Why do Christian teachers invoke divine authority to substantiate the moral rules they advocate? What does viewing biblical morality as divinely commanded add to the moral authority of the Bible considered as a deposit of the wisdom of a long-continuous community? The last post (#6) began to address these questions. As we observed last week history shows that human beings tend toward sensuality and violence both as individuals and as civilizations. And although it is possible to learn much about what is good for human beings from experience, most people are more interested in immediate pleasure than the truly good. Hence the moral traditions of whole cultures can become polluted and self-destructive or so marginalized that they have little impact on the mass of individuals. The Bible assumes that human civilization has become corrupt and it sees divine intervention as necessary. The story of the Old Testament includes divinely commissioned lawgivers and prophets sent to a degenerate culture to reveal what is good.

There is also a second reason Christian teachers invoke divine commands. Human experience is limited to life in this world. Experience can teach much about what promotes human happiness and flourishing in this life. But belief that God is the Creator of this world sets human life in a larger context, beyond the range of what can be learned by ordinary experience. If our sole end is living long and well in this life, then the good is whatever helps us achieve this goal. But if God created human beings for another end, then the good is whatever helps us achieve that end.

If we have a God-intended end beyond living long and well in this body, only God can tell us what it is and how to achieve it. We cannot learn this good from individual or collective experience. It should not be surprising, then, that Christian teachers view all the moral rules Christians live by as divine commands. This view makes perfect sense because in Christianity the humanly chosen goal of living long and well is subordinated to the divinely chosen end of eternal life in God. This shift changes everything. Life in the body as a whole is now directed beyond itself. Living long and well in this life alone is no longer the end that determines what is good. We need God’s help both to know and to do the truly good. Those who believe that Jesus is the risen Lord will gladly receive his and his apostles’ instructions about how to live in view of the true end of human life revealed in him.

There are two big reasons the moral life to which we are called in the New Testament seems strange and oppressive to our age: (1) even experienced based moral rules, which focus only on living well and long in this body, sound strange and oppressive to most people. Never in any society has the majority been virtuous even by Aristotle’s standards! (2) Unless one whole-heartedly embraces the Christian vision of the God-intended end of human life, living here and now in faith for that unseen end appears extremely foolish.

Up next: Souls, Bodies and Sex.