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"'. . . that He may teach us about His ways
And that we may walk in His paths.'
For from Zion will go forth the Law
Even the Word of God from Jerusalem."
Micah 4:2
| Such then is the graveyard of autonomous ethics; on each gravestone reads the Satanic temptation, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." When man turns away from covenantal theonomy to autonomy, when he despises God’s law in favor of humanistic self-law, the inevitable result is spiritual death for man and the loss of any hope for ethics. The autonomous philosophies of man have failed to answer the crucial questions of both normative ethics and metaethics; they have thus failed because each has assumed a nonbiblical anthropology wherein man is not the creature of an authoritative and sovereign Lord-Creator who has placed His indelible image in man and has perspicuously revealed Himself to each man in every fact of man’s environment. Rather man is taken to be, as Sartre unpretentiously puts it in Being and Nothingness, "the being who tries to become God." Rather than submitting himself to God and God’s self-attesting word, man has attempted to deify himself; the consequence of this in the area of ethics is that God’s law is rejected or ignored in favor of a moral law which man himself will devise or validate. Man is culpable for trying to develop his own ethic, for God’s image and revelation are inescapable; man knows himself to be a creature accountable to God and responsible to God’s demands. Theonomy condemns autonomy. The very fact that God has uttered the law makes man obligated to it since he is the creature of God. God’s law is ethically self-attesting; as such it cannot be questioned, appealed, ignored, or replaced. [302] | |
| Autonomous ethics has failed to supply an adequate meaning for "good." It has failed to supply any genuine authority for ethics. All of the autonomous schools of ethics finally fall short of providing actual moral direction and correction; they do not supply the guidance which man longs for in studying morality. An effective motivation is not suggested in the ethics of autonomy; nor is ethical power provided. A final goal or aim of ethics is either unknown or open to question in autonomous ethics. In one or all of these vital elements of a genuine ethic the philosophies of autonomy let man down. | |
| By contrast, the ethics of theonomy is a genuine ethic. "Good" is identified with God; anything which is good is God-like. God reveals to man what is God-like behavior; He tells the creature how to practice holiness. The law of God is good, for its Author is good; the law is the transcript of God’s holiness. This law is very explicit with respect to moral directives and correctives; man is given concrete ethical guidance by the law of God. This law is also authoritative, for the Lord-Creator stands behind it and will judge on the basis of it. All men have a clear revelation of God and know that they are obligated to keep His word; there is no epistemological skepticism with respect to morality. Ethics has a definite relation to facts; the same God who created and defined the material world is the Law-giver who demands the obedience of man. Because the world is as it is, because God is Who He is (Creator and Lord), man must behave as prescribed in God’s law. Obligation can be derived from the facts of God’s character and existence. Because the biblical God is the living and true God who shall hold man accountable, man is accountable to God and obligated to keep God’s law. Man should be motivated to keep this law by faith in God and reverence for His Person; in the light of God’s grace and/or coming judgment, a person is impelled to obey the commandments of God. The enabling power of obedience to God’s law for the believer and the effective agent which restrains the [303] unbeliever from being as unlawful as he could be is the Holy Spirit; God supplies His Spirit, who exercises the power of common grace and sanctifying grace. The power of obedience is most intensely and genuinely known by the Christian who, under the New Covenant, has the law written upon his heart by God; the Spirit causes him to grow up into the obedient stature of Christ, thereby fulfilling the law in the believer. The goal of theonomic ethics is the glory of God and service of His kingdom; by obeying God’s law the Christian honors and magnifies God’s name, bows to His authority, extols His wisdom. Through obedience to God’s law the believer is an effective servant of the kingdom by promoting and seeking its righteousness, by enforcing its demands in the world, by spreading its bounds; the demands of God’s kingdom are applied to self, family, society, and church. This then is the only true ethic for man; to follow another is to deny God His due. Commitment to an autonomous ethic (any moral system which does not fully acknowledge and promote the law of God) is a choice of death and curse in the face of blessing and life. | |
| All non-Christian ethics ultimately seek information and a standard for ethics in man’s moral consciousness; it attempts to divorce the metaphysical question from the ethical. The nature and authority of morality must exist independently of God for the unbeliever; the "good" must be impersonal. Man is forced to find direction for himself; and the inevitable outcome is subjectivism or relativism. There is no hope in non-Christian ethics; there is no promise of enabling power, of sure direction, of the victory of the right. Having no grounds for ethical responsibility and no justification for the consistency and validity of moral demands, the non-Christian ethic becomes ego-centric rather than ego-regulating. Man is not dealt with as a unity by the autonomous ethicists; he is dichotomized into phenomenal/noumenal categories, and there is a one-sided stress on his intellect, or emotions, or volitions. [304] | |
| How totally different is the biblical ethic of theonomy! Christian ethics is bound to an absolute, objective authority in God; good does not exist independently of Him and cannot be discussed without bringing Him into the picture. The moral principles followed by the Christian are personal imperatives, not abstract ideals; they can only be learned by revelation, never by man’s own searching. The Christian does not assume that the present state of the world is normal or that his moral consciousness is normal; this is the fatal presupposition of autonomy. The believer knows that he needs to be corrected and directed, for he cannot trust his own reasoning or inclinations; even God’s general revelation must be seen through the corrective lenses of Scripture. Evil is not inherent in the world; so the Christian has the bright hope of its defeat and judgment. The power of the Spirit and pattern of the law are sufficient to destroy the bondage and effects of Satan in a person’s life and world conditions. Although perfection is not possible until final glorification, and although a thoroughly righteous society will not exist until the establishment of the eschatological new heavens and earth, nevertheless God is at work in the Christian and in His Church even now; sanctification is taking place, and the forces of evil can be reproved and nullified by the positive forces of God’s Spirit in accordance with His holy law. The Christian is never left in situations of moral perplexity; everything he needs to be perfectly equipped for all good works has been supplied to him (2 Tim. 3:16 f.) and there is no situation in which he is left in utter moral insolubility (1 Cor. 10:13). Obligation to God’s law is grounded in His authority as Creator; His final judgment will punish all disobedience and redress all moral imbalance. God, through His law, deals with man as a unified personality; He makes an absolute demand upon man’s thinking, feeling, and willing, for His law touches upon every area of life. The ethics of theonomy is God-centered, then, rather than man-centered; it will regulate and correct man in order [305] to bring glory to God. Only the ethics of theonomy can supply man with his needed moral system. | |
| The main problem with autonomous ethics is that it ignores God’s authority and revealed will; this in itself is immoral and rebellious. It should be rather clear, therefore, that genuine Christian ethics must not align itself with the autonomous methodology and systems of unbelieving philosophy. The Christian should never attempt to find out the principles of morality outside of God’s revelation and direction; the neutrality proposed by Plato in the Euthyphro is sin. The Christian is not relieved of his obligations as a son of God when he studies ethics; God’s clear revelation is the light in which all moral questions (as with all questions) must be answered. Theonomy must be central in Christian ethics. We do not decide to follow God’s law after it has been validated by the categorical imperative or paralleled by any other secular philosophical ethic; we do not demand autonomous justification for God’s commandments. We obey because we love, revere, and trust our Creator, never questioning His wisdom. No apostate standard shall be allowed to evaluate and pass judgment upon God’s law. Theonomy, and theonomy alone, must be the standard of Christian ethics. The sole Law-giver and Judge is God. Hence God’s law must be the criterion by which we evaluate the secular systems of ethics. The "goodness" of God and absolute authority of His word are a priori presuppositions for the Christian. The clay cannot talk back to the potter (Isa. 45:9), and the vassals have no right to question the Lord (cf. Matt. 20:1 ff.). We will be blessed only if we faithfully obey the directives of our God without questioning His word, just as Abraham did (Gen. 22:1 ff.; Heb. 11:17 ff.). When Job demands an interview with God, it is God who does the questioning, thereby asserting His sovereign Lordship and affirming that man cannot call Him into question (Job 38-42). "Let God be true and every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4), for "His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righ [306] teous and upright is He" (Deut. 32:4, NASV). The only foundation for a Christian ethic, and hence the only foundation for any genuine and true morality, is the holy law of God. | |
| Theonomy is pitted against autonomy; no man can take a stand in between, for no man can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). The authority and righteousness of God must be asserted against any and all serpents who question His goodness and veracity. Even if God should ask that we sacrifice the only son of promise, we must never demur or question; His revealed will alone defines the righteousness which is becoming of the believer (cf. Gen. 22; Heb. 11:17-19). We do not attempt to be as God, determining good and evil; rather, we gladly take our place beneath the sovereign Lordship of the Triune God. His word, not our autonomous reasoning, is our law. Theonomy is the exclusive normative principle, the only standard, of Christian ethics. It is all or nothing, ethic or nonethic, obedience or sin. |
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