping with his aforementioned quotation from the book of Isaiah about God and Gentiles: “I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me” (Rom :; citing Isa :). The fruit of the Spirit yields potentially motivating power from God in conscience that nudges or prods people, without coercion, toward rapport with God in divine righteousness. This intentional power thus seeks the kind
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of interpersonal mutuality characteristic of moral rapport and a righteous relationship between personal agents. The fruit of the Spirit is inherently person-based because it expresses divine intentional directedness for humans toward righteousness and divine–human rapport in it. As a result, many people testify that their conscience has “led” them to undertake a good line of action, such as for the common good. Paul thus remarks that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom :). The direct fruit of the Spirit enables God to self-manifest directly to humans in God’s own moral image and thereby to avoid distortion from various human images of God.
Motivating Divine–Human Rapport Given the central place of love (agapē) in the fruit of the Spirit and in the biblical love commands, God cares about human motives and not just human behavior. Our motives bear on who we are, including inwardly, and not just on how we behave. They reveal our moral character, thus allowing our being measured against God’s perfect moral character. We do not fare well in the comparison, given our selfish tendencies, but we can benefit from it nonetheless. If God wants people to love unselfishly as God loves, in God’s unique way that includes love of enemies, they will need a motivating instance of love from God. Paul holds that God provides that instance in the hearts of receptive people and in the self-giving life of Jesus Christ. The divine inward influence fits with the following response to God by the psalmist: “You desire truth in the inward
On the significance of such divine guidance, against its background in the Jewish Bible, see Paul K. Moser, Divine Guidance: Moral Attraction in Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). On some Greek and Roman approaches to divine guidance during New Testament times, see John A. Jillions, Divine Guidance (New York: Oxford University Press, ), part .
being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart . . . Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me” (Psalm :, ). Such deep wisdom is thus morally renewing, courtesy of God’s empowering Spirit of righteousness (Rom :; Cor :–). Paul represents God as loving God’s enemies in Christ through divine reconciliation of them (Rom :), and he expects the people of God to follow suit in such love (Rom :–, :–). Such human reciprocity in divinely initiated love, including love of enemies, is central to robust moral rapport with God, including loyalty to God. It is also, as Chapter noted, central to discerning God’s will for human life (Rom :–). Paul’s expectation is clear, and it follows the love commands from Jesus that demand a robust ethics stemming from agapē reflective of God (Mark :–). (Chapter returns to this topic.) It also is demanding for us, and it thus prompts the question of how we are to proceed in satisfying it. We cannot simply “try hard” on our own, as if we were offered a moral self-help program. In addition, our moral rapport with God does not include our equality with God or our moral power being equal with God’s moral power. From a standpoint of moral selfjustification, we are thus at a moral disadvantage relative to a divine standard. The key to our responding to divine moral challenges in our experience emerges from our ongoing moral rapport with God. Paul prays for such rapport with his aforementioned prayer for the “communion” (koinōnia) of God’s Spirit with God’s people ( Cor :). Moral rapport with God is morally robust
I agree with the suggestion of A. Raymond George that we should understand Paul’s talk of communion of the Spirit here to include talk of communion, or fellowship, with God (also “participation in the Spirit,” or “Gemeinschaft mit dem Geist”). See A. Raymond George, Communion with God in the New Testament (London: Epworth Press, ), pp. –. At this point, George follows Heinrich Seesemann, Der Begriff ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ im Neuen Testament (Giessen: Alfred Töpelmann, ), pp. –. Similarly, see Vincent Taylor, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, nd ed.,
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communion with God whereby humans self-conform, aided by divine power, to God’s experienced moral character and will. Even if Paul also has in mind the “community” of God’s Spirit, the individual members, in his thought, must have communion with God to belong to that community. Membership is thus not by proxy; it calls for individual responsibility and cooperative responsiveness in relating to the Spirit of God in human experience (as suggested by Rom :, :–, –). The best example of moral rapport with God is Jesus in Gethsemane, facing his coming death in Jerusalem. His initial tentative response asks for an alternative plan, but his settled response goes to the heart of his moral relationship with God, showing his moral rapport in prayer to God. He prays: “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me, yet not what I want but what you want” (Mark :). Jesus thus self-conforms his will to God’s morally perfect will, courtesy of divine power, despite the pending result of his death in Jerusalem. We should notice his indispensable use of the second-person “you” for God (similar to the shift to the second-person in Psalm ). Suitable moral rapport calls for such use of second-person language
pp. –; Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians: The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, ), pp. , ; Gordon D. Fee, God’s Empowering Presence: The Holy Spirit in the Letters of Paul (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, ), pp. –; Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, ), pp. –. James S. Stewart rightly emphasizes this point; see James S. Stewart, “The Fellowship of the Spirit,” in The Christian Faith Today (London: SCM Press, ), pp. –. On the idea of the community of the Spirit, see Charles A. Anderson Scott, The Fellowship of the Spirit (London: James Clarke, ); John Oman, “The Fellowship of the Spirit,” in Oman, Honest Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. On the importance of Gethsemane here, see Paul K. Moser, The Divine Goodness of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter . On its bearing on Paul’s thought, see David Wenham, Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ), pp. –.
for God, given its direct interpersonal interaction between a human and God. Paul’s talk of the koinōnia of Jesus Christ ( Cor :) should be understood to reflect Jesus’s exemplary moral rapport with God. God’s moral power for humans is to be found in the kind of obedient cooperation exemplified by Jesus as self-conformity to God’s will in moral experience. This lesson emerges in the context of Paul’s talk in Philippians of koinōnia of the Spirit coupled with his characterization of Christ, thus having Christ’s character inform his talk of the Spirit. Christ’s character includes “the mind of Christ,” and that mind led to his obedience of the cross: “Being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil :). The obedience of Jesus to God emerged from Gethsemane, thus suggesting that Paul would regard Gethsemane as central not only to the communion of Jesus Christ with God but also to wider communion with the Spirit characterized by Christ. Paul relates such obedience to the aforementioned idea that “God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil :–). He also relates it to “being of the same mind, having the same love” with Christ as the authoritative personal standard from God (Phil :). Given that personal standard set by Christ, Paul thinks of the needed communion to include moral rapport with God, in the spirit of Gethsemane. Communion with the Spirit of God, according to Paul, is anchored in divine righteousness. Such righteousness, in relation to humans, is inseparable from the Spirit of God and communion with the Spirit: “The Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom
On this role for Christ in relation to the Spirit of God, in Paul’s perspective, see James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ), pp. –; James S. Stewart, A Man in Christ: The Vital Elements of St. Paul’s Religion (London: Harper, ), pp. –; G. W. H. Lampe, God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), chapter .
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:). This Spirit, according to Paul, “bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,” thus representing the role of God as “Abba, Father” expressed by Jesus in Gethsemane (Rom :–). In this regard, human communion with the Spirit is to be filial with God, in the manner of Jesus relating to God in Gethsemane as God’s beloved child. The disciples of Jesus are to follow him in moral rapport with God. As a result, Jesus taught them to pray to God – “Your will be done” (Matt :) – as the way for God’s moral kingdom and power to come to humans. If we look for divine moral power in places at odds with God’s morally perfect character and will, we will not find it. We may find counterfeits, but they will not sustain us in divine righteousness. The promised divine moral power for humans is, at bottom, the power to do God’s will in moral rapport with God. It is not the power to do our own will apart from God. Analogously, we might look for evidence of God’s reality and goodness on the basis of “human wisdom,” but that evidence falls short. It fails to indicate the divine power characteristic of a God worthy of worship. As a result, Jesus and Paul do not rely on abstract philosophical arguments to present their God of perfect righteousness. Instead, they rely on the power of God’s perfect character and will revealed in their moral experience. They thus exemplify and recommend moral rapport with that God. The filial model set by Jesus goes beyond a self-help program, given its distinctive moral rapport and evidence involving God. It brings people to the unique power of God as “Abba, Father” in perfect righteousness, including righteous love. Jesus and Paul cooperatively experienced that righteous love firsthand, in their moral rapport with God as Father. That experience enabled them to be empowered by that love for the sake of the common good. The moral rapport enabled them to receive and to represent God’s righteous love with their obedient lives, including for the good of other people. The subsequent followers of Jesus are to take the same opportunity for empowerment by God and for
receiving corresponding evidence of God’s reality and moral power. By cooperating with divine power of righteousness, in moral rapport, humans enable that power to come to fruition in what it is intended by God to be: power to draw them to God’s perfect moral character in self-conformity to it. This power seeks human cooperation that puts God and God’s righteous kingdom first, above all else. It thus seeks transformation in moral renewal for human lives, individually and socially. The power of such transformation in righteous love offers people grounded hope in God and in God’s righteous future society that transcends exclusive divisions of race, nationality, and ethnicity. Moral rapport with God thus underlies the divine redemptive plan to unite the world in divine righteousness. Ethics for the common good thus emerges. We face, however, some real obstacles to the ideal of righteousness.
Obstacles to Moral Rapport Human neglect of divine influence in conscience toward righteousness is a harmful obstacle to moral rapport with God. This neglect blocks divine corrective guidance of humans in a way that leads to their alienation from God. It includes ignoring God’s effort to initiate moral rapport with wayward humans for their good. Such neglect hinders God’s moral power in conscience from coming to fruition in human cooperation with it. As a result, the fullness and the salience of this power are blocked from being realized in a person’s moral experience. God gives humans this kind of veto power over divine moral guidance in their experience because God seeks responsive and responsible moral agents among humans, and not mere manipulated pawns. Such dangerous veto power is the price of having responsible agents other than God. Some humans prefer a life without moral intervention from God, and they acknowledge this. They favor what they call their
“autonomy” over divine moral influence and guidance. This kind of desired self-sufficiency by humans conflicts with God’s having an acknowledged role as a moral guide needed by them. Indeed, it conflicts with God’s being an active and uncoercive moral agent in human lives. So, it runs afoul of God’s being lord in human moral life. Such a response to God refuses to let God be God in the domain of moral life. It can lead to the moral corruption of human conscience whereby one’s conscience becomes misleading without divine corrective guidance. So, human conscience is not the unqualified “voice of God.” God is needed to give it divine value in its renewal for human moral guidance, and this is a cooperative interpersonal process. Jesus presented the parable of the sower to identify some human motives behind opposition to divine intervention in human lives. He summed up some of these motives in terms of “the cares of the age and the lure of wealth and the desire for other things, [which] come in and choke” God’s intervention (Mark :). He contrasts such motives with the motives of people who “hear the word [from God] and accept it and bear fruit” (Mark :). That word can penetrate human conscience and leave people with a definite moral challenge for their lives, calling for a life-directing decision from them. Even so, the initial intervention leaves room for human disregard or opposition, thus preserving genuine human agency and responsibility in relation to God’s moral challenge for human renewal. The author of Psalm acknowledges God’s disappointment with human neglect of rapport with God: My people did not listen to my voice; Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts, to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways! (Psalm :–)
We have here a repeat of the problem illustrated by Adam and Eve: human failure to cooperate with God, including a substitution of human counsels for God’s. This is an ongoing obstacle to human rapport with God, and it brings individual and social harm across religions and cultures. Sometimes this obstacle arises from what humans take to be self-protection that replaces God’s priority with a supposedly better, safer alternative. In the face of human opposition, however, God can withdraw and hide divine presence from oppositional people for a time, in order to challenge their wayward, harmful tendencies, while waiting for their turning to God in repentance (Isa :; Rom :, :). God also can bring wrath in judgment, as Paul mentions (Rom :), but we cannot digress. Moral rapport with God often suffers from an additional obstacle: a human emphasis on good gifts received rather than on the divine gift-giver. Good gifts tend to be less elusive and less challenging than God and therefore easier to embrace and to control by humans. As a result, human recipients of divine gifts often neglect the priority of their gift-giver. This tendency among humans is found even in the moral domain. I can value a needed conviction in my conscience but disregard its source in God, from whom it comes as a needed gift. That tendency can depersonalize my conscience and my corresponding moral experience in a way that omits God’s intentional, personal role in my moral experience. This occurs if I put stress on moral “laws” or “principles” to the exclusion of the superior moral lawgiver. Secular ethics tends to move in this depersonalizing direction, and the result is a deficit in motivational vitality, especially for hard moral cases such as those akin to Gethsemane. We see the same deficit in various treatments of religious ethics. This deficit leaves human complacency and fear as serious obstacles to a robust moral life.
For discussion, see Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgement of God, nd ed. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, ), chapters and .
A common impediment to moral rapport with God is human half-heartedness toward divine righteousness. Jesus is clear on the importance of striving for whole-heartedness in his first love command, and this priority coheres with a promise from God in the book of Jeremiah: “When you search for me, you will find me, if you seek me with all your heart” (Jer :). Moral complacency infects a half-hearted approach to God and divine righteousness. It detracts from God’s moral supremacy over all else and thus robs God of due moral authority. Jesus commanded: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt :). In that case, Jesus also promised: “Seek and you will find [God]” (Matt :). So, if we want moral rapport with God, we should seek it whole-heartedly rather than half-heartedly, given God’s supreme value for a good human life with God. We can begin by attending sincerely, and then cooperatively, to the nudging from God in our conscience toward righteousness and away from unrighteousness. This is a promised, and promising, avenue to rapport with God, courtesy of the guiding fruit of God’s Spirit. Moral rapport with God requires that we face the challenge to become righteous as God is righteous. As Jesus put it: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt :; cf. Luke :). Even when we fall short, as we often do, the needed goal is still in place, and it is to be approached in moral rapport with God. In such rapport, we participate in, and have communion with, God’s powerful moral character and thereby become children of God with lasting goodness. We also receive interpersonal evidence of God’s reality and goodness. So, the challenge of moral rapport with God is its own reward, given human cooperation. Such rapport is unmatched in robust value for human lives, individually and socially. Moral rapport with God enlivens religious commitment to God in a way that nothing else can, because it enables God to empower the needed enlivening, thereby countering any debilitating
complacency and fear. We can know that this rapport is God at work, because over time it shows God self-manifesting divine perfect righteousness with directedness for our good. It thus lets us know we are meeting God rather than some counterfeit. Courtesy of God, we have enough of a grip on what is righteous to distinguish righteousness from unrighteousness in many cases. So, we can discern the genuine article in contrast to counterfeits, at least typically, in a manner adequate for maturation in rapport with God. A telling issue is whether we are sincerely willing to be conformed, with the aid of divine power, to the divine goodness presented to us, without begrudging God for it. Human history has been mixed on the matter, but we now can say where God is to be found: in the moral rapport unique to the God of perfect righteousness. So, we no longer find ourselves hunting the snark. We now find ourselves in a world alive with the moral activity of a righteous God, in conscience and, on that basis, in our social world at large. Ethics for the common good thus finds a ground in our moral experience, courtesy of God’s unique and active moral character of universal love for people, even enemies. The issue remains whether – and, if so, how – we value the moral values representing God as divine character traits and thus the fruit of God’s Spirit in our experience. Those divine values, in any case, now take on an importance second to none, and our response is similarly vital. We need to consider how divine moral inspiration figures in human reception of the values and fruit of God’s Spirit.
Moral Experience and Moral Inspiration
If you who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! Luke :
Scholars and students of the Bible have explored the nature and limits of biblical inspiration in detail, but the moral inspiration of humans by God has received relatively little attention. The latter neglect is striking, because such divine inspiration of humans is arguably a source of robust unity for biblical theology. This chapter contends that the moral inspiration of humans by God seeks to build a divine commonwealth of righteous relationships. It accommodates the following definition of “inspiration” from the OED: “A special immediate action or influence of the Spirit of God (or of some divinity or supernatural being) upon the human mind or soul.” Giving special attention to moral influence in moral experience, the chapter’s approach supports the position of Chapters and that the fruit of the Spirit of God includes divine filial values in human experience. In doing so, the chapter highlights a human role in cooperative divine inspiration, given a need for interactive reception of such inspiration. The chapter also provides a needed veracity check on the unified biblical theology offered. We begin with some key biblical texts that underwrite a new storyline for unifying biblical theology while accommodating obvious textual diversity.
Spirit in Creation The biblical storyline in the book of Genesis begins with an enigmatic claim about divine creation and the Spirit of God: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters” (Gen :–, RSV). The role of God in creation, I suggest, is too central in the author’s mind to settle for the NRSV translation “a wind from God” instead of “the Spirit of God.” The author focuses on God as taking the initiative as the creator of the heavens and the earth, without digressing about how exactly God relates to the ultimate constituents of the heavens and the earth. Speculation about God akin to that from Plato and Greek thought thus does not emerge here. God takes the initiative in creation in order to invite a human response to God, in keeping with humans’ being created in “the image of God” (Gen :). The author’s focus includes “the Spirit of God” as moving over the face of the waters, in parallel with “darkness” upon the face of the deep. The Spirit of God, according to the author, is in the vicinity of darkness and is moving rather than static in that context. A natural question is: Moving how? A related question is: Moving to counter darkness, perhaps by moving something from earth to a position beyond darkness to light? If so, to what end? The author thus prompts questions about the Spirit of God in relation to darkness and the context of divine creation. For current purposes, we can regard talk of “the Spirit of God,” at least in Genesis, as talk of God, including divine activity, in relation to creation.
For discussion of its absence, and of the relevance of the translation “Spirit of God,” see Claus Westermann, Genesis –, trans. J. Scullion (London: SPCK, ), pp. –; cf. Terence E. Fretheim, God and World in the Old Testament (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, ), pp. –. See G. W. H. Lampe, God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), p. ; Eduard Schweizer, The Holy Spirit, trans. R. H. Fuller and I. Fuller (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, ), pp. –.
An important lesson of the talk of the Spirit of God in Genesis is that God takes the initiative in creation. God does not wait for anyone else’s advice either to undertake creation or to decide how to present creation. (Famously, the concluding chapters of the book of Job confirm this lesson (see also Isa :–).) God’s initiative in creation results in God’s giving something, including life, to humans that they did not request. Such divine “giving” has mixed results in the Jewish Bible, owing to human failures, and it leads to controversy about the actual goodness of what God has given in creation, or at least what God intends to give (as the book of Job illustrates). The human failures include disobedience to God, as Genesis reports. God responds with a plan to counter this disobedience and thereby to restore humans to their creator. God thus shows mercy to the first humans by not destroying them for their disobedience: “The Lord God sent them forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which they were taken. He drove out the humans, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen :–). A key insight of the writer is that God protects the vital option for righteous life from corruption and distortion by humans. God does not allow them to gain approved life by their unrighteous ways and means. This is a significant indicator of God’s perfectly righteous character and will. Even so, God forces a decision from humans regarding righteousness (that is, between righteousness and unrighteousness) without forcing how they decide, in terms of what they favor. To that end, God puts trouble, including suffering, in human lives, whereby humans learn and show their genuine moral (or immoral) inclinations in the presence of divine challenges intended to cultivate righteousness. The book of Second Isaiah represents a straightforward view of God’s role in creation: I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things. (Isa :)
It does not follow that God causes, creates, or actualizes moral evil, the kind of evil antithetical to what is righteous in interpersonal relationships. God often stirs up turbulence for humans, including in their moral lives, but that divine process avoids creating divine evil. The turbulence, including suffering, is intended by God for the expansion and recognition of divine righteousness, while not causing evil. The writer of Deuteronomy endorses God’s perfect goodness: The Rock, his work is perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God, without deceit, just and upright is he. (Deut :)
Similarly, the author of Psalm reports: “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil will not sojourn with you” (Psalm :). Even so, this perfectly good God can use evil for the sake of good, including in a case of God’s sending an evil spirit to certain people ( Sam :, :, :; Judges :). The boundaries are set by God’s aim to bring about something righteous among humans, and the same is true for the evil that God allows (without causing it). If the book of Job is right, we humans are not in a good position to judge those boundaries in all cases. As a result, Job offers his selfhumbling confession that he is not qualified to advise God on cosmic matters (Job :–). If truth be told, we are no more qualified than Job in that regard. Even in our limited knowledge of divine ways and means, we should ask about purposes for the divine initiative in creation. What are the aims of this initiative? The question is pressing if only because the “good” pronounced on creation by God fast becomes
Here I disagree with Keith Ward, “The Personal Ground of Being,” in W. C. Holtzen and Roberto Sirvent (eds.), By Faith and Reason: The Essential Keith Ward (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, ), pp. , .
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mixed with considerable “bad” introduced by created humans. The book of Genesis portrays God’s response with divine moral recreation for the sake of improved, righteous lives in relation to divine mercy.
Spirit in Re-creation Just as God’s Spirit takes the initiative for the creation of the heavens and the earth, that same God takes the initiative in the moral re-creation of humans, given the need of Genesis . A striking feature of the intended re-creation in Genesis is its desired universality. This emerges with Abram: The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing . . . In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen :–)
The God of Abram is no mere ethnic or national God, given the stated aim to benefit “all the families of the earth.” Just as the opening creation story concerned all of the earth, so also the subsequent re-creation story aims to include all families of the earth. The intended re-creation is inherently moral because it stems from and delivers divine righteousness in human character and interpersonal relationships. The book of Second Isaiah represents God as (re-)creating with righteousness and salvation among people needing such re-creating:
For discussion of the role of Abraham here, see Jon D. Levenson, Inheriting Abraham (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ).
Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it. (Isa :)
God again takes the initiative in creating, and here that effort aims at righteousness and salvation among humans. So, we may call this “moral re-creation.” It aims to redirect the faltering beneficiaries of the first creation with a new level of moral goodness characterized as “righteousness” and “salvation.” The book of Isaiah grounds the needed re-creation in God’s “spirit from on high”: Until a spirit from on high is poured out on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field. The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. (Isa :–)
The main idea is that God’s own Spirit takes the initiative to bring needed righteousness among humans in order to deliver peace and trust among them. This initiative is central to the needed moral recreation by God for wayward humans. The desired re-creation is a divine “inside” job among humans, with God’s “holy spirit” working at the deepest volitional and affective level of humans. The author of Psalm thus prays: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence,
- and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit. (Psalm :–)
God’s Spirit thus directly influences and supports a human spirit willing to obey God from within: that is, a “right spirit within me.” Language of divine “inspiration” of humans, courtesy of God’s Spirit, is thus fitting for “salvation” and a “willing spirit.” This divine Spirit, as the “presence” of God, searches humans for the sake of their moral renewal before God (Psalm :–, –). Such renewal is at the center of divine re-creation and of a biblical theology that captures the key biblical storyline. A divine promise of needed moral inspiration arises in the book of Ezekiel: A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezek :–)
The key promise of suitable moral motivation is: “I will put my spirit within you.” Such inspiration, or enspiriting, by God is the needed inward power source for obedience and reconciliation to God and thus for being the people of God. Ezekiel concurs with the source of God’s inward renewal at the center of Jeremiah’s promise of a new covenant: This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other,
“Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jer :–)
God’s aim, then, is moral renewal from within for the people of Israel, in order that obedience to God will be from “their hearts.” Ezekiel represents a similar promise with talk of a “new heart” from God’s Spirit for God’s people. This is the basis of divine moral inspiration for the people of God, courtesy of God’s inspiring Spirit. The divine project of moral re-creation is implicitly eschatological, awaiting completion in the fullness of time. As a result, the project is ongoing now, moving toward its future fulfillment. The promise of renewal by God’s Spirit is explicit in the book of Joel. It begins with a call to a moral return to God: Even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing. (Joel :–)
Here, again, we see an emphasis on inward change, and not just a change in conduct or “clothing.” We also see that God has a “gracious and merciful” aim not to condemn wayward people but to renew them toward God’s unique moral character. This is therefore moral renewal, courtesy of divine inspiration. The prophet Joel conveys a grand divine promise of enspiriting for renewal: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit. (Joel :–)
This promise extends to “all flesh” and thus goes beyond national Israel. It includes even the “slaves” of the people of Israel. So, the intended renewal by God’s Spirit has a universal scope. A full biblical theology would give careful attention to moral inspiration in a wide range of materials in the Jewish Bible, thus going beyond the limits of this single chapter. We have identified some passages that clearly set the focus on divine inspiration for sustained righteousness and its moral renewal among humans. We turn to such moral renewal in the new covenant initially promised by Jeremiah.
Inspiration in Jesus and Paul Jesus talks little of God’s “Spirit” but his ministry portrays the work of divine moral inspiration in himself and his followers. Mark’s and Matthew’s Gospels draw from the book of Isaiah to set the baptism of Jesus in a context of God’s intervening Spirit (Mark :–; Matt :–; cf. Isa :). After the baptism, Jesus is led by God’s Spirit into the wilderness to face evil (Mark :; Matt :). These events follow the prediction of John the Baptist that Jesus would baptize people with the Spirit of God (Mark :; Matt :–).
On the limited talk of Jesus about the Spirit of God in the New Testament Gospels, see C. K. Barrett, The Holy Spirit and the Gospel Tradition, nd ed. (London: SPCK, ), pp. –; Anthony Thiselton, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ), pp. –.
Luke’s Gospel confirms the role of God’s Spirit in the ministry of Jesus and in its power of moral renewal. It portrays Jesus, after his baptism (Luke :), as being “full of the Holy Spirit” as he is led by the Spirit into the wilderness for testing (Luke :). It also represents Jesus, “filled with the power of the Spirit” (Luke :), announcing God’s mission for him from the book of Second Isaiah (Isa :–): The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke :–)
This is a mission of renewal in moral empowerment from God’s Spirit, as people are freed from what oppresses them, morally and spiritually at least. Given such empowerment from God’s Spirit, Jesus, as noted, regards this Spirit as a divine gift to be received by humans: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke :). So, Jesus does not regard himself as the only beneficiary of God’s empowering Spirit of renewal. Jesus’s closing earthly command to his disciples is to wait for empowerment by God’s Spirit: “I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke :; cf. Acts :–). Luke’s second volume relates the fulfillment of this promise to Pentecost: When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were
sitting . . . All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts :–, )
Luke connects this episode at Pentecost with the fulfillment of Joel’s aforementioned prophecy of the pouring out of God’s Spirit on humans (Acts :–). So, Luke thinks of Jesus as fulfilling the promise of John the Baptist that Jesus would baptize people with the Spirit of God (Luke :). John’s Gospel reiterates the promise of John the Baptist that Jesus would baptize people with the Spirit of God, after that Spirit descended and remained on him at his baptism (John :–). It characterizes the fulfillment of that promise in Jesus as follows: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (John :–). This characterization directly relates the work of the Spirit to human moral standing before God, in relation to the forgiveness of human sins. Such forgiveness aims to reorient people to participate and to be reconciled in the moral goodness, including the righteousness, of God. Once again, then, we see that renewal by divine inspiration is inherently moral. John’s Gospel is explicit about the moral endeavor of God’s Spirit toward human renewal in righteousness. It represents Jesus as saying: I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. (John :–, RSV)
We can understand the intended “convincing” here as being morally “convicting” (as in the ASV). As a result, we can understand it as the kind of “interconvicting” identified in Chapter . People thus can reject it for their contrary purposes. God’s Spirit nonetheless aims to motivate people, at their deepest level, toward participation and cooperation in divine righteousness, the kind of righteousness characteristic of “the Father” of Jesus. So, this Spirit seeks divine moral inspiration for God’s people as they cooperate with God’s recreative work of moral renewal. Seeking a fitting context for the divine inspiration of humans, Keith Ward has commented: At the centre of the human self there is some form of union or encounter with a reality . . . felt to be both beyond the individual self and yet somehow at the root of one’s personal being . . . One may find within oneself a sustaining power which is beyond one’s individual consciousness and yet at the centre of one’s being, and which contains inspirational and creative resources upon which the conscious self can draw.
Ward’s talk of “inspirational resources” intends to suggest inward presence and direct influence by God. For an example, he refers to the Apostle Paul in his affirmation that the love of God has been poured into human hearts by God’s Spirit (Rom :). G. W. H. Lampe has captured a prominent understanding of divine inspiration of humans in the Hebraic tradition, particularly in connection with its interactive feature. He portrays the relevant idea of God’s Spirit as follows: The Spirit of God is God disclosing himself as Spirit, that is to say, God creating and giving life to the spirit of man, inspiring him, renewing him, and making him whole. To speak of “the Spirit of God” or “Holy Spirit” is to speak of transcendent God becoming
Keith Ward, The Concept of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, ), p. .
immanent in human personality, for in his experience of inspiration . . . man is brought into personal communion with God’s real presence.
The inspiration in question, according to Lampe, rests on human receptivity: The Spirit [of the Lord] permeates those human spirits that are open through their moral character . . . and their prayer to God to receive it. There is, in fact, a two-way process at work. Men are qualified by their character and intellect to receive God’s gift, yet their knowledge and their moral character are themselves the expression and the result of the permeating creative power of the divine Spirit.
The inward presence and work of God’s Spirit thus depend on human openness of a morally relevant sort. This theme fits with a lesson of Jesus in his aforementioned parable of the sower. It also bears on Paul’s understanding of the relevance of human moral character in divine inspiration. Paul shares Jesus’s emphasis on God’s Spirit aiming to inspire people toward a renewed life of righteousness with God. Indeed, he understands his gospel as a message of good news empowered by divine righteousness (Rom :–). He gives the Spirit of God a central role in establishing this good news through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rom :–) and through Jesus himself having become a “life-giving Spirit” ( Cor :). Jesus is able to have this role because his moral character sets a moral and spiritual standard for the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God also empowers a spiritual resurrection to new life now, according to Paul (Rom :, ),
Lampe, God as Spirit, p. . Lampe, God as Spirit, p. . See Lampe, God as Spirit, p. ; James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ), pp. –.
while recipients await the Spirit’s resurrection of their bodies (Rom :). As a priority, and as we have noted, Paul gives God’s Spirit a guiding role in a person’s being a child of God: “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom :–). Paul’s idea of being “led by the Spirit of God” is underdeveloped by commentators, but we should give it a central role in divine selfmanifestation. With regard to the Roman Christians, Paul adds: “You are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you . . . The Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom :–). God’s indwelling Spirit, according to Paul, supplies divine moral inspiration, and that inspiration is “life because of righteousness,” the kind of righteousness characteristic of God’s perfect moral character and will. Such inspiration enables God’s moral character, selfmanifested in the fruit of the Spirit, to be shared with humans who cooperate with God’s moral will. Paul extends the role of divine inspiration to the teaching of humans by God’s Spirit: “We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” ( Cor :; cf. Thess :–). So, in Paul’s perspective, God’s Spirit aims to bring understanding to humans along with their moral renewal. That understanding includes awareness of God’s gifts on offer, including God’s inspiring Spirit. Such understanding does not take human self-credit for the relevant divine gifts, including divine righteousness. God’s Spirit inspires humans, as noted previously, with what Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit”: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things” (Gal :–). We have seen that Paul sums up the Spirit’s fruitful work as follows: “Hope [in God] does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom :). Paul thinks of this Spirit as working
inwardly in humans, to “circumcise” their hearts for righteous life with God (Rom :–). This work is thus inwardly inspirational with moral power for God’s purpose of renewing humans in righteousness. The fruit borne by God’s Spirit is not only morally relevant but also representative and even constitutive of God’s morally perfect character and of people sharing in it. It makes God worthy of worship and trust, and therefore it can self-manifest and selfauthenticate God’s reality and goodness to humans. It also enables humans, courtesy of God’s Spirit, to reflect God’s moral character, including God’s “glory” ( Cor :). Paul would agree with the aforementioned insight of the book of Exodus that divine glory is summed up in God’s goodness (Exod :–). In keeping with Chapter , we may regard the fruit of God’s moral character as the spiritual moral values integral to that character. These values, as suggested, are filial in being integral to God’s familial plan: to bring all of the families of the earth into God’s family. This goal, as noted, was suggested initially by Genesis :– and was reiterated subsequently by various biblical writers. God self-reveals in these filial values of the Spirit because they constitute God’s unique moral character – that is, the divine moral personality – and they give content to the corresponding plan for human moral renewal by God (cf. Rom :). The traits in question manifest an intentional, person-directed character when they exhibit an aim from God’s Spirit to lead people to self-conform to them and thereby to relate to God directly. They thus can represent a renewal effort of a personal God: that is, the active Spirit of God seeking to inspire people to agree, cooperate, and commune with God. This significance of the fruit of God’s Spirit as active divine values and character traits in human experience is widely neglected among philosophers, theologians, and biblical interpreters. Human understanding and appreciation of evidence for God’s reality and goodness suffer as a result.
The spiritual values in question, we have noted, stand in contrast and opposition to what Paul calls “the works of the flesh”: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these” (Gal :–; cf. Mark :– on such works coming from the human “heart”). The latter works, according to Paul, stand in sharp opposition to God and therefore persisting in them can block a person from “inheriting the kingdom of God” (Gal :). Paul thus remarks that “what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh” (Gal :), and he suggests that “living by the Spirit” and “being guided by the Spirit” will save a person from “the desires of the flesh” (Gal :, ). A related contrast occurs in Matthew’s Gospel, bearing on God’s Spirit and the fate of a person: “Whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit” (Matt :–). A person’s relation to God’s Spirit thus has a bearing on the fruit exhibited and human destiny, even if that person does not recognize that God is involved. The influence of God’s Spirit aims for human cooperation, but that cooperation does not depend on human recognition that God is the initiator and guide of the moral influence. A person’s informational content can be thin in that person’s cooperation with righteousness. The inspiring and renewing work of the Spirit, according to Paul, is central to the “new covenant . . . of the Spirit” ( Cor :). Paul, under the influence of Jesus, thus confirms the storyline of divine inspiration presented in this chapter. He regards the intended renewal by divine inspiration to be universal: “God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Rom :). This mercy toward all stems from God’s being the God of Gentiles as well as Jews (Rom :, :–). A full biblical theology would turn to the general epistles of the New Testament for further light on divine moral inspiration, but we cannot digress. Instead, we turn to the widespread failure of such intended inspiration in human lives.
Gambit for Divine Inspiration A concise summary of this chapter thus far is: “The Spirit gives life” ( Cor :). The story, however, is complicated. Humans have a voluntary response to the offer of God’s Spirit, and they do not always choose to cooperate with the inspiration, or the corresponding filial values, on offer. We now can understand such inspiration in terms of the following definition in the OED: “Said of God or the Holy Spirit, or of a divinity or supernatural being: To influence or actuate by special divine or supernatural agency; used esp. in reference to the prophets, apostles, and Scripture writers.” We have seen, however, that various biblical writers extend the intended scope of divine moral inspiration beyond “the prophets, apostles, and Scripture writers” to all receptive people. This broad goal raises the question of why such inspiration seems to be relatively rare among humans. (We need not digress to complexities about possible degrees of moral inspiration.) Part of the answer lies behind Paul’s injunction to the Christians at Thessalonica: “Do not quench the Spirit” ( Thess :; cf. Eph :). This injunction assumes, in keeping with many biblical writers, that humans can, and sometimes do, resist and frustrate divine moral inspiration. The book of Second Isaiah portrays divine patience toward human resistance to God’s Spirit: I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, “Here I am, here I am,” to a nation that did not call on my name. I held out my hands all day long to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices. (Isa :–; cf. Rom :)
The divine concern here is moral goodness for people who “walk in a way that is not good.” So, the concern is not just about disobeying a command. It goes deeper to what is morally good for humans, including in their motivations. God’s offer of divine inspiration can prompt human rebellion to divine goodness, and when it does, any divine fruit on offer will be blocked from coming to its intended fruition in righteous relationships. A gift offered is not automatically a gift received, especially when humans need to struggle to receive a demanding gift that is foreign to some of their tendencies. We now can see how an adequate biblical theology should face a history of human conflict with divine creation and re-creation. Even though God takes the initiative in creation and re-creation for human goodness, a human response can be, and sometimes is, resistant or complacent, at least on some matters. The biblical history of Israel is not unique in illustrating this drama of divine–human conflict over goodness in righteous relationships. The illustration continues under the new covenant, despite the effort of God’s Spirit to extend the divine family to Gentiles in righteousness after the example of Abraham, “the father of us all.” God faces a moral problem among humans, as their moral response frustrates God’s aim for a righteous community. Many biblical writers are forthright about this, and their candor supplies a needed moral challenge. So, an adequate biblical theology will be problem-oriented in morality, particularly toward the problem of divine moral inspiration among wayward humans. Neglect of this problem would undermine a key biblical storyline and thus the unity of biblical theology. The storyline under consideration has God opting for a gambit, a move of known risk for the sake of overcoming a challenge. The challenge is to build an all-inclusive commonwealth of righteousness anchored and motivated by Spirit-inspired filial values. (On the goal of a divine commonwealth, see Isaiah :–,
:–.) The divine risk taken is the human rejection of the intended divine moral inspiration seeking a universal commonwealth. The universal divine blessing promised through Abraham thus can be frustrated and blocked by human recalcitrance. (Chapter returns to this topic.) We should not expect divine coercion of moral inspiration or filial values among humans. Such coercion would disable a role for humans as morally responsible participants in the formation of the desired commonwealth and the needed moral character. Humans then would be blocked from exercising their own wills and thus from being morally responsible agents who decide for or against the divine commonwealth or the moral character on offer. The moral formation of the commonwealth, resting on morally responsible persons interacting with God’s Spirit, would then be lost. The biblical storyline of moral inspiration, however, does not resort to making humans pawns of the divine will. If it did, the multitude of biblical injunctions to righteousness among humans, in cooperation with God’s Spirit, would be simply beside the point and also deceptive. By giving humans limited autonomy, for the sake of their being morally responsible persons, God self-limits divine power. As a result, God is not in full control of humans and does not cause their immoral ways. So, at least according to various biblical writers, God is not causally responsible for the failure of the divine moral inspiration of uncooperative humans. Autonomous humans, in contrast, are likely suspects for blocking or hindering, at least at times, divine moral inspiration on offer to them. God would not be required to offer moral inspiration to a person at all times, because God would be in a position to tell if a person would be fully uncooperative in response. In such a case of conflict,
For the role of a desired commonwealth, see C. H. Dodd, The Meaning of Paul for Today (New York: Doran, ), pp. –; C. H. Dodd, The Founder of Christianity (London: Macmillan, ), pp. –.
God could hide from a person for a time, until that person is ready for a cooperative response. Such hiding, as noted previously, could be a way for God to avoid a person’s doing self-harm in response by creating further alienation from God (see Isa :–; Matt :–; Luke :). Skeptics, among others, have wondered if the risk of the divine gambit is worthwhile. Is it worthwhile to create and re-create for divine inspiration among humans if they often block the divine effort toward a righteous commonwealth and opt for some opposing goal? This worry emerges in the book of Exodus, where Moses implores God, on the heels of the golden calf debacle, not to destroy the rebellious people of Israel: Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, how you swore to them by your own self, saying to them, “I will multiply your descendants like the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.” And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people. (Exod :–)
The answer is suggested by the remark “you swore to them by your own self.” God made a promise, out of God’s own moral character, to Abraham for human redemption for all families of the earth, and God, being faithful, will not break that character-based promise. God thus will not extinguish the candidates for the life promised by God, even “for the sake of ten” candidates (Gen :). The distinctive character behind the divine grand promise of life with God is a unique moral character. God, as noted, reveals this character to Moses on Mount Sinai: The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. (Exod :–).
This divine character portrait identifies who God is, and it makes sense of God’s enduring effort toward building an all-inclusive community from divine moral inspiration in spiritual values for character formation. God’s moral character is confirmed in connection with the promised new covenant we identified in the book of Jeremiah, including a stated concern for inward work in God’s people, “in their hearts”: I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing good to them, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul. (Jer :–)
The emphasis here is on God’s faithfulness in “doing good” for people, particularly at the level of their hearts. Divine moral inspiration is the goal of that effort, despite human resistance on many fronts. Perhaps the most explicit summary of the divine motive for universal benefit is “God so loved the world” (John :). This divine love is set on “doing good,” even inwardly and even toward enemies of God, as a matter of God’s perfect moral character (Matt :–). So, the biblical storyline of divine moral inspiration unites biblical theology, because it captures the divine moral character behind the storyline. That moral character grounds and motivates
the storyline, even in the midst of repeated human efforts to block both the character and the storyline. Biblical theology will give adequate illumination only if it focuses on that character and its resulting storyline in ongoing moral conflict. The divine gambit of moral inspiration thus has a divine foundation: in the moral character of the God of the gambit.
Reality Check in Moral Inspiration Biblical theology should attend to the storyline identified above, but it should not stop there. It must separate itself from a purely fictional storyline if it is to have credibility for human life. So, it must attend to what its own literary source acknowledges: people who “say in their hearts, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm :). Even if some of those people are “fools,” as the psalmist alleges, not all such people are. Some people are simply confused and bewildered, given the complexity of the topic, and they lean toward what seems to be a safe response in denial of God’s reality. They may, however, be volitionally akin, with regard to their will, to people who respond to moral inspiration in the right way and deserve commendation, while they fail to recognize that God is at work among them (see Matt :–). In any case, a biblical theology about God needs a reality check about God’s existence and goodness. We now can see how it has one in moral inspiration. Biblical theologians who settle for a strictly “narrative” approach will miss out on our needed reality check, given that they are satisfied with the literary coherence (and related literary significance) of their story from the biblical narratives. The moral inspiration approach offered here values such coherence but goes further, to evidence in human experience for the reality and the goodness of the God implicated in the biblical storyline. I thus take exception to Walter Brueggemann’s exclusive claim that “the God of Old Testament theology as such lives in, with, and under the rhetorical
enterprise of this text, and nowhere else and in no other way.” Parts of the Old Testament text itself affirm that its God acts (and, to that extent, lives) outside the text, including in human experience, even long before the text was written. We have noted abundant evidence of this fact regarding God’s Spirit in creation and recreation. Divine moral inspiration, according to many biblical narratives, goes beyond literary coherence to religious and moral experience, past and present. So, we should ask: Does our moral experience bear witness to the kind of divine moral inspiration promised and described by the central biblical storyline? If it does not, we should wonder if we are dealing with fiction in the biblical storyline, such as the kind assumed by Freud and by many other critics. If, however, it does bear witness to divine inspiration, we should look more closely at the relevant evidence from our moral experience. We should attend to a key criterion: If the alleged intentional God works for moral inspiration via the aforementioned filial values, we will find goal-directed influence of those values in some suitably attentive moral experience. That is, those values will “come alive” with the intentionality of an inspiring Spirit aimed at instilling divine righteousness in at least some receptive humans. So, inquirers about God and biblical theology should attend to their moral experiences with this prospect in mind. They also should consider that the prospective moral inspiration intends to be cooperative and not coercive, for the sake of preserving responsible human agency. Some biblical writers portray such inspiration as coercive, but a cooperative approach fits better with the autonomy and responsibility central to interpersonal moral interaction.
Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, ), p. . For some of the biblical narratives assuming a coercive approach, see Lampe, God as Spirit, chapter .
We can make sense now of human inquiry akin to a “moral experiment” for the reality of a morally inspiring God, bearing on the veracity of a corresponding biblical theology. Edgar Sheffield Brightman has characterized evidential testing for God in general: [We] observe facts of purpose, of value, and of worship which point toward God. On the basis of the inductions made, [we] frame the hypothesis that there is a God with the attributes of goodness and truth and beauty. Then [we] deduce what sort of experiences should be possible if there were such a God, and observe the results.
I am proposing, much more narrowly, inquiry akin to a moral experiment that can receive confirmation (or disconfirmation) over time, on the basis of a person’s moral experience in relation to the filial values in question. If those values show evidence of aiming to lead one into deeper righteousness, say via conscience, that person has a prospect of receiving confirmation. Many inquirers testify that their moral experience is indeed intentional, or goal-directed, in leading them to righteousness. They often cite the role of conscience in their being led to conform to some of the noted filial values, toward righteousness in relationships. They also mention the timing and the fitting content of uncoerced conviction in their conscience. The conviction often comes at just the right time, and it brings moral content that makes for a fitting challenge. If, in addition, enemy love is included in the convicting moral values, it serves as a quality that is rare among humans and antithetical to what appear to be their natural tendencies. A deeper source, with special righteousness, thus merits consideration.
Edgar Sheffield Brightman, The Finding of God (New York: Abingdon Press, ), pp. –. On experiment in general, see Barry Allen, Empiricisms (New York: Oxford University Press, ).
When moral inspiration via conviction occurs in a person’s moral experience, that person should ask what best explains that experience, in terms of its sources. Such a concern for best available explanation is familiar not only in the sciences but also in everyday inductive inference. It is integral to our many efforts to understand the sources of our experiences in a reasonable way, and from that perspective it is above reproach. An important factor in its relevance to questions about God and biblical theology is its bearing on our experience, including our moral experience, and not just on a literary story. This factor fits with the sources of biblical theology that assume that God can give self-evidence and thus selfauthentication in inspired human experience, because God has the moral character and the intentional causal power to do so. The relevant causal power, we have suggested, is a matter of intentional causal influence in moral inspiration, without coercion of a human will. Variability of evidence regarding God’s reality and goodness is understandable if, as many biblical writers indicate, moral inspiration for wayward humans is a divine goal. We have noted that part of the variability is explainable by human resistance to such inspiration in a context of divine desire not to solidify that resistance. So, we should not expect the moral inspiration of some people to be universally shared, even though a divine goal, as indicated, is a universal commonwealth of divine moral inspiration in righteous relationships. If we approach biblical theology through divine moral inspiration, we get not only a unified storyline that has been neglected, but also a biblical theology that admits of needed testing in human inquiry akin to moral experiment for God’s reality and goodness. God’s inspiring Spirit, in this perspective, has a vital role throughout biblical theology that is irreducible to the role of the Jewish Torah and the role of Gentile conscience. We thus get a distinctive and resilient basis for a unified biblical theology and a vital check on its veracity. This theology illuminates the unique role
of God in human moral experience, including conscience, and it does not depend on abstract philosophical arguments. It calls instead for careful attention to moral phenomenology in relation to experienced directedness in conscience toward righteousness in moral character and relationships. We now turn to how much of traditional philosophy has missed the focus proposed here.
Moral Experience without Philosophical Overlays
My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God [δυνάμει θεοῦ]. Corinthians :– I have shown myself [ἐμφανὴς ἐγενόμην] to those who did not ask for me. Romans :; Isaiah :
Many philosophers and theologians hold that evidence for God’s reality and goodness from human experience, including moral experience, is inadequate for reasonable belief. They thus try to add credibility to faith in God by means of persuasive philosophical arguments and explanations. There are two main ways to pursue this aim, and one way is arguably more effective and defensible than the other, at least from the epistemological perspective of the Apostle Paul. Philosophers and theologians who hold that Paul has a contribution to make in this area should consider the relative efficacy of these two ways. The key area of contrast lies in the epistemic basis of relevant philosophical arguments and explanations: either a basis in the power of direct divine self-manifestation or a basis just in philosophical claims. The latter basis will neglect or obscure the power that is distinctive of the prominent biblical God and thus miss out on the foundational evidence characteristic of that God.
This chapter clarifies what the relevant divine power is. It does so in terms of responsive divine self-manifestation as God’s salvific self-witness to divine reality and goodness in receptive human moral experience and character formation. It explains how such power, being interactive toward divine righteousness, serves as a significant alternative to such prominent philosophical overlays on faith in God as Platonism, Thomism, and Kantianism. These overlays improperly depersonalize key evidence for God’s reality and goodness and thereby minimize the significance of that evidence.
Divine Power and Evidence Our opening quotation indicates that Paul wanted faith in God to be grounded on “the power of God.” His understanding of this power fits with the distinctive moral character of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who seeks to “save” people by means of a divine–human relationship of moral goodness in righteousness. The power Paul has in mind is thus divine power to save people from failure in lasting moral goodness for their lives. So, in the context of our quotation, Paul refers to “the power of God” for “us who are being saved” ( Cor :, cf. :). Paul, as noted, speaks of the relevant power as follows: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes” (Rom :). He claims that the “righteousness of God” is revealed in this gospel of divine power (Rom :). He also refers to “Christ the power of God,” given his key role in God’s mission for the salvation of humans ( Cor :). That role underlies Paul’s talk of “the message about the cross” as being “the power of God,” at least for those being saved ( Cor :).
For discussion of Paul on divine righteousness, see Paul K. Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
Suppose that God were not responsive to the vital human need for salvation from destructive opposition or indifference to divine righteousness. In that case, God would be morally deficient and hence not perfectly good or worthy of worship. God then would be morally mediocre at best and hence a false god unworthy of worship. One might argue that the gods of deism, among various other gods, typically fail on this front, given their general lack of ongoing activity in human moral experience. The responsiveness of God must be anchored for humans in trustworthy evidence for divine reality, not in mere postulation. Paul captures this consideration in his regarding faith in God as demanding its ground in the power of God for salvation. He thus takes divine responsiveness to humans to include this feature: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom :; cf. Joel :). The “power of God” in Paul’s thinking, then, is responsive to humans in their felt need for salvation, and the same is true of the evidence that grounds faith in God. We need to clarify what such responsiveness for salvation includes and how it involves intentional divine–human interaction toward righteousness in character formation and relationships. Divine responsiveness figures in Paul’s sharp contrast between a basis of faith in God’s power and a basis in what he calls “the wisdom of the world.” God seeks to undermine the latter as a dangerous counterfeit, according to Paul: Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world [σοφίαν τοῦ κόσμου]? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through [its] wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. ( Cor :–)
God’s aim, as noted, is “to save those who believe,” and that aim relies on divine responsiveness to human receptivity, through
obedient trust, to righteousness in character formation. The divine aim, we have observed, does not use coercion of human wills to comply, because that kind of dominating power would undermine responsible human agency toward divine salvation. It would leave humans as ineffective divine pawns in salvation. A morally responsible community of righteous people cannot consist of such coerced pawns. Divine responsiveness to humans, according to Paul, is identifiable in the divine power that suitably anchors faith or trust in God. This responsiveness is not found in what Paul calls the “wisdom of the world,” because God is not the source or the sustainer of such wisdom. The unique power that grounds faith or trust in God manifests God’s unique moral character set on saving receptive people via character formation toward righteousness. Paul thus remarks: “We boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope [in God] does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom :–). Paul makes this remark, which is central to his epistemology, in a context about faith in God (Rom :). Paul would say about faith in God what he says here about hope. Faith in God, like hope in God, is not a matter of shame or disappointment regarding its ground, because it has a distinctive ground in the self-manifestation of divine love in our moral experience, including our consciences or “hearts.” That selfmanifestation, according to Paul, comes from God’s intervening Spirit in the lives of cooperative people. Paul thus has no place for fideism about either faith or hope in God. Suitable evidence for God matters to him, even if that evidence holds humans responsible to God. The relevant divine self-manifestation can be complex in its features, but it characteristically includes a caring, uncoercive nudge or prod in conscience. It is intended by God to guide people toward
divine righteousness, or toward deeper righteousness, in their moral character and lives. With due attention, we can feel at times such a divine nudge to be caring by its directedness toward what is morally good for us. The same felt directedness indicates, perhaps over time, that an intentional agent with a goal, rather than a mere mechanism or process, is self-manifesting to us. This feature is widely neglected by inquirers, but it is crucial to the evidence for God as an intentional agent – that is, God as personal. The relevant caring self-manifestation is unique evidence of God’s reality and goodness aimed at our salvation via our character formation, even though typical philosophical and theological treatments of evidence for God ignore it. Paul gives a central role to such divine self-manifestation in grounding faith and hope in God through human conscience. God’s intervening Spirit (as God in action), according to Paul, supplies such grounding for cooperative people, even when they do not merit it. That grounding enables a direct human meeting with God in conscience, courtesy of the moral character traits as the fruit of God’s Spirit. (For Paul’s valuing conscience in divine guidance, see Romans :– and :, and Corinthians : and :.) Divine responsiveness, in Paul’s perspective, includes God’s moving first toward potential human recipients in order to elicit a human response of self-conformity to divine goodness. So, Paul asks this question: “Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” (Rom :, NKJV). Any human response of repentance thus follows, and does not precede, the manifestation of divine goodness. This priority of God’s intervening manifestation to humans is central to what Paul regards as divine grace (charis). It excludes a human need to earn or merit God’s favor as if God were grudging toward humans. Paul acknowledges a crucial role for responsible human action in responding to divine self-manifestation. He thus remarks: “To this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds, but
when one turns [ἐπιστρέψῃ] to the Lord, the veil is removed” ( Cor :–; cf. Thess :). Paul uses an active verb to capture the needed turning. It is the turning of repentance where people voluntarily and actively shift their moral priority to God, or at least to divine righteousness, in response to divine goodness in their experience. The relevant turning, in Paul’s thought, typically requires the continued or repeated turning of humans, and not just a single event. He thus uses a conditional for human salvation – namely, “if you continue [ἐπιμένῃς] in God’s goodness” – and adds that “otherwise you will be cut off” (Rom :; cf. Col :–). So, voluntary and responsible human action is a vital part of divine salvation by grace through faith. A mechanical story, then, will not capture Paul’s understanding of salvation or of faith. Paul has a responsive approach in mind for divine intervention when he says, as noted: “Work out [κατεργάζεσθε] your own salvation with fear and trembling, for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil :–, RSV). God’s work in people thus influences their wills without coercing them, given their voluntary role for working out their salvation (not to be confused with working to earn their salvation). A salient result of this responsive interaction with human cooperation is distinctive character formation toward divine righteousness. Paul finds “evidence” of divine salvation among humans in their being guided to live in a manner worthy of divine righteousness: Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you, I will know that you are standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel and in no way frightened by those opposing you . . . This is evidence [ἔνδειξις] of . . . your salvation. And this is God’s doing. For he has graciously granted you the privilege not only of believing in Christ but of suffering for him as well. (Phil :–)
Paul thus finds “evidence” grounding faith in God’s salvation in (God’s providing) character formation, in a cooperative response, toward righteousness. This righteousness reflects the moral character of God in Christ. As a result, as noted, he regards faithful followers of Christ to be an evidential letter of Christ: “You show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God” ( Cor :–). Paul thus finds evidentially grounded confidence for faith in God in the disciples’ character transformation. The relevant evidence comes courtesy of moral inspiration by God’s Spirit, toward divine righteousness in Christ. Paul locates the evidential “demonstration of the Spirit and of power” ( Cor :) in “the fruit of the Spirit.” This fruit, we have suggested, stems from and indicates God’s moral character, and God desires humans to share in it. We have mentioned Paul’s important list: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things” (Gal :–). Coming directly from God’s Spirit, this fruit, according to Paul, intentionally expresses and represents God’s unique moral character. Its manifestation in humans, he holds, is thus salient evidence of God’s reality and goodness. Paul does not list philosophical arguments or explanations in this fruit because they are not sufficiently distinctive of God’s powerful and perfect moral character. If God is a perfectly righteous Spirit worthy of worship, God’s distinctive power will exhibit perfect righteousness, as will direct evidence arising from that power. Paul includes the divine power of self-sacrifice for good in this power of righteousness. He thus invokes the self-giving death (“the cross”) of Christ as exemplary ( Cor :) and as calling for human reciprocity of self-giving to God in response (Rom :–). Paul is concerned that human wisdom can obscure the divine power of Christ’s cross of obedience to God. It can do so by directing human attention away from God’s
unique self-sacrifice in Christ and turning it to human accomplishments. Paul thinks of human conformity to the obedient cross of Christ as satisfying the divine purpose to have the righteous requirement of the law (particularly that of self-giving love) fulfilled in humans (Rom :–). Given the unique role of God’s Spirit (that is, God in action) in self-manifesting God, Paul gives God’s Spirit a unique role in supplying evidence of God for humans. He remarks: God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God . . . We have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit. ( Cor :, –)
This intentional Spirit is important for Paul, because, through powerful evidence in human experience, this Spirit can express and represent God as directly intentional toward righteousness, thereby holding people responsible before God. God’s Spirit can provide the kind of challenge toward salvation fitting for a righteous God and needed by wayward humans. Evidence of divine reality, according to Paul, is not just for human information about God, as if God’s main problem were self-advertisement. Instead, such evidence seeks, intentionally, to challenge humans for their moral benefit via the divine moral searching of humans in conscience coupled with their fitting responsiveness. It does so through what Paul calls human “spiritual discernment” ( Cor :–) and humans “being known by God” (Gal :; cf. Cor :).
For elaboration on the key Pauline theme of divine self-sacrifice, see Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice. On being known by God, see P. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority (London: Independent Press, ), pp. , –; cf. J. Louis Martyn, Galatians, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, ), pp. –.
Paul holds that the needed challenge for humans stems from a conflict between God’s moral character and human tendencies to neglect divine righteousness. God’s “Spirit” represents the divine moral character in its specific moral traits and their corresponding intentional power. In contrast, what Paul calls “the flesh” (not to be confused with human bodies) represents human tendencies to neglect righteousness. Paul remarks: “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh, for these are opposed to each other” (Gal :–; cf. Rom :–). As a result of this opposition, the self-manifestation and corresponding direct evidence from God come with a powerful challenge for humans to receive and to manifest divine righteousness through character transformation in righteousness. The moral challenge from God includes divine nudges or prods in human conscience toward righteousness in a person, but it can be thin on de dicto theological content. God’s main concern would be de re human conformity to divine righteousness, despite shortcomings in human understanding of the reality prompting that conformity. An informational theological component can be added at a later time, without putting prior de re conformity at risk. Even if “faith comes by hearing” (Rom :), it does not come merely by hearing, because it depends for its support on antecedent divine power in human experience, and that power calls for obedient trust from humans. In Paul’s language, the divine power in question seeks the “new creation” of persons in “reconciliation” with God for the sake of “righteousness.” He writes: Even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting
their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us . . . God is making his appeal through us . . . be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ( Cor :–)
Knowing that is not “from a human point of view” is knowing from the guiding viewpoint of intended divine reconciliation in righteousness. This reconciliation has a past component in the death of Christ (Rom :–), but it also depends on current human appropriation as cooperation in self-conformity to divine righteousness: “Be reconciled to God” in volitional agreement. In being reconciled in divine righteousness, humans receive what Paul calls “the Spirit as a down payment” ( Cor :) – that is, an evidential pledge in moral experience of God’s righteousness to be perfected in the fullness of time. The “new creation” mentioned by Paul depends on the commanded “reconciliation” to God; so, a human’s will is not obliterated in new creation. Paul links this process to the experience of divine love that grounds faith in God ( Cor :, ; cf. Rom :). It is active divine love in human experience that aims to guide humans, without coercing them, toward reconciliation with God in divine righteousness. Divine nudges in human conscience toward righteousness are real and felt, but not promiscuous on God’s part. They arise from righteous divine purposes that, as Jesus suggested, recommend against “casting pearls” before people resolved to trivialize or to dismiss them. They express and represent divine character traits at odds with many human tendencies that ignore or oppose divine righteousness. In their presence, people can ignore, oppose, or welcome such righteousness. They thus have a responsible decision to make, even if they decide to ignore or to oppose the relevant evidence. For some people, we have suggested, the best available explanation of their moral experience is that they are being nudged
by a righteous God. This consideration figures in the evidential value of their experience, in the absence of defeaters, but it does not force human compliance with God. The relevant power of righteousness and its corresponding evidence are suppressible and rejectable by humans. People thus can, and sometimes do, “frustrate” the grace of God (Gal :) to their detriment. Paul’s role for divine self-manifestation calls for a moral phenomenology of divine intervention and divine–human interaction in human experience. Such a phenomenology will characterize divine nudges in human conscience toward perfect righteousness in personal character. It will do so in terms of both moral quality of character directly involving the fruit of the Spirit and intentional directedness toward ongoing character formation for human salvation. The divine nudges include a responsive manifestation, at the appropriate time and with appropriate content, of divine moral character aimed at cooperative human self-conformity with that character. We thus may talk of divine self-manifestation that is morally qualitative and directed. Paul, as we have seen, regards the divine power grounding faith in God to include such divine selfmanifestation. He thus suggests that we attend carefully to our moral experience for relevant evidence of God and for our moral standing before God ( Cor :). We may speak of interactive divine self-manifestation, in keeping with Paul’s acknowledgment of divine–human interaction toward salvation in human character formation. We have noted his comment about the salvation of those who call on the Lord
In “Natural Theology: A Deflationary Approach,” I deny that Paul relies on any familiar argument of natural theology, but he does acknowledge that people can suppress truth regarding God’s existence and goodness (Rom :). Paul K. Moser, “Natural Theology: A Deflationary Approach,” in James K. Dew and R. P. Campbell (eds.), Natural Theology: Five Views (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, , forthcoming). On the bearing of a best available explanation on the conferring of empirical epistemic justification, see Paul K. Moser, Knowledge and Evidence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).
(Rom :). In his perspective, calling on the Lord with due sincerity will bring salvation, not in the abstract but in character formation toward reconciliation in divine righteousness. The latter formation is part of divine interaction, with God at redemptive work in human moral experience, typically in response to human receptivity to divine nudges toward righteousness. The divine intervention features such morally significant experiences as felt forgiveness (Rom :), peace in relation to God (Rom :), unselfish love from God (Rom :), and active opposition to unrighteousness (Rom :). Paul would include such experiences in the “witness” of God’s Spirit (Rom :) to divine reality and goodness. They encourage humans to continue in divine goodness by remaining in divine salvation in righteousness (Rom :). They also underlie Paul’s expression of confidence: “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it” (Phil :). The relevant evidence for God in human moral experience is, then, diachronic and ongoing; it thus involves our future as well as the present. The interactive divine self-manifestation in human experience is central to Paul’s understanding of the ground for faith in God. Even so, as we shall see, it is widely overlooked and neglected in philosophical overlays on Christian faith. Such overlays tend to neglect divine self-manifestation of that interactive sort. They thus neglect the kind of intentional and responsive divine power of self-manifestation acknowledged by Paul as a crucial ground for faith in God. We may think of a philosophical overlay to faith in God as a philosophical perspective used to illuminate or support faith or trust in God. No direct experience of divine intentional power is central to the prominent philosophical overlays in circulation. We will illustrate this fact and its serious
On the experience of divine forgiveness, see H. R. Mackintosh, The Christian Experience of Forgiveness (London: Harper, ), especially chapter .
shortcomings regarding evidence from direct divine selfmanifestation in human moral experience.
Platonic Philosophical Overlay Some philosophers invoke parts of Plato’s philosophy to illuminate or to support faith in God. They think of Plato’s Forms or Ideas, for instance, as important for understanding the nature of God, particularly in connection with God’s unique, eternal attributes. These Forms, they claim, illuminate God’s character as eternally divine and good. So, these philosophers overlay faith in God with Plato’s theory of Forms in order to bring explanatory illumination to such faith. Famously, Plato was devoted, for his philosophical explanatory purposes, to an eternal realm of Forms and to a superhuman agent, the Demiurge, who crafts the material world on the basis of the eternal realm (see Timaeus a ff ). Plato’s Forms are akin to what many philosophers understand to be mind-independent concepts or kinds that are truth-makers for necessarily true propositions. For instance, the eternal truths of arithmetic are made true by the eternal objective concepts and their interrelations that figure in those truths. Plato’s Forms are timeless and hence temporally non-episodic; they thus have no causal efficacy. They do not bring about events because they do not bring about anything in time. The Forms, then, are not intentional causal powers, just as eternal concepts, kinds, or propositions are not such powers. Even so, they can figure in an explanation of eternal truths as their truth-makers, such as in answers to Plato’s trademark philosophical “What is X?” questions. The Form of the Good, for instance, lies behind what Plato takes to be a correct answer to the philosophical question “What is Goodness?” Robert M. Adams has recently drawn from Plato for the illumination of his Christian theism. He remarks: “On my theistic
adaptation of Plato, God is the Beautiful itself and the Sublime itself, as well as the Good itself more generally.” He adds: If God is the Good itself, then the Good is not an abstract object but a concrete (but not a physical) individual. Indeed, it is a person, or importantly like a person . . . What is essential to my theory at this point is just to postulate a strong enough analogy of personality in God to sustain such claims as that God loves, commands, has reasons.
This is indeed an important “postulate” for the theism of Adams. We should ask, however, whether the Platonic position of Adams has an adequate basis for regarding it as more than a postulate – specifically, as a well-grounded position that acknowledges “the power of God” in divine interactive self-manifestation as a basis for faith in God. This is doubtful, as we shall see. Adams couples his Platonic metaphysical theism with a theistic epistemology developed by William P. Alston on the basis of “doxastic practices.” Adams takes doxastic practices to be “a suitably integrated set of [common] skills and habits, a system of ways of forming and holding beliefs learned in a social context.” For instance, deductive inference can provide an inferential doxastic practice, and sense perception can supply a non-inferential doxastic practice. Such a non-inferential practice can take input from emotions, feelings, desires, and inclinations, among other things. Even so, we now face a pressing question: How does God figure in that kind of doxastic practice? Adams suggests that we need to test for a causal or an explanatory connection between the processes of a doxastic practice and the truth of the beliefs formed in it. He remarks: “My theistic
Robert M. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, ), p. (hereafter FIG). FIG, p. . FIG, p. . FIG, p. .
theory can pass the test, by invoking God’s causality to explain the connection between those evaluative doxastic practices it endorses and the facts of Godlikeness and divine commands in terms of which it understands the nature of value and obligation.” On this basis, he claims that the most important values and obligations recognized in his theory are revealed by God. The relevant causal connection, he proposes, can be a divine act of showing or disclosing a value or an obligation, without the divine use of such a speech act as commanding or inviting. According to Adams, theological ethics “must reason primarily from ‘ought’ to ‘is’, from moral conviction and vision to what we should believe about God’s purposes.” He has in mind what we should believe about God’s actual purposes, and not just hypothetical purposes concerning what God would intend if God existed. Contrary to Adams’s assumption, however, the alleged “moral conviction and vision” about divine purposes could be false, and they thus call for supporting evidence for their correctness. Suppose that there is no such evidence for them in human experience or elsewhere, even if a corresponding (and longstanding) theistic doxastic practice, including “moral conviction and vision,” is in place. In that case, the Platonic theism of Adams would leave us with an implausible kind of fideism (and a lack of identified needed evidence) regarding God’s existence and goodness. It would affirm God’s existence and goodness, even in a theistic doxastic practice, but it would fail to have the needed evidence for them. We have noted two important factors in the evidence arising from divine self-manifestation to humans: directly experienced “fruit of the Spirit” of God and experienced directedness toward divine righteousness in character formation. The missing piece in
FIG, p. . FIG, p. . FIG, p. .
the Platonic theism of Adams is a foundational role for the selfmanifestation of God’s moral character and its fruit directed toward righteousness in human experience. In the absence of such a selfmanifestation, the theism of Adams may have “moral conviction and vision” but it lacks needed evidence for their correctness, owing to a shortage of evidence for the reality of a divine intentional (and personal) agent. Even if it uses “the facts of Godlikeness and divine commands” to explain “value and obligation,” this option falls short of directly experiencing the divine moral character in terms of its fruit and directedness. Without this experiencing, people will lack foundational evidence for the intentionality and thus the personhood of God. We could have a coherent “understanding” or “explanation” of our moral beliefs, including about God and stemming from a “doxastic practice,” but not have suitable grounding evidence from our experience. Adams opens his position to this problem when he says: “Theological ethics . . . must be willing to take evaluative beliefs as starting points and not just as conclusions in its reasoning.” From a tenable epistemic point of view, however, the needed starting point is not such mere evaluative beliefs but the underlying evidence that can support such beliefs regarding their evident truth. Moral experience, rather than mere moral beliefs, serves this epistemic need in some cases, where people have the relevant experience. We have illustrated this fact with regard to the view of the Apostle Paul. What Adams calls “prevailing evaluative beliefs and evaluative doxastic practices” can fall short, regarding both truth and evidence. So, it is misleading to claim that “there must in general be something right about these beliefs and practices, if there is any nature of goodness or obligation at all” (note well the use of
FIG, p. . FIG, p. .
“must”). Although being real, actual goodness could be missed by our “prevailing evaluative beliefs and practices.” Adams comments: I think that we cannot always or even usually be totally mistaken about goodness. For the role that our use of evaluative language assigns to goodness is partly determined by the things we regard as good. It must be, to some significant extent, a property that we do see in those things.
This line of reply rests on a dubious approach to semantic meaning that gives excessive ontological importance to ordinary linguistic use. We could think that we see goodness in things deemed good in our prevailing linguistic and doxastic practices but actually be mistaken. That is, the reality of goodness may not conform to those practices. It does not take much imagination to conceive of this prospect. Goodness has an ontological independence that frees it from being beholden to our prevailing linguistic and doxastic practices. The latter practices, as our moral history shows, can go wrong as a result of human biases, prejudices, carelessness, or ignorance, among other things. So, the ordinary language approach suggested by Adams fails to convince. God, in any case, would not be bound to reveal goodness in accordance with our prevailing or ordinary linguistic practices. A common problem for a Platonic philosophical overlay on Christian faith is its neglect of discernible divine–human interaction in human moral experience. This is not a logical or conceptual problem, but Platonism tends to put a damper on the interactive moral character of God, given its emphasis on changeless Forms. It thereby tends to depersonalize key evidence for the reality and goodness of a God who self-manifests directly in changing human moral experience. This depersonalization results
FIG, p. . FIG, p. .
from its neglect of direct intentional activity of God in human moral experience. A Platonic philosophical overlay thus typically neglects the kind of interactive intentional evidence from God we have identified in Paul’s epistemology. It is not, however, the only prominent philosophical overlay that faces a problem here.
Thomist Philosophical Overlay Under the influence of Aristotle and Neoplatonism (and thereby Plato), Thomas Aquinas placed some noteworthy strictures on human knowledge and evidence of God’s reality and goodness. In doing so, he formulated a philosophical overlay for Christian faith in God. He thereby disregarded the kind of interactive evidence captured by Paul on the role of divine self-manifestation in foundational evidence for God’s reality and goodness. In his work on the power of God, De Potentia Dei, Thomas remarks: We cannot know God except from his likeness in creatures: thus the Apostle says (Rom :) that the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made. Now we name him according as we know him. Therefore we do not name him except from his likeness in creatures. But when we name a thing from its likeness to another, such a name is predicated of it not essentially but metaphorically: inasmuch, as it is said secondly of God and first of the thing whence the simile is taken: whereas that which signifies the essence of a thing is said of that thing first.
Thomas Aquinas thus denies, by implication, direct divine selfmanifestation to humans by limiting evidence for divine reality to
Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia Dei (On the Power of God), trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, ), q., a., ad .
indirect divine “likeness in creatures.” A resulting belief about God, he holds, does not represent God “essentially but metaphorically.” This is a kind of skepticism about human knowledge of God’s essential character, and it is not shared by Paul. (In addition, Paul does not limit divine evidence to indirect divine “likeness in creatures.”) We should ask where Thomas finds an adequate ground to deny human knowledge of God’s essential character. In particular, we should ask for evidence indicating that none of our moral experiences represent God’s essential character. Thomas does not offer such evidence, and I doubt that he could have, given our available evidence. Instead, Thomas has a philosophical overlay settle this for him, given his interpretations of Augustine and Dionysius. This raises a problem from the standpoints of both needed supporting evidence and Paul’s approach to interactive divine selfmanifestation. If God chooses to self-manifest in the direct way indicated by Paul, a Thomist overlay will be misleading at best. It is, in any case, ill-advised for an epistemology to bar the divine option in question, particularly in the absence of compelling reasons. Thomas invokes Augustine and Dionysius in affirming his skepticism about God’s essential character: Augustine says that God eludes every conception of our intelligence, so that it cannot grasp him. But this would not be so if these terms signified the divine essence, since God would correspond to a conception of our intellect. Therefore they do not signify the divine essence . . . Dionysius says (Myst. Theol. i) that man is best united to God by realising that in knowing God he knows nothing about him. But this would not be so if these ideas and expressions of man’s reflected God’s very essence. Therefore the same conclusion follows as before.
Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia Dei, q., a., ad –.
Thomas, as suggested, assumes that humans now know God only in terms of God’s indirect effects on creatures, and he takes this position to entail that we do not know God’s essential character. Thomas affirms the following about human demonstration of God’s existence: “The existence of God, in so far as it is not selfevident to us, can be demonstrated from those of his effects which are known to us . . . We can demonstrate the existence of God from his effects; though from them we cannot perfectly know God as he is in his essence.” As a result, Thomas rejects any direct selfmanifestation from God to humans that reveals God’s essential moral character. He remains a skeptic about God’s inherent moral character, given his extreme epistemic assumptions about human knowledge of God’s essential nature. This may not be news for many Thomists, but it nonetheless complicates the epistemology of Thomas. A serious problem arises for Thomas if, as he assumes, we have no knowledge of God’s essential moral character. We then will lack a basis to know that the relevant indirect effects alleged to be from God (and to support a demonstration of God’s existence) in fact come from (a righteous) God, rather than, say, from some metaphorical analogue to God defective in righteousness. God as a bare that (without a determinate moral character), coupled with negative knowledge of what God is not, will not yield knowledge of divine righteousness or of a righteous God, even if it includes a potential role for metaphors or similes in human talk regarding “God.” So, the Thomist overlay does not support evidence for the kind of interactive God of righteousness acknowledged by Paul. The current problem for the Thomist overlay arises from the kind of deficit seen in the previous Platonic overlay. It neglects evidence in moral experience arising from direct divine selfmanifestation to humans: both directly experienced fruit of the Spirit of God and experienced directedness toward divine
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Blackfriars ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, ), Ia., q., a..
righteousness in character formation. The missing piece in the Thomist overlay, as in the Platonic theism of Adams, is a foundational role for the direct self-manifestation of God’s moral character and its fruit directed toward righteousness in human experience. In limiting divine evidence to indirect effects of God, the Thomist overlay minimizes directly experiencing God’s intentional personal character and thereby depersonalizes the relevant evidence. Omitting direct intentionality from God in human experience omits inherently personal evidence from God in such experience. The latter deficiency is common for philosophical overlays on Christian faith, and it stands in sharp contrast to Paul’s approach to evidence from interactive divine self-manifestation in human moral experience.
Kantian Philosophical Overlay Immanuel Kant supplied an overlay for faith in God when he gave law-centered morality a central role in religious commitment and its justification. He remarks: The service of God consists simply and solely in following his will and observing his holy laws and commands. Thus, morality and religion stand in the closest connection with one another. They are distinguished from one another only by the fact that in the former moral duties are carried out from the principle belonging to every rational being, which is to act as a member of a universal system of ends; whereas in the latter these duties are regarded as commandments of a supremely holy will, because fundamentally the laws of morality are the only ones which agree with the idea of a highest perfection.
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Philosophical Theology, trans. A. W. Wood and G. M. Clark (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, []), p. (hereafter LPT).
Kant’s “idea of a highest perfection” is his notion of God as the supreme being with a morally perfect character. So, his talk of a “supremely holy will” is talk of God’s perfect moral will. Morality, according to Kant, is a “universal system of ends” that bears on all rational agents with regard to their ultimate (moral) ends. So, morality, in his view, cannot be just a means to some independent, nonmoral ends. Kant represents God as seeking to make people worthy of having happiness from God, and God uses morality to that end. Kant comments: God is the only ruler of the world. He governs as a monarch, but not as a despot; for he wills to have his commands observed out of love, and not out of servile fear. Like a father, he orders what is good for us, and does not command out of mere arbitrariness, like a tyrant. God even demands of us that we reflect on the reason for his commandments, and he insists on our observing them because he wants first to make us worthy of happiness and then make us participate in it. God’s will is benevolence, and his purpose is what is best. If God commands something for which we cannot see the reason, then this is because of the limitations of our knowledge, and not because of the nature of the commandment itself . . . He may often use wholly incomprehensible means to carry out his benevolent aims.
God has a purpose, then, in giving moral commands to us, even if we lack a full understanding of this purpose. The purpose includes our reflecting on moral commands and obeying them, thus making us worthy of our happiness. Kant remarks: “[God’s] governing presupposes purposes, and God’s government presupposes the wisest and best.” “The best” would be God’s intention, even if it
LPT, p. . LPT, pp. –.
is frustrated in reality by humans exercising their free will in opposing ways. Kant holds that morality depends on God for its completeness, and God “completes” it by working for its “conviction, import, and emphasis” in human lives. In doing so, God aims to improve people morally in a way that makes them worthy of their happiness from God. This happiness conforms to God’s moral commands, thus amounting to morally righteous happiness. Kant explains: God’s governance of the world in accordance with moral principles is an assumption without which all morality would have to break down. For if morality cannot provide me with the prospect of satisfying my needs, then it cannot command anything of me either . . . How can I know by reason and speculation what God’s will is, and what it consists in? Without morality to help me here, I would be on a slippery path, surrounded by mountains which afford me no prospect . . . The knowledge of God, therefore, must complete morality . . . In order to provide my heart with conviction, import, and emphasis, I have need of a God who will make me participate in happiness in accordance with these eternal and unchangeable laws, if I am worthy of it.
God thus rounds out morality in practice, according to Kant, by giving it motivating power in human lives. Morality gains practical conviction from God in receptive humans, courtesy of God’s role as the empowering benefactor for those committed to a moral life. The practical benefit from God, including righteous happiness from God, comes only with God’s motivating (that is, “making us participate in”) human conformity to divine “eternal and unchangeable laws” of morality. Kant portrays morality as essential in practice to theistic religion, given the central role of God’s morally perfect character and will in
LPT, p. .
properly motivated theistic religion. He does not claim, however, that we have a cogent theoretical argument for God’s existence on the basis of morality. God’s existence is not transparent in morality in a way required by such an argument. Instead, God’s existence figures in the motivating component of morality when, and only when, we properly seek righteous happiness suited to God’s character and will. Humans, however, need not seek such happiness, and thus they could be without a practical reason to acknowledge God as a real motivating benefactor. Whether a rational human can be without a practical, morally relevant reason to acknowledge God’s reality depends on what rationality includes. If it does not require morality leading to lasting righteous happiness, we do not have a clear basis to include all rational humans as having the reason in question. In that case, morality (leading to lasting righteous happiness) and rationality could diverge in a person, and a rational person thus could be without a practical reason to acknowledge God’s reality. In addition, if morality can exist without our seeking lasting righteous happiness, it does not require our acknowledgment of God’s reality. In that case, morality will not demand theistic religion of all humans. Kant’s role for God in morality and theistic religion falls short of the account of divine self-manifestation found in Paul. Kant, as noted, has a central role for divine commands, including “eternal and unchangeable laws,” in moral motivation. This role, however, omits the key consideration also omitted by the Platonic and Thomist overlays: an evidentially foundational role for the selfmanifestation of God’s intentional moral character and its moral fruit directed toward righteousness in human experience. Without such a self-manifestation of morally qualitative directedness, the theism of Kant may have presumed divine eternal laws in some moral motivation, but it lacks needed evidence for their authenticity – that is, for their coming from God. It omits, in particular, the kind of evidence needed for a purposive, intentional God seeking to share and promote divine righteousness among humans. This
entails an evidential deficiency relative to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Paul. John Baillie has noted a related shortcoming in Kant’s moral perspective on God: [Kant] taught that [moral] guidance is originally revealed to us in the form of a self-evidencing law – a mere obligation detached, as it were, from him [God] who lays the obligation upon us; and that the knowledge of him who thus obliges us is afterwards reached as an inference from the felt nature of the obligation. We, on the other hand, have argued that the Source of the obligation is himself directly revealed to us and that it is in this vision of his glory and his holiness that our sense of obligation is born. It is his perfection that rebukes us; it is his love that constrains us. Hence it is no mere law that is revealed to us, but a living Person.
Baillie thus holds that the evidence for God in moral experience is more direct than Kant held. As Baillie notes: “It is not merely that through our values we reach God or that from them we infer him, but that in them we find him.” The directness of divine evidence acknowledged by Baillie fits better than Kant’s position with the epistemological perspective of Paul. It preserves the intentional personal character of such evidence that is put at risk by the Kantian, Thomist, and Platonic philosophical overlays noted above. Those overlays omit a central feature of Paul’s distinctive perspective on God in moral experience. Divine Evidence Personalized A common human tendency gives inadequate attention to the direct intentionality of God in human moral experience. Such
John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (London: Oxford University Press, ), p. . John Baillie, The Interpretation of Religion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, ), pp. –.
intentionality is often inconvenient for us, owing to its morally challenging character. It seems more convenient for us to focus on “evidence” that does not have such direct intentionality. As a result, we easily neglect divine power in our experience, which includes direct intentionality of God’s moral challenges for us. The intended interactive character of such power thus typically falls by the wayside as we direct our epistemological attention elsewhere. In that case, evidence for God becomes depersonalized as its directly intentional, and thus directly personal, character is diminished or ignored. The directly intentional, however, is the best indicator of the directly personal in human experience; so, neglect of it compromises the irreducibly personal character of direct divine evidence in experience. Divine interactive power plays a central role in the building of human moral trust in God (including trust in God’s moral goodness) and thereby in reconciliation to God. It does so in concert with intentional divine moral challenges in human experience, extended by God to prompt and to advance human trust in divine righteousness. The book of Job provides a classic example, as God seeks to elicit Job’s loyalty in the presence of severe suffering. It does not follow, however, that anything like a full explanatory theodicy is available. On the contrary, our obvious cognitive limitations regarding divine purposes should caution us about expecting such a theodicy now. Instead, we can look for some moral benefits in intentional divine challenges for us, including in many cases of suffering. Paul, we have noted, points us in the right direction with his focus on character formation resulting from direct divine selfmanifestation in righteous love (Rom :–). Paul has in mind righteous character anchored in the direct intentional evidence
For discussion of the relevance of theodicy in this connection, see Chapter ; Paul K. Moser, Divine Guidance: Moral Attraction in Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
from divine agapē in human experience that underwrites hope as well as faith in God. Such evidence is widely available to humans who are willing to self-conform to it, in the fruit of the Spirit, despite the reality of severe suffering and evil in our world. Philosophical overlays tend to obscure or to neglect this crucial epistemological lesson regarding divine self-manifestation. They thus call for due caution in how they are handled. We now turn to what Paul would call a better way.
Moral Experience and Co-valuing in Conflict
Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Matthew :
We have been considering the view that God self-discloses to humans in moral values in their moral experience, including in conscience. These values, we have suggested, are intentional in that God intends them to attract people to a cooperative righteous relationship with God. The desired human cooperation includes God’s aim, from a moral point of view, for people to value as God values, to co-value with God, toward righteousness in human lives. Such co-valuing includes human valuing in accordance with the aforementioned fruit of the Spirit. It thus calls for human co-valuing with divine love as compassionate caring for the good of people, including goodwill toward one’s enemies. This chapter examines the role of such co-valuing in a context of moral conflict, where the divine aim is to form human moral character for the sake of a righteous society. The relevant love is thus righteous love guided by divine moral goodness, despite a context of ongoing moral conflict. The chapter clarifies the relevant kind of divine conflict in terms of moral life “with God” against moral failure and death. It shows, on this basis, what humans should expect of God regarding morally significant relations in “being with” humans. The chapter avoids two extremes regarding the divine accompaniment of humans: one as constant presence to awareness, and the other as merely causal without salient experienced content.
An important result is attention to experienced evidence for our assessment of the reality and the moral character of God. Such evidence can move inquirers beyond some stalemates in longstanding controversy about God’s reality and goodness. It also can highlight a unique value of God for humans: namely, being a trustworthy accompanier bringing lasting moral goodness in life over moral failure and death. The divine conflict reveals God’s righteous character and aims for an interpersonal divine–human resolution in moral social life that is inherently cooperative rather than competitively exclusive. The chapter identifies how this conflict includes a quest for God’s accompanying, or being together with, humans in righteous relationships and thus is irreducibly interpersonal and interactive, and not merely moralistic. Genesis Revisited The scriptural tradition for Jews and Christians begins by stating an origin, “In the beginning,” that is described as “good” by God. On the heels of that statement, the tradition identifies human resistance, or at least neglect, toward intended divine goodness. The human shortcoming includes disobeying God and choosing to go against God’s expressed will, even when good human life is at stake. The resulting problem includes competing wills, divine and human, with contrary results at times: moral life versus moral death. The chapter explains how God seeks something good for humans in a context of ongoing divine–human conflict of a morally relevant interpersonal sort. Understanding that moral conflict, we shall see, is central to understanding God’s being “with us” and corresponding evidence for God’s reality and goodness. Having made humans in the divine image (Gen :–), God, we have noted, puts them in a context of moral expectation and challenge: The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You
- may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen :–)
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is thus a potential danger for humans. If they approach it in a certain way, by eating of it, they will die. We need to clarify what lies behind this morally relevant challenge that amounts to life or death. Since the disobedient humans did not have an immediate physical or bodily death, we should consider a different kind of death for them: moral death as lack of moral sustenance and approval by God. Human disobedience toward God emerges in Genesis and persists in various forms throughout the Jewish and Christian scriptures. As Chapter noted, it begins as follows, with prompting from a mysterious outside power, “the serpent”: The serpent said to the woman, “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise [ ;ְלַה ְ ׂשִּ֔כילlə-haś-kîl], she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. (Gen :–)
It is noteworthy, if often overlooked, that the initial motivation for disobedience included desiring something “to make one wise.” The disobedience toward God, as Chapter suggested, thus seemed good from the perspective of a human quest for becoming “wise.” It is also noteworthy that its motivation included distrust toward God, on the assumption that God was grudgingly withholding something good from humans: namely, “knowing good and evil.” This distrust prompted fatal disobedience. It also invites the question of whether we have an available ground for deeming God trustworthy.
The wisdom in question is morally significant, given its dependence on the fruit of the tree of knowing good and evil. We thus may think of it as moral wisdom entailing knowledge of how to live a morally good life approved by God, the good source of human life. It matters, however, from God’s perspective how a person attains knowledge of good and evil in relation to God. So, God protects the means of access to the tree of good and evil from human abuse (Gen :). The issue, from God’s standpoint, is whether humans give God a due role in the sustenance of a morally good human life. They fail on this front if they grasp at the gift of knowledge without honoring its divine gift-giver – that is, if they seek the valued product without due attention to its divine producer. This includes clamoring for good life without fitting regard for its divine source. Humans are not self-sustaining in having a good life, and a good God would seek to disabuse them of any contrary assumption. Divine–human conflict of a moral sort can result from that divine corrective effort. We have a formative moral conflict, at the start of Genesis, between obeying God and a familiar human approach to “making oneself wise.” The latter approach treats God as at best optional in the human quest for wisdom in life. The immediate question becomes: Who is in a good position to set the standard for becoming wise: God or humans? Specifically, who is in a better position to advise on wisdom for a human life: God or humans? We know the answer of the initial humans, represented by Adam and Eve, and we also know the conflicting answer from God, represented by God in Genesis and later by Jesus. We need to clarify these conflicting answers as a means to illuminating God’s distinctive moral character and purpose and an inferior human moral character.
Conflict in Moral Life and Wisdom Whatever we think about wisdom, it is not just knowledge. We could have extensive knowledge but very little wisdom, because
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our knowledge could fail to give us sound ranked priorities for a morally good life. Our knowledge, for instance, could be coupled with our having bad moral priorities or even moral indifference about human life and related matters. In that case, even given extensive knowledge, we would not be morally wise, given a serious defect in moral priorities and motivation. Extensive knowledge, even of moral information, lacks the resources to correct this problem. Properly ranked and motivated moral priorities are integral to moral wisdom because such priorities are central to living a morally good human life. A pressing issue concerns how moral priorities are to be ranked in a good human life. What are the top priorities and what are the lower priorities? Should we put our own pleasure at the top, with other priorities as lower means to that end? When, if ever, is our own pleasure to be subjected to a higher priority? And what is that higher priority, if it exists? In the absence of definite answers, our moral wisdom is at a disadvantage, because it lacks the kind of moral guidance we need for a morally good life. Genesis :, as noted, indicates that the tree was “a delight to the eye,” and that this figured in the decision of Adam and Eve to disobey God. Such pleasure can become a ranked priority in a way that prompts opposition, or at least neglect, toward God and divine goodness. The book of Jeremiah sets a theocentric normative standard for human wisdom, delight, and boasting: Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom; do not let the mighty boast in their might; do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord. (Jer :–)
The suggested standard is clear: Human wisdom, delight, and boasting are to honor, conform to, and depend on available divine
wisdom, delight, and boasting. Specifically, they are to rely on knowing God, the source of suitable wisdom, delight, and boasting. The human disobedience of Genesis runs afoul of this normative consideration stemming from divine righteousness as perfect moral goodness in relationships. The Apostle Paul places suitable human wisdom, delight, and boasting in the theocentric context suggested by Jeremiah. He identifies a human tendency to go against this context, with human suppression or disregard of the truth about God’s central status (Rom :), as follows: “Though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools . . . They did not see fit to acknowledge God” (Rom :–, ). The human claim or desire to be “wise” thus can go astray, leading to “darkened” understanding, despite its seeming to be good and attractive. Perhaps Paul had in mind Eve’s reliance for self-justification on what she thought would make her “wise.” Paul thinks of human wisdom apart from reliance on God as dangerous for humans. Citing the book of Isaiah, he represents God as saying: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart” (Isa :). He adds: “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? . . . In the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through [its] wisdom” ( Cor :–). The “wisdom of God,” then, does not fit with, and seeks to destroy, “the wisdom of the world.” We need to identify where the conflict lies between divine wisdom and merely human wisdom. Paul takes needed wisdom and corresponding good lives for humans to be divine gifts, and not human self-provisions. God, in his perspective, is a gift-giver who offers to meet vital needs for humans, particularly good life and its righteousness in relation to God and others ( Cor :). Paul thus remarks that “the Spirit [of
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God] gives life” ( Cor :; cf. Rom :), and he adds that “God . . . gives life to the dead” (Rom :). Courtesy of God’s power, according to Paul, Jesus “became a life-giving spirit” through the resurrection ( Cor :). Paul thus sums up his message in terms of God’s gift of life through Christ: “the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom :). Paul has in mind righteous eternal life. Indeed, as noted, Paul remarks that “the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom :). The righteousness from this Spirit for humans is a gift from God, credited to humans through faith in God (Rom :–). Paul thus refers to “the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness [that will] reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Rom :; cf. Rom :). At the center of this gift is the offer of God’s Spirit, whom he calls “the Spirit of Christ,” to responsive humans, to be with them in a relationship of cooperative fellowship (Gal :–; Rom :–; Cor :). Paul’s understanding of God’s role for Christ extends to life, righteousness, and wisdom for humans. He thus speaks of “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,” adding that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom” ( Cor :–). Returning to a theme above from Jeremiah , Paul gives a central role to “Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord’” ( Cor :–). Paul does not elaborate on the ways in which Jesus is “for us wisdom from God,” but he does refer to “our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand” (Rom :–). Perhaps Jesus is also a means of access to divine wisdom for humans, in contrast with the failed role of Adam in his disobeying God. In any case, if divine wisdom and righteousness are personified in Christ, as Paul suggests, they are inherently interpersonal and not to be depersonalized as matters of mere rules or principles. The same holds for moral values, given righteousness as an exemplary moral value.
Adam, according to Paul, is a “pattern” or “type” foreshadowing Christ by way of contrast in relating to God (Rom :). Paul adds that “just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Rom :). The exact conditions for the many being “made sinners” and the many being “made righteous” are complex and need not detain us now. We are attending instead to what was lacking from the kind of wisdom sought in Eve’s initial disobedience toward God. Paul suggests that a failure to honor God in a vital role toward humans is at work in their disobedience. In Paul’s language, that is the role of divine “grace” (charis) toward humans, the offering of unearned gifts of righteousness, wisdom, and good life, in filial relationship with God. Such grace, working through divine righteousness (Rom :), challenges human self-credit and selfboasting for the gifts in question, given a human failure to honor God’s key role in such vital gifts. Human self-credit undermines the distinctive role of divine grace in salvation. Divine–human conflicts over divine grace bear on wisdom, righteousness, and good life for humans. They lead to ongoing divine– human conflicts in those areas and in related areas. Unlike Adam, according to Paul, Jesus did not presume self-sufficiency apart from God but yielded to God in obedience, to the extent of dying for God as a result. In addition, Paul took this obedience to be a model for humans in relating to God: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human,
- he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. (Phil :–)
Paul’s point is that Jesus became obedient to God, thus giving God a central role of authority in his human life, in a manner that contrasts sharply with Adam and Eve. Jesus, then, corrects Adam in relating to God. Paul’s understanding of the needed obedience to God is inherently interpersonal, because it requires presenting oneself to God, not just to an impersonal rule or principle. He comments: “No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Rom :–). Paul has in mind “obedience which leads to righteousness” (Rom :), which is the “obedience of faith” (Rom :, :), and he thinks of such obedience to God as a fitting response to God’s grace in righteousness offered. This grace comes with an important but widely neglected divine intention: It is intended to be received in an ongoing relationship where humans respond cooperatively to divine righteousness. In that relationship, divine righteousness can come to its intended fruition in human lives. The salient moral power of God thereby can be experienced and recognized by humans, including as evidence for God’s reality and goodness. Paul thinks of the expected obedience and presenting to God as akin to – and reciprocal to – the self-giving of Jesus to God in Gethsemane and on Calvary. He writes to the Roman Christians: “I appeal to you . . . on the basis of God’s mercy to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your
reasonable act of worship” (Rom :). This fits with Paul’s understanding in Philippians of the obedience of Jesus in dying for God as a model for his followers. It also fits with Paul’s understanding of a human need to use the power of God’s Spirit to put to death their own evil deeds (Rom :), given that what the Spirit of God desires opposes the ways of human unrighteousness (Gal :). The human will in opposition to God, according to Paul, must undergo a death for God akin to the commitment of Jesus to God in Gethsemane and on Calvary. This commitment includes dying to one’s own will, with regard to its anti-God aims, for the purpose of living to God, as a living sacrifice to God. Paul writes: “We who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh” ( Cor :). He adds: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day” ( Cor :). Paul’s exemplar for humans is Christ, in relation not only to our experienced mortality but also to the direction of our will and life: We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin . . . The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom :, –)
We have here a divine–human conflict between moral life and moral death. This is a conflict between life in cooperation with God in righteousness and human moral death from disobedience to God. Jesus showed the way, through self-giving obedience, to opt for God’s moral life over moral death. He thereby represented in action
On the role for reciprocity in human response to God’s self-giving, see Paul K. Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
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God’s conflict against the disobedience in unrighteousness, exemplified in Adam and Eve, that leads to moral death for humans (Rom :). The conflict includes a human problem with trust in God. Even so, the conflict is redeemable and is intended for redemption in righteousness.
Trust in Divine Accompaniment Eve, as suggested, evidently had a problem in trusting God for wisdom and therefore decided to disobey God in an effort to gain wisdom. Her disobedience prompts a vital question: Why should humans trust God – if, indeed, they should – to supply what they need for a good life? Clearly, they should not trust God to give them everything they desire, because they often desire things that are unrighteous and thus unworthy of God. If God is trustworthy, then, God is trustworthy only for things worthy of God as perfectly righteous. (We are using the perfectionist title “God” to require worthiness of worship and hence perfect righteousness of any titleholder.) Courtesy of an unmatched divine perspective, God would have a decisive and fitting role in ranking the divine delivery of righteous gifts to humans. As a result, God would give the gifts in the priority ranking favored by God, in keeping with God’s perfectly righteous character and will. In addition, God would set the timing for the delivery of the ranked gifts to humans, with consideration of whether humans were ready to receive them with benefit. It would be implausible to suggest that humans should have priority over God in such rankings. A recurring theme of various biblical writers is that God does not place at the top of the list of gifts for humans a full explanation of the divine purposes in allowing human disobedience and suffering. The book of Job is the classic statement of this theme, a theme that Jesus echoed (Luke :–). From God’s perspective, there is a gift
more important than humans’ having such an explanation now; it is divine–human reconciliation in righteousness. That interpersonal gift can be had now without the full explanation in question. So, even if we cannot adequately explain God’s allowing the initial human disobedience, we should consider a more important gift available to humans. The top gift in question, according to various biblical writers, can be characterized as God’s being with, or accompanying, his people as their faithful companion to guide and save them in a righteous relationship. The OED offers the following lead definition of “to accompany”: “To go with (a person) as a companion.” This fits with some prominent biblical ideas of divine accompanying and leading, and it gives helpful content to our use of the nouns “divine accompaniment” and “divine accompanier.” God accompanies as one from whom a cooperative human receives divine guiding power of righteousness for a living relationship approved by God, despite a larger context of suffering and evil. We shall see that the relevant power and companionship exclude partnership in crime or other evil, owing to their intentional focus on cooperation in divine righteousness. The book of Second Isaiah portrays God as saying to the people of God: “I am the Lord; I have called you in righteousness; I have taken you by the hand and kept you” (Isa :; cf. Hosea :–, –). In addition: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you . . . Do not fear, for I am with you” (Isa :, ). Perhaps the most influential statement of our theme is the response to God by the author of Psalm , after claiming that God “leads him in paths of righteousness”: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me” (Psalm :,
On the biblical idea of God as righteous companion, see Paul K. Moser, The Divine Goodness of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
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RSV). Divine righteousness and divine accompaniment thus go together, inextricably, in various biblical passages. The key theme is expressed in terms not only of God’s accompaniment but also of a psalmist’s being with God: “I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor” (Psalm :–). Similarly, both God’s closeness and human closeness get attention at the same time, with priority for divine nearness: “I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved” (Psalm :). Finally: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness” (Psalm :). We find no claim to a full explanation of God’s purposes. Instead, we hear of an experience of being with God in closeness, and its center includes the sharing of divine righteousness in cooperative relationship. The human experience of God’s “being with” people can be helpfully understood as God’s interactively being with humans for the sake of righteousness in divine–human relationships. It should not be understood, however, as God’s being constantly present to human awareness, because it is clear that God is not present in that way. According to Martin Buber, “YHWH is the One who is with [Israel], the One who remains present to them, thus the One who comes-along with them (Exod :, Num :, Deut :, ), the Leader, the melek.” Buber identifies a central role for the divine leading of humans by God as king, but this divine role is more complicated than he suggests. God’s “remaining present” to the people of Ancient Israel is not as continuous as Buber suggests. The recurring themes in the Jewish Bible of divine self-hiding and of the human need to seek God confirm the complexity of the matter.
Martin Buber, Kingship of God, rd ed., trans. Richard Scheimann (New York: Harper & Row, ), p. , emphasis added. Buber thus takes exception to the notion of God as “hidden”; see Martin Buber, Eclipse of God (New York: Harper & Row, ).
The theme of divine self-hiding from humans arises repeatedly in the Jewish Bible. For instance: “Truly, you are a God who hides himself, O God of Israel, the Savior” (Isa :). Similarly, the psalmist asks God: “Why do you hide your face? Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?” (Psalm :). The biblical theme of a human need to seek God fits with the theme of occasional divine self-hiding. Thus: “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord” (Jer :–). These remarks assume that God’s “being with” people does not entail constantly “remaining present” to their awareness. Indeed, they assume that God actively self-hides from people on occasion. A second extreme, noted in Chapter , understands divine accompaniment in terms of divine causal influence of an indirect (perhaps analogical) sort without any direct human experience of God’s moral character. According to Thomas Aquinas, as characterized previously, “we do not name [or know] God except from his likeness in creatures. But when we name a thing from its likeness to another, such a name is predicated of it not essentially but metaphorically.” Thomas thus denies, by implication, direct divine selfmanifestation to humans in experience, by limiting their experience and evidence of divine reality to indirect divine “likeness in creatures.” Any resulting belief about God, he holds, does not represent God “essentially but metaphorically.” We thus do not experience God’s essential moral character, even if God is “with us” in some analogical or metaphorical sense. This position, we have noted, involves a kind of skepticism about human experience and knowledge of God’s essential moral character.
For discussion, see Samuel Terrien, The Elusive Presence (New York: Harper & Row, ). Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia Dei (On the Power of God), trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, ), q., a., ad ; cf. q., a., ad –.
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The position of Thomas neglects the needed role of human experience of God’s moral character in God’s being with people as their guide for a righteous relationship. A key issue concerns how the relevant divine activity and interactivity occur in human experience. It would be unhelpful to postulate divine moral activity but not give any definite indication of God’s corresponding moral character in human experience. That would neglect needed evidence for the relevant moral activity in human lives as being divine (rather than a counterfeit). An undesirable kind of fideism then would threaten divine goodness, leaving any theological claims about divine accompaniment without adequate grounding, owing to an inadequate connection to God’s actual moral character. The indirectness of Thomas here is foreign to many biblical writers. The author of Psalm refers to God as “you who test the minds and hearts, O righteous God” (Psalm :). Psalm : adds to this portrait of God as probing for righteousness: “If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me.” Similarly, Psalm :– states: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.” The divine intervention and accompaniment, according to the author of Psalm , aim to save people in a foundation of divine righteousness: “In your righteousness deliver me and rescue me; incline your ear to me and save me. Be to me a rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress” (Psalm :–). The writer of Psalm continues: Your power and your righteousness, O God, reach the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you? You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again;
from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again. (Psalm :–)
Once again God’s righteousness is the powerful focus and foundation, and it endures alongside “troubles and calamities” without full explanation of them for humans. What matters mainly to the psalmist is God’s righteous loyalty, enduring in its restoring people to God. God accompanies his people in order to save them in righteous relationships, despite their various troubles and their deficits in explanation. This theme emerges sharply in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, when on Calvary Jesus receives no divine explanation of his felt abandonment but is nonetheless rescued in God’s good time, through resurrection. Jesus as God’s righteous child survives death, thanks to God’s being with him faithfully, even in the absence of a full divine explanation for him in response to his “Why?” question. Jesus shows trust in God by calling to “my God,” despite his lack of a full explanation for his fatal predicament.
Conflict in Conscience The divine–human conflict for moral life over moral death intrudes in the human “heart,” including conscience, according to Paul. He thus remarks of the Gentiles: “They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, as their own conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Rom :). Paul sees the Spirit of God at work in this moral conflict for life over death. He thus appeals to conscience to test for God’s work in his ministry: “We commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God” ( Cor :). He adds that his conscience confirms the truth of his message by the Spirit of God (Rom :). God’s Spirit thus works in human conscience, and
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hence in moral experience, to do the needed confirming of truth regarding God’s reality and goodness. Humans face moral conflict in conscience, but this is compatible with divine self-disclosure there. This disclosure is best characterized, as the psalmists and Paul suggest, in terms of uncoercive divine probing and nudging in human conscience for the sake of righteousness in moral character and relationships (see Chapter ). This divine activity exhibits goal-directedness over time and thus qualifies as intentional or purposive, rather than blind or mechanical. Paul, we have noted, describes it thus: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil :). So, there is a divine purpose or intention at work in some humans. This divine work does not coerce human wills, but it does conflict with them in various ways and, given human cooperation, it guides them for the sake of righteousness in relationships. Its uncoercive character, as noted, is confirmed by Paul’s suggestion that humans can “frustrate” the grace of God (Gal :; cf. Cor :). Paul, we have observed, calls for human discernment by God’s Spirit to recognize the gracious gifts, including moral gifts, of God for humans ( Cor :–). He takes God’s Spirit to be at work not only in challenging humans toward righteousness but also in instructing them of God’s gifts of righteousness and wisdom. Whether humans receive the gifts and the corresponding instruction depends on whether they are willing to cooperate with God’s will, after the model set by Jesus in Gethsemane. Humans thus are not pawns in a divine game of coercion. Instead, they are responsible agents before God, as the book of Genesis confirms after the initial disobedience (Gen :–). We easily miss the main divine–human conflict for moral life and its divine resolution if we focus on the desired gifts without the
For discussion, see Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics. Volume : Foundations, trans. W. H. Lazareth (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, ), pp. –.
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divine gift-giver. The main conflict concerns rightful interpersonal lordship (and thus relationship) in a clash of humans against divine supremacy. Adam and Eve represent the origin of the conflict in a quest for wisdom and life without recognizing divine lordship over their lives. They assume, at least in practice, that the desired goods could come to them without the lordship of God. Common religious talk of moral values and principles without recognition of God as needed sustaining moral agent follows the misleading tradition in question. Paul opposes such a fatal approach when he indicates that divine moral power is needed to empower humans against moral weakness (Rom :–). He also identifies a human need for God in preventing human moral efforts from collapsing into futility from final death ( Cor :, –). We have noted his emphasis on presenting oneself to God in obedience, thus maintaining an interpersonal priority. The divine gift-giver is needed as the Lord who is an intentional moral leader for humans in need of moral leading toward righteousness in relationship (Rom :). Without the honoring of that gift-giver, moral defeat and death ensue, as seen with Adam and Eve.
Accompaniment for Agapē Paul regards divine accompaniment with humans as a needed basis for their properly loving others and thus fulfilling the law of God. He refers to “the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God” ( Cor :–). This kind of consoling includes merciful, unselfish care as love toward others, and therefore it bears on the source of such love in humans. A later Pauline letter advises in a similar vein: “Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all,
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clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Col :–). The advised “bearing with one another” and forgiveness include unselfish care as love, and thus they are linked explicitly to the love that supports “perfect harmony” among people. According to Paul, God’s consoling and forgiving of us enable us to console and to forgive others in the manner provided by God. Such divine power shared with us gives us the power to share divine consolation and forgiveness with others, thereby supplying and representing God’s loving character through us. This theme coheres with the following thesis on divine love in John: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them . . . We love because he first loved us” ( John :, ). Divine accompaniment of humans, in the perspective under consideration, is the avenue for their receiving and sharing divine love. This accompaniment goes beyond general divine love for “the world” (John :), because it is love cooperatively received by some humans. Merely being loved by God does not empower a person to love as God loves, given that a person can oppose manifested and offered divine love. There is thus an important difference between being loved by God and being accompanied by God with human cooperation. Divine accompaniment of humans, we have suggested, relies on their agreeable response to divine righteous love. God’s power of love matters, in the perspectives of John and Paul, because it empowers human rejection of the selfish fear antithetical to such love. According to the writer of John: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us” ( John :–). Paul writes in a similar vein about fear and God: “You have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Rom :, NASB). He adds, in the same chapter, that “[nothing] in all creation will be able to separate
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us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom :). God is impervious to selfish human fear and thus can supply a genuinely other-regarding kind of love to humans for their sharing among all humans. God’s love includes enemy love because it counters selfish fear of enemies. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches: You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt :–, )
God’s kind of love, according to Jesus, includes enemy love, and it is to be manifested by the followers of Jesus. Such love is integral to God’s moral perfection, and that perfection is an ideal to be pursued by the people of God. The righteousness of the kingdom of God, in Jesus’s perspective, exemplifies and promotes the demanding love in question. We have suggested that God aims to build a righteous commonwealth of humans without coercion. The main motive, or moving power, of the righteous commonwealth is righteous love that bears on human attitudes as well as human behavior. This fits with what Jesus named as the primary love commandments from God: Jesus answered, “The first [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark :–)
Jesus thus portrayed God as concerned with the deepest motives of humans for their conduct. In addition, he represented God as
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demanding full cooperative commitment to God from humans, from all of their hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Half-hearted love toward God is thus inadequate, by the standard of Jesus and the Jewish Bible. Whole-hearted human love toward God, we have noted, is to be motivated by God’s love toward humans. The love from humans toward God is typically imperfect, but it can be empowered by divine love in human experience. That kind of empowerment, we have noted, is suggested by the author of John and by Paul. It figures in how the love commandments from Jesus are to be satisfied, even if they are satisfied imperfectly by typical humans. Those commandments thus can contribute to the formation of a society unified by righteous love. In doing so, they can advance a community reflective of God’s distinctive moral character, even if the reflection is dimmed by human imperfection. A main biblical storyline is that God aims to form a community of righteous love without coercion. Human shortcomings leave a mixed story in human history, but the story still has signs of righteous love beyond typical human resources. Genuine enemy love is a salient example of divine influence. That influence occurs in the midst of judgment and suffering.
Love’s Judgment Many biblical writers assume that God, although loving, has a right to judge oppositional people and does so with a distinctive goal, in keeping with the message of various Hebrew prophets. Paul remarks: “If our injustice serves to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world?” (Rom :–). It is a given for Paul that God is entitled to judge the unrighteous world and does so.
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Paul asks whether God’s use of power in relation to humans is just: “Is there injustice on God’s part?” (Rom :). Paul’s answer takes us to the book of Exodus: By no means! For [God] says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So it depends not on human will or exertion but on God who shows mercy. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, “I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I may show my power in you and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens the heart of whomever he chooses. (Rom :–; cf. Exod :, :)
We can understand Paul’s question about divine injustice in terms of divine arbitrariness. It amounts to this issue: Is God arbitrary from a moral point of view, including from the viewpoint of being loving and just toward humans? Paul rejects a charge of divine arbitrariness. He makes his point with regard to widespread Jewish rejection of his gospel message, while many Gentiles, in contrast, were receptive to his message. What then are we to say? Gentiles, who did not strive for righteousness, have attained it, that is, righteousness through faith, but Israel, who did strive for the law of righteousness, did not attain that law. Why not? Because they did not strive for it on the basis of faith but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, “See, I am laying in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will make them fall, and whoever trusts in him will not be put to shame.” (Rom :–; cf. Isa :)
Israel’s failure of faith, according to Paul, was a refusal to trust God for God’s redemptive power of righteousness shown in Christ, God’s stumbling block in Zion (Rom :–). Instead, Israel
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misused the law in a way that obstructed God’s salvific righteousness and its call for the priority of repentant faith in God and, subsequently, for the priority of divine redemption in Christ. Paul considers such misuse of the law to contradict what he calls “the obedience of faith” (Rom :, :). Paul makes his point about human opposition by invoking human unbelief as a source of being broken off from God’s salvation in righteousness. He writes regarding Gentile Christians in Rome, in contrast to Jews, the latter being the “natural branches” of God’s tree: You will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off on account of unbelief, but you stand on account of belief. So do not become arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity towards those who have fallen but God’s kindness towards you, if you continue in his kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. (Rom :–)
Paul thus finds no moral arbitrariness, or injustice, in God’s judgment on humans, whether Gentiles or Jews. All people risk being judged by God if they fail to “continue in his kindness” (note Paul’s conditional here). This is divine impartiality, and not arbitrariness, in judgment. It does not include God’s judging any people who do not deserve to be judged, as if God were arbitrary or unjust in judgment. This approach to judgment fits with the recurring biblical themes of a righteous God who judges humans for the sake of righteousness. Paul, as noted, invokes the following lesson from the book of Exodus regarding God’s standard: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (Exod :). This is a standard of divine righteousness in God’s showing mercy and compassion rather than severe judgment. Mercy and compassion come to those who, in keeping with God’s
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standard, will be cooperatively responsive to God’s righteousness, in repentance and the obedience of faith. There is nothing arbitrary or unjust about this standard or the resulting mercy and compassion. They stem from God’s moral character of righteousness that aims to expand needed salvific righteousness among “a numerous people.” The divine patience for this merciful aim emerges in Paul’s citation from the book of Isaiah: “Of Israel [God] says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people’” (Isa :; cf. Isa :; Rom :). Paul, then, agrees with various biblical writers that divine righteousness and judgment seek human salvation in righteous life with God. In keeping with this theme, Stephen H. Travis observes that “the whole point of the proclamation of God’s wrath in Romans – is to show the need – and therefore the possibility – of deliverance from it.” The needed deliverance, according to Paul, comes from God with divine righteous love. Paul comments to the Corinthian Christians: “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world” ( Cor :–). This remark confirms that God prefers not the condemnation of humans but their responding cooperatively in a way that avoids condemnation. As a result, we may think of the condemnation of humans as grounded in their self-condemnation relative to God’s standard of righteous love. God’s use of judgment to try to lead people to their salvation rather than condemnation rests on divine righteous love as the basis for that judgment. This righteous love, as characterized by Isaiah, Jesus,
See Edward P. Meadors, Idolatry and the Hardening of the Heart: A Study in Biblical Theology (London: T&T Clark, ), pp. –. Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgement of God, nd ed. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, ), p. . Travis clarifies the limited role of retributive language in Paul’s approach to divine judgment.
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and Paul, seeks human salvation while allowing for human rejection. It thus differs from what many call “love.” This consideration fits with the perfect goodness of God’s moral character. Paul advances a divine goal found in parts of the Jewish Bible: to build God’s universal kingdom as promised to Abraham, including Gentiles as well as Jews (Rom :–, :–). God is, in brief, set on “the reconciliation of the world” (Rom :), and Paul follows suit. Paul’s message of good news thus has a social direction for universal divine redemption in righteousness, beyond merely individual redemption. His gospel goes to “the Jew first,” but it also goes to the Gentile world (Rom :) and hence to the whole world. Paul does not use language translated as “God so loved the world” but he offers a closely related statement indicating divine love for the world: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us” ( Cor :). Divine love, in his perspective, thus has a universal scope, even if humans can frustrate God’s worldwide intention.
Triumph over Moral Defeat and Death Moral triumph with divine accompaniment over human disobedience toward God is not misplaced triumphalism. It stems from divine righteousness exemplified in God’s self-giving power of salvation. Paul gives a central role to such triumph in human moral life: Thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing: to the one group a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. ( Cor :–)
Paul thus thinks of moral triumph as a person’s being voluntarily led by God, as powerful accompanier, to moral life over moral death. He cites Christ as the model and leader for such moral victory, courtesy of God’s uncoercive power of righteous love. Moral triumph for humans requires their enduring in divine righteousness in the spirit of the crucified Christ in relation to God. The divine power for moral triumph thus encompasses a deep irony: It comes through the crucified Christ in his death shared by his followers as they respond to God’s moral challenges seeking their receiving divine righteousness. They share in Christ’s obedient death in order to participate in the divine triumph of his resurrection, even in this life. Paul thus speaks of Christ’s followers, as we have noted, as “those who have been brought from death to life, and [therefore] . . . as instruments of righteousness” (Rom :), with the aim that they “might walk in newness of life” (Rom :). Paul remarks that God vindicated and exalted Christ on the basis of his obedience to the point of death (Phil :–), and he, Paul, seeks to share in that triumph on the same cruciform basis (Phil :–). As suggested, the crucified Jesus, in the wake of Gethsemane, provides the exemplar of the crucified human will relative to God’s righteous will. Similarly, in the submission of his will to God, he exhibits the model of a crucified quest for wisdom relative to God’s supreme wisdom. His conformity to crucifixion, as Paul notes, is thus about his obedience to God, not about his physical suffering. Sharing in his crucifixion is, then, about yielding what humans desire and seek to God’s righteous will, even when the result seems dire. What of trust or faith in God in relation to the obedience demanded by God? If humans do not trust the divine righteousness on offer, they typically do not yield to it in obedience. At best, they then become stuck in the initial tentative response of Jesus in Gethsemane: Remove this cup from me. In effect, Eve stopped there in her quest for what appears to make for a life of wisdom contrary to God’s wisdom. In the absence of trusting divine righteousness to
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bring needed good, humans typically refrain from proceeding with Jesus to yielding as follows to God: “Yet not what I want but what you want.” Instead, they opt for: “what I want for the sake of what I deem to be good or wise.” God credits righteousness to humans through their faith in God, according to Paul (Rom :), and without their trust or faith in God they block divine moral power and approval received through such faith. In the absence of the trust needed, how are people to proceed? How can they create trust in divine righteousness? In the end, they cannot on their own. God has an acknowledged prior role here, alongside a definite role for human autonomy and responsibility. The parable of the sower suggests as much. In Luke’s version, God initiates the redemptive process by bringing a good word of challenge seeking righteousness for humans, and they respond variously, many uncooperatively. Some do respond cooperatively, however, and “when they hear the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart and bear fruit with endurance” (Luke :). Paul also assigns the initiative in righteousness to God, who shines to humans the light of divine goodness, including in the face of Christ, but he nonetheless maintains human autonomy and responsibility for a response: Humans are expected to “turn to” the Lord voluntarily in repentance ( Cor :, :), but their responses are mixed. Some trust God’s intervention for righteousness in relationships; others do not. The overall result, despite the best divine effort, is partly oppositional to God, after the pattern of the human opposition to Jesus in his crucifixion. The full submission of Jesus to God despite death, in contrast, is a triumph worthy of his resurrection and exaltation. It prompts opposition or at least indifference, however, from many people, just as the parable of the sower foreshadows. God has no decisive recipe for full human cooperation, so long as autonomous responsible agents are involved. Divine coercion would not serve, because responsible human motives matter in response to God, as Luke’s Gospel suggests by referring to a “good heart.” So, God faces
the uneven consequences of responsible human agency, given the reality of persons with their own wills. Some might “taste and see” that God is good, but others prefer to opt out, as the parable of the sower suggests. We now see that the divine–human conflict over righteousness is, at its heart, a struggle for the divine accompaniment of humans in righteous relationships, given their frequent resistance. The conflict, therefore, is not merely moralistic as a matter of mere obedience to moral rules or conformity to moral principles. The contrary view depersonalizes divine righteousness by omitting the central role of its intentional gift-giver and empowering sustainer. The needed empowering is often misunderstood in terms of the satisfaction of highly valued human desires, such as the desire for something to make us wise (see Eve). Instead, it is the power to die to our anti-God ways in order to live to and with God as God accompanies us through circumstances we sometimes do not fully understand. In some cases, God’s will resists easy discernment by us, but these cases do not exclude what we know to be required by righteousness. We therefore remain as moral works in progress. Progress toward righteousness, however, is a discernible reality of a good moral life, especially if God is with us as co-valuers with God in the ongoing conflict of moral life over moral death.
Moral Experience Justified by God
It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Romans :–
Human moral experience features bad as well as good. The bad is sometimes very bad, with no accompanying explanation of its aim. How, according to the best biblical theodicy, does God justify God’s allowing severe suffering and evil among humans? According to this chapter, the biblical God is Lord of the future as well as the present and uses the future to fulfill divine promises to humans. The future fulfillment, coupled with present divine proximity to humans, includes restoring and saving them in full righteousness, given their losses from extreme suffering and evil. The chapter favors a widely neglected biblical theodicy of restoration for humans in divine righteousness at God’s appointed time. Such righteousness aims to renew people for their lasting moral good in relationship with God and others. Benefiting from some Old Testament writers, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus, the proposed theodicy illuminates God’s intention in bringing about a world that undergoes severe suffering and evil. It fits with humans’ “knowing in part” and thus their being unable to justify God in relation to severe suffering and evil. It leaves room, however, for God justifying God in righteousness to be fulfilled, coupled with present divine proximity to humans in need.
In the Beginning God created everything else “in the beginning.” So suggests the opening chapter of the book of Genesis. In that perspective, God existed alone prior to creation and thus faced nothing that was notGod. It then was false that something existed that was not-God. Things changed, however, as a result of creation. Divine creation introduced something that was not-God. For instance, it introduced, according to the writer of Genesis, “darkness . . . upon the face of the deep” (Gen :). The writer does not say that God created the darkness (in contrast with the divine creation of light in Genesis :), but darkness appears to emerge with divine creation, if indirectly. The book of Genesis does not say how it emerges. Having not-God coexist with God, after creation, raises a potential conflict, and it becomes an actual conflict in the Genesis story. At least part of not-God runs afoul of God, and serious problems ensue. Human disobedience of a divine command prompts God’s curse in judgment on at least part of not-God (Gen :–). The damage has begun, with a moral clash between God and not-God. How, then, is God to mend this far-reaching clash? This question occupies the storyline of the book of Genesis, but there is a prior question: Why does God allow the moral clash and its destructive aftermath in the first place? And is allowing the clash a moral failure in God? According to the book of Genesis, as we noted, God needs to “guard the way to the tree of life” for humans (Gen :), in order to safeguard God’s way to divine approval. This need stems from God’s character of righteousness and it hints at the theodicy of righteous fulfillment to be developed, with God as guide, sustainer,
For discussion of the source and the role of the darkness in Genesis , see Claus Westermann, Genesis –, trans. J. J. Scullion (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, ), pp. –.
and guardian of righteous life for humans. The returning of humans to a righteous God requires satisfying a moral standard worthy of being guarded by God for its surpassing value for humans. Nothing seems to force God’s hand in allowing the divine clash from not-God. God does not seem to be at the mercy of a higher power in this regard. Why, then, does God allow for moral disaster from not-God? We gain little, if anything, by appealing to God’s giving free will to humans, as if the responsibility for the clash with God then would rest with humans. God still would be responsible for not deciding to create only those who freely choose righteously in a way that avoids a severe clash with God. Edgar Sheffield Brightman identifies the problem: “If God were omnipotent . . . he could have created a race of free beings who would always choose righteously . . . even though in theory they were free to sin.” Even if an omnipotent God has limited foreknowledge of free human decisions, that foreknowledge could have curbed, at least more significantly, the unjust consequences in question.
From Creation to Promise In the book of Genesis, God pronounces creation to be good in the beginning, but this is not the full story. The seeds of evil lie dormant in creation from an early time, ready to sprout into severe suffering and evil beyond easy explanation or justification. Is there, however, a divine justification for God’s creating that dangerous predicament and its destructive results? What is not-God seems to flout what is God in ways that question God’s vigilance as a uniformly good creator and landlord.
Edgar Sheffield Brightman, The Finding of God (New York: Abingdon Press, ), p. .
Let us suppose, if only for the sake of argument, that God’s nature, consciousness, and will are morally perfect. What, then, of the created order that brings severe evil into God’s creation? Is God responsible for this evil? God would not be responsible for performing the evil actions of humans, of course, but there still could be divine responsibility for evil arising at all among created beings. God, we may assume, proceeded with creation while knowing that the agents created would introduce evil in the created order. So, God as creator would be responsible, causally and morally, for the created situation where evil arose from created beings. The pressing question becomes whether – and, if so, how – God could morally justify creating such a situation. Would it have been more responsible for God not to have created at all, or at least to have created without the resulting severe suffering and evil? Some biblical writers answer in the negative, at least by implication, and their approach merits our attention. The book of Genesis indicates God’s overarching purpose in the face of severe suffering and evil, courtesy of a divine promise to Abram and thereby to all the families of the earth: Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Gen :–)
We cannot adequately understand or appreciate the biblical God without attention to this divine promise. The promise reveals in part God’s purpose in creating and in allowing severe suffering and evil in creation. A short characterization is suggested later in Genesis by Joseph regarding people who brought suffering and evil upon him: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous [ ;ָֽרבrāb]
people, as he is doing today” (Gen :). God aims to sustain in righteousness “a numerous people” in a setting of allowed severe suffering and evil, out of which God will bring “good,” including their being preserved or saved. This grand redemptive aim colors many of the biblical narratives, but it is not fully realized in history to date. It awaits fulfillment in the future, at God’s preferred time and by God’s standard of “a numerous people.” The initial promise does not reveal in detail God’s means of reaching the grand aim, but it gives a hint: Somehow in Abram God will bless all the families of the earth. We get an additional hint in the follow-up promise to Abram: After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great [ ;ַהְרֵּ֥בהharbêh]” . . . He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed [ ;ֶה ֱאִ֖מןhe’ĕmin] the Lord, and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness [ ;ְצָדָֽקהsəḏāqāh]. _ (Gen :, –)
Two factors are noteworthy. First, the best understanding of the blessing or reward for Abram includes God’s causative action of blessing into the future that is not exhausted in the present; hence, “your reward shall be very great.” Second, God’s goal of blessing includes a divine crediting of “righteousness” for Abram and his descendants: “the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” This blessing includes God’s gift of approval of Abram and his descendants, courtesy of divine crediting of righteousness through trust in God. These two factors lie at the center of the biblical theodicy to be developed. Gerhard von Rad has characterized the key role of the divine promise to Abram: Yahweh now intends to give what [humans] attempted to secure arbitrarily. The promise given to Abraham has significance,
however, beyond Abraham and his seed. God now brings salvation and judgment into history, and [humans’] judgment and salvation will be determined by the attitude they adopt toward this work which God intends to do in history . . . The narrator does not yet consider what God begins here primarily as “a sign that is spoken against” (Luke :), but as a source of universal blessing . . . Abraham is assigned the role of a mediator of blessing in God’s saving plan for “all the families of the earth” . . . This prophecy in chapter : reaches far out toward the goal of God’s plan for history, but it still refuses any description of this final end . . . [It] points to a fulfillment lying beyond the old covenant.
Genesis : and –, as suggested, add to the divine promise of Genesis :– with its concern for righteousness credited to humans through their trust in God. The divine goal of having “a numerous people” of God thus includes divine righteousness for them, but the fulfillment of that righteousness lies in the future even though it is begun in the present. The divine promise emerges from God’s benevolent concern for humans. It does not arise from human merit or earning, although divine expectations of humans accompany the promise (Gen :). We need to clarify the biblical theodicy that accompanies the relevant promise and goal.
Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, revised ed., trans. J. H. Marks (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, ), pp. –. On von Rad’s interpretation, see R. W. L. Moberly, The Bible, Theology, and Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Following the NRSV, I do not support a reflexive translation of “bless themselves” in Genesis :, but I agree with Moberly that we should not accept von Rad’s suggestion that a reflexive sense would make the text trivial. On allowing for both a reflexive and a passive sense, see Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis –, Word Biblical Commentary (Milton Keynes: Word Publishing, ), pp. –. It is noteworthy that the prophecy of Zechariah in Luke’s Gospel (:–) relates the divine promise to Abraham to the realization of righteousness.
We now can summarize in initial form an unduly neglected approach to theodicy suggested by some biblical writers: God justifies God’s allowing and using severe suffering and evil among humans by pursuing thereby, in a righteous manner, a goal of forming and saving “a numerous people” in righteousness begun now but to be fulfilled at a future time of God’s preference. God uses, in a righteous manner, the allowed suffering and evil to challenge people without divine coercion to recognize their vital need of God and thus to cooperate, in trust, with divine righteousness, thereby enabling God to bring restoration to them from suffering and evil at God’s preferred time. They thus receive righteous approval from God through their trust in God, as God makes reparation in due time for the suffering and evil they have experienced, despite their not knowing all of God’s purposes in allowing suffering and evil.
God’s aim includes manifesting how divine righteousness that seeks human salvation can be powerful in countering severe suffering and evil among humans. The salvation offered saves people from having a life without a sustaining source of righteousness for their relationships. So, God aims, in a righteous manner, to manifest and deepen a vital felt need of divine righteousness for humans as they undergo severe suffering and evil. We neglect this aim if we underestimate that God’s knowledge of the actual results of human suffering and evil, positive or negative, is superior to ours. Some biblical writers suggest that God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt is a helpful analogue for illuminating divine creation in the book of Genesis and the subsequent suffering and evil. A passage from the book of Exodus sets the initial basis for a generalization to the kind of theodicy to be developed here: The Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go, so that they may serve me. For this
time I will send all my plagues upon you yourself, your officials, and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. Indeed, by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But this is why I have let you live: to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth.’” (Exod :–)
God sends a telling message to an oppositional Pharaoh through Moses: “This is why I have let you live: to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth.” We need to identify (a) the divine “power” in question and (b) how and why the divine “name” is to “resound through all the earth.” In doing so, we can find illumination of the divine allowance and patience toward the moral clash begun in Genesis. A divine goal for divine glory gets some clarification from the following passage, where God informs Moses: Pharaoh will say of the Israelites, “They are wandering aimlessly in the land; the wilderness has closed in on them.” I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, so that I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. (Exod :–)
A crucial issue concerns how we are to understand divine glory here. A correct understanding will clarify what God seeks in allowing and being patient toward the moral clash begun in Genesis. The book of Exodus gives us some needed guidance. In the following exchange between Moses and God, as Chapter noted, it recommends an understanding of divine glory, and by implication divine power, in terms of divine goodness: Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he [the Lord] said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The Lord’, and I will be gracious to whom
I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” “But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one shall see me and live.” And the Lord continued, “See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.” (Exod :–)
Moses’s request for a powerful display of glory is answered by God with a self-described display of divine goodness. The presentation of divine goodness to Moses also includes the divine announcement that “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” This announcement gives attention and priority not to coercive power, but instead to the morally relevant features of divine graciousness and mercy toward people. Divine graciousness and mercy receive emphasis in a follow-up passage from Exodus regarding Mount Sinai and the Law: The Lord passed before [Moses] and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty.” (Exod :–)
This passage fits with the Exodus portrait of God as concerned with moral goodness, including love, grace, and mercy toward wayward people, and thus with not condoning evil, even when God allows it to arise. So, God will “by no means clear the guilty” if such clearing requires condoning evil. The book of Job offers further illumination for our theodicy.
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God’s Test and Job’s Lesson According to the book of Job, God aimed to show that Job “is a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil” (Job :). This stated aim anticipated a challenge to God: The accuser answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job :–)
The challenge concerns Job’s motive for commitment to God and divine righteousness. Does Job commit to God only for pleasant gifts from God and not for God and divine righteousness in themselves? God aims to show that Job, contrary to the accuser’s suggestion, is prepared to respond in favor of the primary goodness of God and divine righteousness, even when he suffers and his explanations of God’s purposes fail. We thus might say that Job stands on the side of the intrinsic value of God and divine righteousness for humans. The biblical God’s justification for allowing severe suffering and evil relies on the divinely valued primary goodness of human cooperation with God, or at least with divine righteousness, to which such suffering and evil sometimes lead. Some human participants, including Job, thus deem God worthy of a cooperative witness even in their severe suffering and evil. In God’s judgment, it is better to become a righteous human sufferer than not to do so or not to exist at all, if this benefits God’s righteous showing and perfecting a human need to trust God. The suffering in Job’s case is not divine judgment or punishment. Instead, it becomes an opportunity for Job’s welcoming God on God’s righteous terms and thereby for current divine proximity to him. A biblical theodicy accommodates the value of such proximity.
It thus recognizes that the divine promise of future righteous fulfillment emerges from and is grounded in divine proximity to recipients of the promise, whether Abraham, Joseph (Gen :, ), or Job. H. H. Rowley has captured a central lesson of the book of Job: Whatever bliss the righteous may enjoy in the afterlife, that can offer no explanation of suffering they may experience here. We, no more than Job, can deduce the cause of all human suffering, and when men experience suffering which they feel to be innocent, instead of crying out against the injustice of God, they are wise to believe that it has some cause or purpose, though concealed from them and hidden in the heart of God, and through trust in him to find fellowship with him. For in God’s fellowship is the spring of man’s truest life and health.
We may think of the relevant “fellowship” to include what we have called “loyal cooperation” with God. It is volitional, and not just intellectual, at its center. Rowley adds: “The message of Job . . . is that here and now in the fellowship of God the pious may find a peace and a satisfaction that transcends all the miseries of his lot.” This observation fits with Job’s concluding remark to God about divine proximity: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job :). (This talk of hearing and seeing is best understood as metaphorical.) Job’s suffering thus led to a deeper appreciation of God and divine proximity in the midst of his suffering, not by escaping it but by enduring it with trust in God. God uses such suffering, then, to bring benefit now, and not only in the future, to “a numerous people of God” in a righteous relationship with God.
H. H. Rowley, The Faith of Israel (London: SCM Press, ), p. ; see also H. H. Rowley, Job, revised ed., New Century Bible (London: Oliphants, ), pp. –. Rowley, Job, p. .
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Psalm , in agreement with the book of Job, holds forth proximity with God as a primary value for humans, while announcing God’s goodness: Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart . . . I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor . . . My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Indeed, those who are far from you will perish; you put an end to those who are false to you. But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works. (Psalm :, –, –)
Despite suffering (“all day long I have been plagued” (Psalm :)), the psalmist finds refuge in God, courtesy of his being “near God” and God’s being close to him (“you hold my right hand”). The proximity of God through divine intervention in human experience gives credibility to God’s promise of the fulfillment of righteousness. A striking feature of the book of Job is that it seems not to limit God’s promise and proximity to this life. Job thus reports: For I know that my vindicator lives and that in the end he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. (Job :–)
James Crenshaw has identified a similar note of transcending this life in Psalm , given a desired lasting basis for its talk of glory, forever, rock, and portion as well as its talk to God of “afterward you will receive me” (Psalm :). Crenshaw adds: Anyone for whom God is the sole “possession and desire” in heaven and on earth has reached the stage where asking about the permanence of such a relationship is as natural as breathing. The fervor of this intimate relationship seems to give rise to the unthinkable. Death cannot blot out this love. It follows that the psalmist dares to hope for survival beyond death.
The same, according to Crenshaw, applies to Job in his hope for God’s enduring presence. Given the suggested perspective on Job and Psalm , we may understand them to approach suffering in a way that coheres with the theodicy under development. They endorse righteous fulfillment in divine promise for the future coupled with divine proximity in righteousness now. We shall return to such promise and proximity after confirming that the Apostle Paul and Jesus agree with the lesson of Job that suffering does not entail divine judgment or punishment but can provide an effective context for a righteous relationship with God.
Paul and Jesus on Theodicy Following many writers of the Jewish Bible, Paul does not assume that all human suffering results from divine judgment. He writes to the Christians at Corinth:
James L. Crenshaw, Defending God: Biblical Responses to the Problem of Evil (New York: Oxford University Press, ), p. . Crenshaw, Defending God, p. .
Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation. We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again. ( Cor :–)
The felt “sentence of death” included intense suffering, but it was not a matter of divine judgment. Instead, according to Paul, it came from a divine purpose that did not entail judgment. It arose “so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” The purpose here is God’s, but it does not follow that God caused the suffering in the felt sentence of death. God allowed it, of course, but divine causation of it is not needed for God to have a purpose for it, including a purpose to attract human repentant trust in God. Paul does credit God with creating human frustration, and thus suffering, of various sorts for a good purpose: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom :–)
God, in Paul’s perspective, causes some frustration and suffering among humans by subjecting some parts of creation to futility. God does so with a definite aim: to bring to recognition the people of God who are to receive and manifest the freedom and glory of being God’s children.
The suffering caused by God fits with our biblical theodicy of righteous fulfillment. It intentionally yields significant moral good for some of the people of God: the manifested freedom and glory of being God’s children. In addition, the good in question is not exhausted in the past or present but reaches its fulfillment at a future time preferred by God. Paul clarifies a divine purpose: We have this treasure [of God’s good news of righteousness] in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed, always carrying around in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For we who are living are always being handed over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our mortal flesh. ( Cor :–)
Paul highlights “the power of God” with special attention to “making visible” the life of Jesus in response to God. In Paul’s thought, this is a focus on the righteous character of God manifested in Jesus, “who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” ( Cor :). The powerful righteousness of God’s character and good news, according to Paul, is made visible not only in Jesus but also, as we have noted, in his faithful followers. Paul writes to the Corinthians: “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all, and you show that you are a letter of Christ, prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are human hearts” ( Cor :–).
For discussion, see C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ), vol. , pp. –.
The Corinthian Christians, according to Paul, manifest in their lives the moral character of God and Christ, including divine righteousness. Seeking the manifestation of righteousness in humans, God is willing to allow and to use human suffering, including severe suffering, to that end in a righteous manner, including for the sake of righteous fulfillment in the future. Paul suggests that divine goodness aims to lead people to repentance (Rom :). Suffering also can contribute to repentance as turning cooperatively to God as needed righteous rescuer, and away from distrust. John’s Gospel, agreeing with Paul, endorses that God manifests divine works through human suffering: “[Jesus’s] disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind.’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him’” (John :–; cf. :). This perspective coheres with the theme of God’s seeking to show divine righteousness through humans, including through their suffering. We have seen an indication of why God aims to make the divine moral character and works visible through humans: so that people, including “the nations,” will know through their experience that God is God and Lord, the one they need for lasting righteous life. On the heels of a warning about suffering from persecution, Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus say: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt :). Jesus makes participation in divine righteousness required for life with God: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt :). The divine motive shared by Jesus is to call and bring people into conformity and cooperation with God as the morally perfect one, intrinsically worthy of full commitment, who can save them from their felt moral failure and moral death (Matt :, :–). We need to clarify how this motive figures in our biblical theodicy.
Jesus responds to a request for theodicy in Luke’s Gospel: At that very time there were some present who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the other people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent you will all perish just as they did.” (Luke :–)
It is common to take this passage as having Jesus simply brush off the question of an available theodicy for human suffering. That, however, is a mistake. Jesus, I propose, is suggesting the kind of theodicy of righteous fulfillment that we are pursuing. His talk of perishing indicates that he has in mind something vital for a good human life. The lesson drawn by Jesus is no abstract injunction; nor is it limited to divine judgment. Instead, it is suggesting a key divine purpose in God’s allowing human suffering, whether intentional or “accidental.” This purpose is to show and perfect a vital human need to turn in (deeper) repentance to God in the salvific righteousness through trust in God. This perspective coheres with the biblical theodicy under development and thus merits our attention. Extending a suggestion from Jesus, we may talk of a divine purpose of “perfecting repentant faith” among humans, because such faith comes in degrees, in keeping with degrees of repentance and trust. Jesus recommends repentance in the face of suffering even if a person has met a basic threshold for repentance, while needing to perfect repentance by going deeper in turning cooperatively to God in righteous relationship. Repentance thus should not be considered a one-time or an all-or-nothing event for all people. It is better understood as ongoing in opportunities for increasing
depth in turning one’s life cooperatively to God in righteousness. (Paul would agree with this perspective (cf. Phil :–).) The standard suggested by Jesus includes new levels of depth in cooperating with God in the face of new incidents of suffering, whether one’s own suffering or that of another person. For instance, the suffering of either the Galileans at Pilate’s hand or the victims of the fallen tower of Siloam can prompt us to repent more deeply of either our own indifference toward certain human suffering or some other shortcoming by God’s standard of righteousness. In such repenting, we would turn cooperatively to God with deeper trust in the power of God’s redemptive goodness, even if we had some prior trust. The book of Job, we have suggested, illustrates this kind of development for Job in the face of severe suffering, presenting him as an approved cooperative witness for God and noting that “in all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (Job :). Jesus’s perspective is eschatological in acknowledging God’s future resolution of various present deficiencies, in keeping with our notion of righteous fulfillment in God’s preferred time. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus responds to his disciples as follows: Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my name’s sake will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.” (Matt :–)
The suffering that Jesus has in mind thus will not be fully rewarded now, even if it is coupled with repentant faith. The divine reparation will have to wait for “the renewal of all things” in the future. Even so, God can work to perfect repentant faith now, in the presence of severe suffering and evil, while its full benefits come later. (A similar argument is made by Paul in Romans : and
Corinthians :.) A theodicy, in any case, does not require full reparation or redemption for suffering and evil now. The kind of repentant faith sought by Jesus cannot be reduced to intellectual assent to information about God. Matthew’s Gospel captures this important but widely neglected lesson in its teaching on Jesus regarding the divine judgment of humans (Matt :–). Divine approval arises from a fitting human response to an opportunity for righteousness, even if the people responding fail to recognize God’s presence. Trust in divine righteousness thus does not require trust that God is present in the righteousness. Such trust, then, can be had by agnostics and even atheists. People can have a fitting response in faith without recognizing theological factors in what they trust. God’s purpose in a theodicy, as a result, can seek such a response even in the absence of recognition of a theological contribution. The divine aim would be for human receptivity toward, and guidance by, righteousness itself (de re), with the allowance and hope that any needed theological information (de dicto) would be recognized in due course. We should understand the role of potentially implicit faith involved with a theodicy accordingly. Jesus understood God’s purpose to allow for his voluntary decision in Gethsemane. We have no evidence of his being coerced to undertake God’s plan for his redemptive death. Jesus arguably was allowed to receive in due course the benefits of divine reparation for the severe suffering and evil he faced in his role for God (cf. Heb :). In addition, Paul reports that God highly exalted Jesus as a result of his faithful obedience in his death (Phil :–). So, we may think of Jesus as having received a divine reward for his severe suffering for other people. It is arguable that an analogue applies to righteous sufferers more generally, as Jesus suggested above.
See Paul K. Moser, The Divine Goodness of Jesus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
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The approach of Jesus to theodicy corresponds to his approach to the coming of the kingdom of God in righteousness. They both have a distinctive feature of being realized “now (initially), but not yet fully.” Divine righteousness is at the center of both biblical theodicy and the arriving kingdom of God; so, the similarity in realization as “now, but not yet” is not surprising. The similarity is significant, nonetheless, and it adds to the plausibility of the approach to theodicy offered here.
God’s Theodicy Justified We have asked whether it is morally permissible for God to allow in creation, for a salvific purpose, the introduction and continuation of severe suffering and evil. A central divine purpose, as noted, is to show and perfect in human lives their vital need to have a salvific guide and sustainer of righteousness. This prospect calls for repentant faith in God’s power of saving righteousness, which does not exclude any people who would prefer to receive it on its own terms. A pressing question is whether God’s salvific purpose would make some people suffer in a way that is morally unacceptable. Some people doubt that all human suffering reflects or serves either God or divine righteousness in a way that God can morally justify. They ask how God can morally justify not curbing (more than is curbed) either severe suffering of innocent people or human freedom that yields such suffering. Such moral justification would indicate how God’s tolerant response to severe human suffering would preserve divine righteousness in a morally robust way. This problem does not assume that all human suffering is evil, and that result is correct. In addition, the proposed theodicy does not
On Jesus on the kingdom’s arrival, see Moser, The Divine Goodness of Jesus, chapter . Here I dissent from Arthur C. McGill, Suffering (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, ), p. .
assume that all suffering is good or salvific, and that result is correct too. A key assumption, instead, is that God as salvific can bring vital righteousness for humans out of suffering and evil and thereby justify current divine tolerance and patience. God’s self-justification depends in part on the moral value of perfecting repentant faith in God in the face of severe suffering and evil, including severe misuse of human freedom. According to the previous suggestions from Jesus, Paul, and various Old Testament writers, God values perfecting repentant faith in God enough to allow for severe human suffering and evil for the sake of promoting such faith. The key issue is whether that is morally wrong of God, perhaps as a matter of injustice. Even if God, as the book of Job suggests, tests humans “every moment” (Job :), is divine allowance of severe suffering to this end morally acceptable? An important issue is whether moral goodness requires God to remove without delay severe suffering and evil, including severe misuse of human freedom. An affirmative answer is not obvious, because, as suggested, God can bring in due time significant righteousness and related reparation out of severe suffering and evil, including for people who directly experience such suffering and evil. It would be presumptuous of us to assume that we are in a position to set God’s time for moral benefit or reparation. Perhaps an underlying concern, however, is that God appears to use the severe suffering of some people at most for the benefit of other people. This concern may prompt a charge of unfairness on God’s part. Some people might want to opt out of benefiting by God’s standard of showing and perfecting repentant faith. Even so, God would not need to demand a cooperative response from them now for the sake of their future benefit and reparation. Future benefit and reparation, along with a future agreeable response, would be live options, given God’s long-range planning and power over death. God would not have to neglect people indifferent to repentant faith by using their severe suffering to benefit other people. The
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important consideration is that God would give them a fair opportunity to benefit significantly at a fitting time. We lack evidence to infer that God has failed on this front, and human refusal of divine reward or benefit does not create such moral failure in God. In addition, we have noted testimonial evidence from Jesus of a divine reward for righteous sufferers. Jesus did not limit this reward to our earthly life, and we have indicated a similar approach in Job and the Psalms. A biblical theodicy accommodates the truth that humans lack full knowledge of God’s purposes in parts of redemption, including in allowing severe suffering and evil. If the book of Job had not made this lesson clear to us, we find it confirmed by Jesus, even in his own case (Mark :–), and by Paul ( Cor :), both of whom affirm the abiding and sustaining love of God for wayward humans (Rom :–; cf. Matt :–). As a result, a biblical theodicy will identify illuminating explanatory themes but not exhaustive details for us now. The themes do not yield a full explanation of divine purpose, but they identify a partial trajectory that saves God from a compelling charge of moral failure. Even so, exoneration of God in full self-justification will await future fulfillment. A divine theodicy (from and for God) would be free of explanatory limitation, but a theodicy for humans now must accept the limitations in human understanding documented by the book of Job. We humans rarely know, in any case, the full audience who benefits from a divine challenge to humans toward righteousness (cf. Cor :). As a result, cognitive modesty among humans is fitting with regard to their understanding of divine purposes in human suffering and evil. In the biblical theodicy offered here, God aims to perfect repentant faith in the presence of severe human suffering and evil. So, inquirers should ask about a significant relation between perfecting repentant faith and severe human suffering and evil. They should ask whether God wants people to come to recognize, at some time, their vital need of divine salvation in righteousness and thus will use
severe human suffering and evil to contribute to that recognition when the contribution is effective on God’s righteous terms. The relevant suffering and evil call attention to such a vital need as real and valuable. This consideration does not, and should not, include inferring an independent reality (God) from a human need, as the relevant need could go unfulfilled by independent reality. Instead, it assumes that a perceived vital need can aid in attending to relevant evidence of what is real and valuable. Many biblical writers identify the vital need in question as that of being raised to new life with God by the righteous power of God. In that regard, resurrection by God is central to full recompense or reward by God for humans. The hitch is the accompanying view that humans must suffer and die into the needed resurrection by God (Rom :, ; Cor :–). Paul gives a reason: so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead ( Cor :). He also offers an aim that coheres with the previous reason: I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Phil :–)
Paul thus ties together our main themes for a biblical theodicy: divine righteousness, fulfillment, faith, suffering, and resurrection. This is noteworthy evidence that our proposed biblical theodicy is on the right track. Two additional factors merit attention. First, Paul speaks of the “surpassing value of knowing Christ”; he has in mind the human need to value divine righteousness and its culminating
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representative as a top priority. Such righteousness is not intended to be just an optional add-on for a human life. It is mistreated if it is not taken to be life’s priority, according to many biblical sources. Famously, Jesus taught the same (Matt :). Severe suffering and evil provide a distinct opportunity to set priorities accordingly, and Paul knew this firsthand. Our proposed biblical theodicy thus should be understood to represent a divine aim to have a human priority for divine righteousness through perfecting repentant faith. The second factor concerns Paul’s talk of the divine power of resurrection. He thinks of this power as being at work now in receptive humans’ lives, with completion in the fullness of time: The death [Jesus] died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. (Rom :–)
Paul speaks of people who, by God’s power, “have been brought from death to life” and thus are to be God’s “instruments of righteousness.” This is the divine power of resurrection now, even though bodily resurrection awaits a future time. It is the power to bring divine righteousness to a human life now through perfecting repentant faith in God, in the context of that life’s moral experience. We should recognize such power in what we have called the “proximity” of God to humans in current life. A noteworthy problem is that neither the resurrection power nor the motivating evidence for the corresponding theodicy is perceived by all people. We can account for this problem to an important extent. People perceive firsthand the resurrection power of renewal
in righteousness only if they receive it by allowing it to come to fruition in its power to renew their own lives. We experience its power firsthand to bring restorative divine righteousness only if we let the power come to fruition in changing us. H. Wheeler Robinson has remarked: “God is able by his grace to transform all evil into good . . . I see him doing it on Calvary, and so far as I am really penitent, I feel him doing it in my own heart, and I trust him to do it on the vast scale of his universe.” Note the crucial condition: “so far as I am really penitent.” Jesus hinted at this truth in his teaching about resurrection: “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke :; cf. John :). An implication is that people will miss an opportunity for recognizing divine power and a corresponding theodicy if they do not let the power of divine righteousness come to fruition in their own cooperation. God, as suggested, does not use coercion to block such human resistance, lest human agency be suppressed and humans be extinguished. Paul thinks of a cooperative experience of God’s resurrection power, in our moral experience, as supplying a down payment or foretaste of God’s ultimate renewal in vital righteousness, courtesy of God’s intervening Spirit ( Cor :, :; Rom :). He finds that the same Spirit aims to lead people in righteousness as the obedient children of God (Rom :). Such experiences of God’s Spirit underwrite as evidence God’s worthiness of trust, despite severe suffering and evil. This book has proposed that the fruit of God’s Spirit (Gal :–) supplies needed evidence as the selfmanifested moral character, or personality, traits of God in moral experience. This evidence can be ignored or suppressed, but it comes with an intention of divine leading toward righteousness in human moral experience.
H. Wheeler Robinson, Suffering: Human and Divine (New York: Macmillan, ), p. .
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Paul sums up his evidential perspective on suffering and theodicy: “We boast in our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom :–). Receiving the divine righteous love on offer in experience thus becomes evidential, courtesy of a selfmanifestation of God’s unique character, in a way that removes cognitive shame toward hope and trust in God. Such experience as evidence can figure in justifying the biblical theodicy that, owing to God’s Spirit, “we know that all things work together for good for those who love God” (Rom :). The biblical theodicy of righteous fulfillment receives support not only from Jesus and Paul but also from various Hebrew prophets, along with the writers of Genesis, Exodus, and Job. We thus have a firm basis for calling the proposed theodicy “biblical.” It is not left as an abstract explanation but is grounded and manifested in a distinctive pattern of human life turning toward righteousness presented in human moral experience. Its ultimate ground is God’s character of salvific righteousness, and that ground is fitting for any theodicy deemed “biblical.” We have mentioned the importance of allowing God’s selfjustification to proceed on God’s righteous terms, rather than on merely human terms. This chapter invites further exploration of the key idea of “God’s righteous terms” for divine self-justification. These terms depend on righteousness as redeeming goodness found in moral experience, as an alternative to mere speculation or wishful thinking. Why bother, then, with a theodicy at all, given the acknowledged explanatory incompleteness? Many people wonder, but we have a
For an elaboration on Paul’s evidential approach, see Paul K. Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine Self-Sacrifice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
straightforward answer: The biblical God bothers with divine self-justification. We saw this in connection with the book of Job and various other biblical writings. The divine self-justification does not seek to give humans full explanation of God’s relevant purposes, but it does find moral, existential, and even explanatory substance in God’s promise of righteous fulfillment, coupled with divine proximity in receptive human experience. We thus care about divine theodicy because God does, on God’s unique terms. Courtesy of such care, we can pursue more deeply the uniqueness and the benefit of divine righteousness for our thinking and our lives. Such justification seems adequate for continued work on a biblical theodicy of righteous fulfillment.
Perfecting Moral Experience Our proposed theodicy returns us to the book’s main focus: the unique role of God in seeking to perfect human moral experience in righteous relationships. Paul sums up this focus in terms of righteousness, including divine presence and promise that perfect human holiness as moral goodness in relation to God. What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? . . . As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people . . .” And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. ( Cor :, , , :, NIV)
Paul’s concern is righteousness among the Corinthian Christians, and he takes God’s righteousness, in divine presence and promise, to promote that concern. God offers such righteousness as a gift of grace through faith, but human reception of it requires humans to cooperate actively, by “working out their salvation” in relation to God and divine righteousness. Paul’s reference to divine promises includes identifying God’s “living with” God’s people and “walking among” them. It thus bears on human experience of God’s “living with” humans and “walking among” them. This experience includes divine power of a morally perfect will, given God’s being an intentional agent worthy of worship and hence morally perfect. God as morally perfect would seek the moral perfecting of humans – or at least of humans willing to cooperate – in a manner that depends on human experience of divine moral power. This perfecting would advance human reconciliation with God and would serve the overall good of humans, including in their relationships with each other. It also would include the perfecting of divine love in humans for the sake of reconciliation for all involved (cf. John :). The relevant divine power represents God’s moral character without coercing humans in their response to God. False gods would be hard put to copy such power, because they lack the needed perfect moral character. Their moral imperfection falls short of the divine power of moral perfection and its leading people to righteous character and relationships. Only God, then, would have the needed power to self-manifest a morally perfect divine character. Only God, similarly, would have control over the selfrevealing of God’s personal character to humans. The clarity or salience of divine perfect love relative to a person depends on that person’s cooperation with such love. That
cooperation enables the divine love to come to fruition in a relatively stable manner for what God intends it to be: a power for cooperative receiving and sharing among humans. Regarding our evidence that the love in question comes from God rather than from humans alone, we should look to Paul’s aforementioned statement that “all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God” (Rom :). This manner of being led concerns being led to divine righteousness in moral character and relationships. Paul’s statement invites the question of what it is to be “led by the Spirit” of God. Paul speaks of being “led by the Spirit” in connection with some comments about divine love (Rom :–), a central manifestation of the fruit of God’s Spirit (Gal :). Humans, we have seen, are challenged to allow themselves to be led by the Spirit, and this includes a kind of human cooperation with God, such as in divine prodding in conscience toward righteousness. The role of human cooperation is clear in Paul’s understanding of advised human “sowing to the Spirit” (Gal :) and his injunction to “walk by the Spirit” (Gal :). Such talk would be irrelevant if being led by the Spirit disregarded a cooperative human will. If God were to coerce people in leading them to become obedient children of God, we would have to ask why God has not coercively led all people to comply. That would save them from the pain and suffering of life without a positive relationship with God. If God is willing to use coercion, it would seem pointless, if not also perverse, to allow people to undergo life without an agreeable relationship with God. Divine coercion, however, would face the obvious reality that many people have not received the supposed benefit of being coerced by God to obey. In any case, the alternative of genuine human agency in obeying God fits better with the reality of human trials. Some of those trials may serve to challenge human agents to reorient, without coercion, their priorities for life agreeable to God. No full theodicy for such trials is available to us now, but we can make some theological, redemptive sense of some trials.
We can identify a distinctive role for God as an intentional power greater than humans in their being led by God by asking what would be the goal of their being led. Two prayers of Paul offer suggestions: “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all” ( Thess :); and “This is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best” (Phil :–). God’s love could be perfected in a human bit by bit. This would not make the person perfect overall, but it would make perfect a feature of a person, such as an act or attitude of love, and then another feature. Humans thus need not be perfectly loving overall to be in a process of being perfected, if piecemeal, in divine love over time. A human could be an incomplete work in progress toward overall perfect love. In that case, divine love would be in a process of being perfected in a person overall. The central role of a mutual process over time emerges in Paul’s following remark: Not that I have already . . . reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil :–)
A similar emphasis on maturation over time is suggested by Paul’s comment on “making holiness perfect in the fear of God” ( Cor :). God could use a developmental cooperative process to honor maturing human agency toward divine righteous love. If God is perfectly loving, the central goal of the maturing process would be the cooperative perfecting of all humans in divine love, in relationship with God and other humans. This goal would be intrinsically valuable, and it would serve at the center of the meaning of life for humans. Perfect love would aim to be uncoercive, universal, and relational in that cause. Otherwise, it would suffer
from a moral defect that undermines moral perfection, and it thus would be inappropriate to a God worthy of worship. We have no reason to assume that God would need to perfect divine love in a person instantaneously overall. The divine effort instead could be diachronic, attending to the cooperative maturation of humans over time in relation with God’s perfect moral character. Our expectations for God set filters for our receiving evidence of God’s reality and goodness. In failing to expect God to self-manifest in the fruit of the Spirit in our moral experience, we look away from a key source of divine evidence for humans. We also miss out on a divine purpose that gives enduring meaning to human life. We thus do well to be reflective toward how we set our attention and expectations toward potential evidence of God in moral experience. In being thus reflective, we could find new evidence and meaning for goodness’ sake, including for our own sake. In addition, it is hard to imagine a lasting downside. Even so, the needed kind of reflection is distinctive in its challenge for us. We turn, finally, to that matter.
Moral Experience and Theological Inquiry
Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God. John :
It is the rare person who has not asked about God’s existence or goodness, regardless of any answers reached or not reached. So, it is odd that theologians and philosophers typically fail to explore how to ask about God in a manner suitable to the potential object. In particular, they usually fail to ask how inquiry about God is to be related to God’s unique moral character. This failure is important, because God, if real, is not an inert or purposeless object. God as a good creator would be robustly purposive in various ways, including toward humans and their inquiry about God. God thus would care about human motives and intentions in inquiry about God, and not just about the informational results of that inquiry. God also would aim for humans to live their way obediently into cooperative understanding of God, thus going beyond mere intellectual reflection and affirmation about God to a responsible relationship. Otherwise, human understanding would wear thin from the standpoint of human character formation in relation to God and divine righteousness. We shall see how this perspective bears on moral experience and adds profound moral depth to typical inquiry about God, in the wake of Jesus and Paul.
Competitors for Divine Revelation The Jewish Bible faces the challenge of competing claimants, such as prophets in conflict, to divine power and revelation. For instance: If prophets or those who divine by dreams appear among you and show you omens or portents, and the omens or the portents declared by them take place, and they say, “Let us follow other gods” (whom you have not known) “and let us serve them,” you must not heed the words of those prophets or those who divine by dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you indeed love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. The Lord your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his commandments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him you shall hold fast. (Deut :–)
The test here of claimants to divine revelation relies on their loyalty or lack thereof to “the Lord your God.” This is a concern about the personal source of an alleged divine revelation. The main issue is whether the personal source of supposed revelation is loyal to the true God in representing that God rather than a counterfeit. The writer of Deuteronomy thus identifies an underlying test of loyalty from God: whether people faithfully love God, with all their “heart and soul,” rather than a false god. The writer assumes that such love will favor their representing God reliably and protect them from misleading claimants. A call to loyalty to the true God arises directly in the book of Deuteronomy, in response to competing gods: You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve him, and swear by his name. You shall not go after other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who are round about you; for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God . . . You shall diligently keep the
commandments of the Lord your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he has commanded you. And you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may go well with you . . . It will be righteousness [ ]ו ְּצָדָ֖קהfor us, if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us. (Deut :–, –, , RSV)
The commanded loyalty to God is loyalty to divine “righteousness,” including “doing what is right and good in the sight of the Lord.” God’s righteousness distinguishes the true God from competing false gods, and that righteousness is inherently moral and not just intellectual or speculative. As a result, theological inquiry about the true God is inextricably inquiry about righteousness in moral experience and action. The book of Jeremiah recognizes a test from God that fits with the test from Deuteronomy : “I the Lord test the mind and search the heart, to give to all according to their ways, according to the fruit of their doings” (Jer :). The test bears on “the fruit of their doings” – that is, the moral conduct people bring about. So, the test does not stop with human beliefs, preferences, or feelings. It bears on humans as agents who perform actions in response to what they experience and decide. False prophets fail to speak for God, according to Jeremiah, because they lack the needed moral influence and guidance from God: Who has stood in the council of the Lord so as to see and to hear his word? Who has given heed to his word so as to proclaim it? . . . I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council,
then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings. (Jer :, –)
Standing in the council of God, according to Jeremiah, is needed to represent God reliably, because it brings one under God’s moral influence and guidance. Jeremiah has in mind the influence and the guidance of divine righteousness toward a human, and he represents these as crucial to knowing God. The relevant knowing sought by God bears on human moral conduct, not just on intellectual reflection and affirmation. Jeremiah thus portrays God to characterize human knowing of God as follows: Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. (Jer :–)
Knowing God, according to Jeremiah, thus includes “doing justice and righteousness []ו ְּצָדָ֔קה,” and doing the latter depends on “standing in God’s council” – that is, relying on divine guidance of some sort. So, this knowing is practical rather than merely intellectual or speculative. Jeremiah connects human knowing of God and human boasting to human relating to divine righteousness: Thus says the Lord: Do not let the wise boast in their wisdom; do not let the mighty boast in their might; do not let the wealthy boast in their wealth; but let those who boast boast in this, that they understand and know me, that I am the Lord; I act with steadfast
love, justice, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight, says the Lord. (Jer :–)
God’s character and delight are grounded in “love, justice, and righteousness,” and human knowing of God is to conform to those and thereby reflect who God is. Moral factors of righteousness and love are central to representing God aright. So, this process is inherently moral. R. W. L. Moberly identifies Jeremiah’s “interest . . . in a moral and spiritual proximity to YHWH whose purpose is explicitly to convey a content to Israel for their benefit.” He explains: The all-important claim to be from God . . . is to speak of a divine realm that is not vacuous, for the reason that it is the prophet’s lifestyle and message, whose moral character is open to scrutiny in the present, which give content to the claim about God. The spiritual nature of the prophetic message, whether or not it is from God, is determined by its “moral” content and accompaniment. Claims about the invisible spiritual realm are validated (or not) by the content of the visible and accessible realm of character, conduct, and priorities . . . A person’s consciousness is indeed altered . . . through appropriation of God’s will in such a way that one’s vision of the world and life within it, and one’s conduct correspondingly, is transformed.
Moberly’s characterization is helpful as far as it goes, bearing on the moral “character, conduct, and priorities” of one who speaks for God. It acknowledges that inquiry about God must attend to such moral matters, in keeping with God’s distinctive moral character. So far so good, but what of the role of moral experience, including its inward qualitative, felt features, in this context?
R. W. L. Moberly, Prophecy and Discernment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), p. . Moberly, Prophecy and Discernment, p. .
We need to safeguard the central role of inward moral experience of God that often underlies moral “character, conduct, and priorities.” Jeremiah does so in two ways that call for emphasis. First, he relays a promise of inward moral and spiritual renewal from God to the exiles from Judah; second, he highlights the importance of inward divine forgiveness in this renewal. The promised inward renewal goes deeper than moral “character, conduct, and priorities”: I will set my eyes upon them [the exiles from Judah] for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with their whole heart. (Jer :–)
Similarly: “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for all time, for their own good and the good of their children after them . . . I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me” (Jer :–). In a similar vein: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer :). God’s “giving them a heart to know” God and “writing on their hearts” go deeper than mere moral “character, conduct, and priorities.” They include inward renewal by God that is experiential as well as moral. A main feature of the promised inward renewal is felt pardon or forgiveness by God in divine love. We may think of this feature to include the experience of the divine power of moral freedom in love’s pardon – that is, freedom from guilt or shame for forgiven wrongdoing and freedom to proceed with unselfish love toward others. Commenting on God’s writing on human hearts, Jeremiah connects knowing God with human moral experience of inward divine forgiveness. He represents God as follows: “They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for
I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more” (Jer :). The divine promise to “restore the fortunes of Judah” includes God’s powerful forgiveness in human moral experience: I will cleanse them from all the guilt of their sin against me, and I will forgive all the guilt of their sin and rebellion against me. And this city [Jerusalem] shall be to me a name of joy, a praise, and a glory before all the nations of the earth who shall hear of all the good that I do for them. (Jer :–)
The experiential nature of this forgiveness is indicated by the removal of felt guilt for sin and the resulting joy and praise. These are felt qualities of experience, not abstract concepts. The relevant felt qualities go beyond mere moral “character, conduct, and priorities” to distinctive, morally relevant awareness states in people who, in Jeremiah’s words, “stand in the council of the Lord.” Such states arise from a receptive experiential encounter with God’s unique moral character of righteous love and its unmatched forgiveness of humans. We shall continue to safeguard the role of moral experience in inquiry about God, with help from Jesus and the Apostle Paul, as well as from the prophet Ezekiel who promotes loyalty to God’s moral character. Ezekiel challenges priests and prophets who have neglected that moral character. Thus: “Priests have done violence to my teaching and have profaned my holy things; they have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them” (Ezek :). The divine concern is that God’s people do not profane the holy character of God – that is, God’s unique moral character. They are to reflect that character faithfully and not contradict it in practice. We shall see further how moral experience figures in this divine expectation, in connection with theological inquiry.
Jesus on Theological Inquiry Matthew’s Gospel has Jesus test prophets for reliable divine revelation on the basis of their personal moral character: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. (Matt :–; cf. Luke :–)
Jesus thus teaches that we are to distinguish between true and false prophets regarding divine revelation by means of their good fruit or bad fruit. That fruit corresponds to how they are “inwardly” (ἔσωθεν). This is a standard based on morally relevant action and its underlying moral character and inward moral experience. Jesus points to “inward” matters with his mention of the human heart in relation to God. He cites God’s complaint from the book of Isaiah that “this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Mark :; cf. Isa :). He adds: “It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come . . . All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark :–). The corresponding point about good intentions, including those of righteous love, is clear, and it takes us to morally relevant inwardness, including moral experience. The standard of “good fruit” set by Jesus has its basis in the moral character and will of God. In the context of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus commands: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt :). This command follows on the heels of a command to love one’s enemies: “I say to you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on
the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matt :–). The perfection commanded thus asks for our perfect love of other people, in order for us as children of God to reflect God’s love. The standard is maximally high, as it calls for a loyal filial relation with God and its manifestation in unselfish love, even toward our enemies. Jesus focuses on “good fruit” in connection with a comment on doing God’s will: Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” Then I will declare to them, “I never knew you; go away from me, you who behave lawlessly.” (Matt :–)
The relevant “doing the will” of God includes, at least as a goal, the aforementioned being morally perfect as God is. Jesus is speaking of evaluating human theological talk, such as saying “Lord, Lord” to him. He asks for evaluation on the basis of a person who makes theological claims while “doing the will” of God. This is a curious but important position and it merits special attention, particularly in connection with recognizing God, rather than a counterfeit, in moral experience. An initial concern is whether Jesus is taking an ad hominem stance that assesses a claim just on the basis of the moral standing of the claimant. In fact, a critic might suggest that an ad hominem circumstantial fallacy is at work here. I doubt, however, that such a fallacy is present. Refusing to consider only informational content and its status, Jesus is considering whether a person making a theological claim is fit for the kingdom of God. This is akin to Jeremiah’s concern that a spokesperson for God “stand in the council of the Lord.” As a result, Jesus mentions “entering the kingdom of heaven” (Matt :). His response suggests a distinctive
position on divine revelation and the assessment of its veracity. We need to clarify his aim. Jesus seeks to understand and to assess theological claims on the basis of relevant divine purposes for them and the divine moral character underlying those purposes. In doing so, he resists assessing such claims without consideration of those relevant purposes and character. We see this position at work in his treatment of a dispute about divorce. Instead of focusing on the Mosaic Law in its face value, he turns to God’s purpose for humans in marriage (Mark :–). Similarly, he treats Sabbath laws on the basis of the divine purposes of such laws for the benefit of humans (Mark :–). Jesus approaches theological questions with concern, shared with God, about an inquirer’s status or intention relative to the moral will, purpose, and character of God. Even though Peter correctly identifies Jesus’s messianic role verbally, Jesus has harsh words for Peter’s relation to God: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mark :). He thus turns attention to Peter’s relation to God, with regard to what he has set his mind on. As a result, he faults Peter for “setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Setting one’s mind on “divine things,” by Jesus’s lights, would be to set one’s mind on God and God’s moral will, purpose, and character in relation to one’s own moral standing before God. It thus would focus on one’s repentance in the direction of a (deeper) cooperative relationship with God. In this regard, theological inquiry for Jesus is properly interpersonal and existential toward God. This position removes any sterile abstractness from such inquiry and it fills it with due attention to one’s actual moral experience and its moral challenges from God. It is fitting that, according to Luke’s Gospel, Jesus characterized his mission in terms of a message of liberation from the book of Isaiah. Thus: “He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are
oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke :–; cf. Isa :–, :–). This message includes good news of divine release of humans into freedom from condemnation and oppression for sin and thus freedom to see divine goodness at work in the world. Since Jesus represented himself as a means to human knowledge of God (Luke :; cf. Matt :), we should consider his emphasis on divine forgiveness as important to such knowledge. This emphasis coheres with the message we have identified from the book of Jeremiah. It also recurs in Jesus’s parables of the prodigal son (Luke :–) and of the two debtors (Luke :–), as well as in the Lord’s prayer (Luke :; Matt :). In addition, Luke has the earthly ministry of Jesus culminate with a message to announce God’s forgiveness (Luke :–), and Matthew puts a message of divine forgiveness at the center of Jesus’s Last Supper (Matt :–). This message concerns experienced forgiveness, not forgiveness as a mere concept. It thus continues the previous message from Jeremiah concerning divine forgiveness in relating to God. Jesus sees a cooperative response to him as a cooperative response to the divine gospel and thus to God: He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark :–)
In addition, he puts the importance of this interpersonal response, to God and to himself, above the importance of mere acceptance of propositional information about God. The lesson at hand is widely missed by theologians, philosophers, and other interpreters of Jesus, but it takes us to the heart of his distinctive epistemology of God. In his perspective, interpersonal
cooperation with God, entailing obedience to God, has priority over simply accepting theological information, even such true information. The same holds for his position on assessing persons, such as prophets, who are claimants of theological information. We shall identify some important implications of his largely neglected approach, especially regarding God in moral experience. Jesus assumes a difference between our making moral selfreference in evaluation of ourselves relative to God and our mere intellectual assessment of theological propositional information for either its truth or its rational status. He favors the former over the latter, in order to put us in an interpersonal evaluation of our moral status relative to God, for the sake of our responding to God in cooperation. The latter responding, Jesus suggests, is to be part of a loyal filial relationship with God as our self-authenticating moral authority. Our self-referential moral evaluation should include recognizing our moral shortcomings in comparison with God and our need of moral relief and liberation from God with divine forgiveness. This self-referential feature would shift the focus from mere propositional content regarding God to the moral character of the people inquiring about God and to God’s response on offer. Human inquirers would thus come under moral question and evaluation by God, with a divine standard of righteous but merciful evaluation. The divine aim would be to bring inquirers in line, by way of cooperation and character, with God and with divine righteousness, in order to bring suitable focus and direction to them and their inquiry. God’s standard of evaluation, according to Jesus, is divine righteousness that includes divine merciful, forgiving love, even toward enemies. This righteousness calls for cooperative interpersonal relationships with God, for the sake of appropriating God’s lifegiving power of good character formation. A primary question from Jesus is whether humans are living cooperatively in response to divine righteous love, in relation to God and other humans.
Sincere cooperation by humans would allow divine love to come to fruition in forming their moral character and relationships. It would fill in Jesus’s talk of a “good tree” and “good fruit,” in contrast with a “bad tree” and “bad fruit.” The desired ground is in a righteous personal relationship with God, because God’s main purpose toward humans is to promote such a relationship for the moral good of all concerned. Jesus represented God as being worthy of a righteous personal relationship with humans, but his evidence often goes unnoticed. He pointed to divine goodness at work in the world, including in human lives. For instance: Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? . . . Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? (Matt :, –; cf. Luke :–)
Jesus uses these remarks to discourage people from worry about getting what they need, but he has in mind God’s generous goodness as his basis. Jesus’s plea is: Let yourself be attracted and instructed by God’s goodness found in your life and experience. This calls for giving one’s attention to divine goodness that first attracts one’s attention, if temporarily. Jesus recognizes how recognition of divine goodness can be lost in the mix of life, and thus he calls for choosing to focus on it: “Look!,” “Consider!” Significantly, Jesus does not recommend “faith” in God in the absence of a recommendation to “look at” and “consider” experienced circumstances of human life. He thus suggests that such faith is to be based on evidence of God’s goodness in human life and experience. His position contradicts, then, the fideist view that faith
in God is to be a leap in the dark, with no supporting evidence. The evidential arbitrariness of such fideism has no place in Jesus’s understanding of faith in God. It does not follow, however, that humans control the evidence supporting faith in God, in Jesus’s perspective. Lack of human control over evidence, in any case, does not entail lack of evidence. It would be odd if humans controlled divine evidence of God’s reality and goodness. Their having control would require their being able to control God’s giving the relevant evidence in human experience, including moral experience. That requirement goes against any expected or plausible relation of humans to God, given its assumption that humans control what God gives them by way of divine self-manifestation and corresponding evidence of divine reality and goodness. Even if God hides from some humans at times, for their benefit, it does not follow that they control divine hiding. God’s decision rightfully has priority here, given God’s superior status. Apparently, some people see evidence of divine reality and cooperate with it, but other people do not. Clearly, some people do not cooperate with it, by their own admission, but do they also fail to see it? Matthew’s Gospel applies a passage from the book of Isaiah to this issue, in connection with the purpose of Jesus’s parables: With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: “You will indeed listen but never understand, and you will indeed look but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes, so that they might not look with their eyes, and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn – and I would heal them.” (Matt :–; cf. Isa :–)
Matthew’s Gospel thus suggests that some people voluntarily choose not to see or hear evidence from God, in order to avoid facing the challenge of God’s redemptive offer to them. In the perspective at hand, the problem is not with a grudging God but is with humans who resist facing and cooperating with evidence made available to them by God. The Apostle Paul makes a similar point, in referring to “people who suppress the truth [about God] in unrighteousness” (Rom :). We now turn to Paul’s understanding of theological inquiry.
Paul on Theological Inquiry Paul shares Jesus’s rejection of fideism in inquiry about God by acknowledging an important role for experiential evidence of divine reality and goodness. He therefore advises the Christians at Thessalonica: “Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil” ( Thess :–). Like Jesus, Paul connects the testing of talk of God with “what is good,” and his contrast with “evil” indicates that he has moral goodness in mind. This connection results from the distinctive moral goodness, or righteousness, of God’s moral character and will. Paul, as indicated, takes the self-manifested qualitative features of God’s moral character to be found in “the fruit of the Spirit” (Gal :–) experienced by many people. He finds there the self-manifestation of God in human moral experience. Such divine goodness in human experience is intended to prompt people to turn
For the difference between Matthew’s Gospel and Mark’s Gospel on this topic, see William Manson, “The Purpose of the Parables,” in Manson, Jesus and the Christian (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, ), pp. –; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ), vol. , pp. –.
to God in repentance (Rom :). It challenges people in conscience to respond to God’s challenge in favor of righteousness for human lives. As Paul remarks: “Their own conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Rom :). Paul finds, as we have noted, a special experiential ground for faith and hope in God in the primary fruit of the Spirit: experienced divine love (Rom :). This righteous love seeks, through its being experienced by humans, their being renewed in reconciliation with God ( Cor :–). With this experienced love, God aims to lead people, intentionally, into cooperation, peace, and fellowship with God as the children of God (Rom :, :). When this intervening love comes to fruition in a human life, that life has moral character formation after the image and Spirit of Jesus as God’s Son (Gal :–, ; Rom :–, –). It thereby experiences and represents the unique reality and goodness of God. On this basis, Paul says to the Galatian Christians: “You have come to know God, or rather to be known by God” (Gal :). Paul understands the relevant knowing of God to require human cooperative participation in God’s righteous love, after the model of Jesus. Paul does not talk much of divine forgiveness on its own, but such forgiveness is included in the divine–human reconciliation he promotes. Cooperative participation in this reconciliation requires the kind of loyal obedience to God demonstrated by Jesus, including in Gethsemane. Paul identifies the central role of such obedience in the faithful death of Jesus (Phil :–), and such obedience is to inform what Paul calls “the obedience of faith” (Rom :, :; cf. Phil :). The obedience in question, Paul holds, includes sharing in what Jesus obediently suffered: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like
See James D. G. Dunn, The Epistle to the Galatians (London: A & C Black, ), pp. , .
him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil :–). “Becoming like him in his death,” according to Paul, is to become like him in his obedience to God, even when death is the result (Phil :). The obedient death of Jesus, according to Paul, came from self-giving love for humans on God’s behalf: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal :; cf. Cor :). The love Paul has in mind shows God’s character when manifested in human life and experience. As a result, Paul says: “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Rom :). Indeed, this self-giving love is at the center of God’s righteous reconciliation of humans through God’s “sacrifice of atonement” in Christ, according to Paul (Rom :–, :). That sacrifice, Paul reports to the Roman Christians, calls for reciprocity in human self-sacrifice to God as a “reasonable act of worship” (Rom :). The human reciprocal self-sacrifice underwrites worship with one’s being “transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom :; cf. Cor :, :–). So, knowing God’s righteous will aright depends on one’s being voluntarily conformed to it, with divine power. We may say the same for knowing God generally in the desired manner: Humans are to be voluntarily conformed to the righteous character of the one known. Theological inquiry, in Paul’s perspective in the wake of Jesus, should accommodate this lesson. It thus should put divine love above other gifts from God, as what Paul calls “a more excellent way” ( Cor :). Paul remarks: “If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing” ( Cor :). The divine love in question is central to testing for divine authenticity in
On Paul’s thought on such sacrifice, see Paul K. Moser, Paul’s Gospel of Divine SelfSacrifice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chapter .
alleged prophecy and knowledge from God. Paul thus shares the view of Jesus that such testing takes us beyond the assessment of intellectual information to matters of moral character formation by divine power. God self-authenticates divine reality and goodness for humans, according to Paul, by showing God, by God’s standard, to be trustworthy for righteousness in relation to humans and their needed salvation from sin and death. Since “it is God who justifies” (Rom :), not just any human standard for righteousness will serve. Paul regards Jesus to be the standard for divine righteousness, referring to him as Christ our “righteousness” ( Cor :). Paul shares the aim of Jesus for God’s redemptive cause for humans, and he promotes the risen Jesus as the central human figure for God’s plan to spread righteousness to all people, Gentiles as well as Jews ( Cor :–, :–). Jesus serves this role, according to Paul, because at his resurrection he “became a lifegiving Spirit” ( Cor :) able to invite and lead people to God. Jesus thus can have a transformative role in human moral experience. The moral experience of God prized by Paul bears on a person’s moral identity, and we need to clarify this reality.
Moral Experience as Gift and Duty The “fruit of the Spirit” in human moral experience comes by what Paul calls a “gift of grace.” So, it is not earned or merited by humans. It is a freely given manifestation of God’s unique moral character as represented in Jesus as the Son of God. It therefore is evidence of God’s reality and goodness. It does not depend, however, on earning from human goodness, as it can come to God’s enemies. When it does come, it presents a duty, or a moral demand, as well as a gift: a duty to value it for what it is actually worth. We need to identify two important implications of this lesson for theological inquiry and human knowledge of God.
The first important implication bears on human moral identity formed by divine intervention in cooperative human experience. P. T. Forsyth has explained this implication with remarkable clarity. He begins with a general point about evidence from moral experience: If I am not to be an absolute Pyrrhonist, doubt everything, and renounce my own reality, I must find my practical certainty in that which founds my moral life, and especially my new moral life. The test of all philosophy is ethical conviction. That is where we touch reality in moral action (God as Spirit is God in actu), and especially in that action of the moral nature which renews it in Christ. Now, my contention is that my contact with Christ is not merely visionary, it is moral, personal, and mutual.
Forsyth understands “contact with Christ” to include contact with God, and he takes this contact to be not just intellectual but also experiential of a morally relevant sort. That is, it includes qualitative awareness of God’s moral character. Forsyth comments on his new moral identity: [Christ] has not merely passed into my life . . . but he has given me a new life, a new moral self, a new consciousness of moral reality. In him alone I have forgiveness, reconciliation, the grace of God, and therefore the very God (since neither love nor grace is a mere attribute of God). There has been what I can only call “a new creation.”
Forsyth bases these claims on his moral experience, including that of being forgiven: In my inmost experience, tested by years of life, [Christ] has brought me God. It is not merely that he spoke to me of God or
P. T. Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ (London: Hodder and Stoughton, ), p. . Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, pp. –.
God’s doings, but in him God directly spoke to me; and more, he did in me, and for me, the thing that only God’s real presence could do. Who can forgive sin but God only, against whom it was done?
One might suggest that Forsyth himself is responsible for the moral change in question, but he dissents: “It is an experience of a change so total that I could not bring it to pass by any resource of my own. Nor could any [human] effect it in me.” He also anticipates a general challenge and suggests a response: If you claim the right to challenge the validity of my experience, you must do it on the ground of some experience surer, deeper, getting nearer moral reality than mine. What is it? Does the last criterion lie in sense, or even in thought? Is it not in conscience? If life at its centre is moral, then the supreme certainty lies there. It must be associated, not with a feeling nor with a philosophic process, but with the last moral experience of life, which we find to be a life morally changed from the centre and for ever. To challenge that means rationalism, intellectualism, and the merest theosophy.
Forsyth identifies his conscience as conveying the moral experience influencing his moral change toward God’s unique character of righteous love. A challenge to Forsyth’s experience would need to identify the inadequacy of the moral process of his transformation toward God’s moral character. Forsyth denies that the inadequacy has been presented. He would appeal to the experienced intervention of God as having a central role in a best available explanation of his renewed moral experience. Forsyth’s encounter with God in moral experience goes to the core of his moral identity and life, and it prompts this result: “If this
Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. . Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. . Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p.
contact [with God in Christ] represent no real formative activity on me, if it be but impressionist influence, then the whole and central activity of my life, whereby I confront it in kind, is unreal.” Forsyth thus is morally certain of his moral experience of God: There is no rational certainty by which this moral certainty of a creator Christ could be challenged; for there is no rational certainty more sure, or so sure, and none that goes where this goes, to the self-disposing centres of life. This moral certainty is the truly rational certainty. Christ approves himself as a divine reality by his revolutionary, causal, creative action on that inmost reality whereby man is man.
This is not a claim to a logical proof of God’s existence or goodness. Instead, it is a claim to the indispensable reality of God’s creative influence on Forsyth’s moral experience and life. Forsyth clarifies the powerful nature and some key results of his moral experience of God: My experience here is the consciousness not of an impression on me, but of an act in me, on me, and by me. It is not an afferent but an efferent consciousness, as the psychologists would say, like the muscular sense, the sense not of rheumatism but of energy. And, to go on, it is the sense not only of myself as acting in the experience called faith, but it is the sense that that act is not perfectly spontaneous but evoked, nay, created by its content and object. And, still to go on, it is the sense that it is created by another and parent act which is the one eternal decisive act of an eternal Person saving a world. I am forgiven and saved by an act which saves the world. For it not only gives me moral power to confront the whole world and surmount it, but it unites me in a new sympathy with all mankind,
Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. . Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, pp. –.
and it empowers me not only to face but to hail eternity. And this it does not for me, but for whosoever will.
Let’s suppose that human faith in God is a cooperative human response to experienced divine moral power that is intentional. We can ask when a faith response is responsible by the standard of presented evidence of God in moral power. More generally, we can ask whether people with the relevant moral experience have a duty to value the moral power experienced. We have suggested that the moral power in question is captured by Paul’s talk of the fruit of the Spirit. We need to consider the bearing of moral duty on experiencing such fruit. The second important implication of the fruit of the Spirit as gift and duty bears on a role for human valuing in appropriating divine self-manifestation in moral experience. H. R. Mackintosh has explained this implication. He begins with a general distinction between religious knowledge of God and scientific knowledge. The former knowledge depends on a distinctive kind of human valuing not found in scientific knowledge. Following some biblical suggestions, Mackintosh proposes that we think of ideal relating to God based on a model of good and faithful companionship. According to this model, humans are expected by God to value God and God’s goodness, and not just to reflect on and forms beliefs about God. Mackintosh explains: The man who does not care for goodness is not accidentally but necessarily blind in matters of faith [in God]. He does not see the friendship of God waiting to be taken; he cannot understand what such friendship could be for. Let us be quite frank with ourselves: the truth that God is love, that we may have the forgiveness of sins, that death cannot separate us from the Father, is not clear to everybody without exception, or to anybody at all times. Indeed,
Forsyth, The Person and Place of Jesus Christ, p. .
we all of us know perfectly that our inward persuasion of such things moves up and down through various degrees of certainty according to the moral plane on which we are living.
Purely theoretical knowledge of God does not require the kind of valuing needed by good companionship. Similarly, if there could be scientific knowledge that God exists, it would lack this valuing of divine goodness. In general, people who know that God exists could fail to value divine goodness. A divine expectation for humans to value God could be for the benefit of humans and need not sacrifice an objective component in human knowledge of God. Mackintosh comments on faith in God: Like every form of knowledge, faith [in God] is a response to a reality which evokes, invites, and rewards acquaintance. The revealed fact is not man-made or poetically contrived; it is given or presented or found to be inescapably there; it confronts the human mind not in the same fashion but just as positively as nature confronts the scientist, or historical events confront the historian. What mediates [divine] revelation in its highest form is a significant fact or series of facts occurring in time, “fact” being used here in a sense capacious enough to include personality.
God thus can self-present the reality of God’s intentional moral goodness to humans. God can expect humans to respond to divine self-presentation, by intentionally valuing the divine goodness presented. Neither the fact of such expecting nor the fact of such valuing challenges the reality of divine self-presentation to humans. On the contrary, this reality is central to the experience in question. As Mackintosh notes: “It cannot be too emphatically said that what faith [in God]
H. R. Mackintosh, The Christian Apprehension of God (New York: Harper, ), p. . Mackintosh, The Christian Apprehension of God, p. .
does is not to create the [divine] revelation it apprehends, but to perceive and accept it.” Mackintosh suggests a kind of divine self-authentication and a kind of human freedom in experience of God, including God in Christ. He remarks: Unless Jesus renders his own reality evident by his power to lead us to God, unless what he is shines through what he does . . . [one] cannot by any eloquence of argument make men feel that Christ means God; but . . . if, in the Spirit’s power, one can show Christ to men, the picture will vindicate itself. It furnishes indeed a sure ground of faith unaffected by the numberless questions that historical criticism may and must raise concerning the Gospel narratives. Again, just because the supreme revelation meets us in Jesus, it wins the spontaneous assent of the free and conscious spirit; it is not imposed by any legal or external compulsion.
We should expect Christ as a life-giving Spirit to be selfauthenticating for receptive humans on the basis of his selfmanifested intentional power in human moral experience. Mackintosh adds: “The liberating and cleansing effect of Christ upon our lives is guarantee to faith that the revelation which he embodies is true.” Two cautionary points are fitting here. First, we should be careful about putting undue focus on the “effect” of Christ or of God in “liberating and cleansing” a human life. Emphasis on such “effect” should not omit a central role for qualitative awareness-content from directly experienced fruit of the Spirit and from directly being “led” by that fruit toward divine righteousness, such as in conscience. Second, it can be misleading to talk of a “picture” of Christ as self-vindicating. Any picture, portrait, or narrative offered will need
Mackintosh, The Christian Apprehension of God, p. . Mackintosh, The Christian Apprehension of God, p. . Mackintosh, The Christian Apprehension of God, p. .
vindication on the basis of supporting experience indicative of the divine power on offer. As agents with intentional causal powers, God and Christ can be self-authenticating, but they are irreducible to a picture, portrait, or narrative. Even so, Mackintosh rightly speaks of God’s “winning the spontaneous assent of the free and conscious spirit” on the basis of divine character manifestation. This approach preserves a role for humans as responsible voluntary agents rather than as pawns of God. A duty to value God’s self-presented goodness is backed by a divine expectation for humans to reciprocate their being valued by God (with fruit of the Spirit, including love, for them). They could reciprocate by their valuing God and divine fruit, aided by antecedent divine power toward them. They thus would value God as God values, and love God as God loves, at least to some extent. This kind of moral reciprocation is suggested by the mandate from God to the people of Israel, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Lev :; cf. Pet :), and by the charge from Jesus to his followers, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt :). The evidence for humans of divine reality and goodness in God’s self-manifestation to them, as we have observed, is intended by God to come to fruition and salience in human cooperation with God. That cooperation ideally includes human valuing of the relevant manifestation and evidence for what they are: a life-giving gift from a morally perfect God. The relevant evidence calls for such a valuing response from humans, and it joins the divine gift with a corresponding duty to value, courtesy of God’s purpose to reconcile humans to God and to each other in righteousness. Human responses to the divine expectation and corresponding moral experience are undeniably mixed. So, the divine evidence on offer does not come to fruition or salience in all cases. Paul identifies a problem: “Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned” ( Cor :). Spiritual discernment includes not only moral discernment,
regarding what is morally good, but also properly valuing the goodness discerned. Failure in such discernment results in failure to allow the presented divine goodness to come to fruition and salience in one’s experience, thereby blocking one from an adequate experiential understanding of the gifts from God in, for instance, the fruit of the Spirit. The deficiency in question hinders reliable assessment of the available evidence for God’s goodness and reality. It also results in extensive human resistance to faith in God and thus disagreement about God’s existence. Even so, it does not enable people who lack salient evidence about God to generalize to an agnostic claim that nobody has adequate evidence for divine reality or goodness. Instead, it prompts the question of whether the lack of salient evidence, at least in some cases, results from a human deficiency. This option merits careful consideration in various endorsements of agnosticism and atheism. It also suggests a noteworthy complication for such endorsements, leaving them in doubt.
Concluding Ongoing Task This book’s Introduction characterized Tolstoy as facing a challenge in his moral experience to be morally better. He attributed this challenge to God’s will for him, but he rejected the suggestion that he is self-justified as good before God by his own moral life. Instead, he regarded God to be merciful as well as demanding with regard to his moral life. The divine mercy includes God’s not condemning Tolstoy for his inadequate moral life and thus not demanding that Tolstoy justify himself before God. Instead, God offers a gift of moral and spiritual renewal by divine grace. The gift comes with expectations and responsibilities from God, but it is not earned or merited by humans, even if God can enable them to become worthy to receive it. Whether humans will comply is not controlled by God.
The gift of divine moral renewal of humans depends for its reception on their voluntary cooperation with God over time. This lesson is widely neglected, partly because some inquirers think that it threatens divine unmerited grace and favors a dubious kind of human “works.” The latter motive, however, is confused and confusing. Human cooperation as a way to receive an unmerited gift does not make the received gift merited. When we open a gift box, for instance, we do not thereby undermine the gift as an unearned gift. Receiving a gift with cooperation does not entail earning the gift. Paul, as indicated, has confirmed the active role of humans in receiving salvation by grace from God: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil :–, RSV). Paul thus thinks of the divine salvation of humans as a process to be “worked out” by them over time. In that respect, the people undergoing salvation are voluntary works in progress. Paul states that he is not a finished work: Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it, but one thing I have laid hold of: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal, toward the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil :–)
This remark follows on the heels of Paul’s stated goal that “I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil :). Resurrection, in Paul’s thought, is a key part of “the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” It includes Paul’s goal “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil :). We have noted that “becoming like him” includes learning to obey God as Jesus did, and that this occurs over time, with maturation in responding to God.
Maturation in relating to God calls for letting God’s fruit of the Spirit come to fruition in oneself on an ongoing basis. Such maturation is a gift, given the gift of divine fruit, and a duty, given its challenge for humans to conform to it, with divine power. Going beyond mere practice, inquiry about God seeks such maturation, in keeping with the main purpose of self-manifested divine evidence: to lead people to loyal cooperation with God. So, it is no surprise that to inquire about God is to conform to divine transformation toward righteousness in human lives. Theological inquiry, by a divine standard, should honor the duty to seek answers in a way that gives God and divine righteousness priority. This calls for letting divine evidence come to fruition in human cooperation and conformity with it. The seeking expected by God can give seekers attentiveness to divine value in a way that enhances their conformity to it. It thus can put them in a good position for theological inquiry. We have noted an endorsement for seeking God in the book of Jeremiah (:), while Jesus linked the seeking to divine righteousness: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt :). W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison have explained that talk of “the kingdom” here is equivalent to talk of divine righteousness. The talk of “first” here is talk of value priority, not temporal order. It thus suggests a demand for humans to prioritize divine righteousness in what they seek and value. This demand bears on cognitive as well as practical seeking. It thus bears on theological inquiry, and it expects the seeking and maintaining of righteousness in such inquiry. Beyond mere assessment of information, the moral status of inquirers before God is thereby involved in such inquiry, by a divine standard. Theological inquiry benefits from grounded assurance of its integrity and success. Not just any assurance will do, however, as
See W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ), vol. , p. .
Chapter suggested. Inquirers can seek assurance for relatively unimportant things, including things at odds with God’s perfectly good character and its self-manifested fruit. We need, however, a personified understanding of divine assurance, along the lines of what we have proposed for divine values and duties. Such assurance is personified when understood and experienced as intentional divine leading to human cooperation in righteousness. It is assurance of God’s righteous power at work in human lives, and not of what we simply think is good or is approved by God. The attitude of Jesus in Gethsemane is thus fitting for receiving assurance from God, even if it leaves us with many unanswered questions about God’s purposes and with feelings of frustration at times. Divine leading, we have suggested, contributes to the meaning of human life: the meaning, or purpose, as being led by God to be better regarding divine righteousness as one cooperates with it. As we noted, Tolstoy recognized the divine purpose for us to be better, and he thought it called for a renewed life with God. We have suggested that such life calls for vigilance regarding divine values – that is, for vigilance toward God. Jesus, too, called for watchfulness for God’s intervention in human experience (Mark :, , ). That intervention, according to various biblical writers, includes divine righteousness manifested in human moral experience. Humans will tend to be watchful for such righteousness only if they value it. So, what we value will have a bearing on the evidence of God we receive and recognize. Our questions about God’s role in our moral experience are, in part, questions about us as inquirers. Given this book’s perspective, a concluding question for us is: Will we let God be God in our moral experience, for goodness’ sake, including for our own sake?
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Index
Abba, , , , Abraham, , , , , , , , Abram, see Abraham Adam, –, – Adams, Robert M., agapē, , , , agency, , , , , , , , , , , Aquinas, Thomas, , attention-attraction, awareness (experience), Baillie, John, , belief, , , , , , , , , , , , in God, biblical theology, , , , , , Brightman, Edgar Sheffield, , Camus, Albert, x, certainty, , , Christ, , , , , , , , –, , , , –, – Clarke, William Newton, common good, xiii, , , , , , , , conscience, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , conviction, , , , , , , moral, , cooperation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , co-valuing, , , creation, –, , , , , , , , , , , , , cross of Christ, death, –, , , , –, – deciders, divine, commonwealth, , , , , creation, guidance, , , , hiding, , , , nudge, power, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , purpose, xiii, , , , , , , , , , , , righteousness, self-authentication, self-manifestation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , duty, Eve, –, , –, , , evil, xiii, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
explanation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , faith, , , –, –, , , –, , , , , –, , –, , , – in God, , , , , , , , –, , , , – fear, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , fellowship, , , , , forgiveness, , , , , , , , , , , , , , Forsyth, P. T., , , , freedom, , , , , , fruit of the Spirit, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , frustration, , , , future, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Gethsemane, , , , , , , , , , , gift, , , –, , , , , , , , , –, –, , , , –, , – God, evidence for, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , experience of, knowing, , , , , Son of, , , , , , worthiness of worship, , , , , gospel, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , grace, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , heart, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
hope, x, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Hume, David, idolatry, , intentions, , , , , , Isaiah, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Jesus, –, –, , , –, , –, Job, , , – judgment, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , justification, Kant, Immanuel, , , , , , Kantian, , koinōnia, , , Lampe, G. W. H., , law, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , of God, , , moral, , of sin, love, x, , , , , , , , , –, –, , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, –, , , , , –, , , , , , –, , Mackintosh, H. R., , , , , meaning of life, , , Moberly, R. W. L, moral, duties, experience, – experiment, , , , , guidance, , , , , , inspiration, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
rapport, , , , , , – self-adaptation, , , , values, Moses, , , , , , , , , , motivation, , , , , , mystery, ,
revelation, , , , , , , , , righteousness, , –, , –, , –, –, –, , –, – Robinson, H. Wheeler, , Russell, Bertrand,
natural theology, , Niebuhr, H. Richard, , , ,
sacrifice, , , , , , , salvation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , science, sin, , , , , , , , , , , , , , Son of God, , , struggle, , , , , suffering, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and evil, human, , , , , , , , , severe, xiii, , , , , , , , , , ,
obedience, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Oman, John, participation, , , , , Paul, the Apostle, – personality, , , , , , , , persons, ix, xii, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , philosophical overlay, , , philosophy, , , Plato, , , , Platonic, , , , , , , , prayer, , , , , , presence, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , purposes, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , rapport, – reconciliation, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , redemption, , , , , , , , religious diversity, xii repentance, , , , , , , , , , , , , responsiveness, , , , , , , resurrection,
theodicy, , theological inquiry, , , , , , , , theology, , , , , , , , , , , , biblical, , , , , , , , Thomist, , , , , Tolstoy, Leo, , , , , , , , , , , , , trust, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , in God, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , turning, to God, , , , , ,
value, Ward, Keith, , wisdom, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
witness, , , , , , , , , , , , worship, xiii, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,