Moral Philosophy

W. Carl Ketcherside

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     One of the most articulate graduate students among those whom I know is a regular reader of MISSION MESSENGER. I think he sometimes feels that I belong to a bygone age, and yet he envies my simple faith. Recently he wrote me thus about his own.

     I came to the university with my faith intact, clothed in it as an armor. But it was shot full of holes and now hangs in shreds. Christianity no longer appears unique to me. My study of philosophy has convinced me that every moral or ethical precept enunciated by Jesus was borrowed from a prior source, and was not a divine declaration as I have always been taught to believe. You will probably say I should not have studied philosophy, yet it seems to me that an honest man should not subject himself to a mental straitjacket in order to find security at the cost of truth.

     There is a grave possibility that our young brother, brilliant as he undoubtedly is, may have begun his university work on a borrowed faith. It is very easy for us to grow up in a religious atmosphere in which we simply accept what is being taught or said without engaging in the agonizing struggle to reach a personal meaningful conviction. Thus we may confuse our father's overcoat with armor. And, like an overcoat, what we call faith may be merely an external form or pattern of thought into which we slipped quite easily.

     The shooting full of holes of such a cloak represents no real attack upon the faith once delivered. It need not cripple the wearer for life if he sees it in proper perspective. One can recover from a hole in his cloak, but he will need to change garments.

     Certainly I do not argue that one should not study philosophy, even though Frederick the Great did say, "If I wished to punish a province, I would have it governed by philosophers." Philosophy is actually the history of the thought processes of men through the ages. When I read after Plato, Aristotle, or Marcus Aurelius, I am able to understand the forces which helped to shape human destiny in every

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avenue of life. The problem with our brother is not that he understands too much about philosophy, but he understands too little about the nature of Christianity.

     First of all, the Way was never intended to be a compendium of epigrams, a collation of ethical proverbs, or a code of laws and rules. Obviously our Lord did not intend to load us up with a collection of new or original moral precepts. One does not become a moral being merely by observing statutes, but he observes the rules because he is a moral being.

     A moral law is not right simply because God commands it, but God commands it because it was right. That is why no moral law can ever become a test of one's faith in God. Moral obligations are inherent in the nature of man as a social and rational being, and while laws may define and clarify them they can never create them.

     Actually, it is a little silly to talk about "a new morality." There is no such thing and there cannot be. Morality is not a creation of lawmakers nor a product of creed-makers. External laws may be modified, amended, or even abrogated in the interest of morality, but the moral obligation existed before such regulations and will still inhere regardless of what may happen to the rules.

     Men existed as moral beings a long time before Jesus entered the earth through the flesh curtain, and since there were brilliant thinkers who knew how to define human relationships and to record their observations, we should not be surprised to find a wealth of wisdom literature in the philosophic works of many ancient peoples. There were ethics before there were Christian ethics. And whatever was true would certainly be acknowleded by One who was the very embodiment of Truth.

     As a philosophic student our brother should recognize that he has joined a rather inglorious company of skeptics, some of whom have become discredited long since. Celsus, who lived in the second century, wrote about the admonition of Jesus to forgive our enemies, and declared that he had found the same injunction in the writings of Plato, and more eloquently stated by the Greek philosopher. But Celsus hated Christianity with a prejudice so deep it became a passion.

     Many philosophers have not been too accurate in their citations either. A good example is Edward Gibbon who referred to what is called "the golden rule" and then remarked, "A rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates, four hundred years before the publication of the Gospel." The historian was presuming upon the ignorance of his readers, because Isocrates gave a negative precept which was a far cry from the positive action required by our Lord.

     Our brother was carried away in his desire to justify himself and impress me. His statement that "every moral or ethical precept enunciated by Jesus was borrowed from a prior source," is not according to fact. A good example is the teaching related to love--agape--that active and benevolent good will which stops at nothing to accomplish the good of its object. So superior was this teaching that the word can hardly be found in the Greek classics.

     The reason is quite clear. It required the cross to demonstrate its depth and give it meaning. Jesus could truthfully say, "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another, as I have loved you." The natural concept until this time was that love responded to that which was lovable in the object, that is, that the lovable quality created the love. But agape is exactly the opposite. It is the ability to love the unlovable. It is the love that creates the worth in the object, and not the worth in the object that creates the love.

     This is a height of moral value to which human philosophy had never attained, nor could it do so, for it grew out of divine philanthropy and not out of the social relationship as rational beings. And it is the love ethic which gives the lie to Voltaire's thesis that Christianity

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drew its light from the Far East, and to some of our more recent theorists who speculate that Jesus was educated and initiated in the lore of the Essenes.

     I have no hesitancy in acknowledging the truth of any statement that is true, regardless of who discovered the truth or issued the statement. If a pagan discovered the truth about a matter of moral consequence before our Lord came to earth I would expect the latter to affirm it rather than to deny it. I happen to hold that since all nations had a common ancestry, and since our primeval fathers walked and talked with God originally we should not be at all surprised that many who were shut off from later direct oracles should rise above the corruption of their times.

     The uniqueness of Christianity does not lie in the code of morals which it predicates, superior though they may be in their statement. If we regard God's supreme revelation of Himself in Jesus as merely a declaration of ethical truths there may not be anything to challenge our lives. But when we see it as the manifestation of eternal life, that life which was with the Father from the beginning, we can at once recognize that Christianity is not merely a way of life, but the life of the Way! "He that hath the Son hath life."

     Heathen philosophers could discover moral truths and frame them into precepts, but they could not find power to implement them in their own lives. Christianity is not an ethical code trying to make us good from without, but an inner transformation, a transfiguration, which purifies from within. It is the residence of Deity, through the Holy Spirit in our fleshly frames by which we crucify the deeds of the body.

     I do not recommend that our brother stop his study of philosophy, but I do suggest most humbly that He begin a genuine acquaintance with Jesus through the indwelling Spirit. He will never really be happy until he does. When the Spirit comes in He can straighten out a philosopher. My God can do anything but fail!