What is Absolute about Moral Absolutes?

Moral absolutism is often defined as a problem with ethical rigidity stemming from a particular interpretation of scripture. Unlike scriptural literalism, in which a literal interpretation that is broadly applied to the entire corpus of the Biblical witness does not exist due to the use of exaggeration or figurative speech, moral absolutism does exist, but often is a victim of ad hoc exceptions or philosophical problems, which makes its application as a broad-reaching approach more problematic.  

Moral absolutism of course seems good on the one hand. It creates a portrait of God whose work is perfect and irrepressible. It places the burden of faulty interpretations of scripture on the human being rather than problems of moral ambiguity on God. Moral absolutism is also an approach that is extracted from scripture rather than argued directly from scripture. It means that I can take a general position on a morally absolute interpretation of scripture rather than look for evidentiary warrant directly from scripture. For example, “Be perfect as I am perfect.”  Or in God there is no “shadow of turning.” Depending upon my understanding of libertarianism and deterministic thinking, I can do all sorts of things with these passages that do not necessarily impugn my approach to moral absolutes. I may, for example, examine how God “repented of his works” after destroying the world in Genesis, but I’m not obliged to read this as a flaw in his strategic planning. Perhaps I simply wanted to show the anthropocentric attention God gives to his creatures. Here,  we have removed the lens of moral absolutism entirely. We simply can blame ourselves for not knowing how to read the statement, instead of God for reneging on his perfect plans for creating a world that he did not anticipate would jeopardize the same through sin.

In other cases, however, the position of moral absolutism does not seem easily deflected. Moral absolutism is often bumped up against statements for which the commandment is complicated by other factors. Perhaps my friend asks me where his gun is. I learned last night that my friend wishes to take revenge on someone. I know where his gun is. When he comes to ask me, I have the opportunity to lie or to be honest. In fact, I hid it. Looking strictly at my situation using two prominent commandments, I find myself in a dilemma. If I lie, I break the commandment, but I might save the life of the person he is looking to harm. If I don’t lie and show him his gun, I do not break the commandment, however, now I might as well have broken another commandment as I will most likely become an accessory to murder.

May I offer a third option grounded in the academic theology of last century's ethical theorists: Moral absolutes are not about the commandment at all, but about my response.

The demand of the commandment is before me.  "Thou shalt not..." It is not the demand that requires obedience, but the demand that requires my response, which may or may not generate obedience. Obedience itself was a term used intentionally but with conscious redress against its more simplistic forms that throughout the history of Christian ethics affected its manifestation to "yes" and "no" reactions.


Think about it in terms of the nuances of law in the American judicial system. Laws in our country that allow us permission to self-defense differ from state to state and often involve a series of circumstances that can only be solved by carefully weighing the details.  There are certainly precedents, but ultimately anyone claiming self-defense as a motive for murder has to show any number of conditions have been satisfied, and even those details are often left to the determination by the jury or judge. What becomes absolute about a moral absolute? In this situation, it is not the law, but the response. One type of a response or any response?  If the command alone is a moral absolute, then there is little room for debating the details. It wouldn’t matter if a person struck me first, and I killed him. It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t see that person crossing the street. The moral absolute argument would dictate that the taking of a life is murder.

So is moral absolutism a term we should even use? Yes, but shifting the emphasis away from right action and to the act of action. What is absolute about a moral absolute is not the demand but my response. My response is an absolute in so far as it is a moral orientation to God - for better or worse. Given my contingent being, God does not need to demand anything of me in his commandment. As Kierkegaard writes, such a situation would undoubtedly make the commandment "higher than the individual." When, however, I acknowledge that even as far as the boundaries of my life extend, God is a necessity that draws in my contingency, my response becomes my trajectory. The content or context of my response is not what is in contention, but rather that I respond. When I am lukewarm, failing to respond, like the church in Revelation, I am “spit out of his mouth.”

Remember Abraham and God?

“I will destroy these cities because they have sinned.”

“Lord, please reconsider?”

“Remember Jacob and the angel?”

“I will not let you go until you bless me.”

Jacob and Abraham’s answers suggest that what is more important than God’s sovereign intervention is that his intervention always comes with the effect of soliciting my response, not a “right response.” After all, what confidence do we have in our flesh? writes Paul. The expediency of Jesus making his followers righteous means that the focus on the commandment’s rightness or wrongness is not as important as God loving the world to send his only Son.  This is the lesson of Luther, of Bonhoeffer, of Kierkegaard.  This is why these men started first with the human-divine relationship, before addressing the legal repercussions of the sin. This is why Luther could say beyond all other commandments, the greatest moral order was faith - the confidence of standing before God and saying your "yes" or "no."