The Bible and Moral Principles

I have spoken to more than one friend recently who have employed some argument against using the Bible to derive objective moral values. These are my thoughts that emerged from one of those discussions, particularly about the gay marriage issue.

First, I think it is important to point out that there are objective moral values. "Objective" in this context means that something is right or wrong regardless of whether a person accepts it or not. I take it to be true, for example that torturing children for sport is objectively wrong, and that loving your neighbor as yourself is objectively right. The rightness or wrongness of these principles is not dependent on any person's perspective. Of course, how the principles are applied or expressed is necessarily context specific. So, love for neighbor will look very different in Ankara and in Llanelli, but people in both locations have a moral obligation to love their neighbors. Ultimately any attempt to deny that there are objective principles is self defeating. If I say "there are no objective principles," haven't I just appealed to a principle that I consider to be objectively true?

How the Bible relates to our understanding these principles is a question of hermeneutics. Of course, the Bible is not an instruction manual or a list of abstract principles. The Bible needs to be interpreted. That has always been the case (see Nehemiah 8:8). But the Bible does speak with a single voice on a great many topics. And the authors themselves assume that to be the case. The New Testament authors quote each other and refer to the authority of the others. Do they believe that they are referring their readers to content which will undermine what they are writing? That doesn't mean that we read the Bible as a list of commandments or principles. It may be that the genres of scripture are the best medium for communicating timeless truths and that we are intended to wrestle with what the content reveals about God and the world.

Jesus had no problem appealing to the Old Testament to express what he clearly understands to be objective moral principles; and he issues them as commandments. For example, Jesus commands, "Love your neighbor as yourself." Is this not an objective principle that Jesus explicitly tells us is both derived from scripture and is the framework on which "all of the law and the prophets hang?" In addition to deriving objective principles from scripture, it sounds to me like Jesus is describing a discernible single voice in the Bible. And he also assumes that his followers will be able to derive these kinds of principles from his teaching: he instructs us to make disciples, "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." Was he asking us to do the impossible?

So, it is reasonable to attempt to discern these principles from scripture. I think that a Christian view of revelation at least claims that the Bible is a reliable expression of objective truth and that scripture is our source for deriving those principles- even if we don't take it to be a simplistic list of instructions.

To take another example, are we wrong to read the Bible as teaching that Jesus is Lord? The apostles and Jesus himself all appeal to the Old Testament as teaching this truth. If we aren't justified in reading scripture this way, then what should be our source for discovering this truth? Or is it not objectively true that Jesus is Lord?

And if we are justified in concluding from scripture that Jesus is Lord and that I must love my neighbor, then should I not also look to the Bible to discern objective moral values in other areas, especially since Jesus himself spoke specifically about so many topics, including sexual morality?

And if I shouldn't look to the Bible for those principles, then is there any sense in which the Bible is a privileged source of truth for Christians, or is it just another book of sayings and stories in a world full of equally valuable, though contradictory, books of sayings and stories?

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