Moral Apologetics and Living Sacramentally

By David Baggett

Although I have stepped down from The Worldview Bulletin, it remains close to my heart and I continue to wish my friends and colleagues associated with it all and only the best. This morning in church some ideas came to me in a fresh way, and with the WB’s permission, I thought I’d pass them along. It pertains to apologetics, but this time in a way that focuses on the benefits that can accrue for the believer, not just the unbeliever.

In my spiritual pilgrimage over the last few years, I’ve largely left the culture warrior aspects of my faith behind. I know some continue to wear that mantle proudly, and power to them if that’s what they feel called to do. But my predilections of late have been moving in different directions. One of those directions is to take with greater seriousness the sacramental life, and to do so as a Protestant. There’s much to say here, but the way I plan to delimit this short conversation to something manageable and practicable is to point out some resonances between moral apologetics, which has been my main area of focus for decades, and the sacramental life.

The moral argument for God, as I like to lay it out, involves five components: issues of the good, issues of the right, moral knowledge, and the two dimensions of Kantian moral faith. Allow me to say a few words about each component and how each one has rich insights about and resources for spiritual growth and maturation.

The Good

I think that we as Christians have excellent reason to think not just that God is good, but that he is the Good itself. The highest archetype or exemplar of the Good. This makes Good personal to the core. So to contemplate the Good is an exercise in contemplating God; the Bible is replete with encouragements for us to do this very thing.

A specific value I also enjoy discussing when giving the moral argument is the infinite value of human persons, creatures made in God’s image whose value is derived from that ontological connection. To see the sacredness of others because they have been made in God’s image strikes me as an exercise in sacramentalism. Recall Lewis’s lines about how we’ve never met an ordinary human. Austin Farrer wrote about seeing God in our neighbor and our neighbor in God. The Bible says that when we do something for the least of those among us, we’ve done it for Christ. Cultivating the eyes with which to see the sacredness and infinite value of our neighbor is part and parcel of learning to love our neighbors as ourselves, adjacent to the most important command of all.

The Right

Issues of moral rightness have more to do with the deontic matter of moral obligations than with the axiological matter of goodness, although of course the good and the right are organically tied together. But as Christians we have to take our moral duties seriously. This is not to suggest that doing our duty only has value if we do our duty for duty’s sake; I think Kant was quite wrong to suggest as much. No, as we get closer to God, discharging our duties should increasingly be seen as a joy and privilege. Duties are but the anteroom in the great cathedral or castle of morality; its upper reaches go well beyond our duties; as George Mavrodes once suggested, eventually talk of rights and duties will be left far behind, replaced with talk of gift and sacrifice.