The Ethics of Love

 

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, here’s a post about love! Is “love” the only rule of conduct for Christians? How do we define love? How do we practice love? To answer these common questions, we must turn to Scripture. In response to claims that God only commands love, Gordon H. Clark writes:

 Theology is the crux of the matter, for ethics depends on theology. Instead of a God who gives moral laws, [Dr. Joseph] Fletcher [, Professor of Social Ethics in the Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, Massachusetts] acknowledges a god who commands nothing but love. Now, one can wax eloquent and plausible about love. One can even sound devout and Christian, but if we are logical and rational, we must analyze the position to see exactly what it means.

It is not clear that Fletcher knows what he means by love. He quotes Tillich that the law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law. But his paradoxical statement contains no positive information. Fletcher tells us also that “Christian love is not desire… it is an attitude.” But this statement too is negative and devoid of specific information. Later he says that love and justice are the same. “Justice,” he says, “is Christian love using its head, calculating its duties.” But Fletcher does not tell us what justice is or how we are to use our heads. Beyond this, Fletcher makes several other statments about love. But even if some of them should happen to be true, none of them shows how love can justify any action, even any good action, let alone disobedience to God.

The point I wish to make is not merely that love all by itself does not justify murder, theft, and perjury. The important point is that love all by itself does not justify any action. Morality cannot be based on love alone because love alone gives no guidance whatever. As a quotation a moment ago showed, the Scriptures may require us to love God but how we are to love God is spelled out in detail: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” Without the specific and detailed instruction of the commandments we could never know how to express our love for God.

The fact is, Fletcher has trouble even with the command to love. When he rejects “all revealed norms or laws but the one commandment to love God in the neighbor,” he misquotes the commandment he refers to and omits the one on which it depends, namely, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Now a man doesn’t have to be a Christian. A man may adopt any principles he pleases if he can rationally defend them. But what kind of a Christian is it that accepts a garbled Second Commandment while rejecting the First from the same authority?

You can read the rest of this lecture, “The Puritans and Situation Ethics,” here. 

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Phone: 423.743.0199 Fax: 423.743.2005

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Augustine vs. Aristotle: Truth and Happiness

What is the aim of human endeavor? Is ignorance truly bliss? Gordon H. Clark provides a peek into the happiness-centric ethical philosophies of Aristotle and Augustine (emphasis in bold is my own):

“Happiness” (eudamonia, from which we derive eudaemonism) is the term Aristotle used to designate the goal of life. It is an end in itself, never a means to anything else. “Honor, pleasure, intelligence, and all forms of virtue, we choose both for their own sakes, … and we also choose them for the sake of happiness. … But no one chooses happiness for the sake of honor or pleasure, nor as a means to anything else at all” (Nicomachean Ethics, I, vii, 1097b1-6).

…

Augustine’s ethics was also eudaemonism. The good life is one of happiness (beatitudo, beatitas; both terms coined by Cicero). All men desire happiness (De Trinitate, X, v, 7). “No one lives as he wishes unless he is happy” (De Civitas Dei, XIV, 25). Now Augustine would not disparage virtues such as courage and temperance; nor would he belittle rational thought. In fact, no one can be happy without knowledge of the truth. In this there is similarity to Aristotle. But Augustine replaces Aristotle’s secularism with Christian content. God is truth and to know God is wisdom. Therefore the happiness Augustine recommends becomes blessedness or beatitude.

More explicitly: wisdom is not the knowledge of some heathen god, nor even of, say, Spinoza’s first principle. To have wisdom is to have Christ. Christ is the truth; Christ is the wisdom of God.

One reason for making truth the aim of our endeavors is that if we love what can be lost, we cannot be happy. But God, Christ, and truth are immutable, and if we have this, our blessedness is permanent (“Happiness,” Essays on Ethics and Politics, pp. 109-110; originally published in Baker’s Dictionary of Christian Ethics, Carl F.H. Henry, editor. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1973, pp. 281-282.).

What are Good Works?

Here are some helpful comments from Gordon H. Clark which answer the question of how one can know good works from evil ones. Emphasis in bold is my own.

What then are good works? Are they those actions a benevolently intentioned gentleman may happen to enjoy? Is a substantial donation to an orphanage, hospital, or church a good work? Strange as it may seem to non-Christians, and even to uninstructed Christians, the answer is that these actions are not necessarily good. They may be good; but again they may not be. What then makes a work or action good?

Two requirements must be fulfilled before an act can properly be called good. The [Westminster] Confession says, “Good works are only such as God hath commanded in his holy word, and not such as, without the warrant thereof, are devised by men out of blind zeal, or upon any pretense of good intention.”

The first part of this section teaches that unless we had the Bible, it would be impossible to know what is good and what is evil. To be sure, the heathen know that there is a distinction between right and wrong; and they regularly violate their consciences; but they do not know in particular what acts are right because their consciences are unenlightened. The Biblical revelation is essential to a knowledge of what works are good (“Good Works,” Essays on Ethics and Politics, p. 104; originally published in The Southern Presbyterian Journal, February 9, 1955.).

“The Ethics of Abortion” by Gordon H. Clark

Parts of this paper were given in connection with a demonstration before Erlanger Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Today many hospitals, institutions which are supposed to save life, permit and even encourage their doctors to kill innocent babies. They tear the babies limb from limb or sometimes the nurses have thrown the living babies into garbage cans. Abortion is legal because the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. said so. A majority of nine men, without any amending of the Constitution or any referendum of the population, but all by themselves, negated the legal right of innocent persons to live. Having rejected God, they wish to assume His prerogatives.

One argument abortionists frequently use to defend themselves against the charge of murder is the claim that the baby is not a human being. But if the baby in the womb is not human, what is it? Is it canine? Is it feline? I think that some babies born thirty or forty years ago have turned out to be asinine.

Another argument which abortionists use to defend their murder of innocent infants is that the government must not base its legislation on religious principles. Legislation should always be based on irreligious principles. No doubt you have all heard that the government should never enforce morality. This may be one reason why many abortionists oppose the death penalty for murder. This is consistent, for if murder be a capital offense, the abortionists, both doctors and mothers, are in great danger. But if a government cannot enforce morality, rape would be as legal as murder. Nor could the government prohibit theft. Note carefully that the same Ten Commandments which condemn murder condemn theft also. When irreligious bureaucrats and secular judges prohibit the display of the Ten Commandments on the walls of a public school, they erase theft as well as murder from the list of crimes. Opposition to theft is just as religious as opposition to murder. Christianity condemns both murder and theft because both are condemned by God.

If atheism is to be the law of the land, there can be no laws at all to support morality, for there is no morality apart from the laws of God. I would like to make it clear that sociology, statistics, psychology, or any empirical science can never determine moral norms. Secular science at best can discover what people do; but it cannot discover what people ought to do. From observational premises no normative conclusion follows. Any attempt to define morality by observational science is a logical fallacy. Science can invent new ways of killing people, but science can never determine who should be killed. It cannot determine who should not be killed. It can only invent more effective ways of doing what somebody for some other reason wants to do.

The controversy between those who consider life sacred and those who kill babies is not a controversy between two systems of ethics, as if we had one system and the abortionists, secularists, and atheists had a different system. The point is that they cannot have any system of ethics at all. Scientific observation – what they sometimes call reason as opposed to what they misunderstand by faith – cannot establish any values whatever. Science often produces wonders but one thing it cannot do: It cannot establish the value of anything, even the value of itself.

Repudiation of divine laws is destructive of all morality. Abortion is immoral. Rejecting God, the abortionists try to justify their cruelty to babies, while at the same time condemning burglary, by an appeal to a social consensus. To this attempt to condemn theft while justifying murder, there is a single answer with two parts.

First, no social consensus has been established. The Supreme Court alone, nine men out of two hundred million, legalized the killing of babies on its own arbitrary authority. This is the autocracy of evil dictators.

Then, second, social consensus cannot determine what is right or wrong. The social consensus of the Spartans in antiquity and of at least some Indian tribes in North America condoned theft and even praised it. Before the Belgians took over the Congo a century or so ago, social consensus approved of cannibalism. The fact that various societies have considered theft and cannibalism to be right, does not prove that theft and cannibalism are right – nor the murder of babies, either. One can perhaps with relative ease discover what groups of people think is right; but social consensus does not make anything right or wrong.

So far as I can see, the only pertinent difference between the abortionists here and the cannibals in the Congo is that the abortionists do not eat the babies. They throw them in the garbage can. What a waste of good meat in these times of famine. Of course the meat would have to be inspected by the USDA, but I can see no reason why, on abortionist principles – or lack of principles – I see no reason for prohibiting the eating of human flesh. A nice tender baby might taste better than a Cornish hen. Or if the mothers, for no good reason, do not want to eat their babies, they could at least send them to alleviate starvation in the Third World. Of course babies are a little small, like Cornish hens. But if the Supreme Court can legalize the murder of infants, it can as easily legalize the murder of adults. Indeed some groups already propose the murder of the elderly. Abortion logically justifies the murder of anyone. Hence the Supreme Court could legalize the murder of all who support the right of life and so produce a unanimous social consensus.

If anyone thinks that this proposal is extreme, be it noted that Hitler’s National Socialism and Stalin’s International Socialism attempted just that. Hitler massacred the Jews and Stalin massacred the Ukrainians and hordes of others. And aside from historical examples, rampant murder is well within the logical range of atheistic abortionism. There is a determined effort in this nation to reduce orthodox Christians to the status of second class citizens. Their recent interest in politics and law has been severely condemned. Even Barry Goldwater, supposedly a conservative of the conservatives, showed his anti-religious bigotry in denouncing the pro-life movement. In many public schools the secularist view is sustained by government imposition and the pro-life view is denied a hearing. Smut is legal, and even required reading, but the Ten Commandments are prohibited. The end of this, unless stopped, is the same persecution now practiced under Communism.

We must try to stop this atheistic program. And one place, a good place to start, is abortions.

May/June 1982

 

Copyright © 1998-2011 The Trinity Foundation
Post Office 68, Unicoi, Tennessee 37692
Phone: 423.743.0199 Fax: 423.743.2005

Gordon H. Clark on Knowledge as the Basis of Responsibility

The Bible does not work out a theory of voluntary action and deliberate choice. It does, however, base responsibility on knowledge, and allows for greater responsibility, greater sin, and greater punishment in proportion to the amount of knowledge. The idea is clearly expressed in Romans 1:18,19, 32; 2:12, 13, 15. Also, Christ said, “that servant who knew his master’s will, but did not make ready… shall receive a severe beating. But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required” (Luke 12:47, 48) (Gordon H. Clark, Essays on Ethics and Politics, “Ethics,” pp. 59.).

… Those who deny that men are dead in sin hold also that sin is not merely voluntary, but is particularly an act of free will. Volition and free will are not the same… Free will, that is, a choice that is not caused either by God, by character, by motives, or anything else, is substituted for knowledge as the basis for responsibility. Moreover, the problem is complicated by the fact that God is omnipotent. He could have made men sinless, had he so desired. … Christianity teaches that God is omnipotent so that He could even now eradicate evil. Superficial thinking attempts to say that God limited himself. The infinite made itself finite. God undeified himself, and hence there is sin. This reply is inadequate because limited omnipotence is a contradiction in terms… (63).

Clark’s essay, “Ethics,” was originally published in the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible, Merrill C. Tenney, editor. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1975, pp. 385-404.

Luther, Calvin, Zanchius, and Gill on Free Will

In Gordon H. Clark’s essay, “Concerning Free Will” (Essays on Ethics and Politics; Jefferson: Trinity Foundation, 1992. pp. 25-35; originally published in The Reformed Presbyterian Advocate, August-September, 1961.), Clark provides several quotes from historic Protestantism on the subject of “Free Will.” I found the following quotes especially helpful, particularly because they speak to subjects and arguments that I have encountered in my own theological discussions. Emphasis in bold is my own.

First, Martin Luther, in response to Erasmus’ quote of Deuteronomy 30:19, “I have set before thy face life and death, choose what is good.”

“What words” says the Diatribe, “can be more plain? It leaves a man the liberty of choosing.” I answer, what is more plain than that you are blind? How, I pray, does it leave the liberty of choosing? Is it by the expression “choose”? Therefore as Moses saith “choose,” does it immediately come to pass that they do choose? Then there is no need of the Spirit. … [Erasmus says] “It would be ridiculous to say to a man standing in a place where two ways meet, Thou seest two roads, go by which thou wilt; when only one was open.” This, as I [Luther] have observed before, is from the arguments of human reason, which thinks that a man is mocked by a command impossible: whereas I say that the man by this means is admonished and roused to see his own impotency. True it is that we are in a place where two ways meet, and that one of them only is open, yea rather neither of them is open. But by the law it is shown how impossible the one [way] is, that is, to good, unless God freely give us His Spirit, and how wide and easy the other [way] is, if God leave us to ourselves. … Wherefore the words of the law are spoken, not that they might assert the power of the will, but that they might illuminate the blindness of reason, that it might see that its own light is nothing and that the power of the will is nothing. … Man by the words of the law is admonished and taught what he ought to do, not what he can do; that is, that he is brought to know his sin, but not to believe that he has any strength in himself” (pp. 153-154).

Look then first at that of Jeremiah and Malachi, “If thou wilt turn, then will I turn thee;” and “turn ye unto me and I will turn unto you.” Does it then follow from “turn ye” therefore, ye are able to turn? Does it follow also from “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart” therefore, thou art able to love with all the heart? If these arguments stand good, what do they conclude but that free will needs not the grace of God, but can do all things of its own power? (p. 162) [Clark 27-28]. [Clark takes these quotes from Luther’s Bondage of the Will, Henry Cole trans., Sovereign Grace Union ed., United States, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1931.]

Here Luther has shown that one can only derive propositions (such as “Man possesses the liberty of choosing”) from other propositions. An imperative statement, or command, is not a proposition; it is neither true nor false, and thus truth cannot be derived from it.

Next, John Calvin.

“The Christian and the Law,” by Gordon H. Clark

[You can find this and many other excellent articles at The Trinity Foundation.]

Not only do denominations differ over their interpretations of various Biblical doctrines, but also within each denomination individual members have their personal peculiarities. Therefore when ministers assemble for a sedate colloquium or college students get together for a friendly bull session, and a question on Biblical doctrine arises, the discussion is bound to be interesting.

Within the past year two such meetings took place-one almost exclusively of ministers and professors, the other almost exclusively of students. It may not be so surprising that the subject of divine guidance and right conduct was taken up at both meetings, but it is worthy of note that in the first meeting a minister from a liturgical and rather formal denomination and in the second meeting some students from much more informal groups, expressed similar sentiments on the Christian’s relation to the law of God. It may also be worthy to note that few of the ministers agreed with the minister, while most of the students agreed with the students.