Good and Evil – Who Decides? Part 2

Good and Evil – Who Decides?  Part 2

Biblical theists like C S Lewis are not alone in recognising that if there is no God “all moral judgements (are) … statements about the speaker’s feelings” and nothing more (Part 1). In his influential 1979 essay Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law [Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law (duke.edu)] Yale Law School professor Arthur Allen Leff bluntly states:

The so-called death of God turns out not to have been just His funeral; it also seems to have effected the total elimination of any coherent, or even more-than-momentarily convincing, ethical or legal system dependent upon finally authoritative … premises.

In the words of law professor and ID theorist Phillip E. Johnson, Leff “expressed the bewilderment of an agnostic culture that yearns for enduring values…” (Nihilism and the End of Law, First Things May 1993). He explains:

The heart of the problem, according to Leff, is that any normative statement implies the existence of an authoritative evaluator. But with God out of the picture, every human becomes a “godlet” with as much authority to set standards as any other godlet or combination of godlets.

And Leff does not find a “godlet” filled world appealing. Here’s his conclusion:

All I can say is this: it looks as if we are all we have. Given what we know about ourselves and each other, this is an extraordinarily unappetizing prospect; looking around the world, it appears that if all men are brothers, the ruling model is Cain and Abel. Neither reason, nor love, nor even terror, seems to have worked to make us “good,” and worse than that, there is no reason why anything should.

But thankfully we are not all we have. We are sentient moral beings made in the image of Jehovah God, and it is His nature which defines for us what is good and evil, moral and immoral, desirable and despicable, holy and unholy. Since “righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne” (Psalm 97:2; 89:14) those who bear Jehovah’s image understand that they are to value truth, virtue and integrity in a world plagued by moral confusion and uncertainty.

Rex