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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Scott B. Rae
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February 20 - June 13, 2016
Aristotle connected happiness with being a good person. He said, “Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.”
Epicurus put it this way: “It is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently, honorably and justly.”
Jesus himself when he said to his disciples, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul [a part of which i...
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This is certainly the idea of the moral law being written on our hearts, as described in Romans 2:14–15. Paul here is arguing for the pervasiveness and universality of sin by maintaining that we all violate God’s law, whether we have access to it or not:
They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” The point of the text is that the demands of morality are imprinted internally on each person, giving him or her an inherent sense of right and wrong.
In the same way that we are rational, conscious, and relational, created by a rational, conscious, and relational God, we are also moral beings created by a moral God.
“Why should I be a good person?” What makes this a difficult question is that doing the right thing usually involves some sort of sacrifice of a person’s self-interest. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this discussion!
Most ethical decisions come with some cost, though in the long term, a better case can be made for the benefit of being ethical,
Even disciplines such as politics and economics are fundamentally moral enterprises. Politics is, at its core, about how we order our lives together in community. Economics is, at its core, about how we distribute the burdens and benefits of our lives together in community. Both are intrinsically moral projects because they are discussions about how we ought to live our lives together.
The numerous New Testament (NT) passages that have the phrase “one another” in them are prescriptions about how to treat one another, summarized in the mandate to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14; see also Col. 3:13 and Eph. 4:32).
morality refers to the content of right and wrong, while ethics refers to the discipline of discovering morality. Ethics is more the “how we get there,” and morality is the “what the standards are.”
Not only do we regularly make moral assessments; we think that’s a good thing. Imagine what the world would be like if no one ever made moral assessments about anything. If everyone adhered to the maxim “Don’t judge,” we would have chaos before long.
no enforcement of any restraints on people doing whatever they want to do.
if we didn’t assess lying as wrong and didn’t uphold truth telling as a virtue, it wouldn’t be long before meaningful communication would cease to exist,
The motive also is important, assuming that we can know someone’s motive. Sometimes the motive is all that distinguishes between two otherwise identical actions. Take, for example, the difference between a gift and a bribe. They could look exactly the same but be entirely different things, one praiseworthy and the other immoral, simply based on different motives.
In addition, it is helpful to assess the consequences of the action, again, as far as they can be known.
Finally, it is important to assess the character of the person involved in the action you are considering.
Simply put, the law is the moral minimum. It is the moral floor, not the ceiling.
The notion that you can’t legislate morality is partially true. If what this means is that no one can legislate a moral intent, or motive, that is certainly true. Generally, the law can’t regulate a person’s thoughts and intentions, though that is not to say that some people today are not trying to have the law regulate those too.
Martin Luther King Jr. ironically put it, “The law can’t stop someone from hating me, but it can stop someone from killing me.”
“wall of separation”
the state was not to regulate religious belief, and religious freedom includes the freedom to influence culture by a variety of means, mainly moral persuasion but also including the law.
being a morally good person is an integral part of faithfully following Jesus.
Moral assessment is something we all do routinely, whether we know it or not, and includes evaluating the action, the motive behind it, the consequences of the action, and the character of the person doing it.
A Christian ethic is one that is objective, universal, and transcendent, a view known roughly as “moral realism.”
Euthyphro dilemma.
does God command things because they are good, or are things good because God commands them?
Both “horns of the dilemma” are problematic for religious morality. However, the dilemma is eased by denying the premise—that morality is ultimately grounded in God’s commands.
If morality is rooted in God’s character, then God cannot command anything contrary to his character.
the ultimate foundation for morality is God’s character, not his commands. They are the penultimate source of right and wrong. Of course, God’s character and his commands are consistent.
So Christian ethics is a combination of virtues and principles. That’s another way of saying that God’s character and his commands go together.
Christian ethics is not simply a moral code; it comes out of the framework of a relationship with God. Christian ethics is an expression of loyalty to God in gratitude for his goodness to us. Our obedience to the ethical demands of the gospel is a reflection of our relationship with God.
Godly sorrow is sadness that we feel when we hurt someone we love and is the appropriate emotion when a person falls short of the demands of Christian morality.
Take, for example, all the various laws that governed how real estate was transacted (Lev. 25). Laws like the Year of Jubilee, the right of redemption, and others were designed to shape economic life in Israel to reflect God’s character of justice and compassion. The purpose for the entire civil law was for Israel to reflect a just and properly ordered society, which was to anticipate the social order when the kingdom comes in its fullness after Christ returns.
In Isaiah 42:1–4, the Servant will bring justice to the earth (repeated three times), suggesting that he will usher in a just and righteous society which will include the redeemed community.
Similarly, the prophets join knowing God rightly with a person’s regard for the poor and victimized (Isa. 58:6–8). In perhaps the clearest statement of this connection, Jeremiah puts it this way: “ ‘He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the LORD” (Jer. 22:16).
(Matt. 25:40).
(James 1:27).
(Rom 7:15, 18–19). Because of this, Paul affirms that we need the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit to do what is right, that simply knowing what is right and wanting to do right are not enough.
So the dominant elements of Christian morality include the following: Christian morality consists of a blend of virtues and principles, with its primary source being the character of God. Christian morality is set in the context of a relationship with God; it’s a relational ethic. Christian morality is designed to produce holiness (being set apart) in the community of God’s people. Christian morality has a significant social dimension; it is designed to impact culture as well as the church. This social dimension is focused particularly on the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized among us.
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In the oracles of judgment against the nations (Isa. 13–27; Jer. 46–51; Ezek. 25–32), the prophets condemned the nations for most of the same things for which they condemned Israel—violence, oppression of the poor, and idolatry.
Without something like natural law, it is difficult to say anything about morality to the culture that considers an appeal to the Bible to be a nonstarter. Being able to appeal to moral principles and virtues that are held in common regardless of one’s worldview is a great help in bringing Christian morality to bear on issues facing the culture, without explicit reliance on the Bible.
moral conflicts are real because of life in a fallen world. However, the option chosen is not evil, and it is not correct to say that the person chose the “lesser evil.” The choice is a morally justifiable option, not sin, and thus there is no need for repentance. This view attempts to combine the nature of God’s commands, the reality of life in a fallen world, and a proper understanding of moral accountability. Therefore in this view, Corrie ten Boom should have lied to protect the Jews she was harboring, and she would have been morally justified in lying to protect their lives.
Christian morality is an objective morality, meaning that its content is true regardless of how one feels about it.
Further, as the discussion of natural law suggested, since everyone has access to God’s moral demands regardless of their contact with the Bible, all are accountable. This means that Christian morality is a universal morality, applicable to all cultures, though the specific way in which particular principles and virtues are applied may vary widely from culture to culture.
It is a transcendent morality, since it comes from God and is not fundamentally a human creation. It is discovered by ...
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Most “religions of the book,” including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, are heavily deontological, since they rely on the values that come out of the commands and precepts in their respective scriptures.
For example, the deontological system of the eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant derived moral principles based on reason alone, resulting in what is known as the categorical imperative.
right of bodily integrity—the right to do with one’s own body as one chooses.
The most common form of teleological reasoning is known as utilitarianism, the moral theory popularized by John Stuart Mill in the mid-1800s. The shorthand version of utilitarianism is that morality is determined by the greatest good for the greatest number. That is, the action that produces the greatest balance of benefits over harms is the moral thing to do. It is, in essence, a moral form of cost-benefit analysis.
