Apologetics: Ethical Objections & Ethical Relativism

Introduction: Ethical Relativism Explained

Before we investigate objections on specific Christian ethical positions, I thought it would be best to assess the broader picture of Christianity’s place within ethical discussions. In this lecture, I’ll explain ethical relativism. Then, I’ll look at two ways in which ethical relativism manifests in a pair of objections against the Christian faith. Next, I’ll articulate responses to those objections. Thereafter, I’ll turn back to relativism with an aim of undermining it. To close, I’ll consider what’s often behind ethical relativism and highlight that philosophy’s weaknesses as well.

This lecture will resonate with our earlier treatment of religious pluralism and multiculturalism. Like that previous topic’s framework, there are many ethical systems from which to choose: utilitarianism, hedonism, virtue ethics, feminist ethics, and deontological ethics to name a few. The existence of differing belief systems is once again construed as definitive evidence that none are wholly true.

One of the more pervasive views today isn’t an ethical system per se but an interpretation of all ethical systems. Ethical relativism insists upon the profound limitation of ethics to tell us what is right and wrong. Normally when we speak of relativism, it’s the ethical version to which people are referring.

As you may know, ethical relativists think that the truth can’t be known about ethical matters. In that, they agree with skeptics who also claim we can’t know ethical truth. Unlike skeptics, though, the ethical relativist says this is the case because there is no objective truth to be known. There’s no position on a single issue, let alone a host of issues, that can be shared and accepted among all people because terms like “right” and “wrong” don’t capture any real features of the world.

To put it bluntly, “right” and “wrong” are just words within this view. Ethical principles are conventions like etiquette and traffic laws. We make up these sets of rules to help us decide how to act, to help us keep the peace, or to promote a privileged group’s interests. The rest of us abide by them because doing so helps us get along in society, garner others’ praise, and feel good about ourselves. Even if some of us naively think we abide by ethical rules or norms for grander reasons, there’s nothing grander going on than self-approbation.

Before we get too far, understand that ethical relativism doesn’t come in only one flavor. There are a few varieties of ethical relativists. One variety holds ethical truths are relative to groups of people. Multiculturalism often works hand in glove with group-centered ethical relativism. This position would say, for instance, that female circumcision is ethical or good for the groups that practice it in Africa or the Middle East even though many Western groups abhor it. We’re not able to condemn such practices without being ethnocentric, which is to say, without being biased in favor of the beliefs and practices of our group.  

Another variety of ethical relativism holds that ethical truths are relative to the individual. It may be the individual’s judgment, what he or she can or can’t accept, or what most promotes his or her interests. Regardless of why a person believes it’s good to behave in a certain way, another person cannot fairly pass legitimate judgment on another’s beliefs. This variety would be more consistent with American individualism, which says every single person should be free to pursue his or her self-determined goals without societal interference.

Listen closely in conversation about ethics to determine in which camp the person with whom you’re speaking resides. The same person may shift among these views. As an example: if he’s criticizing Christianity, it may be from the perspective of an enlightened American citizen. If he’s defending himself, it may be from the perspective of an unaffiliated individual. That sort of wavering is a vulnerability we can exploit because equivocation, where a person uses the same word to mean different things at different stages of argumentation, is a logical fallacy. We have something to say to both individual- and group-centered relativism, but anyone committed to clear thinking can see that it can’t be both.

Importantly, note once again that fair, impartial criteria with which to assess the various opposing ethical judgments do not exist. Any proposed criteria would be skewed either to the person offering the criteria or to that person’s group. As we’ll see, it’s hard to avoid using criteria, though.

One of the practical side effects of ethical relativism is it frees you up to decide whether you’ll obey the man-made rules or whether you’ll work around them. Ethical commandments or prohibitions are weaker within a relative paradigm. They aren’t compulsory. Other people may say sexual promiscuity is bad, but that doesn’t bind you when you’re a relativist in love. Others may say drug use is bad, but that doesn’t bind you when you’re a relativist who needs to chill out.

Another practical outcome of ethical relativism is that it stifles attempts at ethical correction. Within this schema, we shouldn’t criticize others because each of us is trying to do the best we can and figure out our life’s course for ourselves. Even if we aren’t relativists, we are influenced by its dominance. Many  of us hesitate to speak the truth in situations for fear of offending someone with such an intrusion. Our hesitation often comes from doubt about the truth’s existence, at least in that situation.

Correction is impossible for another reason as well. In lieu of justifying truth on rational or objective grounds, that is, grounds that are accessible by our fellow human beings, our culture frequently turns to sincerity. This is generally accepted to be the case for ethical and religious belief. Sincerity is, by definition, private. It’s internal. There’s no arguing with it because feelings aren’t rationally responsive. If a person sincerely believes something, many are tempted to conclude it is somehow true for him or her. The validation of belief becomes subjective. It’s a product of how strongly a person feels or how convinced he or she is.

Finally, notice that none of the above entails that ethical relativists have no ethical beliefs. As we’ll see, many ethical relativists still say they believe that certain actions are right and certain actions are wrong. What’s different is what’s at stake in disagreements. The tenor of those assertions and the ensuing discussions is nearer to disputes about matters of taste than debates about matters of truth. Since the highest achievement of ethics for a relativist is to become an established opinion accepted by others, there’s no need to cede any ground. Anyone else’s opinion is just as valuable as your own. The rub is that no opinions can be prescriptive, meaning rules can be forced on other groups or individuals. This is, however, another point of vulnerability that many of our responses will attempt to prod.

To summarize, ethical relativism alters the way ethical principles or propositions are held. For ethical relativists, even when you think some action is right, this isn’t actually the case. Instead of supposing a foundation beyond human opinion, ethics has flimsier grounding. The truth is often conceived as what works for us or what we sincerely believe to be true. It follows that whatever counts for the lesser caliber of truth varies between people, either groups or individuals.

Cultural Barriers

Our culture, under the influence of postmodernism, has grown increasingly dubious about mind-independent truth. A recent poll found that approximately 80% of Generation X assume there is no absolute truth, as compared with approximately 70% of Americans at large who assume there is no absolute truth. Ethics, as we have seen, is no exception.

Whether or not the respondents to those surveys understand the ramifications of that statement, it’s clear the Bible cannot accommodate that stance. Christians would say this incommensurability is a problem for nonChristians in that they are wrong or confused about the nature of reality. It’s also a problem for us, though, in that we are judged by many nonChristians to be wrong or confused about the nature of reality, too.

Since Christians believe in objective moral truths, they will disagree with ethical relativists. The Bible contains many behavioral rules that are intended to apply to everyone, everywhere. For example, Christ has told everyone, everywhere to be perfect like their heavenly father is perfect. There is never a situation in which any of us have permission or license to be imperfect. Even though we act, as a matter of fact, imperfectly, we know this is our own wrongdoing.

As you could imagine, relativism, ethical or otherwise, is an impediment to apologetics insofar as people think that Christianity’s ethical claims don’t have the truth value and explanatory power we hold that they do. If you say that some action is wrong--especially a popular action, an ethical relativist would object, “Maybe to you, but not to me.” If you respond that the Bible backs up your view, you’re likely to hear, “Maybe you think it backs up your view, but it really doesn’t.”

One conclusion from conversations with ethical relativists we can draw is that Christianity has lost its accumulated cache of authority. It may come as a shock because, in the realms of church and congregation, the faith is held in such esteem. We like to believe that we not only stand on but that we own the moral high ground in our culture. Listen to ethical discussions around you, however, and you’ll hear that others stringently believe that Christians are ethically bankrupt.

After the revision of the concept of truth, from capital “T” truth that’s true for everyone at all times to little “t” truth that’s true for certain people at certain times, Christianity’s ethical claims are construed as intolerant. From a relativist’s perspective, Christian claims deny others’ opinions. Instead, Christian claims are understood as opinions that claim to be more than opinions.

Another objection levels the higher charge that Christian ethical claims are immoral and wrong. Part of this indictment is that those claims don’t allow people to choose for themselves what is right and wrong. We’ll address both claims of Christian intolerance and Christian immorality next.

***

Rather than simply disagree with ethical relativists, or worse still wag our fingers and scold them, we need to debate. We need to show others not only why we believe in ethical truth but why they should believe so, too. We need to uncover the implications of ethical relativism as well as elaborate upon common misrepresentations of Christian commitments.

In addition, it bears reminding that while speaking to the subtlety and nuance of interpreting Scripture and applying it to our lives, we can never question its absolute truth.

Christian Intolerance

As we saw last week and as we’ll see once again on when we discuss hell at length, people commonly take offense at Christianity’s perceived intolerance. While the heart of these issues is the same, their bodies are different and worthy of examination.

One common ethical objection to Christianity we’ll cover has to do with the way Christians believe. Namely, they take their ethics too far. They cross the line that respects others’ freedom to act and live as they see fit.

Because it’s inflexible about what is right and wrong, some would say Christianity doesn’t respect people’s ability to find their own happiness. To them, Christianity is an elaborate political movement that aims to force it’s outdated morality on the country as a whole. Christians’ understanding of God and attempt to impose his will on others is seen as encroaching upon everyone’s personal freedom, which is acutely threatening to Americans.

Oftentimes, objectors point to Christian fervor as a necessary consequence of their commitment to objective morality. They’ll point to self-righteous, overzealous, bigoted, antagonizing and all the other volleys they claim Christians launch in the culture wars. They’ll talk about the picket signs and protest marches, the threats of damnation, and televangelists perverse excitement with natural disasters befalling sinful places. To them, we hate the sinners and the sins. We’re not merely close-minded, we’re aggressively close-minded.

What these critics want is to be left alone and allowed to do as they wish. They would say, “I don’t believe those rules,” or “My people don’t believe those rules.” Either way, they’d say “Stop trying to force me to obey them.”

Christian Misdeeds

Another common ethical objection to Christianity focuses on what Christians have done, often in the name of God. Some people make ethical objections to Christianity on the grounds that it has supported, initiated, or turned a blind eye to immoral actions large and small

You’ve heard the charges against the church historically, the Inquisition, the Crusades, the various bloody wars during the 16th and 17th centuries, endorsement of the slave trade, and vast institutional betrayals like the never ending sex abuse scandal. Today, we are constantly accused of smaller scale atrocities for which we need to answer. There is no shortage of accounts of nominal Christians and church leaders involved in wicked schemes of adultery or theft. There have been plenty of violent attacks upon abortion clinics or their staff. There have been cruel disruptions of funeral services.

Atheists and agnostics point to these examples of wrong-doing. In so doing, they’re basically claiming, “There is no truth to what their religion espouses. Look at the sorts of people it generates.”

Responses to Christian Intolerance

Using the proper approach is an indirect way to address ethical objections generally. On a most basic level, guard the way you present yourself to others. Don’t challenge someone unless you’re motivated by a concern for his or her ultimate healing. Again, don’t approach someone with an air of superiority. We all struggle with various temptations and idolatries. We should never forget we, too, are sinners. Taking a humble posture is one way to disarm charges of intolerance before they’re leveled.

We also need to be mindful of the way the conversation is framed. While it’s easier to be against something than to be for something, defining yourself negatively, in opposition to something, doesn’t inspire people to act or to change. We don’t want to be on the side of intolerance and allow another group to be on the side of tolerance. We need to make a finer distinction. We aren’t advocating for intolerance as opposed to tolerance. We’re advocating for intolerance of evil in the world and in ourselves and embrace, not just tolerance, of good.

As a brief but important aside, I’d like to once again plug the golden rule. Reciprocity can spare us much wasted effort in misunderstanding. Christians groan at every news story that presents us as unintelligent, hypocritical, or self-serving. Let’s not repeat this mistake and assume that every nonChristian is a liberal, an evolutionist, or a feminist. Not all atheists or agnostics are across the board moral relativists or would self-identify as such. Many simply struggle with confidence in their judgments because they’ve been told definitive positions are arrogant. We can show people by grace by asking them what they believe to be the right course of action rather than assume they believe a false one.

Adding content to that form of humility, we can begin with agreement. Tim Keller is quick to point out in response to these observations a scriptural observation of his own. The Bible reserves plenty of criticism for religion. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes the religious to task, not the irreligious. He condemned pharisaical pride. So, we should feel emboldened to echo his rebukes.

There’s more on which we can agree. One of the reasons why ethical relativism is so popular is because it capitalizes on a salient feature of ethical reasoning. Specifically, that ethics can be hard. There are situations in which interests collide, principles conflict, intentions confuse, and outcomes confound. On that point, the ethical relativist and the Christian of like mind. They both recognize the imperfections and limitations of human understanding. Let’s not be afraid to explain how even when we as Christians take right and wrong to be black and white, that we still live in gray. Be open with how hard it has been for you to apply God’s instruction to your life. It does not follow that we should throw up our hands and just go with our gut or, even worse, conclude that our best judgments are faulty.

After humbling yourself, point out what’s wrong with taking tolerance as a universal virtue like it commonly is. Many of our peers speak as though tolerance were always good. But this cannot be the case. To say a person is wrong is construed as disrespectful. It hurts people to tell them they’re wrong. But first of all, what if a person is incorrect? So long as you don’t gloat about it, wouldn’t we say that correction is a good thing? We don’t let children believe that Abraham Lincoln was the first president. Surely if it’s proper to correct people about trivial matters, it’s proper to correct people about weighty matters like courses of action.

Second of all, is harm--such as the harm involved with disagreeing with someone else--always wrong? If so, then we have a universal principle for which ethical relativism cannot account. If not, how can you draw the line? On what ground can a person who takes tolerance to be a virtue stand up against an intolerant person? It’s one of the inherent inconsistencies with global tolerance. It can’t be sustained indefinitely. At bottom, tolerance can often become a refusal to value what is true and good.

Point out how we would not be benefitted by God allowing us to determine what’s good for us. We need God’s law as well as his love. We believe in divine ethical imperatives, commandments that God has passed down to us through his word and has written on our hearts. These cannot change. They are always righteous. Don’t mince words. God does constrain our personal freedom. This is merciful on his part, not controlling. It the only sort of correction that could truly repair us.

No response would be complete without an attempt to help sophisticate others’ understanding of Christianity. Firstly, Christian doctrine does not claim that all ethical topics are straightforward. The Apostle Paul himself writes of the complications when he says, leaving aside whether or not it’s lawful to eat certain foods, that you should not do what makes others stumble even if it doesn’t make yourself stumble. (Romans 14:13-23)

Moreover, Christianity is not just a set of rules to follow. This is not the place to elaborate upon the Gospel. Suffice it to say our faith is relational, not transactional.

Responses to Christian Misdeeds

First of all, ask why those actions are wrong. Hard questions like that have a way of softening positions because, as we’ve agreed, ethics isn’t easy. You’re likely to reveal the other’s version of relativism or you’ll hear something that sounds like or a foundational belief. The latter, of course, would no longer be relative. Afterall, accusing Christians of wrongdoing is self-defeating for an ethical relativist insofar as it assumes there is something truly evil about dominating others, for instance. We’ll discuss what we can say to secular foundations towards the end of class.

Also, ask why the person focuses on Christian misdeeds in the first place. Ask them if there is any group in history who couldn’t be criticized. Even the groups relativists associate with would be vulnerable to reproach. Here, as elsewhere, the merits of the ethical system aren’t born out in its representatives’ actions. They’re borne out in the inherent correctness.

Provide a counterweight to the critic’s slanted portrayal. Point out the many of the positives accomplishments Christian groups and individuals have made for civilization. To scratch the surface: Hospitals have Christian roots. Public education and universities were a product of early Christian living. Christians were greatly influential and some of the first to push for abolition of the slave trade. More recently, the Civil Rights movement was largely made possible by Christian faith. It had a part to play in ending apartheid and repressive Soviet communism. The Christian legacy has many examples of people who gave their lives in service of others, an act empowered by a fervent belief in a God who already died to save the world.

But we shouldn’t whitewash our past or even our present. We need to humble ourselves before others, nonbelievers included, and admit we are flawed like our other Christian brothers and sisters. Christian misbehavior, be it on a personal level like rudeness or on a historical level like some churches’ support of slavery, cannot be soft pedaled. We need to be clear in condemning wrong actions, regardless of who commits them or whether or not they self-identify as Christian. The fact is Christian misdeeds are done in contravention of Christian principles.

A good time to introduce the notion of sin and inject the Gospel into these discussion may be precisely when speaking of such failures. The Bible regularly illustrates the faithfuls’ disobedience, so we need not shy away from calling it out. We can explain our enduring need for God’s mercy and how, of all people, Christians shouldn’t be self-righteous. We all need a savior.

***

When it’s time to take on ethical relativism itself, we have a few tacts we can take. I’ll cover two tonight. One is to crack the ribs, as it were, and the other is to get to the heart of the matter. We’ll cover both in turn.

Making a Case: Why Relativism Is Wrong

Insisting that truth is subjectively determined is muddled thinking. Clarify the terms. There’s a difference between what is believed and what is true. It may be true that you believe something, but it isn’t necessarily true that what you believe is true. Christians can agree with relativists on that point. We know our fallibility continues past our baptisms or conversions. Just because we can err doesn’t mean that we always do, however. Furthermore, just because we disagree doesn’t entail there’s no truth about the subject of our disagreement. The relativist’s leap to these conclusions needs explaining.

Frances Howard-Snyder in his essay “Christianity and Ethics” concisely recounts the many difficulties for ethical relativism. First, either version of ethical relativism is incompatible with moral progress because it can’t regard changes as progressing in any direction, positive or negative. Improvements requires standards and any proposed standard would be relative.

This fact has unsavory ramifications for many ethical relativists. Who’s to say taking biodiversity into account when modifying seeds and planting crops is any nearer to the good than ignoring natural stability and doing whatever is cheapest? To give another example, there’s no objective way to compare our society to antebellum America, for instance. We can’t claim improved race relations for ourselves. All that can be said on the relativist’s account is that our beliefs have changed, not that they’ve changed for the better or the worse. This also undermines accusations that past Christian misdeeds like the Crusades we’re actually wrong. (That’s not the point were arguing, of course, but it does refute that objection.)

Also, ethical relativism that’s group-oriented becomes incoherent when an individual is a member of multiple groups. If a woman is Christian and living in Saudi Arabia, it becomes impossible to say whether it is or is not moral for her to drive a car, for instance. As a Christian, she should be free to operate a vehicle but as a citizen in a heavily paternalistic nation, she should be a passenger. Nothing is right for her.

Relativism Relativizes Itself

Most damning, ethical relativists almost always stop claiming there is no ethical truth at some point. If you ask probing questions, there will likely come a time when the ethical relativist concedes that certain immoral actions are always immoral, regardless of the person or society. I’ll have more to say on that later, but for now: to break through the purported equivalence of all truth claims, pose an extreme example of evil behavior and see if the other person would tolerate it as permissible. If not, inquire after why this particular action shouldn’t be allowed.

Most stringent relativists will have trouble allowing naziism to be a good thing, even for early 20th Century Germans. This shows that there must be some criteria with which to exclude certain viewpoints as unacceptable. As CS Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, as soon as we think one system is better than another, we stop thinking of ethics as a human convention. Whenever we say one is better than the other, we appeal to a standard that is independent of ourselves. That is, essentially, the Christian ethical position.

It would be fair to ask how he or she explains the conviction that animals shouldn’t be abused, for example. You may need to challenge them to explain how his or her beliefs aren’t undone by one of the varieties of ethical relativism. Whether or not a response is forthcoming, it could be powerful to offer the theistic account.

The relativist’s inconsistency is telling. People want to believe in ethical truth, even if they vocally deny its existence. An amoral universe is frightening, even if we suppress that fear. The deep sense of ethical conviction is bridge to atheists. This is where God’s truth has a hold of them. Use that. Explain how God has made his moral character known by imbuing our universe with real goodness.

Good Implies God

At this point, it may be appropriate to pivot towards an argument for the existence of God. As you may recall, I mentioned that one of the chief arguments that God exists is an argument that accounts for the objective truth about ethics. Now that we’re talking about ethics again, it’s fitting we revisit that argument.

Tim Keller presented an argument for the existence of God from a moral sense in his book The Reason for God. He observed that we have an unavoidable belief in moral values and obligation. Even if we don’t always see eye to eye on what those values are and how we are obligated in a specific situation, we are convicted by our consciences. Even purported ethical relativists draw lines that cannot be crossed regardless of how a person feels about them.

The difficulty for the strictly secular theories of morality is they cannot state on what inalienable rights, for instance, depend. It’s inconceivable how something like human dignity could be from nature, given nature’s tendency towards violence and predation where the strong lord over the weak. It’s impossible to claim justification from majority rule because nothing prevents a majority from acting oppressively and compromising the minority’s human rights. The binding law can’t come from the individual because, as we mentioned, individuals disagree.  Short of saying that nature is unnatural when it comes to morality, a strictly secular account cannot answer why we ought to respect others’ rights. Considering moral obligation the Biblical account of things, once again, makes better sense of things than the secular account.

Thinking Through Relativism: Relative Evil

As we just saw, we should bore down in these conversations, drilling past ethical objections, past relativism, and down into the bedrock metaphysical commitments. Doing so, we’ll eventually confront naturalism. That’s where our fundamental conflict lies with ethical relativists because that tends to be the philosophy to which secularism appeals.

To understand the heart of relativism, I’d like consider how ethical relativism is at the root of another objection to Christianity. When the problem of evil arises, many atheists and agnostics have a simplistic view of suffering. They are likely to assume all pain is evil. The influence of relativism is behind this assumption. When we deny the reality of objective moral values, we only have recourse to subjective ones. We look to our preferences and feelings to discern between good and evil. Everything that hurts us, that is unpleasant, is taken to be evil and, contrarily, everything that helps us, that is pleasant, is taken to be good.

This brings us to another reason for the popularity of ethical relativism, besides the fact that ethics can be difficult, is that values like good and evil, right and wrong, aren’t empirical. We can’t directly see or measure values. That makes it hard to be quantified, which means it makes it hard for science to study them. The cultural authority the Christianity has lost has in many ways been claimed by science. This is the true core of our disagreements.

We can use moral intuitions to undermine science’s sway. Just because science can’t label it and explain a phenomenon doesn’t imply it doesn’t exist. Unexpectedly, the very fact that there is real, genuine evil in the world that isn’t a matter of personal opinion, a fact that remains evil even if the people perpetrating it invincibly believe it is good, this fact is a problem for a naturalistic worldview that science assumes. It is a fact that we are appalled by ethical evils, but how else could that fact be adequately explained without recourse to theism? What is the physical status of that evil, how can it be measured and quantified? If it’s more than just a feeling of displeasure, more than a preference, more than a delusion, or an accident, if it is the truth, which seems to be what people are saying when they’re appalled by brutality, where is it to be found outside the brains of the affronted and indignant? How could it be anything more or even other than a natural outcome of natural processes?

The conclusion to draw from this is that naturalism is normatively challenged, by which I mean, cannot adequately obligate its adherents to do good or avoid evil regardless of their peculiar subjective, personal states. If the right thing to do is costly or if the wrong thing could be easily done secretly, naturalistic accounts don’t have sufficient obligating power to require us to be ethical. As I mentioned at the outset, some would selfishly prefer this to be the case and to take advantage of this leeway. Those of us who long for justice to be done can’t abide by that outcome. Either justice is real and will be done or it’s optional and it won’t.

This is another component of the moral argument for the existence of God in that it’s exemplary of people’s intuitive knowledge of the moral law. The problem of evil exhibits that knowledge in that it assumes things on earth are not the way they ought to be. Whatever falls short of a standard presupposes a standard of goodness. The Christian has recourse to the supernatural. Our standard of goodness is derived from God's. (Matt 5:48) What does the naturalist have?

(return to Apologetics page)