In the “Merciful vs. Just” article, I addressed a question from an atheist named Fluke about possible conditions under which God may be deemed more virtuous. Specifically, he wanted to know if God would be more virtuous if he were more merciful. Given that virtuous means conforming to moral and ethical principles or morally excellent, this calls for a theory of ethics (values and morals); and given that the question was framed as a critique of God, it had to be uniquely Christian.

But since a Christian theory of ethics would hold that something is virtuous or morally excellent by the degree to which it conforms to the nature and will of God—as moral order is grounded in the very nature of God and expressed prescriptively by his commands—it seemed unclear to me how the nature and will of God could conform to any greater degree to the nature and will of God. It seemed nonsensical to ask how God could greater than himself.

This, however, struck Fluke as prima facie unsatisfactory because to him that seemed to create a dissonance. If moral order is grounded in the very nature of God, then how is it possible for Fluke to have a moral opinion contrary to God? So he asked me (a) if I believed that “God imbued man with a sense of morality,” and if so, (b) “then how could it be that our own God-given sense of morality is so very ‘out of alignment’ with God’s morality?” The answer is at once both simple and historically known.

If moral order is grounded in the very nature of God and mankind was created in the image of God, then we have an intelligible account for man’s innate intuition of an objective morality. But how is it possible for this God-given moral compass be so very ‘out of alignment’ with God’s morality? The answer is simple and historic: mankind exists in a fallen sinful state. That free agency which manifests the human imago Dei also manifests itself in estrangement from God, as told in the myth* of the Fall in the book of Genesis. According to this myth, mankind in his freedom can choose to deny or repress their spiritual and moral likeness to God—“the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (Rom. 1:18-32).

Which is the very reason how and why Fluke can have a moral opinion contrary to God. Although mankind as imago Dei possesses that innate intuition of an objective moral order, by his sinful condition and rebellion against God that moral compass is broken. It is a compass that is wilfully uncalibrated against true morality, which is found nowhere else but the sovereign and holy God revealed in the sacred Scriptures. The varied attempts to ground moral order anywhere but in God also explains the disparate moralities found throughout the world—although at the most basic moral level there is no real disparity which, once again, makes sense under a human imago Dei created by a God in whom moral order is ultimately grounded.

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* I do not mean “myth” in the pejorative sense common in anti-theist sentiment, viz. an invented or imaginary story. I mean it in the real and classic sense of “a traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society” (as found in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004).

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