Thanks go to Matthew Flannagan for pointing me in the direction of this response to the problem.

A while back Professor Randal Rauser issued a blog entitled “Calvinism and the Arbitrary Camp Director” in which he criticised the Calvinist understanding of election.

For those of you who are unaware of the Calvinistic understanding of election, very roughly, it’s the idea is that God elected some for salvation and did not elect others for salvation. Now obviously there’s FAR more to Calvin’s doctrine of election than merely the claim that some are elected and others are not. But that at least, is the centre point of Rauser’s criticism, and more particularly, it’s that element of Calvin’s doctrine that I seek to defend in this article.

Before we begin, it’s interesting to note that barely three months ago I was a staunch Arminian when it came to soteriology. I reacted against Calvin’s doctrine with the greatest of revulsion. How could it possibly be, I thought, that God could be “good” and yet actively choose some for salvation while leaving others to die?! It made no sense to me! In-fact, I remember going to scripture one Sunday morning actively seeking to find that knock down scriptural blow against the Reformed understanding of election. Interestingly, the first scripture I read was the parable of the wheat and the tares Matthew 13:24-29/13:36-43. While I read it, it struck me that this challenged my Arminian understanding of Salvation. But I didn’t want to believe it, so I left it for a week hoping that there would be some other explanation. But none was forthcoming. Very quickly I found myself speaking in terms that a week earlier I would never have been revolted to hear myself say. I was not yet a practicing Calvinist. I was what you might call “soteriologically agnostic”.

Now the reason I say this is not because I hope to establish myself as any authority on the matter. To the contrary, Rauser, being a Professor of Historical Theology at Taylor Seminary is far more of an authority on the matter than I can hope to be at this stage of my life. So it’s with much fear and trepidation that I dare post this article contradicting Rauser’s arguments. So why do I give my testimony of how I came to Calvinism? Well I myself am a little unsure. Nevertheless, I suspect that the main reason I give such testimony is that I find it and irony worth sharing that I am writing an article that barely three months ago I would never have even dreamed of writing. If I was going to write anything, it would have been about how Calvinism completely destroys any sensible understanding of God’s justice and love.

But now let’s get down to business. Precisely what is Rauser’s objection? More than anything else, it appears to be a moral objection. The problem, Rauser urges, is that it makes God’s choice about who save entirely arbitrary. Why, he asks (referring to one of his dialectic opponents apparently named Tom) should God bring glory to him (Tom) and not another say Saddam Hussein? This picture, Rauser asserts, completely undermines the idea that God is loving. In order help us to see this point. Rauser entreats us to consider the following illustrative analogy:

“Imagine that there is a camp for troubled youth. The camp director has a rather unorthodox method of dealing with the campers. Some of them are beaten severely with whips in a wholly punitive or retributive (i.e. not restorative) manner while others are chosen by the director to receive care, love and nurture in a way that restores them.

You are contemplating sending your child to the camp but you want your child to be lovingly restored, not viciously beaten, even if the beatings are just. So you enquire: what is it that makes the director decide to beat the children rather than nurture them? Is it the nature of their crimes? Their race? Gender? What?

The answer comes back. There is absolutely nothing that differentiates the two groups. The bottom line is that for some inexplicable reason the director arbitrarily selects some children to be beaten and others to be nurtured.

Now imagine that somebody came up to you with a positive testimonial. “The director loved our child! He nurtured her. She’s much better now. He is very loving to those he chooses.” Wouldn’t you want to scream back “But what about the children he opts to beat? How can you call that loving? How can you focus only on those he nurtures and completely ignore those he beats? Doesn’t it bother you that his choice to nurture your child was wholly arbitrary?”

What Rauser neglects to include in his analogy, and truthfully it’s essential, is that humans do not deserve salvation. The Calvinist maintains that (in virtue of our Total Depravity) morality and/or justice does not impose on God a duty to save us from death. As such, if God is to save us, it is totally unmerited in all senses of the word. It goes, as it were, beyond the call of duty, and is as such, “supererogatory”. That is to say, it might be a nice deed for God to perform, but there is no obligation/duty on Him to do so. If it’s the case that any salvific work that God does is “supererogatory” in this sense, then it cannot be said that there’s any injustice associated with picking some and leaving others. Suppose by way of illustration, that some person S has many brothers. Suppose furthermore, that S (out of the goodness of his heart) decides to gift some money to but one of his brothers. Since S was under no obligation to give ANY of his brothers (let alone the one he actually gave it to) any money at all, there’s no injustice or objective unfairness in S benefiting one brother and not benefiting others. None of S’s brothers had done anything that placed a duty on S to provide his brothers with money, and nor was there anything about S’ brothers which meant that they were intrinsically deserving of the money. In a similar way, the Calvinist holds that because of our sinful nature, there is nothing about us or the way we act which means that we deserve salvation. Hence God has no duty whatsoever to save us. That God has no such duty entails that there is no injustice associated with God saving some and not others.

It is the fact that we don’t deserve salvation that Rauser unfortunately fails to include in his analogy. I have no doubt that he attempted to include this in the analogy (the fact that the children are referred to as “troubled” is indication enough), nevertheless it strikes me that what does most of the work in producing the intuition that the camp director’s actions were unjust, is not so much the fact that his actions were “arbitrary”, so much as that the children were not deserving of such treatment. As much as Rauser attempts to include in his analogy the un-deservingness of the children, he does not succeed. Troubled children, we perceive, are never so troubled and don’t commit crimes so horrific as to deserve the treatment they receive at the hands of the camp director in Rauser’s illustration. To the contrary, we are inclined to think that the children deserve better treatment. In Rauser’s analogy then, there is a duty on the camp director to treat the children in a more appropriate manner. It’s this that the injustice of Rauser’s analogy consists in. Not, as he asserts, the mere arbitrariness of the camp directors choice.

By failing to incorporate this aspect into his analogy, Rauser assumes what the Calvinist about election already denies, namely that we are deserving of salvation, and that God has a corresponding duty to save us. So in an important sense, Rauser assumes the falsity of Calvinism in an attempt to show its falsity. To put a long story short, he begs the question against Calvinism.

I am given to understand that Randal Rauser is a prolific blogger, and I sincerely hope for his response.

[1] It is wrong to kill a human being without justification;

[2] A fetus is a human being;

[3] In the case of feticide (at least in the majority of cases) insufficient or no justification is forthcoming.

I argued that defenders of feticide cannot rationally reject this argument unless they reject one of the premises. I argued further that attempts to refute [3] are successful only if one assumes that a fetus is not a human being. It follows then that defenders of abortion laws cannot rationally avoid the question of whether [2] is correct, whether a fetus is a human.

Is the Fetus a Human Being?

The first thing to note is that the claim that feticide is homicide has considerable prima facie plausibility. Consider this, a hunter is in the woods and notices some rustling in the bushes. Looking through his scope he sees a six-foot high, bi-pedal being with brown hair, blue eyes, wearing a red and black swanndri. He refrains from shooting. Here, the hunter makes the sensible and reasonable judgement that in firing he would risk engaging in homicide. He bases this on what the target looks like. In the absence of reasons for thinking otherwise, he has good grounds for this claim.

This example has application to the status of the fetus; “[there is] a general consensus that the fetus is recognisably human after six weeks, and certainly after eight”[1] This fact, conjoined with the above illustration, entails that, in the absence of good reasons to the contrary, there are good grounds for thinking that feticide is homicide.

The second thing to note is is that good reasons for thinking the fetus does not have human status are not forthcoming. Here I will focus on four common examples: viability, sentience, birth and person-hood.

Viability
A common argument contends that a fetus is not a human because it is not viable. Susan Sherwin argues that feticide differs from killing children because a fetus “is wholly dependent on her [the mother’s] unique contribution to its maintenance, while a newborn is physically separate, though still in need of a lot of care”.[2]

There are several problems with this position.

The fact that a fetus cannot survive independently of its mother does not mean it is not a human being. Fetal viability is contingent upon the medical technology of a given culture. A fetus that is not viable in Chad is viable in Los Angeles. If viability is necessary for something to be a human then a woman pregnant with a viable fetus in Los Angeles who flies from Los Angeles to Chad carries a human being when she leaves but this human being ceases to exist when she arrives in Chad and yet becomes human again when she returns.[3]

Another implication of the viability criteria is that it entails that conjoined twins are not human. Consider conjoined twins Bob and Scott. If Bob is a human being then since Scott cannot live independently of Bob, Scott must not be a human being. It is difficult to see what property Bob has that Scott lacks which would justify considering him human but not Scott. By this reasoning, one would be forced to conclude both that they are and are not, human.[4]

In addition, the property Sherwin points to – dependence – is not something that ends at birth. David Oderberg puts the point well;

A born baby is also totally dependent on its mother, only instead of being fed and sheltered by the mother’s automatic internal processes, it is fed and sheltered by the mother’s consciously controlled external, behaviour. How can that make a difference to whether or not a foetus is a human being? [5]

A newborn is totally dependent on its mother if it happens to be born in an isolated area where there are no other lactating women and there are no means of bottle-feeding. An elderly woman may be totally dependant on her children looking after her. A hiker who breaks her leg a week’s walk from a road will die if her companions do not bring help. In these situations, it would be homicide for the mother to kill her baby, the children to kill their mother or the hikers their companion. The fact of dependence does not change this; one could not plausibly say that the baby, the elderly women or the hiker are not human beings.[6] Consequently, it is not plausible to suggest that the dependence of the non-viable fetus upon its mother makes it non-human.

Sentience
Because of these problems the more common response is to ground humanity in certain psychological capacities. Killing an organism is not homicide unless the organism’s brain has developed enough for it to acquire sentience, the ability to perceive pleasure and pain. This criterion will mean abortion is permissible up to 24 weeks.

Despite its pervasive appeal, there are some prima facie problems with this position. On the face of it, lack of sentience does not make a being non-human. If it did, then human beings cease to exist when asleep or unconscious and then pop back into existence upon awakening. Shooting someone would cease to be homicide as long as the victim was asleep or unconscious.

But setting this objection aside, there are other serious problems with this position. David Boonin notes that those who attempt to ground humanity in the amount of brain development an organism has undergone face a dilemma. “Any appeal to what a brain can do at various stages of development would seem to have to appeal to what the brain can already do. Or to what the brain has the potential to do in the future.”[7]

Either option leads to problems for a defender of the permissibility of abortion who does not also want to endorse infanticide. This is because “by any plausible measure dogs, and cats, cows and pigs, chickens and ducks or more intellectually developed than a new born infant.”[8]

Suppose, then, one takes the first horn and appeals to what the brain can already do.  However, unless one wishes to affirm that cats, dogs and chickens are human beings, “appeals to what the brain can already do” will “be unable to account for the presumed wrongness of killing toddlers or infants.”[9]

Suppose, then, one takes up the second horn of the dilemma and appeals to “what the brain has the potential to do in the future;” Boonin notes that this will entail that feticide is homicide. “If [such an account] allows appeals to what the brain has the potential to do in the future, then it will have to include fetuses as soon as their brains begin to emerge, during the first few weeks of gestation.”[10]

Birth
A third, position is that the fetus is not human until it is born. Aside from entailing feticide up until birth, this position has other problems. A premature, 30-week infant in a hospital intensive care unit would be a human being, whilst a 40-week fetus in utero would not be. Doctors would hypothetically struggle in one room to keep a human person alive while in the other, a physiologically-identical or more developed being is referred to as a non-human product of conception that can be killed. One gets the distinct impression that an ad hoc arbitrary judgement has been employed here purely to justify abortion.

Personhood
A final line of argument contends that while fetuses are clearly physiologically human they are not not “persons” –  where person is defined as  “a thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking being, in different times and places.”[11] The point is that fetuses lack advanced psychological attributes such as self-awareness, rationality or autonomy which are typical of human persons. This position excludes the animals mentioned above as well as excluding human fetuses.

The problem is that by this account newborn infants are not persons either.

In a definitive study of infanticide, Michael Tooley compiled an impressive array of neurological and physiological data which demonstrated that infants are not persons in this sense until some time after birth.[12] The price of this line of inference is the reduction of newborn infants to the ethical level of cows. A newborn cow, and certainly a mature cow, is more person-like than an infant is. It is difficult to understand by this view why killing and eating infants is any more problematic than consuming a Big Mac.

Of course one can avoid this by claiming that it is the potential to acquire properties such as rationality, self-awareness, autonomy and not their actuality that matters. This enables one to claim that infants are protected by the moral rules against killing but it still permits us to kill and eat animals. The problem with this, of course, is that fetuses would also be covered by this rule, because fetuses also have the potential to possess these properties.

Conclusion
In summation, the arguments for the claim that a feticide is justified show that, except for a few rare cases, abortion is justified only if feticide is not homicide. However, there are good prima facie grounds for thinking feticide is homicide and these prima facie grounds are not overridden by reasons to the contrary. Almost every attempt to show a feticide is not homicide, has the implication that infanticide is not either.

[1] David Boonin A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 95.
[2] Susan Sherwin “Abortion a Feminist Perspective” in Bonnie Steinbock & John D Arras (Eds)  Ethical Issues in Modern Medicine 5^th ed (Mountain View CA: Mayfield Publishing Co, 1999) 364.
[3] Peter Singer “Taking Life: the Embryo and the Fetus” in Writings on an Ethical Life (London: harper Collins, 2000) 148.
[5] David Oderberg Applied Ethics: A Non-Consequentialist Approach (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Co, 2000) 5.
[6] Peter Singer “Taking life: The Embryo and the Fetus” 148-149.
[7] David Boonin A Defense of Abortion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) 125.
[8] Ibid 121.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] John Locke Essay Concerning Human Understanding I.9.29.
[12] Michael Tooley Abortion and Infanticide (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) Ch. 11.5.

RELATED POSTS:
Abortion and the Morality of Feticide: Part I

In this series I will examine this question. First I will sketch an argument against feticide: the killing of a fetus. Then I will examine three common ways of criticising this argument and respond to them.

The Argument Against Feticide

Implicit, if not overtly explicit, in much historic Christian moral reflection on feticide is a simple three-premise position. Firstly, that there is a divine law prohibiting homicide – the killing of a human being without adequate justification; secondly, a fetus is a human being; and thirdly, that in all or most cases of feticide, justification for homicide is not forthcoming. This argument can be summarised as follows:

[1] It is wrong to kill a human being without justification;

[2] A fetus is a human being;

[3] In the case of feticide (at least in the majority of cases) insufficient or no justification is forthcoming.

This argument is formally valid. These three premises jointly entail that feticide is wrong; premises [1] and [2] entail that it is wrong to kill a fetus without justification, this conclusion, conjoined with [3], entails that feticide is wrong in at least the majority of cases. Given the argument is formally valid, any critique of this argument must call into question the truth of either of the premises. [For more on validity see Assessing Arguments]

Avoidance Tactics
Notwithstanding this, the most common response to this argument is some tactic seeking avoidance of the issue. It is not unusual to see attempts to denounce, insult, caricature or defame the character of those who oppose feticide. If current commentary is to be believed opposition to legal abortion comes from misogynist fundamentalist fanatics who want to impose their religious mores onto others.

Of course, these strings of pejorative terms fail to address the argument above. Suppose everything that is said of such people is true – people who oppose feticide do have the bad character traits or motives claimed – the soundness of the argument remains untouched. A good argument does not cease to be a good argument just because someone has personal flaws or dubious motives. It is only unsound if it is invalid or if one of its premises is false. A person’s motives for adopting a conclusion or the circumstances of their supporting that conclusion, might tell us something of the psychology of that person but it does not tell us about the truth or falsity of their premises or the validity of their argument.

Similar things can be said about slogans such as “you can’t force your morality onto others”, “you can’t legislate morality”. As I argued in Imposing Your Beliefs Onto Others: A Defence, those who cite such slogans face a dilemma; either they claim that the slogan “you can’t force your morality onto others” applies to the moral principles prohibiting homicide or they do not. If they do not, then opposing feticide can only involve an unjust imposition of morality onto another if you first assume feticide is not homicide. If they do then their position is manifestly absurd as it entails that all forms of homicide – murder, manslaughter, infanticide, etc – should be decriminalised.

Is Feticide Justified?
In the literature on the morality of feticide numerous arguments have been offered against premise [3] that purport to establish that feticide is justified. These arguments can be broadly grouped into two categories. The first comprises of appeals to various beneficial consequences that the practice is alleged to have. The second category of arguments is rights-based and appeals to an alleged right to control or dispose of one’s body as one sees fit.

What is important to note is that the typical arguments against [3] succeed only if it is assumed from the outset the falsity of [2], the fetus is not a human being and given this that feticide is not a form of homicide. Some examples will illustrate this.

Rights Arguments
It is frequently asserted that “that a woman ought to be in control of what happens to her body to the greatest extent possible, that she ought to use her body in ways she wants to and refrain from using it in ways she does not want to.”[1] This assertion is false. Women do not have a right to do whatever they like with their bodies – no one has such a right!

Women cannot use their bodies to rape or commit homicide or set fires or steal. The right to do as we please is limited by the morality of our actions, thus whether abortion falls into the category of an action we are free to choose to do depends on whether feticide is homicide. If it is, then this argument fails but as currently used it is just assumed that it is not.

Some might object that such an interpretation is an uncharitable reading of this contention. What is important from this perspective is that all people have a right to control what happens inside or to their own bodies. I have a right to control what happens to mine and you have a right to control what happens to yours. Hence, provided the decision I make does not involve me using your body in a way that you do not consent to then I have a right to do it. However, implicit in this argument is the claim that a fetus, at least until born, is part of a woman’s body, that it is not a separate, bodily-living, human being on its own.

This claim is erroneous. There are no reasons for affirming this. The usual reason given is because the fetus exists inside a woman’s body and is dependent upon her for survival so therefore the fetus is part of that woman.

Despite its constant repetition in the literature, this reason is wanting. If a person lives inside an ocean liner for several months while on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, she resides inside the cruise liner and depends upon its facilities for survival. It does not follow that she is part of the cruise liner!

Numerous other counter-examples are available against this line of reasoning. A premature infant is not part of the incubator nor is an embryo, brought into existence extra-corporeally, part of a petri-dish.

Not only are there no reasons for thinking that a fetus is part of its mother’s body, there are some good reasons for thinking this contention false.  To suggest that a fetus is part of a woman’s body entails that the mother of a male fetus has two heads, four arms and a penis.[2] Once again, this argument is successful only if one assumes a fetus is not a human being from the outset. If the fetus is human then it too has a right to not have its body harmed.

Back-Street Abortion
The infamous illegal “back-street” abortion argument fares no better. I have written more about this in my post on Back-Street Abortion but consider the following argument from Zoe During;

But the majority of women, poor women, have had to go to backstreet practitioners or swallow dubious potions or use knitting needles on themselves. Attempting illegal abortion by such means has always been dreadful and dangerous and greatly increased maternal mortality.

The World Health Organisation estimates that worldwide there are 20 million abortions each year, half or more being illegal, these causing up to 78,000 maternal deaths and hundreds of thousands of disabilities… Thus not having access to legal abortion unjustifiably kills mothers and babies, while legalising abortion saves lives.[3]

The allegation that thousands of women die from illegal abortions can justify legalisation only if feticide is not homicide. If it is homicide then this argument reduces to the bizarre assertion that we should kill over ten million children each year in order to prevent thousands of women from harming themselves by breaking the law.

Other Consequentialist Arguments
Typical consequentialist arguments also fail. We are told that abortion prevents unwanted children who are likely to be poor, abused or engage in crime. It is hailed as a solution to over-population and the existence of more handicapped people. It prevents adult and teenage women from falling into economic hardship and stress. It enables them to complete their education, pursue their careers.  However, all this is equally true of infanticide.

Infanticide prevents the existence of unwanted children and their associated social costs, lowers the population, prevents the handicapped existing and saves women and teenagers from the economic and emotional stresses of parenthood. Yet infanticide, as convenient as it is, is condemned because it is homicide.

Again, all these arguments assume that the fetus is not human without actually arguing for it.

Self-Defence
This is not to say that feticide can never be unjustified. Utilising the justification of self-defence, I think a case can be made for feticide where pregnancy constitutes a serious threat of harm to a woman’s life. We do not generally think that a woman who stabs and kills her rapist has committed an unjustifiable homicide. So where a fetus poses a threat on par with such cases, defensive force aimed at it might be able to to be justified. However, such cases are extremely rare and make up less than 0.5% of all abortions (according to figures compiled by the New Zealand Abortion Supervisory Committee and this seems similar to figures from other jurisdictions).

So if feticide is homicide then the vast majority of abortions lack justification. To defend permissive abortion laws by appealing to the tiny amount of hard cases is a bit like allowing people to commit homicide whenever it suits them on the grounds that there exist rare cases of justifiable homicide in self-defence.

Unless on contests [2] the claim that a fetus is a human being then in the vast majority of cases feticide appears to be unjustified homicide.

In my next post Abortion and the Morality of Feticide: Part II I will look at whether the fetus is human and the arguments that it is not.

[1] Baruch Brody “Opposition to Abortion: A Human Rights Approach” In John Arthur ed Morality and Moral Controversy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc, 1981) 181.
[2] Peter Kreeft The Unaborted Socrates (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1983) 45-47; Francis J Beckwith Politically Correct Death: Answering the Arguments for Abortion Rights (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Books, 1993) 124.
[3] Zoe During “Is Abortion Justifiable?” New Zealand Rationalist Humanist Spring (1999) 10-11.

Pro Life Tour 2011

• 31 Jan Wellington
• 1 Feb Palmerston North
• 2 – 3 Feb Christchurch
• 4 Feb Dunedin
• 5 Feb Auckland
• 7 Feb Hamilton

Most centres will have day workshops and evening talks – click on the centre nearest you for details.

Dr Glenn Peoples will be joining Jill and Bryan to speak on “Pro-life Apologetics” at the workshop in Dunedin, Brendan Malone will be speaking on “Why we Believe what we Believe” at the Christchurch workshop and Matt will be giving a talk entitled “Answering Arguments for Abortion” at the Auckland workshop and also the one in Hamilton.

Pro-life Workshop Auckland

Greenlane Christian Centre, 17 Marewa Road

• 11:00am Doors open and Morning tea
• 11:20 am Welcome
• 11:30am Workshop 1 – Bryan Kemper ”Why should we be pro-life and how can we reach this generation?”
• 12.15 am Workshop 2 – Jill Stanek “Prolife blogging”
• 1:00pm Lunch
• 1:45pm Workshop 3 – Bryan Kemper “Pro-life activism on Campus”
• 2:30pm Workshop 4 – Jill Stanek “Abortion and the breast cancer link”
• 3:15pm Workshop 5 – Matthew Flannagan “Pro-Life Apologetics: Answering Arguments for Abortion”
• 3:55pm Pro-life Auckland – Simeon Brown “What we do and how you can help”
• 4:00pm – Finish

Speaker Bios

Jill Stanek was a registered nurse working in the labour & delivery department at an Illinois hospital. One evening she was on duty and she was asked to assist with a complicated abortion procedure. The baby was born alive and was subsequently put in the hospital’s soiled utility room and left to die. Jill went in and held it until it died. When hospital leaders said that they would not stop this practice, Jill went public and became a national figure in the pro-life movement.

Jill has been quoted in the national media on television, on radio, in print, and by local and national legislators, including the US President. She has now testified twice before the Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee of the US House of Representatives and in several state legislatures. Her written testimony has been read several times in key US Congressional debates on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

Jill remained at the hospital fighting the fight from the inside, until she was terminated in 2001 for reasons related to her public outspokenness to its abortion practices.

In 2002, President Bush invited Jill to the signing of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which protects live aborted children from infanticide. The President publicly thanked for her help with the bill during his speech.

In 2003, World magazine named Jill as one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders in the movement over the past 30 years and President Bush invited Jill to his signing of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, which protects partially delivered babies from being killed.

Today Jill writes on pro-life issues as a weekly columnist for WorldNetDaily.com, rated the #1 independent Internet news site. Jill also oversees her own blog, jillstanek.com, the top ranking pro-life blog in the US.

For her pro-life writing MSNBC’s liberal commentator Keith Olbermann named Jill, in 2009, as the “Worst Person in the World!” In 2011, News Real Blog named Jill one of the “Top Ten Enemies the Pro-Abortion Left Fears.”  More on Jill here.

Bryan Kemper grew up in a bad neighbourhood and battled drug abuse before becoming a Christian. He went on to found and run Stand True Ministries, a Christian pro-life group. He also founded Rock For Life, an organisation that blends the pro-life message with Christian rock music – two of Bryan’s own passions. He blogs at BryanKemper.com

Bryan is a passionate and compelling orator; he has spoken at high schools and Universities around the world, including Harvard, Princeton, Notre Dame, Queens University in Northern Ireland, Cardiff University in Wales and many more.  He taken the pro-life message around the world to countries like Ireland, Australia, Scotland, Austria and many more . In the past, he was a regular guest on the television show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher and co-hosted his own call-in cable show in Portland, Oregon. Bryan has been featured on MTV, radio shows, newspapers, and magazines including the cover of the New York Times and a six-page layout in Swing Generation. He has also been featured in three documentary movies.

Aside from his speaking, Bryan is also an author. Bryan’s first book, Social Justice Begins in the Womb was released in January of 2010 by Clay Bridges Publishing. His articles have appeared in many magazines and pro-life publications. More on Bryan here

As one of the organisers, Andy Moore, wrote:

I’m going to go and hear these guys when they come to Auckland on 5 February.

These are two of the top pro-lifers in the States – on a speaking tour in NZ for the first time. Whether you’re pro-life or pro-choice, it shouldn’t matter. I put the challenge to you, come along and decide for yourself. If abortion is what I’ve said it is – the murder of an unborn child, then it’s a bloody serious issue that we should speak up about. This is not an issue where you can sit on the fence and be a typical laid-back Kiwi about – if they’re killing unborn babies down the road from you at your local abortion clinic, then you should do something about it.

Dr Glenn Peoples holds a Bachelors of Divinity, a Masters of Theology and a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Otago.

For over ten years he has been writing and speaking, both in New Zealand and abroad, on intellectual issues that Christians face, including the place of faith in the public square, justice and human rights and the reasons for Christian belief.

He and his wife Ruth Peoples were active in the Waikato branch of Students Organised to Uphold Life (SOUL) and later worked with the national office primarily doing pro-life talks in churches, community organisations and university campuses.

Glenn blogs and publishes his podcasts at Say Hello to my Little Friend: The Beretta Blog and Podcast. More on Glenn here.

Brendan Malone is a media and education officer for pro-life organisation, Family Life International. He regularly appears in the New Zealand media in interviews and opinion columns presenting the pro-life perspective on issues related to human persons and their fundamental right to life.

Brendan is an engaging speaker and will be taking on “Why we Believe what we Believe”, an overview of the arguments against abortion. Young people will work together in groups to learn how to communicate their pro-life views to their peers in a clear and logical way.

Brendan blogs at Semper Vita on life issues.

Dr Matthew Flannagan is a blogger at MandM – New Zealand’s most read Christian blog – and is also one of New Zealand’s leading analytic theologians. He holds a PhD in Theology, a Masters with First Class Honours and Bachelors degree in Philosophy.

His PhD thesis was on the Ethics of Feticide (the killing of fetuses). In it, he surveyed the history of Christian moral opposition to feticide and defended this tradition against contemporary secular critiques and arguments for abortion. This work is currently under consideration for publication as a monograph by a US publishing house.

His paper “Abortion as Arbitrary Killing” was made required reading for the Social and Moral Philosophy course at the University of Waikato. His article “Confessions of an Anti-Choice Fanatic“, originally published as one of his Investigate Magazine columns, has received considerable international attention from the pro-life movement (and its opposition) – Google currently shows 346 unique links to it! His academic publications on abortion have appeared in international journals of philosophy, theology and ethics he has earned praise for his work from some of the top pro-life academics in the world.

Matt is also qualified to teach philosophy, ethics, theology and religious studies in secondary schools, so he knows how to break complex academic topics down to lay level without compromising them.

He is a proficient public speaker. He has twice formally debated Dr Zoe During (formerly of the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand) on abortion; the second of these debates also featured Dr Bill Cooke (then President of the New Zealand Association of Rationalist Humanists).

He has appeared on major New Zealand TV documentaries and radio shows speaking on ethical issues surrounding abortion and his opinion pieces on pro-life issues have been published in mainstream New Zealand print media.

He and his wife, Madeleine Flannagan, founded and ran the Waikato branch of SOUL and later took over the national running of it. These roles saw him speak on abortion around the country at many churches, community organisations, university campuses and more than once at the annual Voice for Life conference in Wellington.

He has spoken on abortion at the Survivors Summer Camp in Los Angeles and he has just been invited to speak on issues around personhood at the Society for Biblical Literature’s annual meeting in San Francisco in November 2011.

You can find almost all of his popular and academic written material on abortion on this blog - just click here. More on Matt here.

So mark the pro-life tour date relevant to where you are in your calendar now, register and come along.

It is common for this imperative statement to be used as a kind of rhetorical club to silence moral critique of various cultural practices. When a particular practice is subjected to such critique those who engage in the practice will complain they are being “judged.” If the alleged judgers are Christian, the claim that “judging is contrary to what Christ taught” is typically added to the charge.

I think this is a misrepresentation of the passage and an affront to common sense. I will address the latter point first. The claim that it is wrong to judge other people is problematic; it is so problematic that it is amazing that anyone gives it credence. For example, if it is wrong to judge other people then since Hitler was another person, it is wrong to say that what he did was wrong. To claim that his actions were wrong is to make a judgment about them and if judging is wrong then it is wrong to judge Hitler. Similarly, Martin Luther King Junior was wrong to criticise racism and doing so judged the actions of racists and William Wilberforce was wrong to make moral judgments about the slave trade as in doing so he was judging slave owners. Taken consistently, the claim that “it is wrong to judge” entails that we should have no legal system, no laws and no courts as all these things involve judging others by deeming certain conduct as wrong.

The problems with this interpretation of Matthew 7:1-2 do not stop there. A little reflection will demonstrate that the claim that it is wrong to judge other people is incoherent. To claim that it is wrong to judge others is to make a moral judgment; in making the statement one is judging that a particular action is wrong. Moreover, when a person announces this to other people he or she is implicitly making a judgment about other people’s actions. To utter that it is wrong to judge others is to engage in judging others. This kind of thinking can easily induce a kind of intellectual vertigo, it is analogous to the person who states, in English, “I can’t speak a word of English” or a person who tries to convince you of the truth of the claim “there is no truth.”

Fortunately, one does not need to attribute to Jesus such absurd, incoherent, platitudes because it is doubtful that Jesus meant anything quite so stupid. Several factors bear this conclusion out. First, one should note that the claim, “do not judge, or you too will be judged,” occurs as part of the Sermon on the Mount. In this Sermon, Jesus regularly used hyperbole to vividly illustrate a point. One should note that interpreting these hyperboles too literalistically leads to obvious absurdities. For example, Jesus states, when referring to the act of looking at another person’s spouse with lust, “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away” (Matthew 5:9). It is evident that Jesus is not advocating self-mutilation but simply making his point about not lusting in a vivid, hyperbolic fashion. Similarly, he commands people to, “do good deeds before men,” (Matthew 5:16) but a few verses later he tells us, “not to do good deeds before men.” (Matthew 6:1). Taken in a strictly literalistic sense this is a contradiction. However, a reading of the context shows these apparently opposing statements are simply vivid illustrations of the same point; one’s good deeds should be motivated by a desire to honour God, to do the right thing and not by a desire to advance one’s own reputation. In light of such contexts the phrase, “do not judge,” should be seen for what it is, a hyperbolic statement illustrating the point elaborated in the surrounding verses.

Second, when one seeks out this context one can see quite clearly the point being made. The phrase translated in the NIV as, “do not judge, or you too will be judged,” was originally written by Matthew in Koine (a Greek dialect). The Interlinear Bible gives the literal translation here as, “do not judge that you be judged.” In other words, do not judge others in a way that leads one to put oneself under judgement. The surrounding words support this conclusion,

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. ″Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.″ Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces. (Matthew 7:2-6)

Here the qualifications are evident. One is not to judge in a way that brings judgment on oneself. The reason for this (“for”) is that the standard one uses to judge others is the standard that one’s own behaviour will be measured by. Jesus goes on to illustrate, with a sarcastic example, precisely what he is talking about; a person who nit-picks or censures the minor faults of others (taking the speck out of their brothers eye) who ignores the serious, grave, moral faults in their own life (the log in one’s own eye). His point is that such faults actually blind the person’s ability to be able to make competent moral judgments. This suggests that Jesus is focusing on a certain type of judging and not the making of judgments per se.

In fact, the conclusion that Jesus does not mean to condemn all judging of others is evident from the proceeding sentences in the above quote. Rather than engaging in the kind of judgment Jesus has condemned one should “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” In other words one should try to rectify the serious moral flaws in one’s own life precisely so one can assist others with theirs. One needs to avoid hypocrisy in order to make constructive and effective moral judgments about others. This would make no sense if Jesus meant to condemn all judging by this passage.

The reference to “pigs and dogs” in verse 6 further bears this out. Dogs and pigs, to Jews, were unclean animals and the term was frequently used to designate people considered to be of low moral character who were “unclean” before God. In this verse Jesus is simply repeating the Old Testament teaching to “not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you: rebuke a wise man and he will love you” (Proverbs 9:8). The implication, again, is that one should try to make constructive judgments rather than simply provoking anger. Constructive judgments involve making judgments.

Just in case I have not belaboured the point enough, my interpretation is further reinforced by what follows after these passages. While reading a passage in its context is not the strength of many popular critics of Christianity, immediately after the cited passage Jesus goes on to warn about the dangers of religious charlatans, which he, rather judgmentally, refers to as “ferocious wolves” in “sheep’s clothing” (Matthew 7:15). In the age of Osama Bin Laden, David Koresh and Jim Jones the danger of such charlatans needs little further elaboration.

In exhorting the requisite discernment, Jesus actually instructs his disciples to make moral judgments about others. He tells his disciples to judge whether a person is a false prophet or not by their “fruit.” Anyone familiar with Old Testament prophetic literature, as Jesus’ hearers were, would know that “fruit” is a metaphor for character. Isaiah’s use of the metaphor is paradigmatic; Isaiah famously described Israel as a vineyard that did not bear fruit. In the metaphor, fruit quite clearly referred to such things as right conduct, justice, morality, etc. Paul uses the same metaphor when he states that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23a). Jesus makes it clear that he is utilising this metaphor. He goes on to stress that in this context the fruit of a prophet is whether he or she “does the will of my Father” and is not an “evil doer.” It is clear then that Jesus here is exhorting his disciples to make moral judgment about other people, to critically evaluate other people’s lives, choices and actions and to make judgments about their spiritual authenticity based on this evaluation. All of this would be very odd if Jesus thought it was wrong to judge.

Moral judgment of religious leaders, of oneself, of the organisations one is contemplating joining, of people one considers associating with, of the political leaders one supports at the ballot box and broader issues in wider culture is a task essential to both authentic spirituality and the competent navigation of everyday life.

I write a monthly column for Investigate Magazine entitled Contra Mundum. This blog post was published in the February 10 issue and is reproduced here with permission. Contra Mundum is Latin for ‘against the world;’ the phrase is usually attributed to Athanasius who was exiled for defending Christian orthodoxy.

Letters to the editor should be sent to: editorial@investigatemagazine.DELETE.com

RELATED POSTS:
Contra Mundum: What’s Wrong with Imposing your Beliefs onto Others?
Contra Mundum: God, Proof and Faith
Contra Mundum: “Bigoted Fundamentalist” as Orwellian Double-Speak
Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth
Contra Mundum: Confessions of an Anti-Choice Fanatic

What: STAANZ Conference on Eschatology and Pneumatology
When: Thursday 19 November – Friday 20 November 9:00am-5:30 pm
Where: Ponsonby Baptist Church, 43 Jervois Rd, Auckland
Cost: $15

Pre-conference prayer will be held at 8:00am at All Saints in Ponsonby, 284 Ponsonby Rd, Auckland.
Dinner at a local restaurant will be organised for the Thursday night.

Speakers are as follows: [UPDATED]

Thursday
“Holy Spirit in the theology of Walter Kasper” – Hugh Bowron
“Backgrounding Walter Kasper’s Early Thought”- John Dunn
“Wandering between two worlds: 19th Century Reflections on Hope and Hell” – Carolyn Kelly
“Conscious Awareness of the Spirit in Symeon the New Theologian” – Jim McInnes
“Searching for Embers” – Susan Adams & John Salmon

Friday
“Abortion, Harm and Eschatology” – Matthew Flannagan
“Infant Salvation: Is God’s Mercy Enough?” – Myk Habets
“Participatory Glory : The Eschatological Direction of Karl Barth’s Theology of the Cross”— Rosalene Bradbury
“The Spirit and Longing” – Judith Brown
“Filioque, Personhood and Ecclesiology” – Scott Kirkland

The abstract for Matt’s topic “Abortion, Harm and Eschatology” is as follows:

In No Harm No Foul: Abortion and the Implications of Fetal Innocence Kenneth Einar Himma offers what I shall call ‘the eschatological argument for abortion rights.’ Himma argues that because a fetus lacks the mental capacity to be culpable for any sin, a plausible Christian eschatology entails that a person who kills a fetus does not actually harm the fetus. Instead feticide benefits the fetus by sending the person killed straight to the afterlife, thus avoiding the possibility of any risk of future sin and consequent damnation. Given abortion does not harm the fetus, and as one should only legally proscribe harmful actions, it follows that abortion should be considered a woman’s right. In this paper I will criticise the eschatological argument for abortion, arguing it has absurd implications that entail infanticide and killing the disabled. Further, that even if one grants the eschatological assumptions implicit in Himma’s critique, abortion does, in fact, harm the fetus.

Whilst Matt’s paper will find its way onto this blog, it is always nicer to hear it delivered in person so if you are free Friday morning he will be delivering it from 9:00-10:00 am.

A secular reason is, roughly, one whose normative force, that is, its status as a prima facie justificatory element, does not (evidentially) depend on the existence of God (for example, through appeals to divine command) or on theological considerations (such as interpretations of a sacred text), or on the pronouncements of a person or institution qua religious authority.[4]

Audi supplants this principle of secular reason with two others, a principle of “secular motivation” and something he calls “theo-ethical equilibrium.”[5] His principle of secular motivation goes further; “one should not advocate or promote any legal or public policy restrictions on human conduct unless one not only has and is willing to offer, but is also motivated by, adequate secular reason, where this reason (or set of reasons) is motivationally sufficient for the conduct in question.”[6] Theo-ethical equilibrium is “a rational integration between religious deliverances and insights and, on the other hand, secular ethical considerations … a mature, conscientious theist who cannot reach it [theo-ethical equilibrium] should be reluctant or unwilling to support coercive laws or public policies on a religious basis that cannot be placed in that equilibrium.”[7]

So construed there is an obvious asymmetry in Audi’s position. In a review of a book which defends Audi’s position, Philip Quinn observes;

These principles impose burdens on religious people that Audi nowhere suggests imposing on nonreligious people. … Audi does not propose that nonreligious people must be sufficiently motivated by adequate religious reason for their advocacy or support of restrictive laws or politicise. The lack of symmetry is striking. [8]

The fact that Audi’s position singles religious reasons out for exclusion from public discourse in a manner which he does not apply to secular reasons, raises the obvious question of why? What’s so special or objectionable about theological reasons being used in public?

Elsewhere in his article Audi offers some reasons for this; he notes, “[religious reasons] are special in relation to liberal democracy even by contrast with [secular reasons] … that are not accessible to any normal adult.”[9] He gives five “salient points” to support his case, all based on the idea that religious reasons are dangerous to society.[10]

In this post we want to focus on the first of these. Audi thinks any appeal to God’s commands in public debate is dangerously divisive because “religious reasons … are directly or indirectly taken to represent an infallible authority.”[11] This line of thought strikes a chord with many, concern about the infallible nature of divine will is often the basis for criticism of appeals to theology in public discourse.

However, as Audi defines the term ‘infallible’ any reason a person offers for their position would be infallible; according to Audi, propositions are infallible if it is “impossible that they be both endorsed or accepted by God and false”.[12] God, as Audi understands him, is omniscient. God only believes true propositions. It follows then that any proposition one can imagine, regardless of its content, will be such that it is impossible for both God to believe it and that the proposition be false. Given this it is hard to see how “religious reasons” are especially objectionable on Audi’s contention.

Perhaps, however, this is a technical point based on a mistaken definition of infallibility. Audi’s main concern is that a person, who believes that an action is commanded by God, believes that an omniscient, infallible being has endorsed that action. Appeals to purported divine commands are therefore problematic because the authority appealed to cannot err.

The obvious rejoinder is that many secular ethical theories face precisely the same problem. One of the most influential secular theories is the ideal observer theory, which is endorsed by ethicists as diverse as David Hume, Adam Smith, Henry Sidgwick, Richard Hare, Roderick Firth, John Stuart Mill, Tom Regan, Richard Brandt, Immanuel Kant and others. On this theory, an action is wrong, if and only if, it would be proscribed by an ideal observer, by a person who is perfectly impartial and perfectly informed on all the relevant facts. A hypothetical ideal observer is no less infallible than religious believers take God to be. It is hard to see how invoking religious reasons is not acceptable but invoking the secular reasons is.

This is probably enough to address Audi’s concerns but there are several other points worth noting.

Firstly, the fact that the law of God is infallible does not entail that there is or cannot be debate over what the law of God in fact is. Claiming that God’s law is infallible is not to claim that any human never errs in his or her discernment of what this law is, his or her interpretation of it or his or her application of it to particular cases. Claiming that there is debate over the interpretation of divine law and debate over how to apply various precepts of divine law to specific cases, is compatible with affirming that divine law is infallible.

In this, the law of God is analogous to deductive reasoning. By definition, a sound argument can never have a false conclusion. It is impossible for the conclusion to be false if the argument is sound, hence sound arguments are infallible. It does not follow from this that people never err in constructing arguments that they mistakenly believe are sound or that there is no debate over which arguments are sound. Reason is authoritative; however, human reasoners are not. It is hard to see why the infallibility of the law of God means that appeals to this law are any more problematic than appeals to logic.

A similar response is available on the immutability of divine law. The fact that God’s law is immutable does not mean that any person’s understanding of this law cannot change. He or she may find his or her particular beliefs about God’s law were mistaken or that he or she had applied it incorrectly.

In this respect, the law of God is analogous to numerous things that it is unobjectionable to appeal to. Consider an appeal to facts and reason; these too are immutable. If it is a fact that the world was round at the time of Columbus then this is something we cannot change. It cannot be true 100 years from now that the world was not round when Columbus sailed. Moreover, whether an argument is sound is also immutable; we cannot repeal the laws of logic. Therefore, both facts and reason are as immutable as God’s law is.

Moreover, consider a precept such as it is wrong to torture children for entertainment. Is this mutable so that society could repeal it tomorrow? Is the claim that rape and genocide of Jews is wrong something that is mutable, that human beings can change and repeal these things? Obviously not. Immutability is a feature of any serious, ethical viewpoint. If you cannot base civil law on immutable things, then you cannot base it on facts, reason or secular values.

[1] Robert Audi “Liberal Democracy and the Place of Religion in Politics” in Nicholas Wolterstorff & Robert Audi (eds) Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc, Lanham Md, 1997) 1-66.
[2] Robert Audi “The Separation of Church and State and the Obligations of Citizenship” (1989) 18 Philosophy and Public Affairs 259, 279.
[3] Ibid 284.
[4] Ibid 278.
[5] Audi, above n 1, 25-37.
[6] Ibid 284.
[7] Audi, above n 1, 21.
[8] Philip Quinn “Religion in the Public Square: The Place of Religious Convictions in Political Debate” (2000) 60:2 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 486, 487 (book review).
[9] Audi, above n 1, 31.
[10] Ibid 31-32.
[11] Audi, above n 1, 31.
[12] Audi, above n 1, 62.

This post was jointly authored. It is largely a mash of extracts from Madeleine’s  paper “Religious Restraint and Public Policy” and from Matt’s “Is Historic Christian Opposition to Feticide Defensible in the 21st Century.”

There are a range of Christian theories on the moral acceptability of lying.

The issues around lying seem difficult to fully categorise in English. The problem is a lack of simple words to express subtle differences in meaning. To illustrate this note that the concept of lying can be considered analogous to killing. With killing we have sub-terms such as murder, manslaughter, and capital punishment. We also recognise killing in a variety of situations such as warfare and self-defence. The debate about the morality of types of killing is more transparent because we agree on meaning, even if we disagree or the moral acceptability of them.

Whereas “lying” merely means distorting the truth irrespective of the circumstances. There are terms such as deception, falsification, untruthfulness, but these are basically synonymous. There are situational terms though, such as perjury.

So is falsehood a single conceptual category? I have long thought it meaningful that the 9th commandment is not, “You shall not lie,” but rather, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.” I have previously distinguished between reality and what one perceives as reality stating that affirming a false belief is not lying. I have also made the distinction between voluntary and forced disclosure of information which I wish to expand on here.

The moral debate is that either:

• lying (or specific types or lying) is objectively wrong, that is, various forms of absolutism; or
• lying is not intrinsically wrong (for all people), (though it may be preferable to avoid in certain situations for other reasons), that is, forms of subjectivism.

Christianity claims that morality has its source in the moral law giver, thus it views the morality of truth telling as objective: the same rules for all people at all times. Here are particular forms of such absolutism.

1. Unqualified Absolutism

Lying is always wrong. People should never lie ever. No matter what the situation or consequences.

Doug Beaumont explains such unqualified absolutism.

Unqualified Absolutism is based on the idea that most moral actions are intrinsically right or wrong, and because sin is always avoidable there can be no actual moral conflict. Given a choice between telling the truth or lying to avoid a murder, for example, one must choose telling the truth for in that instance it is not the one speaking, but the murderer who is sinning. In that case it is better to permit sin than to commit it. This view states that moral “oughts” are viable regardless of their consequences, for any moral philosophy that has exceptions results in relativism. Moral law is based on God’s unchanging nature, therefore moral law itself is unchanging. Logically, if an act is intrinsically evil, it cannot become good because of a changing situation. Finally, God can always provide a third alternative to sinful actions.

This is how many people view lying. It is a somewhat reasonable but it lacks depth. Exceptions to rules don’t intrinsically mean relativism. True, exceptions can be special pleading or hypocrisy, but they may be legitimate (eg. age based rules). And as I note below, unqualified absolutism may conflate intrinsically different actions.

2. Conflicting Absolutism

Lying is wrong, but it needs to be considered within the situation. If lying conflicts with another moral commandment then one must do obey the higher moral. But lying, while required, is still sinful.

Such a position acknowledges that we have moral conflict (at least in this age). I think this is an improvement as it notes that as bad as lying may be, it may not be the greatest evil (though lying is a bigger evil than many acknowledge). This position encourages people to do good and love their neighbour.

It fails in that it suggests at times all options a man may have involve sin. However if we wish to do right, Scripture suggests we are able to do so (thru God). Further, how much less are we to blame when others have placed us in a dilemma, rather than our own prior choices.

3. Graded Absolutism

Lying is wrong unless it conflicts with a higher moral commandment. Obeying the higher moral by lying is not wrong or sinful.

This resolves the dilemma or not being able to make a right choice. It affirms moral conflict, but it claims that the choice to do the better is good. And not sinful if a greater good is being done. There may be some support from Jesus’ words to the Pharisees. It discussing tithing garden herbs Jesus states

“But woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.”

While one could claim that tithing herbs and doing justice are morally equal—Jesus does say not to neglect the former—the context would suggest that doing justice is a higher moral command. Apologists for unqualified absolutism could argue Jesus commands they do both, but there is no conflict between moral obligations set up here, so unqualified absolutism cannot be proven from the passage. I am merely illustrating that moral commands are graded.

It is important to note that this is not arguing that the end justifies the means. Yes, the end is considered, but for the sake of doing good, not for preferred result. Doing good may have unpleasant consequences.

4. Libertarian Absolutism

Lying is wrong if one is voluntarily giving information. One need not tell the truth if one is being compelled to divulge information. I am responsible for my actions, not yours.

This has the advantage over graded absolutism in that it recognises that voluntary information and compelled information are categorically different. It is somewhat analogous to saying that predatory killing is sinful but self-defensive killing is not.

Interestingly Jesus’ words may shed some light on our understanding here.

After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He would not go about in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For not even his brothers believed in him. Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” After saying this, he remained in Galilee.

But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for him at the feast, and saying, “Where is he?” And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man,” others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.

About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. (John 7, emphasis added)

Jesus said he wasn’t going but then he did. This implies that Jesus’ answer was not true. In fact some manuscripts say, “I am not yet going up to this feast.” Which would seem to make Jesus’ answer more honest. Looking at the passage it is clear Jesus wished to go without others initially knowing he was there. He is asked if he is going, however Jesus does not wish to tell this person. Being evasive may be construed as a yes. Jesus says that he is not going to this feast. Within the libertarian absolutism view a request is made of Jesus to divulge information he does not wish to give and he is at liberty to answer in a way that does not divulge same information.

This position is distinct from graded absolutism in that one is not weighing up morality in conflict. The distinction is in will for informing.

Although one could think nothing one hears in conversation is reliable, the solution is listen to what people wish to tell you.

5. Authoritative Absolutism

Non aggressive version

• Lying is wrong in non-aggressive situations. Self-defence against an aggressor allows for lying. Authorities are owed the truth.

Libertarian version

• One need not tell the truth if one is being compelled to divulge information unless being compelled by a legitimate authority.

Authoritative absolutism states the voluntary information must be true as per libertarian absolutism, or that all information must be true unless facing an aggressor. It states that, in general, compelled information does not need to be true though there can be variation on what is meant by compulsion.

But this position does allow an appropriate authority to force information (whereas strict libertarian absolutism would not). A person following libertarian absolutism would allow one to lie in court if he did not wish to divulge the truth. Non-aggressive absolutism would mean that it is eumoral (morally good) to tell the truth in legitimate courts and immoral to withhold it. Note the caveat: obeying a lesser authority is not required if that means disobeying a higher one. Obeying a policeman, a ruler, or a court is necessary even unjust ones, or in unpleasant circumstances; unless doing so compromises a higher earthly ruler or God.

Conclusion

People may argue for the legitimacy of any of these options within Christian theology. Unless one recognises that the concept of lying may include more than one category, graded absolutism is as far as one can advance and this seems to be the best approach. However the knowledge of a permissible sub-categorisation based on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary knowledge sharing allows for more nuanced views.

Here the victim of rape is as treated the property of the father. Since the rapist has despoiled the father’s property he must pay a bridal fee. The woman apparently has no say in the matter and is forced to marry the person who raped her. Notice also if they are not discovered, no negative judgment is forthcoming. The implicit message seems to be that if you rape an unbetrothed virgin, be sure not to get caught.[1]

In the post I noted that the word translated rape is tapas which simply means “to grab” or “hold;” the term itself is neutral as to whether this involves force. It can be used in a context where it is clear that force is involved but it also can be used in a context where no force is involved. All the text states then is that a virgin is grabbed by a man. I went on to argue that the context provided reasons for thinking that what was envisaged was actually a seduction.

In discussing this I noted that a few verses prior to this one the text does envisage a rape. In the immediately preceding passage in Deuteronomy 22:23-27, the word chazak is used instead of tapas in reference to a bethrothed woman who screamed for help when a man attempted to have sex with her; chazak suggests a violent seizure.

In regards to this text, Martin contends that “when rape is condemned in the Old Testament the woman’s rights and her psychological welfare are ignored.”[2] Martin argues

In the case of the rape of a betrothed virgin in a city, the Bible says that both the rapist and victim should be stoned to death: the rapist because he violated his neighbor’s wife and the victim because she did not cry for help (Deut. 22: 23-25). Again the assumption is that the rapist despoiled the property of another man and so must pay with his life. Concern for the welfare of the victim does not seem to matter. Moreover, it is assumed that in all cases that a rape victim could cry for help and if she did, she would be heard and rescued. Both of these assumptions are very dubious and sensitive to the contextual aspects of rape.

On the other hand, according to the Bible, the situation is completely different if the rape occurs in “open country.” Here the rapist should be killed, not the victim. The reason given is that if a woman cried for help in open country, she would not be heard. Consequently, she could not be blamed for allowing the rape to occur. No mention is made about the psychological harm to victim. No condemnation is made of a rapist in open country, let alone in a city, who does not get caught.[3]

There are several points packed in here. First Martin contends that these passages teach that rape is an offence against a man’s property and do not condemn it out of concern for the woman’s welfare. Second, Martin suggests that the text does not condemn rapists who do not get caught. Third and perhaps most significantly, Martin suggests that the passage makes “dubious” assumptions about rape; it assumes, for example, “that in all cases that a rape victim could cry for help and if she did, she would be heard and rescued.” [Emphasis added] Martin states that this is something that fails to be sensitive to contextual factors of rape.

This last point in particular is often emphasised by sceptics. To take a common example, suppose a rapist puts a knife to a woman’s throat and commands her not to scream. If this happens in the city she will not cry out and the passage, so the sceptics allege, will hold the woman unjustly responsible for her own rape.

I think each of these points are mistaken.

Turning to the first point, Martin contends that the passage teaches that rape is merely a property offence against the husband and is not concerned with the welfare of the woman. To asses the claim it is worth looking at the passage he refers to,

If a man happens to meet in a town a virgin pledged to be married and he sleeps with her,24  you shall take both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death–the girl because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife. You must purge the evil from among you.25  But if out in the country a man happens to meet a girl pledged to be married and rapes her, only the man who has done this shall die.26  Do nothing to the girl; she has committed no sin deserving death. This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbour, for the man found the girl out in the country, and though the betrothed girl screamed, there was no one to rescue her. (Deuteronomy 22:24-27 NIV)

Two points need to be noted here. First, the text states that people who rape should be executed (I have argued that capital sanctions like this were not always intended to be taken literally in Capital Punishment in the Old Testament). Martin suggests that the fact that adultery is a capital crime means that this is merely a property offence. He states the “assumption is that the rapist despoiled the property of another man and so must pay with this life.” Actually the converse is true; Christopher Wright notes this point,

The fact that the legal penalty for the wife who commits adultery is execution weighs strongly against the idea that wives in OT Israel are legally no more than the property of their husbands. If adultery is merely an offence against another man’s “property” why destroy the property as well as punishing the guilty man? Furthermore, it would be quite exceptional, in as much as no other property offence in the OT is punishable by death.[4]

The second point to note is that Martin’s contention seems to be explicitly contradicted by the text in v 26. In this passage it states that rape is, “This case is like that of someone who attacks and murders his neighbour.” The text compares rape to a violent assault, a murder, not theft.

Martin’s second point fares no better. Martin seems to argue that the text ignores the “woman’s rights and her psychological welfare” because “no condemnation is made of a rapist in open country, let alone in a city, who does not get caught.” It is hard, however, to see the force of this; all legal codes will only punish people who commit crimes once they are caught. Current New Zealand law on rape, for example, does not punish or condemn people who are not caught, tried and proven guilty of rape. No one thinks that this practice of observing due process is contrary to the rights of rape victims and correctly so, the fact that a woman is the victim of a heinous crime does not automatically cancel out the due process rights of anyone accused of a crime. The same is true here, the law punishes only those caught; if a person has not been caught committing a crime then the state does not know who committed the crime. To call the failure to punish the perpetrator of an unsolved crime a violation of a woman’s rights is hard to take seriously.

Moreover even if one were to take this line of argument seriously, it proves too much. In Deuteronomy, for example, The Torah refers to a situation where a man has been murdered and the authorities, after careful investigation, cannot determine who committed the crime. The result is that the unknown perpetrator is not punished. Are we to infer from this that The Torah victimises men and treats them as property and expresses a sexist anti-male sentiment?

This brings us to the final and perhaps most significant point. Martin notes that the law assumes “that in all cases that a rape victim could cry for help and if she did, she would be heard and rescued. Both of these assumptions are very dubious and sensitive to the contextual aspects of rape.” A rhetorical question will more vividly express this point; what if a women could not cry out, what if the rapist in a city put a knife to a woman’s throat and ordered her not to scream, what if a woman was set upon suddenly and was unable to scream? In these situations the rape occurs in a city and the woman does not scream for help. The above law then seems to teach that she is should be treated as guilty of a serious crime. If this is the case then surely this is insensitive to the rape victim? To have a law that condemns a woman in this situation is to have a law that ignores the specifics of the situation; it, in Martin’s words, ignores the “contextual aspects of rape.”

I am inclined to agree that if the law condemned a woman in these kinds of contexts it would indeed be unjust. The question needs to be asked, however, is does it? Is it plausible to assume that the law is intended to be applied in such a rigid, a-contextual, fashion?  I think the answer is no.

Deuteronomy is an Ancient Near Eastern Legal text; it therefore is part of a literary genre from that period of time. We are aware of other texts from the same genre such as the ancient Hittite Laws, Middle Assyrian Laws and Code of Hammurabi, and its important to note that legal codes written in this Genre differ significantly from modern legal codes.  Hiller notes,

[T]here is no evidence that any collection of Near Eastern laws functioned as a written code that was applied by a strict method of exegesis to individual cases. As far as we can tell, these bodies of laws served educational purposes and gave expression to what was regarded as just in typical cases, but they left considerable latitude to local courts for determining the right in individual suits. They aided local courts without controlling them.[5]

The same point is made by Raymond Westbrook in his comparative study of Ancient Near Eastern Legal Codes. He notes that such laws “reflect the scribal compilers’ concern for perfect symmetry and delicious irony rather than the pragmatic experience of the law courts.”[6] The method used in legal texts was “to set out principles by the use of often extreme examples.” Christopher Wright calls this “paradigmatic law,” which he explains as “the detailing of specific circumstances with the view to giving judges basic principles and precedents on which to evaluate the great variety of individual cases that may come before them.”[7]

Once the genre is understood it is not hard to see the flaw in Martin’s argument. Martin assumes that the law is a rigidly literal rule that inflexibly applies to all cases. In fact, the law probably did not function this way nor was it intended to. Instead it functioned as kind of paradigm illustrating a principle. The principle was this; women who have sex with a man are not to be considered adulterers or immoral if they do not consent. If it cannot be established whether a woman consented to a sexual act then she should be presumed innocent. Rape is not adultery, it is rather a serious assault or an attempted murder. At a more general level the case law vividly illustrates the principle that culpability entails consent.

[1] Michael Martin “Atheism, Christian Theism, and Rape” accessed 27 September 2009.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Christopher Wright International Biblical Commentary: Deuteronomy, (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1996 ) 254.
[5] Delbert R Hillers Covenant: the History of a Biblical Idea (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1969).
[6] Raymond Westbrook “The Character of Ancient Near Eastern Law” in The History of Ancient Near Eastern Law Vol 1 ed Raymond Westbrook (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2003) 74.
[7] Christopher Wright Deuteronomy 244.

In several posts (see the related posts below) I have criticised some of the arguments Armstrong makes in this article. In this post I want to turn to another. The claim that “divine command theory makes morality childish;” Armstrong states,

A second objection is that the divine command theory makes morality childish. Compare a small boy who thinks that what makes it morally wrong for him to hit his little sister is only that his parents  told him not to hit her and will punish him if he hits her. As a result, this little boy thinks that, if his parents leave home or die, then there is nothing wrong with hitting his little sister. Maybe some little boys think this way, but surely we adults do not think that morality is anything like this.[4]

Its worth noting that Armstrong’s sketch is something of a caricature; the picture is of a little boy who thinks hitting is wrong because his parents will punish him if he engages in hitting. This tacitly implies that divine command theorists believe that actions are wrong because God will issue punishments to us if we do them. No divine command theorist to my knowledge holds this view. What we typically hold is that an action is wrong for a person to perform if a perfectly good, omniscient being (identified as God) commands that person to refrain from the action in question. The fear of punishment does not come into it.

This point, however, is largely tangential because the heart of Armstrong’s position appears to be based on three ideas.

[1] That some children see morality as dependent on the commands of their parents.
[2] That it is inappropriate, childish or infantile for adults to view morality as being dependent on the commands of a parent.
[3] That the conception of morality proposed by a divine command theorist is analogous to basing morality on the commands of a parent.

Hence, divine command morality is infantile or childish.

In responding to this line of argument, it is worth noting Armstrong’s argument is not new. In fact, it simply summarises an early argument made by Patrick Nowell-Smith in his widely-anthologised essay Morality: Religious and Secular. In this article all three of Armstrong’s premises are defended in more detail than Armstrong provides in the short paragraph above. I think that by critically examining Smith’s argument one can see the problems with Armstrong’s.

Like Armstrong, Nowell-Smith argued, “religious morality is infantile.”[5] Similarly, like Armstrong, it is clear that Nowell-Smith’s target was a divine command theory.[6] Nowell-Smith’s thesis is that a divine command theorist possesses an ethical consciousness that is frozen or arrested at the pre-critical stage of a child. A mature adult whose cognitive faculties are functioning properly would have outgrown it.

In arguing for this thesis, Nowell-Smith draws upon the theories of moral development proposed by Piaget.[7] According to Piaget, children start out with a view of morality that Nowell-Smith labels deontological, heteronomous and realist. Children view morality as obedience to certain rules (deontology) which hold because an authority figure, usually the parent, has promulgated them (heteronomous) and wrongdoing is perceived as any external action that violates these rules (realism). This view of ethics is appropriate for small children; however, as they mature and become more rational their consciousness changes. They begin to see the point of certain rules and understand the reasons behind them and the function of such rules. This is the stage where ethics become in Nowell-Smith’s words “autonomous.” Instead of just accepting a parent’s word for it the child learns to figure these things out for him/herself.[8]

Nowell-Smith goes on to argue that these same features of heteronomy, realism and deontology are present in “religious morality” or more specifically, divine command theory. Consequently, divine command theory reflects a childish way of viewing ethics, one not worthy of a grown-up, educated adult.[9]

Nowell-Smith’s analogy between divine command theory and childish morality ignores a fundamental disanalogy between the case Piaget describes and that of the divine/human relationship. As Richard Mouw has pointed out, Piaget views the transition from heteronomy to autonomy as corresponding to the time when a child begins to be on an increasingly-equal footing with his or her parents. The infantile stage of morality is appropriate while the child is in infancy because of its limited rationality and knowledge. In this state the child is unable to make decisions as competently as the adult, hence it relies on and defers to the judgement of adults. However, as the child grows equal to the parent in these respects he or she ceases to rely on parental judgement. He or she is now just as competent to answer these questions as his or her parent is and so his or her thinking becomes autonomous.[10]

Consequently, Piaget’s model of development applies to situations where the subordinate is temporarily in a stage of inferiority to the authority but is undergoing a process of growth towards equality. It is when this equality is reached that the authority relationship is no longer appropriate. However, the relationship between adult humans and God is fundamentally different. Adults are not growing into divinity so that when mature they will equal God in rationality and knowledge. Rather, they are permanently in a state where they are inferior to God in these respects. In this context the failure to reach a moral consciousness that is equal to God’s is not a sign of arrested development and the infantile charge loses its sting. It is inappropriate for adults to behave like children but not inappropriate for them to fail to think like God.[11]

Nowell-Smith’s argument, therefore, is unsound. I think the same response can be attributed to Armstrong’s argument. Returning to Armstrong’s three premises,

[1] That some children see morality as dependent on the commands of their parents.
[2] That it is inappropriate, childish or infantile for adults to view morality as being dependent on the commands of a parent.
[3] That the conception of morality proposed by a divine command theorist is analogous to basing morality on the commands of a parent.

There is a subtle equivocation in this argument; turning to premise [2] that it is inappropriate, childish or infantile for adults to view morality as being dependent on the commands of a parent, as we saw, this is because an adult child has grown to a position where he or she is on par in terms of maturity, rationality, insight, knowledge, and so on, to the parent. The problem is once this is clarified [3] is false. The conception of morality proposed by the divine command theorist is not analogous to basing morality on par with the commands of a parent who is an equal as no divine command theorist thinks of adult human beings as being on par with God in terms of maturity, rationality, insight, knowledge, and so on.

Of course there are other respects whereby the conception of morality proposed by divine command theorists is analogous to a conception that sees morality as dependent on the commands of a parent, so in this sense [3] is true. The problem is that these respects do not include the features of the relationship between an adult child and their parent that makes the conception inappropriate and so if correct then [2] would no longer be true. Either way the argument fails.

[1] Walter Sinnott-Armstrong “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008) 106.
[2] Ibid. 108.
[3] Ibid. 114.
[4] Ibid. 109.
[5] Patrick H. Nowell-Smith “Morality: Religious and Secular,” in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy ed. Ian T. Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1966) 95.
[6] Ibid. 96. Nowell-Smith characterises the view he critiques as follows, “They have simply assumed that just as the legal propriety of an action is established by showing it to emanates from an authoritative source, so also the moral propriety of an action must be established in the same way; the legal rightness has the same form as moral rightness, and may therefore be used to shed light on it. … Morality, on this view, is an affair of being commanded to behave in certain ways by some person who has a right to issue such commands; and once this premise is granted, it is said with some reason that only God has such a right.”
[7] Ibid. 100.
[8] Ibid. 100-103.
[9] Ibid. 103-108.
[10] Richard Mouw The God Who Commands: A Study in Divine Command Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 12.
[11] Ibid. 12-14.

RELATED POSTS:
On a Common Equivocation
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on God, Morality and Arbitrariness
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part I
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, William Lane Craig and the Argument from Harm Part II
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part I
Tooley, The Euthyphro Objection and Divine Commands: Part II