Ethics

This study of ethics starts with three premises.  The first is that the God of the Bible is real.  The second is that He created the world.  The third is that He continues to reign over the world in a manner both engaged and omnipotent.  These three ideas make up the basic foundation upon which a solid worldview should be based, and as such, they also make up the basic foundation upon which a proper view of ethics is built.

God is real.  This simple statement ultimately carries the most important meaning any three words can hold.  Since God is real, He is measurable.  Not measurable in the sense that He can be quantified as an exact value, but measurable in the sense that a variable in an equation is measured.  That variable will always exist, and can be relied upon to be the variable it is, but it cannot be measured without the proper information: information that is, in this case, inaccessible to the human mind.  God is, in a sense, equivalent to infinity.  It will always behave the same way: in other words, it will always have the same nature.  God’s nature is one of holiness.  And that is not because there is some standard outside of God to which He naturally conforms.  Nothing else has ever existed self-sufficiently outside of the framework set in place around the world as it is today.  God was always there.  He is holy purely because holiness comes from Him.  To be holy simply means to be set apart.  And God is, by His very essence, set apart from the universe, as surely as a carpenter is set apart from a house.

Because God is the Creator of all that exists, He is entitled to complete authority over His creation.  It would be absurd for a mechanized toy to tell a toymaker that it would rather not be made to walk when it is wound up, thank you very much, and that it would rather decide for itself what its function ought to be.  In the same way, God has the absolute right to set upon His creation any requirements He pleases.  This includes an ethical system.

God’s nature is relevant because everything in the world is in some way a reflection of an aspect of His personality.  His nature not only gives Him the right to devise an ethical system, but it also provides the standard for that system.  In Genesis 1:27, the Bible—on whose authority our first premise rests its assumptions about God—states that man was made in the image of God.  What this means is that mankind, the only species capable of cognitive thinking, is also the one that most fully reflects God’s nature.  As such, the standard for mankind is the same standard for God: holiness.  Since man is made in the image of God, he is expected to be set apart in the same manner.

The important thing to realize about this system of ethics is that it is unchanging.  God’s nature is constant.  As such, the moral standard by which humans are expected to abide will not change.  There are no surprises: the standard will be consistent throughout eternity, and so, once learned, will serve across the entirety of one’s lifetime.  If that is the case, how can the standard be learned?  If God’s nature is hidden to humans, how is it possible to discover the standard by which we are supposed to abide?  There are two methods that may be used, inextricably interwoven and tied up in two key elements of the Christian faith: general revelation and special revelation.

General revelation is the information about God’s nature that He has coded into creation.  This is easily accessible just through viewing the world.  God’s incredible order and structure is evidenced by the layout of the seeds found at the center of a sunflower.  His delight in beauty is found in the vibrant colors He has instilled into the flora and fauna found across the globe.  His sense of humor can be detected in the interesting design choices of creatures such as the giraffe or the platypus.  Such knowledge is gained through general revelation, which exposes broad shades of God’s character.  Special revelation, on the other hand, is information about God’s nature that has been given directly to the human race in order to allow us to understand specific details about God’s nature; for instance, His detestation of pride, dishonesty, and murder, or His high regard for faith, hope, and love.  Such incomprehensibly complex structures as the Trinity, such mindboggling concepts as God incarnate, are all discovered through the special revelation of the Bible.  In a sense, then, if God’s nature were a play, general revelation would be the setting and the backstory, the scene and the props, while special revelation would be the characters who actually move the story forward and progress the plot.

One last thing must be explained as regards this system of ethics: it cannot be completed.  Every human being is destined to failure.  If you doubt this, look around at the world you live in.  Murder, rape, theft, corruption, deception, sadism, war…  These are only a few of the problems alive and thriving on this civilized, progressive, twenty-first century planet known as Earth.  Would such problems be present if all humans followed the standard laid out for them?  If every mandate of the Holy One were carried out, would millions upon millions die every year at the hands of barbarians?  The simple answer is no.  And that is because no replica is ever able to live up to the original.  Man was made in the image of God, but he is not God.  And so God had to live as man in order to fulfill the standard laid upon mankind.  That is the greatest mystery of Christian ethics, and it is found in the special revelation known as the Gospel.