christianity

The Standard for Ethics

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How do the laws in human history relate to ethics today? We may read of the laws of mankind from ancient times, such as the Code of Hammurabi and the Ten Commandments, combined with the laws in the Hebrew people’s teachings, the Torah. Many centuries later, Plato wrote an extensive, though unfinished, dialogue entitled Laws, which attempted to analyze legal codes of various Hellenic countries of the 5th Century B.C. In comparing these ancient codes and commentary, we find one particularly significant property in common, which is the appeal to deity in one form or other for establishing the authority of the laws. The rationale for appealing to such authority has its basis in the absolute standard of purity, without equivocation or error; otherwise, ethics and faith in God Himself have no standard but are reduced to mere relativism. Therefore, a comparison of ancient legal codes and commentary with the Bible would seem not only appropriate but vital.

Even though earlier legal codes of a Sumerian culture are also extant, these appear much more fragmented and incomplete than Hammurabi’s. The Code of Hammurabi dates back to the 18th Century B.C. under a Mesopotamian leader, probaby King Hammurabi himself, in the region of the Euphrates. Oddly, the most complete preservation of the code, the basalt stele of Hammurabi, was discovered in Susa, Iran (Persia) near the border with modern-day Iraq, and stands reassembled today in the Louvre Museum. Scholars surmise that the stele had been moved to Susa by force of war; nevertheless, other fragments found in the Near East point to the code of Hammurabi having a lasting influence across several cultures over some centuries in the overall region. The stele has a prologue and 282 legal paragraphs inscribed in cuneiform in the Akkadian (Semitic) language, followed by an epilogue, and it prescribes the legal requirements for such topics as family and civil law, business law, property law, and criminal law. The legal paragraphs are amazingly advanced in both format and concept. The casuistic style for each legal paragraph states “if” such-and-such, “then” such-and-such shall apply as to the legal remedy, and either a reward or punishment. Probably the most notable paragraph similar to a biblical nature mentions exacting punishment for the crime of violence – “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” as later cited in the law of Moses: Exodus 21:24; Leviticus 24:20; Deuteronomy 19:21; and repeated in the New Testament in Matthew 5:38. The carved relief at the top of the stele depicts the king revering Shamash, also known as Utu, the Babylonian god of the sun and justice.

Another remarkable code chronologically after Hammurabi’s would of course be the law of Moses as found in the parchment manuscripts of the Hebrew books of instruction – the Torah, consisting of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy (written c. 15th Century BC). The earliest extant manuscripts of the Torah today, along with many other Hebrew scriptures and Jewish writings, were discovered between 1946/1947 and 1956 at the caves of Qumran near the Dead Sea. They were probably copied by Essene scribes dating between the 3rd and 1st Centuries BC, with some manuscripts even earlier, and some later. The advance in scholarship and corroboration finds a remarkable similarity in the wording and clarity of translation between the previously “oldest” extant manuscripts and the Dead Sea Scrolls. The law of Moses found in the Torah reveals the law code of God to His people that organizes around the Ten Commandments presented to the first generation of the liberated Hebrews who exited Egypt (Exodus chapter 20), and then a second time to the next generation as the people prepared to enter the Promised Land (Deuteronomy chapter 5). We may note that the Ten Commandments give four “vertical” commandments on how to relate to the Supreme Being, followed by six “horizontal” commandments on how to relate to fellow humans. The summary commandments for each of these two categories may be found in the narration and admonitions by Moses to the people. Deuteronomy 6:4-5 provides the famous “Shema,” meaning “Hear,” which states the oneness of God and the Greatest Commandment – to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. The first four of the Ten Commandments relate to honoring God as the only true and living God, the use of His name, and keeping the Sabbath, and all fall under the Greatest Commandment, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 – the Shema. The Second-Greatest Commandment, to love your neighbor as yourself, lies deep in Leviticus in the context of not holding a grudge, but to love instead, in Leviticus 19:18. “Love your neighbor as yourself” provides the primary emphasis and reason for the last six of the Ten Commandments, which include:

  • Honor your father and mother.
  • Do not murder.
  • Do not commit adultery.
  • Do not steal.
  • Do not bear false witness.
  • Do not covet.

This law code includes the simple major and universal Commandments but branches out into the sacrifical system of worship and animal blood atonement for sin, as well as various cultural regulations, sacred holidays, and worship requirements that provide a type for Christ, the projected Messiah, who was to come centuries after Moses. We may state unequivocably that the law of Moses points to the Divine, and as Bible believers, we say on faith that it comes from God.

We now come to the bulwark of Western legal and political thought, the philosphers of ancient Greece, which included the Big Three: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Of these, we may focus on Plato’s final work in his old age, his dialogue, Laws. Today Plato’s discussion of laws may be criticised for its style and antiquated opinions, which at times seem to border on the naive. However, the major point comes from the statements of Plato’s character in the dialogue, the Stranger of Athens, as he propounds the divine nature of good law. “The laws of the Cretans,” he says to Clinias the Cretan, “are held in superlatively high repute among the Helenes. For they are true laws inasmuch as they effect the well-being of those who use them by supplying all things that are good. Now goods are of two kinds, human and divine” (Laws, Book I). He further expounds on humanity’s dependence on divine direction. We may wonder whether, assuming pagan gods to be nonexistent, a “divine” order or direction from the ancient Hellenic world would have any relevance, even in the 5th Century BC. The answer must come from their perspective, which would be affirmative. Although at times Plato’s Athenian Stranger mentioned God as the source for good law, we may only gather that he referred to someone in the ancient Greek pantheon. In the reading, one may find a reference to Zeus and Pythian Apollo. Now Zeus in general would be regarded in Hellenic culture as of highest rank, the deific king of Olympus. However, Apollo, a god of great influence in multiple areas of human endeavor, specifically became involved in Greek religious tradition as the source for the power of the oracle at Delphi, the ancient Greek center of the universe. There at Delphi on the Bay of Corinth, Pythia, the oracular priestess, practiced her art of divination. Belief in law from the mouth of Apollo through Pythia had great weight to the Hellenic peoples.

Our thesis, after some comparison of legal and religious cultural references, lays out the universal need for authority for objective ethical principles, which we may further focus as commandments and laws of religious importance; namely, there must be a standard by which ethics are judged that stand independent of mere opinion and relativism. Even as Bertrand Russell, a self-described agnostic or atheist, admitted, he could not definitively judge goodness and badness (right and wrong) without requisite “non-natural properties of goodness and badness” (Stanford, 2021). Therefore, we may surmise that, according to Russell, without the supernatural ethical standard, objective ethical correctness would be reduced to debate. God must exist for an objective ethical standard, and as God said, “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Remarkably, the ancient philosophers and lawgivers tended to agree on divine direction, if only ostensibly to justify the laws. Divine decree was invoked by Hammurabi, Moses, and Plato. Bible believers say that God will judge the people of the world, past, present, and future, and His judgment is right. We have His Book by which we may know His standard, in the pages from Genesis to Revelation.

For God shall bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. – Ecclesiastes 12:14

Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. -Hebrews 4:13

We are fortunate to have the hope of God’s promises to believers, and may call on the name of the Lord and plead in faith for His grace and mercy, turning to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith (Romans 10:9-10; Hebrews 12:2). We are privileged to live out our faith, not under judgment, but under grace and a sound mind in Christ (Romans 8:1; 12:1-3). May the Lord’s peace be with you.

REFERENCES:

Britannica Online, britannicaonline/topic/Britannica-online. “Code of Hammurabi.” Accessed 10

February 2024.

Britannica Online, britannicaonline/topic/Britannica-online. “Dead Sea Scrolls.” Accessed 10

February 2024.

Britannica Online, britannicaonline/topic/Britannica-online. “Shamash.” Accessed 10 February 2024.

Plato, Laws. English trans. by R.G. Bury. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1926.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Russell’s moral philosophy,” under subtitle “1. The open

question argument and its aftermath: Moore’s influence on Russell,” revised 4 May 2021.

The Cost of Following Christ

jmsmittyweb

Jesus had much to say about the cost of being His disciple; in fact, true discipleship will cost you everything, and yet, the value of His grace is limitless! This quote from Jesus compares such a cost with the practicality of war:

31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples. -Luke 14:31-33

We also know of the cost of a stronger nation at war against a weaker power, which holds out with great resistance and perseverence, because the weaker power’s homeland means everything to the people, even life itself. The stronger power must be forced to weigh the cost, even weighing the diminishing returns from a seemingly endless war. America has witnessed this from the Vietnam War and the war in Afghanistan. Russia may be experiencing this principle in its war against Ukraine, and also suffered heavy losses in the 1980s in the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. In fact, the principle of diminishing returns goes back in history to ancient times. Aristotle referred to the fading Persian empire’s struggle against Atarneus, a stronghold town on the coast of Asia Minor (Politics, Book II, iv, 10), in which the city’s mega-wealthy financier, Eubulus the Bithynian banker, suggested to the Persian general, Autophradates, that he count the cost in time, expense, and lives to take the city. Autophradates wisely withdrew the seige from Atarneus.

Now Jesus’ example in Luke chapter 14 refers to the weaker power offering peace terms when the cost would be too great. We have therefore two examples from history: the diminishing returns of the stronger power in one example, and the likely defeat or excessive cost of the weaker power in another example. Our moral of these illustrations pertains to becoming a Christian. To be a Christian, Jesus says, you must go “all in.” The cost is your life, whether literally in the case of your martyrdom, or the cost over your natural lifetime as a slave of Christ.

Then He said to them all: 23 “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.” -Luke 9:23-24

Self-denial places others ahead of yourself, and the motivation is love. The cost of discipleship is everything, but the gain is everything for eternity. Oh, the amazing riches of Christ (Romans 9:23; Colossians 1:27; Hebrews 11:26)!

Now the cost of discipleship to Jesus may be regarded, in the case of the strong Christian, as the stronger power waging war on the weaker, who may perhaps find himself casting his pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6) in the hope of saving the irretrievable, only to sink himself in the mire of the other’s depravity. Once you have laid out the gospel and your arsenal of prooftext – that is, your memorized Scriptures that show the way of repentance and salvation in Christ – it becomes necessary to “dissolve the bands” (T. Jefferson) that may lead to evil influence. As the apostle said, once you have warned the wayward one, watch that you yourself be not tempted. Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good character,” which Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:33, quoting from the Greek Poet, Menander.

In the case of an ordinary Christian, or a new Christian, or even a weaker Christian, how do you ask for peace against the stronger power? One must not negotiate with evil, especially the devil. Surrender, not to evil, but to the risen Savior. Do as Paul described in Colossians 3:1-3; namely, hide your life in Christ. As you deny self and hide your life in Christ, the Lord Jesus stands between you and evil. We are all weak in one way or other, and Jesus knows your every weakness. Call on Jesus for protection. Take that temptation to the Lord in prayer. Such is the resistance of the saved, calling on the name above all names, Jesus. As James wrote, resist the devil, and he will flee (James 4:7). Is he fleeing from your power? No, he is fleeing from you because of who is in you, Jesus, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

Hell Is Real

jmsmittyweb

The Friday edition of The Wall Street Journal features an essay series, “Houses of Worship,” written by a different specialist each week on a topic of interest related to religion. On Friday, March 8, 2024, p. A13, Lance Morrow presented his article entitled “How We Think About Hell.” It seems every unpleasantry imaginable occupies our thoughts about hell, if we think of hell at all, although the plethora of concepts tend to marginalize the truth from God’s Word. Pope Francis, when asked what he thought about hell, said, “What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty. I hope it is.”

Mr. Morrow went through a vivid list of observations by writers and thinkers on the topic of hell. Pope Francis described hell as “eternal solitude.” Jean Paul Sartre, the existentialist “pontiff,” commented that “hell is other people.” Great writers published their own particular twist on hell. Dante’s Inferno “set the standard,” says Morrow. Milton wrote a tortuously lengthy tome, Paradise Lost, putting words in Lucifer’s mouth: “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” James Joyce’s novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, apalls the senses with the smell of rotting flesh and boiling blood of sinners, even as the fire “gives off no light.”

Then we are given a glimpse of hell on earth, such as World War I’s Battle of the Somme, which introduced mass insanity of 300,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries in a barrage of shelling, destruction of human life and limb the likes of which had never been seen before. Survivors were prone to take decades to speak of it, if at all. The butchery continued through wars and terrorism throughout the Twentieth Century and into the Twenty-first. Of course, Hitler teed up a nuance to hell on earth, delivering genocidal annihialtion to his Holocaust victims in the dehumanizing of human life as ghoulish as the hated Nineveh of the ancient Assyrian Empire.

Nowadays it seems that relativism takes the front seat of people’s concept of laying blame for sin, which is the reason for hell in the first place. But has sin become dependent on the situation? Are we no longer responsible for our actions if our psyche is the product of our genetic and social circumstances? Consequently, Morrow raised a pointed question: “Has the old idea, fire and brimstone through all eternity, gone out of business?” After all, who is responsible in Twenty-first Century thinking? Artificial Intelligence raises new possibilities of transferring blame away from a potentially punishable culprit. Do you blame the “occupant” of a self-driving vehicle when a computer glitch causes the death of a hapless pedestrian? Nevertheless, the author concludes that there is somehow a basic truth to be ferreted from human nature and our sense of justice. I would say that therein lies the problem – the finding of justice by human standards rather than God’s.

I would add that the groundwork for such dubious ideas of justice began long ago. Novels and speeches and articles over the modern era laid the foundations of relativism. Dostoevsky, Hardy, Dreiser, and Steinbeck – each contributed to the idea of the extenuating circumstance and the perpetrator as victim. Today we see this in the news as criminals are given a pass. If the criminal is a victim, then how can you punish him? Is not society itself responsible? As far back as Thomas More’s Utopia, first published in 1516, and in English in 1551, the foundation for such warped thinking had been laid.

“For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them?” -Thomas More, Utopia

The book had a lengthy Latin name with various English translations that could be simplified to this: On the Best State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia. We best recognize the book, of course, as Utopia, and its rather loose treatment of crime became woven into Western culture in popular works, including the motion picture, Ever After (1998). In the movie, Drew Barrymore directly quoted the above English rendition of Thomas More’s indictment of punishing thieves.

Sin as sin can only be, at its core, a simple concept that – without grace from above – predicates the inexorable conclusion: judgment. Therefore, hell becomes crystal clear in the moral code of God’s Holy Word, the Bible. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the Eighteenth Century evangelist and author of the famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” ignited the proper fear of the Lord God in thousands of Americans’ hearts and helped bring about the Great Awakening, the great Christian revival in Colonial America. His basic examples from Scripture atested to the reality of hell, a real place of torment for those who have earned the wrath of God, not the least of which results from intransigent rebellion against the evidence of God’s existence, beginning with unbelief in the miracle of His creation (Romans 1:20) and extending to unbelief in the miraculous, incarnate Son of God.

“Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.” –John 3:18

We have the Biblical illustration from one of Jesus’ parables, “The Rich Man and Lazarus,” in which poor Lazarus dies and goes to heaven, resting on Abraham’s bosom, while the wicked rich man is tortured in the eternal fires of hell (Luke 16:19-31). Now hell was originally reserved for the devil and his angels, the fiery eternal place where Satan would be locked up as he justly deserves (Matthew 25:41). However, mankind, who is made in God’s image, was not intended for such a fate until after the Fall, when the sin of man came into being. What do we have now? We have an alternative: either to enjoy God’s grace as we look to “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2, KJV) or to face an eternity in hell. Its description leaves no doubt of its physical reality. Isaiah 66:24 describes the scorched bodies of the wicked who are the objects of God’s wrath in a place where the worms consuming them never die and the fire is never quenched; and Jesus relates this illustration from Isaiah as the place of hell, emphasizing the worms and unquenchable fire three times (Mark 9:42-48).

As mentioned, there lies before us God’s boundless grace and his unmitigated holy wrath; the choice is yours. “As for me and my house,” as Joshua said in Joshua 24:15, “we will serve the Lord.” We will turn to God’s grace freely offered, not due to our own merit, but because we look to Him in faith (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Genesis 9:4 – The Life Blood

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The Rainbow covenant that God made with Noah and his family, the survivors of the Great Flood, included a stipulation of great interest to the Abrahamic people groups and their respective faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. God commanded the abstention from the lifeblood of animals when He allowed the eating of meat in the human diet after the Flood. To Noah and his wife, their three sons, and their wives, God said: “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it” (Genesis 9:4).

God further required an accounting from any human or animal that took another human life: capital punishment.

5 “And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each human being, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.

6 “Whoever sheds human blood,

by humans shall their blood be shed;

for in the image of God

has God made mankind.”

– Genesis 9:5-6

Two points come to mind from this passage, Genesis 9:4-6:

  • Respect for the lifeblood of an animal whose meat is eaten by humans.
  • Accountability for the shedding of human blood by another, whether by an animal or a human.

The lifeblood sustains the life of both man and beast, sending oxygen, nutrients, and antibodies throughout the organism. The blood of both humans and animals truly sustains the life of the organism. The Hebrew Torah gives further rationale for respecting the blood of animals, whether by animal sacrifices on the altar to God, or whether by consumption of meat for food.

11 “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life. 12 Therefore I say to Israelites, “None of you may eat blood, nor may any foreigner residing among you eat blood.”

– Leviticus 17:11-12

Deuteronomy 12:24 further prescribes how to treat the shed blood of the animal consumed for food; its blood was to be poured onto the ground, leaving the meat free of its blood. The reason for this care becomes clear from the principle of sacrificial atonement. The innocent animal sheds its blood for the life of the person offering his gift at the altar. Indeed, vicarious atonement, a life for a life, provided the forgiveness in the Israelites’ covenant with God. The covenant emphasized that sin promoted death, and without the shedding of blood, there was no forgiveness. The priest sprinkled the holy articles and the altar with blood from the sacrifice. In Egypt during the plagues against Pharaoh and the Egyptians, the Israelites sprinkled the doorpost and lintel of their homes with the blood of the Passover lamb, which prevented the angel from killing the firstborn of their household.

In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. – Hebrews 9:22

Non-Christians do not understand the nature of Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself on the cross. He is called the Lamb of God, because He is the atoning sacrifice for all the sins of humanity. Our only contribution is faith in His sacrifice as Son of Man and Son of God, the sinless One who took our sins upon Himself.

Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. -Hebrews 7:27

Thus the sinless Son of God offered Himself for us, conquered death through His resurrection, and gave us eternal life through His atoning sacrifice of grace and our faith in Him.