The Real and Knowable Wrongness of Abortion
“Dictatorship of Relativism”
Pope Benedict XVI (formerly Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) writes that relativism is so pervasive in Western culture that dissent is hardly tolerated:
Having a clear faith, based on the Creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas, relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and “swept along by every wind of teaching” looks like the only attitude (acceptable) to today’s standards. We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.1
Here’s my quick take on where this kind of thinking comes from and how to respond.2
Relativism is expressed culturally and individually. Cultural relativism states that right and wrong are determined by one’s own culture. Because cultures disagree on important moral issues, then either objective moral truths don’t exist, or (if they do exist) we cannot know them. At best, our sense of morality is socially constructed from place to place. Hence, each culture must determine its own moral codes and refrain from judging other societies that might hold to different moral standards. Individual relativism asserts that right and wrong begin with each human being. What’s wrong for one person may be fine for another. Morality is reduced to personal preferences and tastes, so we shouldn’t push our morality on others or pass judgment on individual choices.
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Neither form of relativism is persuasive. First, cultures may not differ as much as we think. Sometimes the differences are factual, not moral. I once heard a talk show host say that humans have intrinsic value, yet early abortion is morally permissible. He said he thinks the unborn is not a human entity until later in pregnancy. He’s factually mistaken on this point, but he holds to the same moral principle the pro-lifer does—that humans have intrinsic value by virtue of the kind of thing they are, not some function they perform. This is not a moral difference; it’s a factual one.
Second, even if cultures do in fact differ, it doesn’t follow that nobody is correct. As Hadley Arkes points out, the absence of consensus doesn’t mean an absence of truth. “It is not uncommon for mathematicians to disagree over proofs and conclusions,” he writes, “yet nothing in their disagreement seems to inspire anyone to challenge the foundations of mathematics or to call into question the possibility of knowing mathematical truths.”3 The relativist is guilty of the is/ought fallacy: while people and cultures may in fact differ, we shouldn’t assume there are no right answers. People once disagreed on slavery and equal rights for women, but that didn’t mean moral truth was out of reach.
Third, if morals are relative to culture or the individual, then there’s no ethical difference between Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa; they just had different preferences. The latter liked to help people, while the former liked to kill them. Who are we to judge? But such a view is counterintuitive.
Fourth, relativism, in any form, cannot say why I ought to be tolerant of other cultures. Suppose my culture decides not to tolerate minorities. Now what? Moreover, if right and wrong are relative to one’s particular society, moral reformers like Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi are by definition evil. After all, they challenged their own society’s moral codes.
Finally, relativism can be judgmental. For example, if the relativist thinks it’s wrong to judge, how can he say that pro-lifers are mistaken in the first place? Isn’t he judging the pro-lifer?
The Shift from Moral Realism to Moral Nonrealism
In his book In Search of Moral Knowledge, Ronald Scott Smith sketches a brief history of thought from the ancients until now.4 He begins with the moral realism of the Old Testament, where moral truth is both real (objective) and knowable. From Moses forward, biblical texts point to objective moral truths that exist independent of my thinking that they exist. So my believing them to be real doesn’t make them real. Instead, moral truths are grounded in the character of God and are accessible to all his people. As Moses points out: “This commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off ” (Deut. 30:11). At times these objective moral standards take on a utilitarian application. For example, Moses says, “Choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (Deut. 30:19). However, this utilitarian application doesn’t cheapen the objective truth standards; instead it shows their practical benefits.
Classical thinkers like Plato and Aristotle recognized these same objective moral truths. For Plato, universal morals are grounded in the world of ideas (forms) but are nonetheless real. For Aristotle, objective morals are rooted in the nature of man—in his immaterial soul or essence. Moreover, man can know what’s right and wrong through the rational faculties of the soul. Man’s duty, then, is to cultivate virtuous habits so that he acts and behaves in a manner consistent with (and proper for) his nature as a human being. Both man’s nature and the standards he’s obliged to obey exist objectively.
Moral realism continues with the New Testament writers, but with one significant addition. Not only is moral truth real and knowable; it is also transforming. While ethics are deontological in their foundation, they don’t end with duty for duty’s sake. Rather, through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, God’s objective truth radically changes the Christian disciple more and more into the image of his Master.
But even the nonbeliever can know certain objective moral truths and act upon them, without the aid of special revelation. The moral law, rooted in God’s general revelation, is something we all know intuitively. True, that intuitive knowledge isn’t sufficient to save nonbelieving men and women from their sins, but it doesn’t follow from this that they can’t recognize right and wrong, even if they work overtime to suppress that recognition (see Rom. 1:18–32).
Not only is moral truth real and knowable; it is also transforming.
During the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas combined Aristotle’s ethics with Christian theology, preserving the moral realism of the biblical writers. However, there’s a slight twist. While the biblical writers grounded objective morals in the character of God, Aquinas grounded it more or less in man’s unique nature as a rational being, a substance made in God’s image with both a body and a soul. Aquinas was confident that human reason, unaided by special revelation, can know moral truth (an idea known as natural law). Nevertheless, he was committed to universal moral realism.
As Smith points out, the shift from realism to nonrealism begins with William of Ockham (1287–1347). While Aristotle grounded human nature and morality in a set of universal truths that applied to everyone, Ockham embraced nominalism—everything is particular. For example, “justice” doesn’t have essential qualities that exist outside of time and space and apply universally. Rather, each instance of “justice” is particular to the situation at hand.5
Are Morals Real and Knowable?
Moral nonrealism says objective morals either don’t exist, or we cannot know them as such even if they do exist, because we’re trapped behind our own sense perceptions or cultural biases. Moral nonrealism springs from naturalistic and postmodern worldviews and is now the default position of Western thought. Throughout the media and academia, the prevailing scientism dictates that we allow for objective truth in science but never in religion or ethics. If we can’t measure something empirically through the five senses—so the argument goes—it’s simply a matter of personal taste. Science, and science alone, counts as real knowledge. Everything else—especially philosophy, metaphysics, morals, and religion—cannot be measured empirically, and is therefore not real.
Despite the self-refuting claim (to say that science alone is true is a metaphysical claim about science, not a scientific one that we can measure empirically), moral nonrealism grounded in scientism runs deep in Western culture. How did we get here?
Are right and wrong real and knowable?
Moral realism says yes. Right and wrong are objective, and we can know them as such. We can know them through direct intuitions (self-evident and properly basic truths we immediately recognize, such as “rape and murder are wrong”) or through inference (arguments advanced for or against a position). Either way, they’re real. They exist objectively even if I don’t recognize or acknowledge them. Moral realism fits comfortably with theistic worldviews like Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Notes:
- Homily at the Mass for the Election of the Roman Pontiff, St. Peter’s Basilica, April 18, 2005.
- For a complete treatment of relativism, see Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998). I owe my thoughts here to this excellent book.
- Hadley Arkes, First Things: Inquiry into the First Principles of Morals and Justice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 6.
- R. Scott Smith, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014).
- Ronald Scott Smith, “Making Sense of Morality: Shifts from the Scientific Revolution,” Ronald Scott Smith website, June 8, 2020, https://ronaldscottsmith.medium.com/.
This article is adapted from The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf.
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