A Primer on Moral Law, With Reference to Same-Sex “Marriage”

I shall begin where I did earlier, with the opening sentence of Book II of Aristotle’s Physics [1]: “Of things that exist, some exist by nature, and some from other causes.” With the help of Aquinas, we may amend that to read, “Of things that exist, some owe their existence to God, and some to other causes.” That is the beginning of all right reason. And if it applies to the question of Rights, as I argued in the first part, it applies no less to the moral law. No one, I expect, would argue that Aristotle’s words apply to only tangible things. Rights, though intangible, exist; for that is how people talk about them. People talk as though intellect, and love, and reason, and logic, and freedom do exist, and do matter, in a much more profound way than a world of tangible things. Wherefore, that is how we should speak of the moral law, too, and whence it derives.

I.

C.S. LEWIS AND THE REALITY OF THE MORAL LAW

With that in mind, let us turn to how C.S. Lewis establishes the reality of the moral law, in the opening paragraphs of Mere Christianity [2]:

Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they say. They say things like this: ‘How’d you like it if anyone did the same to you?’—‘That’s my seat, I was there first’—‘Leave him alone, he isn’t doing you any harm’—‘Why should you shove in first?’—‘Give me a bit of your orange, I gave you a bit of mine’—‘Come on, you promised.’ People say things like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as well as grown-ups.

Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man’s behaviour does not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man very seldom replies: ‘To hell with your standard.’ Nearly always he tries to make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends that there is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. … And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are. (Lewis 3-4)

That is so brief, so deceptively simple, that we are likely to miss all that Lewis has accomplished in just over 300 words. With a single, everyday example—which all of us have witnessed—he demolishes the notion that standards of right and wrong are relative. The reason he demolishes it is because no one believes it. A lot of people think they do; a lot of people say, “Oh, why should I follow your standard?”—at least when it comes to a point in the moral law that is inconvenient or difficult. But at the same time, they have all sorts of moral standards that they expect everyone else to know and follow. Ask a relativist whether you should be free to push someone over a bridge because of the color of his skin; after all, why should you have to follow some other man’s moral law? Listen to the answer you’ll get. All of a sudden the “relativist” believes in a standard that applies to everyone.

To return to Lewis.

What was the sense in saying the enemy [during World War II] were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair. [3] (Lewis 5)

If moral good and evil are no more than relative standards that differ from time to time and place to place, then ask the relativist to explain why slavery or segregation were wrong. Were these not just an expression of the culture of the South? Should they not have been left to die of their own accord, rather than bother to fight a Civil War or launch a civil rights movement? Or ask the relativist to explain why the Holocaust was wrong. Wasn’t that just an expression of German culture in the thirties and forties? Why go to war to stop it? If moral right and wrong are merely relative standards, what was going on at the Nuremberg trials? Why was Adolf Eichmann executed?

It is nonsensical to assume the Germans did not know that genocide was wrong, just as it is nonsensical to assume the South did not know, at bottom, that slavery and segregation were wrong. For indeed, as Lewis points out, any points of difference between cultures in their moral understanding

have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks[,] and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. … I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were really admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. (Lewis 5-6)

I appreciate Lewis’s math analogy in the last sentence. The analogy has become something of a cliché now, but the point of it is worth underscoring: The claims of religion and of morality are truth claims, and as such they have as much reality standing behind them as does a mathematical equation. It is important to emphasize that fact, because we have come to a point at which people don’t think of the question that way. Instead, people tend to think of religious propositions, particularly when it comes to sin, as though they were mere opinions that ought not to be imposed upon anyone else.

II.

TED OLSON AND FALSE MORAL EQUIVALENCE

But it is worth noting that, when people want to argue in favor of same-sex marriage, many of the arguments they make are moral ones. To be sure, it is a false morality—or a true morality misapplied—and I will show that at the proper time. But to see that the same-sex marriage proponent makes moral arguments, we may turn once more to Ted Olson’s op ed in Newsweek, “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage.” Mr. Olson writes:

The explanation mentioned most often [for keeping marriage between a man and woman] is tradition. But simply because something has always been done a certain way does not mean that it must always remain that way. Otherwise we would still have segregated schools and debtors’ prisons. Gays and lesbians have always been among us, forming part of our society, and they have lived as couples in neighborhoods and communities. For a long time, they have experienced discrimination, and even persecution; but we, as a society, are starting to become more tolerant, accepting, and understanding. … It therefore seems anomalous to cite “tradition” as a justification for withholding the status of marriage and thus to continue to label those relationships as less worthy, less sanctioned, or less legitimate. (Olson 2)

The entire passage is premised on false, and frankly offensive, comparisons—such as the suggestion that keeping marriage between a man and a woman is no different than keeping a school segregated. Or the suggestion that homosexual people, by being denied marriage, are forced to live life in a type of debtors’ prison. These comparisons are not meant to describe reality, but instead to evoke emotions.  Does Mr. Olson really mean to suggest that the Catholic Church, say, is on a par with George Wallace, or the villain in a Dickens novel? This is not reason, but pathos.

I would also point out the faulty premise that, just because some things in society have changed, therefore anything may be changed. In the context we are talking about, it is particularly faulty since, with respect to segregation, change brought society closer to the moral law.  But with respect to same-sex marriage, change would take society further from it. Mr. Olson needs to explain why same-sex marriage is a moral good, which is in doubt; not that it is change, which no one doubts.  Change is not an inherent good, but its moral value must be measured against the nature of the change itself.  No one, I trust, would argue that we should re-introduce slavery because it would represent change.  “Change” is a vacuous political mantra; it is not a serious argument.

Underlying these false comparisons and errors in logic, however, is an appeal to moral good—not the moral good of same-sex marriage, but instead the good of “tolerance,” of “acceptance,” of “understanding.” I would reply to Mr. Olson by saying that these virtues are not without limit; there is no “tolerance,” no “acceptance,” no “understanding” of sin. Compassion for people, yes, but none for immoral behavior; and Mr. Olson is begging the question. Still, he does not say that all moral values are false. Instead, he appeals to moral values that he presumes everyone to believe in, and attempts to persuade society to accept same-sex marriage on the basis, not of its own value, but others.

Thus the question of same-sex marriage does not involve the reality of the moral law. You can show in a matter of seconds that no one believes in moral relativity, regardless of whether he says he does. Not even Christopher Hitchens believed in moral relativity. Those who claim to believe in it probably mean instead, “I don’t want to be bothered with what you Christians tell me I ought or ought not do.” But that’s different. Behind every claim to moral relativity is someone making an excuse, either for himself or for someone else. He knows the behavior in question is wrong, but is attached to it, or perhaps does not wish to make the necessary effort to correct it. Perhaps he feels it would require too much effort. Or perhaps he doesn’t wish to give offense—which is the false moral sensibility of our age.

The real question is Aristotle’s: Where does the moral law come from? Everyone, even little kids, knows instinctively that it exists, and it requires the self-delusion of a sophomore, or a philosopher, to deny it. But where does it come from? “There is a difference,” the philosopher Douglas Wilson points out, “between knowing the existence of good and evil, and being able to give an accounting of it” (~1:50-1:55). And here, as with the question of Rights, there are only two options: Either the moral law comes into existence on its own, or it comes from God. And if it comes from God, we have to consider both the nature of who He is and the purpose for which he designed us.

III.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS AND THE MORAL ARGUMENT FROM ABSENCE

As I said, Hitchens did not deny the existence of morality; indeed his argument against Christianity was that it is, in his judgment, immoral. So how does an atheist promote himself moral judge of religion:  How does he explain the reality of a moral standard apart from the religion he seeks to denigrate? First, consider the following statement (part of Hitchens’s standard exordium when in debate). Christianity, he says, is immoral

by making love compulsory, by saying that you must love. You must love your neighbor as yourself—something you can’t actually do. But you’ll always fall short so you can always be found guilty. … This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. (~2:00-2:25)

Note that Hitchens describes Christian morality as a species of trap, which demands of us what we cannot possibly achieve. For Hitchens, perfect morality, if it exists, appears to be achievable—within everyone’s capacity. The sinless life (if Hitchens had accepted the word “sin”) is possible. In this view, the source of moral action is not outside the human person but within. That, at least, is consistent with Hitchens’s belief in an evolved human “species.” If the human person evolved, it follows that the moral sense would have to have evolved as well. Thus Hitchens explains morality as a development toward what he calls “human solidarity.” Here again is Hitchens, this time from his debate at Kings College with Dinesh D’Souza.

What we think of as “morality” or “ethics” comes from human solidarity and pre-dates all forms of monotheism. Don’t let it be said that … [the Israelites] wandered all that time under the belief that perjury and murder and theft were okay, only to eventually bump into Mt. Sinai and receive the news it wasn’t kosher after all. … Any society who believed those things wouldn’t have got that far. … Name me a moral statement uttered by a believer or an ethical statement, that could not be uttered by a non-believer. … We calculate that the human species, homo sapiens, has been around now … I would say 100,000 years, not more nor less. … For those 100,000 years people were born, died, many of them in childbirth, either the mother or the child. Life expectancy 20 years, perhaps 25. People died of microorganisms they didn’t know existed; Genesis doesn’t mention them because the people who wrote Genesis didn’t know there were microorganisms. Earthquakes would have been terrifying—tsunamis, volcanoes, mysterious events, war and famine superimposed on all this. … That was our life for tens of thousands of years. Maybe a gradual upward curve of a sort; we seem to have made some progress, very painfully and with infinite suffering and labor, and with our solidarity still intact. (~19:55-20:42, 25:54-27:33)

Hitchens relied on this exordium in debate after debate; it was his only attempt to explain the existence of a moral law without God. And the errors are many. For one, Hitchens assumes the human “species” to exist prior to monotheism, but never explains how he knows that to be true. He presumes Christianity to teach that God communicates the moral law to human beings for the first time on Mt. Sinai, and exclusively by means of a written code. But the very Scripture which tells us about this event also says that God has written the law upon our hearts (Jer. 31:33; Rom. 2:15; Heb. 10:16). That explains how non-believers know about it (it explains how Cain knew about it long before Mt. Sinai); although Hitchens seemed to believe he had the Christian backed into a corner when he asks the question, he was attacking a straw man and a fantasia of his own creation.

Finally, note how, at the end of the passage, Hitchens describes the struggle for survival among human beings as a type of the evolution of moral sensibility: Out of that shared struggle for survival comes “human solidarity,” which is Hitchens’s preferred expression, rather than “morality” or “ethics” or “virtue.”

But “human solidarity” is not the same thing; indeed, it is less, for it involves nothing greater than the mere recognition that there are other creatures like yourself that you are bound to for survival. It brings with it no sense of obligation to them out of justice. Nor does it bring with it any sense of moral obligation to oneself or to the Creator of all things. If I had had the opportunity to debate Christopher Hitchens, I would have asked him how it is that, if morality has an evolutionary explanation, and if it is achievable, no one has ever fulfilled it perfectly.  (Other than Christ, because He was God, and Mary, because she was given a unique grace.)  Even Hitchens understood that there are people walking around living immoral lives.  But if the moral sense—the instinct toward “human solidarity”—is an evolutionary development, wouldn’t viciousness be as impossible as forgetting to breathe?  Where was Mohamed Atta’s sense of human solidarity?  Or was he an evolutionary freak?

Instead what we find is that we have to train ourselves in righteousness (1 Tim. 4:7). And we have to war against the impulse to transgress. In a lecture on C.S. Lewis (linked to here), British scholar Philip van der Elst explains how attributing morality to evolution or instinct misses the mark. Extrapolating from a passage in Mere Christianity, he asks his listener to imagine walking by a cold river and seeing a drowning child. On the one hand, you have an instinct to jump in and save the child; on the other hand, you have an instinct not to risk your own life. But you know that you ought to suppress the instinct to save yourself and follow the instinct to jump in and rescue the child. What is that tells you to follow the one instinct and suppress the other? Whatever it is can’t itself be another instinct. It has to be something outside (~18:04-20:17).

But in his effort to avoid the theological explanation, Hitchens leaves too much else unexplained. He diminishes the human person to a mere collection of evolved instincts, as though we were no better than an animal, as though moral action were no different than a cat bathing itself. But if Hitchens is right in this, how can it be said that we should be surprised by anything a human being does? Why fulminate against religion on the basis that it is “immoral”? Is not the religious impulse just one more evolved instinct in human beings? What sense does it make to argue against it? Indeed, to argue against it, and on the basis that Hitchens does, is—in the words of Douglas Wilson—to borrow moral values from the Christianity he seeks to discredit.

To accept that the moral law comes from God creates no such problems. All human beings possess an awareness of it—even children, even the uneducated, even unbelievers, even those who attempt to deny it; and the reason they do is because God has written it upon their hearts. If that is the case, it follows that the content of the moral law must be derived from the nature of who God is and the purpose for which he created us.

On that, continue along with me as the series progresses. Next up in Part 3, “A Primer on Natural Law, With Reference to Same-Sex Marriage.”

ENDNOTES

[1] Aristotle. Physics.  Trans. Robin Waterfield.    New York:  Oxford UP, 2008.

[2] Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity (1952).  New York:  Harper Collins, 2001.

[3] Just a parenthetical remark here, but did you catch the differentiation Lewis makes between the characteristics a person is born with, and his behavior?  Lewis does not labor under any misbegotten belief that certain Germans living in the 1930s and 1940s had been born with a predisposition to be murderers, as though they were slaves to their DNA.

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