On God's Right to Set Moral Standards

The Christian says that morality and ethics are determined by God, and reflect his eternal character. Some dissenters have asked what right God has to do that; or rather, what is it about God that gives us confidence his moral standards are to be taken on as our own? To most of us theists that's an incredible question. It shows a very small and bounded view of what the glory of God can and does mean. Few could express this as well as C.S. Lewis.

In his autobiography he wrote of his turn toward a theist and Christian view of what is good:

"God was to be obeyed [Lewis came to realize] simply because he was God. Long since, through the gods of Asgard, and later through the notion of the Absolute, He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do to us but for what it is in itself. That is why, though it was a terror, it was no surprise to learn that God is to be obeyed because of what He is in Himself. If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, 'I am.' To know God is to know that our obedience is due to Him. In His nature His sovereignty de jure is revealed.

"Of course, as I have said, the matter is more complicated than that. The primal and necessary Being, the Creator, has sovereignty de facto as well as de jure. He has the power as well as the kingdom and the glory. But the de jure sovereignty was made known to me before the power, the right before the might. And for this I am thankful. I think it is well, even now, sometimes to say to ourselves, 'God is such that if (per impossible) his power could vanish and His other attributes remain, so that the supreme right were forever robbed of the supreme might, we should still owe Him precisely the same kind and degree of allegiance as we now do.' On the other hand, while it is true to say that God's own nature is the real sanction of His commands, yet to understand this must, in the end, lead us to the conclusion that union with that Nature is bliss and separation is horror."

(Quote taken from pp. 223-224 of Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Years. New York, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1955. Lewis, or his editor, was inconsistent with the use of the upper case H in pronouns referring to God. I think I have copied it accurately here.)

Two explanations may be in order. First, Lewis's references to Norse myth and the Absolute go back to prior interests of his, which had set him on a road to understanding the true God. (I heartily recommend you read the story, by the way.) Second, the use of "I am" here may be unfamiliar to those who do not know the Bible. It is God's own name as he stated it to Moses, and as was claimed by Jesus Christ for himself. Rich in meaning for all its simplicity, it calls to mind God's eternal and unique self-existence, that which perhaps above all other things sets him apart as God; not to the exclusion of all else that can be said of him, of course.

Posted: Sat - July 29, 2006 at 05:41 PM |

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On God's Right to Set Moral Standards

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson