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The Christmas Conspiracy!

THREE: "THE LAW AND THE PROPHETS: ABOLISHED OR CONFIRMED?

LAW

THE THIRD ARCHETYPE

"'. . . 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

Adam:
AUTONOMY vs.THEONOMY

Human history begins in the Garden of Eden, not in a dark, impersonal past. The modern theory of evolution is designed to allow man to escape his responsibilities to his Creator. The theory is a moral evasion, not a scientific necessity.

Even when man’s life was untainted by sin, his moral consciousness was not ultimate, but derivative; Adam was receptively reconstructive of God’s word, that is, he thought God’s thoughts after Him on a creaturely level. Adam did not look to himself for moral steering; rather, he lived by supernatural, positive revelation. Adam was not without external moral dictate; he knew what was good and evil because His Lord told him.

However, Adam fell from his state of blessing and moral uprightness when he succumbed to the Satanic temptation improperly to "be like God." Satan lured our original parents into thinking that they should know good and evil for themselves; they would be moral arbitrators determining good and evil. They decided that they could be self-sufficient in their moral consciousness and reasoning. They substituted autonomy for theonomy.

For more on the fall of man, his desire to be his own god, and the disastrous environmental effects, click here.

The dreadful results are all too well known to us. Man is not morally self-sufficient; when he tries to be he sins and rebels against God, and such is the antithesis of true ethics. Autonomy is inherently destructive of genuine morality; self-law makes ethics impossible. Although Adam’s temptation and fall took place in calendar history, his pattern of autonomy has been recapitulated throughout the history of ethical philosophy.

The resplendent Garden of Theonomy vs. the barren Wasteland of Autonomy.

Biblical theonomy as the principle of Christian ethics is a resplendent sight in contrast to the wasteland of humanistic ethical philosophy.
1. The following treatment in this chapter is not intended to be the in-depth analysis which only a book (or series of books) could be. Philosophic detail-work and highly qualified argumentation have been relinquished in order to achieve a popular sketch of the high points of autonomous ethical systems. The discussion is thus non-expository as well as incomplete in its selection (e.g., the period spanning the third century B.C. to the eighteenth century A.D. is completely untouched). My aim has simply been to set out an outline of approaches to ethics and present key critical questions for them, in order that some general comparative remarks and a fundamental conclusion can be reached in the end. Those wishing background to the history of philosophy can profitably pursue it in: Henry Sidgwick, Outline of the History of Ethics, (with an additional chapter by H. G. Widgery) (Boston: Beacon Press, 1886, reprinted 1960); Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1966); Mary Warnock, Ethics Since 1900, 2nd Ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).
In what follows we shall selectively explore, albeit briefly, the history of humanistic ethics that we might see the collapse of morality and ethic in its ungodly course.1

Note [281] should be made of the failure of autonomous ethics (i.e., anything outside of biblical theonomy) to answer the decisive questions of interpretation, direction, authority, motive, power, and goal for an ethical system.

  • What is the meaning of "good"?
  • What norms are to be used for choosing value?
  • What is the right thing to do in a particular situation?
  • Why should a person be obligated to act morally?
  • In what is obligation grounded?
  • What motivates moral behavior?
  • Where does one get the ability to act rightly?
  • What is the aim of moral conduct?

Autonomous ethics, because it looks to sinful man rather than to the covenantal Lord and His law, is bankrupt before the demands of these questions. Only theonomy can render a genuine and effective moral system, for there is only one Law-giver: the living and true God. Autonomy refuses to acknowledge this. The autonomous philosopher is misled in his metaphysical and, hence, epistemological presuppositions. Presuming autonomy he does not see the facts of God’s self-sufficient authority over man and His self-attesting communication to man; it is only inevitable, then, that he will be misled in his ethics. In fact, the very presumption of self-sufficiency is evidence of immorality, sinful rebellion against the clearly revealed, living and true God. When man turns away from covenantal theonomy to supposed autonomy, ethics become a vain delusion.

Next: Plato


The Christmas Conspiracy


Virtue


Vine & Fig Tree


Paradigm Shift


Theocracy
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