DIVINE COMMANDS: Being told what to do

“belief that the voice of God is behind moral prescriptions found in the Decalogue, in the moral judgements of the prophets, in the sensitivities of individual conscience. Critics dismiss this approach to ethics as "heteronomous" and against the grain of independent thinking which is a hallmark of maturity. Some versions of Christian ethics may indeed appear to promote in this way an infantile dependence on ’being told what to do’. However, the more mainstream emphasis is on the need for each individual as part of their growth to Christian adulthood to come to recognise and affirm for themselves such moral principles and insights. They do this with benefit of access to the thinking of fellow Christians past and present, and fully tuned to the heart and mind of their own conscience.”

Illustrative Stories

Unthinking obedience

George was not a great one for dreaming, but when he did they were in technicolour. Last night’s dream had been especially vivid. An enormous figure came towards him. Already dazzling in the distance, as it approached the brightness was overwhelming, but so was the musical sound and sense of warmth which came with it. Then there was a stillness and out of this he heard a firm but lilting voice, which spoke to him as follows: “Your life till now has been preoccupied with ordinary routines – with work, with food, with television. There’s much more in the world for you to enjoy, and from you to give to the world. From tomorrow, I invite you to start a new way of living. Eat no more meat. Find others with whom you can work to change the region’s economic dependence on arms production. And tell everyone that they can’t afford to delay in responding to the need for change.” George was astonished by this experience as he slept. He was even moreso when he thought about it after he awoke. From that day on, however, he was determined to respond to the invitation as best he could.

question: what considerations might have made George’s response less a matter of irrationality, and rather more one of being reasonably convinced? Would that conviction be moral or religious, neither or both?

Naïve disobedience

Anna was resolute in her antipathy to superstitions in any shape or form. This she took to counter-suggestible extremes. For example, since first she had heard that it was ‘bad luck’ to walk under a ladder, she would invariably contrive to walk under any ladder that came within her line of vision. And sometimes she would go to considerable inconvenience to do this. She even became quite upset when one of her friends sought to discourage her from doing this.

question: Is there a sense in which rational rejection of what may be little more than an amusing ritual may be replaced by something that is actually more debilitating? What might Anna learn from the symbolic play of superstitions?

Extracts from influential writings

A philosopher’s warning

“Now it is true that if you believe in God in such a way as to accept God as your Lord and Master, and if you believe that something is an ordinance of God, then you ought to try to follow this ordinance. But if you behave like this it is not because you base morals on religion or on a law concept of morality, but because he who can bring himself to say ‘my God’ uses ‘God’ and cognate words evaluatively. To use such an expression is already to make a moral evaluation; the man expresses a decision that he is morally bound to do whatever God commands… The command gains obligatory force because it is judged worthy of obedience. If someone says, ‘I do not pretend to appraise God’s laws, I just simply accept them because God tells me to’, similar considerations obtain. This person judged that there is a Z that is a proper object of obedience. This expresses his own moral judgement, his own sense of what he is obliged to do.”

Kai Nielsen Ethics without God Pemberton 1973, p:20

question: is it right to conclude that it is only right to obey God if first we have recognised God’s moral worth?
Are Christian Ethics by definition ‘authoritarian’?

“Formally, authoritarian ethics denies man’s capacity to know what is good or bad; the norm giver is always an authority transcending the individual. Such a system is based not on reason and knowledge but on awe of the authority and on the subject’s feeling of weakness and dependence; the surrender of decision making to the authority results from the latter’s magic power; its decisions cannot and must not be questioned..(B)ecause its own interests are at stake the authority ordains obedience to be the main virtue and disobedience to be the main sin…The Old Testament, in its account of the beginnings of man’s history, gives an illustration of authoritarian ethics. The sin of Adam and Eve is not explained in terms of the act itself; eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not bad per se… The sin was disobedience, the challenge to the authority of God…
Humanistic ethics, in contrast to authoritarian ethics, may … be distinguished by formal and material criteria. Formally, it is based on the principle that only man himself can determine the criterion for virtue and sin, and not an authority transcending him. Materially, it is based on the principle that ‘good’ is what is good for man and ‘evil’ what is detrimental to man; the sole criterion of ethical value being man’s welfare.”
Eric Fromm Man for Himself. An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1947, pp: 20-2.

question:
Making modern sense of the Ten Commandments?

Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two?
No graven images may be
Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for for thy curse
Thine enemy is none the worse:
At church on Sunday to attend
Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is all
From whom advancement may befall:
Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive:
Do not adultery commit;
Advantage rarely comes of it:
Thou shalt not steal; an empty feat,
When it’s so lucrative to cheat:
Bear not false witness; let thy lie
Have time on its own wings to fly:
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.

The sum of all this is, thou shalt love
If any body, God above:
At any rate shall never labour
More than thyself to love thy neighbour.

Arthur Hugh Clough ‘The Latest Decalogue’ (circa 1850)

question: what further distortions in attitudes to the Decalogue might Clough

Biblical References

Order and orders from the very beginning times

"Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of God has God made man. As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it." Genesis 9: 6-7

question: is there a better way of translating this than: ‘Make love not war!’?
The Ten Commandments

Then God spoke all these words, saying, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. "You shall have no other gods before Me. "You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. "You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
"You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain. "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. "Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. "For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy. "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the LORD your God gives you. "You shall not murder. "You shall not commit adultery. "You shall not steal. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor." Exodus 20:1-17

question: are all these commandments equally important? If asked to put them in rank order, which would you have as your top three and bottom three?
Prophetic Judgement

What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation— I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Isaiah 1: 11-17

question: is religion worthless without social ethics?
Christian Moral Authority

Six days later, Jesus took with Him Peter and James and John, and brought them up on a high mountain by themselves. And He was transfigured before them; and His garments became radiant and exceedingly white, as no launderer on earth can whiten them. Elijah appeared to them along with Moses; and they were talking with Jesus. Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tabernacles, one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah." For he did not know what to answer; for they became terrified. Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, "This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!" Mark 9:2-7

"Good Master. What must I do to win eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." Mark 10:17

question: Jesus is seen as keeping company with both Moses and the Prophets and as having moral authority in his own right. Why did he present himself as more interested in people coming to understand the relationship between goodness and ‘Godness’, than in asserting his own status?
Ordering the kingdom: new commandments from Jesus

You have heard that it was said in early times, "You shall not kill: whoever kills shall be liable to judgement". But I say to you that who ever is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement. Matthew 5:21-2

You have heard that they were told, "Do not commit adultery." But what I tell you is this: if a man looks at a woman with a lustful eye, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart. Matthew 5:27-8

You have heard that they were told, "Love your neighbour and hate your enemy". But what I tell you is this: Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. Matthew 5:43-4

question: is one implication of these commands that thoughts and feelings make it
’Strenuous Commands’

The ‘strenuous commands’ have found a resonance in the hearts and minds of countless people who have acknowledged that this would indeed be an admirable way to behave if only the world was such as to make it possible. Christians believe that it is not just possible but is a future guaranteed by the promises of their God. Their response is to act as if it were already present. By so doing they demonstrate its power as a realizable vision and their contribute to its realization. Of course they constantly fail to grasp these opportunities. When the y do so, they are properly reminded of their own sinfulness and the limitations of any human endeavour not undertaken wholly according to the will of God.. But our study has suggested that they should not also accuse themselves of having transgressed an explicit commandment of Jesus. For, as we have seen, his ethical teaching was not intended to provide a set of rules to regulate the moral conduct of his followers, but rather to challenge us to live ‘ as if’ the kingdom were already a reality. And since the values of the kingdom correspond to some of the deepest and most constant yearnings of humanity, and since his apocalyptic warnings of the consequences of rejecting them find a resonance in some of our most constant and pervasive fears, it is not surprising that his maxims, for all their uncompromising directness and radicalism, have haunted the conscience and inspired the imagination of innumerable human beings through every century that has passed since they were first uttered and recorded.

Anthony E Harvey STRENUOUS COMMANDS The Ethic of Jesus
(SCM 1990) pp. 209-10

question: When commands arouse a sense of internal responsiveness does that significantly increase their legitimacy, or simply pander to a feel-good factor?

Expositions from Theologians

Emil Brunner

“The Commandments – both of the Decalogue and of the Sermon on the Mount – are God-given paradigms of love…Each of these commandments does two things: it makes the one Command concrete, and it also abstracts from the concrete reality. It stands, so to speak, in the centre between the infinitely varied reality of life and the unity of the divine will of love. It shows us what love would mean in this or that more or less ‘special’ but still general case, and it commands us to do this very thing. Then is this the beginning of casuistry? No. It is of the utmost importance to note how unsystematic, how ‘casual’, are all the commandments which are scattered through the New Testament. Here and there a plunge is made into human life and something is ‘lifted out’ in order to make the meaning of love clearer. But the matter which has been singled out is not held fast as such; it is allowed to slip back again. Care is taken to avoid the possibility of even apparently dividing life up into various ‘cases’ or ‘instances’ which, as such could be prejudged in a legalistic manner. None of the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount are to be understood as laws, so that those who hear them can go away feeling, ‘Now I know what I have to do!’ If it were possible to read the Sermon on the Mount in this legalistic way the absolute and binding character of the Divine Command would be weakened, the sense of responsibility for decision would be broken, the electrical charge of the moral moment would be released.”

The Divine Imperative Lutterworth Press 1947, p: 135

question:
Josef Fuchs

“There is no lawgiver-God who confronts the human possibility of pluralism, and thus of error: neither the commandments of Sinai nor the Sermon on the Mount, nor other biblical texts, are to be understood simply as the revelation of the divinely willed ordering of the morally right conduct of the human being in his world. Faced with widespread pluralism, one cannot appeal to such biblical documents in order to overcome it, for although the Bible’s statements about God and man shed much light on the moral understanding of the human person, and the grace promised in the Bible effects an opening of the self to the truth, the ordering of right conduct itself is not disclosed in this way and thus wrested from the human person’s endeavour.
It is frequently held that the church can exclude all pluralism from its community and thus from its believers. It is true that a certain moral order has crystallised in the church in the light of faith and under the workings of the Holy Spirit, in connection with historically given moral understandings, and that this process of crystallisation continues. But since the faith itself does not give the moral answers, and God’s Spirit does not occupy the place of the community or the individual believer seeking the moral truth, it is likewise true that a historical search for moral truth, and hence also mistakes and alteration, are not excluded – both in community and in the individual."

Christian Morality: the Word becomes Flesh Gill and Macmillan 1987, pp:137-8.

question: Is the implication of this that though any commandments from Bible or Church should be heeded, they are no infallible substitute for openness to God’s Spirit which also resources humankind in other ways?

Parallels in other cultures

Divine Commands

Islam

O you who believe! do not violate the signs appointed by Allah nor the sacred month, nor (interfere with) the offerings, nor the sacrificial animals with garlands, nor those going to the sacred house seeking the grace and pleasure of their Lord; and when you are free from the obligations of the pilgrimage, then hunt, and let not hatred of a people-- because they hindered you from the Sacred Masjid-- incite you to exceed the limits, and help one another in goodness and piety, and do not help one another in sin and aggression; and be careful of (your duty to) Allah; surely Allah is severe in requiting (evil).

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/005.qmt.html#005.012 ‘Qur’an, Chapter 5: Al-Maeda (The Table, The Table Spread), verse 2.’ The M.H. Shakir translation.

Islam

Surely Allah enjoins the doing of justice and the doing of good (to others) and the giving to the kindred, and He forbids indecency and evil and rebellion; He admonishes you that you may be mindful.

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/016.qmt.html#016.090 ‘Qur’an Chapter 16: An-Nahl (The Bee), verse 90. The M.H. Shakir translation.

Additional Religions

Native American Religion (Sioux)

Wakan Tanka is the sum total of the personified powers that brought all things into being; sometimes it is embodied as the Six Grandfathers…Everything has its own spirit but all share the same spiritual essence that is Wakan Tanka; so it is that the most important aspects of personality are shared by everything in the universe…The Sacred Calf Pipe, brought to the people by the White Buffalo Calf Woman, one of the Wakan Tanka, is the embodiment of all creation, all forms of which are understood to be one’s relatives and to which one is bound by smoking the Sacred Pipe; by this act one accepts one’s responsibility toward all one’s relatives.

http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/nam/sioux.html ‘Sioux Religion.’


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