Science and Theology News has an interesting essay on ethics and morality written by Brian Henning, a philosopher at Mount St. Mary's College. Henning seeks to impress upon the reader that "Moral problems do not have indisputable answers existing prior to their solutions that we need only divine and then codify.... Moral laws should not be rejected wholesale, but how their status is conceived should be dramatically revised." He goes on to say that:
Just as there is no final or absolute certainty in physics that allows one to make perfect predictions about future physical events, there is no final truth in ethics that allows one to dogmatically determine in advance the good in any particular situation...every person must continually and resolutely revise his or her moral conclusions in light of the goods we see and resist the temptation to codify these conclusions in absolute moral laws.
Mr. Henning has many good things to say in this piece, but I think he goes too far when he suggests that we should abandon the idea of absolutes in ethics. While it's true that the circumstances surrounding an act usually determine the moral value of the act this is not always the case. In the real world it is absolutely wrong no matter what the circumstances (unless one posits circumstances that would obtain only in the hyperactive mind of philosophers) to beat a child with one's fists, to commit genocide or rape, to commit suicide by driving the wrong way on the Interstate, to torture someone for pleasure, etc.
These acts are always wrong because they violate the absolute commands of Scripture. Those absolutes are found in the Old Testament in Exodus 20:1-17. In this passage God gives the Isaraelites the Ten Commandments. The first four govern our relationship toward God and can be summed up in the imperative to "Love God." The last six are to govern our relationships toward each other and can be summed up in the imperative to "Love others." These are the two great absolutes of Scripture and Jesus Himself affirms this in Matthew 22:36-40 where He responds to a lawyer who asks Him to name the greatest commandment in the Law. Jesus doesn't reply that it is any of the ten, instead He sums up the first four and says that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Then He goes on to say that the second greatest commandment is to love others like we love ourselves. In other words, He sums up the last six.
We may define love not as a kind of feeling but rather treating people with dignity, respect, and kindness. In the Old Testament such actions are considered "justice" and the emphasis in the O.T. is on loving people by doing justice. In the New Testament the emphasis is on loving others by showing them compassion.
So, then, we are called to love God and do justice/show compassion. Any act, such as those specified above, which is unjust and/or uncompassionate violates the imperative of love and is therefore absolutely wrong. Lying, for example, is almost always unjust or uncompassionate, but there are times when, on the contrary, it is both just and compassionate and therefore the right thing to do. The classic example is the case of a family hiding Jews in their home from the Nazis in WWII. The Gestapo comes to the door and informs the householder that they are rounding up all the Jews in the town and they ask whether there are any in the building. It's a lie to deny that there are but it would be both unjust and uncompassionate to answer truthfully.
There are other cases where we might think lying is actually morally right. An undercover operative seeking to infiltrate a terrorist cell must lie to succeed. Would he be wrong to do so?
The serious ethical dilemmas arise in the attempt to balance justice and compassion because sometimes these seem to be at odds. The case of the moral propriety of capital punishment is an example. Justice may demand that a life be forfeit. Compassion demands that it be done in as humane a way as practical even though the criminal may seem to deserve much worse.
At any rate, although Henning is surely correct when he says that most of the time right and wrong must be gauged by the context in which the act occurs, he errs in suggesting that there are no moral absolutes. Such a claim would be true, of course, if there is no God, but if there is a God, and if He has revealed moral truth to us in Scripture, then He has indeed given us absolutes in the commands to do justice and to show compassion.
