Chapter I: The Attributes Of God (6)

Salter, First Steps in Philosophy, 150—“It is right to aim at
happiness. Happiness is an end. Utilitarianism errs in making
happiness the only and the highest end. It exalts a state of
feeling into the supremely desirable thing. Intuitionalism gives
the same place to a state of will. The truth includes both. The
true end is the highest development of being, self and others, the
realization of the divine idea, God in man.” Bowne, Principles of
Ethics, 96—“The standard of appeal is not the actual happiness of
the actual man but the normal happiness of the normal man....
Happiness must have a law. But then also the law must lead to
happiness.... The true ethical aim is to realize the good. But
then the contents of this good have to be determined in accordance
with an inborn ideal of human worth and dignity.... Not all good,
but the true good, not the things which please, but the things
which should please, are to be the aim of action.”

Bixby, Crisis of Morals, 223—“The Utilitarian is really asking
about the wisest method of embodying the ideal. He belongs to that
second stage in which the moral artist considers through what
material and in what form and color he may best realize his
thought. What the ideal is, and why it is the highest, he does not
tell us. Morality begins, not in feeling, but in reason. And
reason is impersonal. It discerns the moral equality of
personalities.” Genung, Epic of the Inner Life, 20—Job speaks out
his character like one of Robert Browning’s heroes. He teaches
that “there is a service of God which is not work for reward: it
is a heart-loyalty, a hunger after God’s presence, which survives
loss and chastisement; which in spite of contradictory seeming
cleaves to what is godlike as the needle seeks the pole; and which
reaches up out of the darkness and hardness of this life into the
light and love beyond.”

_Greatest good of being_: Not only Edwards, but Priestley,
Bentham, Dwight, Finney, Hopkins, Fairchild, hold this view. See
Edwards, Works, 2:261-304—“Virtue is benevolence toward being in
general”; Dwight, Theology, 3:150-162—“Utility the foundation of
Virtue”; Hopkins, Law of Love, 7-28; Fairchild, Moral Philosophy;
Finney, Syst. Theol., 42-135. This theory regards good as a mere
state of the sensibility, instead of consisting in purity of
being. It forgets that in eternity past “love for being in
general” = simply God’s self-love, or God’s regard for his own
happiness. This implies that God is holy only for a purpose; he is
bound to be unholy, if greater good would result; that is,
holiness has no independent existence in his nature. We grant that
a thing is often known to be right by the fact that it is useful;
but this is very different from saying that its usefulness makes
it right. “Utility is only the setting of the diamond, which
_marks_, but does not _make_, its value.” “If utility be a
criterion of rectitude, it is only because it is a revelation of
the divine nature.” See British Quarterly, July, 1877, on Matthew
Arnold and Bishop Butler. Bp. Butler, Nature of Virtue, in Works,
Bohn’s ed., 334—“Benevolence is the true self-love.” Love and
holiness are obligatory in themselves, and not because they
promote the general good. Cicero well said that they who
confounded the _honestum_ with the _utile_ deserved to be banished
from society. See criticism on Porter’s Moral Science, in Lutheran
Quarterly, Apr. 1885:325-331; also F. L. Patton, on Metaphysics of
Oughtness, in Presb. Rev., 1886:127-150.

Encyc. Britannica, 7:690, on Jonathan Edwards—“Being in general,
being without any qualities, is too abstract a thing to be the
primary cause of love. The feeling which Edwards refers to is not
love, but awe or reverence, and moreover necessarily a blind awe.
Properly stated therefore, true virtue, according to Edwards,
would consist in a blind awe of being in general,—only this would
be inconsistent with his definition of virtue as existing in God.
In reality, as he makes virtue merely the second object of love,
his theory becomes identical with that utilitarian theory with
which the names of Hume, Bentham and Mill are associated.” Hodge,
Essays, 275—“If obligation is due primarily to being in general,
then there is no more virtue in loving God—willing his good—than
there is in loving Satan. But love to Christ differs in its nature
from benevolence toward the devil.” Plainly virtue consists, not
in love for mere being, but in love for good being, or in other
words, in love for the holy God. Not the greatest good of being,
but the holiness of God, is the ground of moral obligation.

Dr. E. A. Park interprets the Edwardian theory as holding that
virtue is love to all beings according to their value, love of the
greater therefore more than the less, “love to particular beings
in a proportion compounded of the degree of being and the degree
of virtue or benevolence to being which they have.” Love is
choice. Happiness, says Park, is not the sole good, much less the
happiness of creatures. The _greatest_ good is holiness, though
the _last_ good aimed at is happiness. Holiness is disinterested
love—free choice of the general above the private good. But we
reply that this gives us no reason or standard for virtue. It does
not tell us what is good nor why we should choose it. Martineau,
Types, 2:70, 77, 471, 484—“Why should I promote the general
well-being? Why should I sacrifice myself for others? Only because
this is godlike. It Would never have been prudent to do right, had
it not been something infinitely more.... It is not fitness that
makes an act moral, but it is its morality that makes it fit.”

Herbert Spencer must be classed as a utilitarian. He says that
justice requires that “every man be free to do as he wills
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of every other man.”
But, since this would permit injury to another by one willing to
submit to injury in return, Mr. Spencer limits the freedom to
“such actions as subserve life.” This is practically equivalent to
saying that the greatest sum of happiness is the ultimate end. On
Jonathan Edwards, see Robert Hall, Works, 1:43 sq.; Alexander,
Moral Science, 194-198; Bib. Repertory (Princeton Review), 25:22;
Bib. Sacra, 9:176, 197; 10:403, 705.

(_c_) Nor in the nature of things (Price),—whether by this we mean their fitness (Clarke), truth (Wollaston), order (Jouffroy), relations (Wayland), worthiness (Hickok), sympathy (Adam Smith), or abstract right (Haven and Alexander); for this nature of things is not ultimate, but has its ground in the nature of God. We are bound to worship the highest; if anything exists beyond and above God, we are bound to worship that,—that indeed is God.

See Wayland, Moral Science, 33-48; Hickok, Moral Science, 27-34;
Haven, Moral Philosophy, 27-50; Alexander, Moral Science, 159-198.
In opposition to all the forms of this theory, we urge that
nothing exists independently of or above God. “If the ground of
morals exist independently of God, either it has ultimately no
authority, or it usurps the throne of the Almighty. Any rational
being who kept the law would be perfect without God, and the moral
centre of all intelligences would be outside of God” (Talbot). God
is not a Jupiter controlled by Fate. He is subject to no law but
the law of his own nature. _Noblesse oblige_,—character
rules,—purity is the highest. And therefore to holiness all
creatures, voluntarily or involuntarily, are constrained to bow.
Hopkins, Law of Love, 77—“Right and wrong have nothing to do with
things, but only with actions; nothing to do with any nature of
things existing necessarily, but only with the nature of persons.”
Another has said: “The idea of right cannot be original, since
right means conformity to some standard or rule.” This standard or
rule is not an abstraction, but an existing being—the infinitely
perfect God.

Faber: “For right is right, since God is God; And right the day
must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin.”
Tennyson: “And because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom
in the scorn of consequence.” Right is right, and I should will
the right, not because God _wills_ it, but because God _is_ it. E.
G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of Morality, 178-180—“Utility
and relations simply reveal the constitution of things and so
represent God. Moral law was not made for purposes of utility, nor
do relations constitute the reason for obligation. They only show
what the nature of God is who made the universe and revealed
himself in it. In his nature is found the _reason_ for morality.”
S. S. Times, Oct. 17, 1891—“Only that is level which conforms to
the curvature of the earth’s surface. A straight line tangent to
the earth’s curve would at its ends be much further from the
earth’s centre than at its middle. Now equity means levelness. The
standard of equity is not an impersonal thing, a ’nature of
things’ outside of God. Equity or righteousness is no more to be
conceived independently of the divine centre of the moral world
than is levelness comprehensible apart from the earth’s centre.”

Since God finds the rule and limitation of his action solely in
his own being, and his love is conditioned by his holiness, we
must differ from such views as that of Moxom: “Whether we define
God’s nature as perfect holiness or perfect love is immaterial,
since his nature is manifested only through his action, that is,
through his relation to other beings. Most of our reasoning on the
divine standard of righteousness, or the ultimate ground of moral
obligation, is reasoning in a circle, since we must always go back
to God for the principle of his action; which principle we can
know only by means of his action. God, the perfectly righteous
Being, is the ideal standard of human righteousness. Righteousness
in man therefore is conformity to the nature of God. God, in
agreement with his perfect nature, always wills the perfectly good
toward man. His righteousness is an expression of his love; his
love is a manifestation of his righteousness.”

So Newman Smyth: “Righteousness is the eternal genuineness of the
divine love. It is not therefore an independent excellence, to be
contrasted with, or even put in opposition to, benevolence; it is
an essential part of love.” In reply to which we urge as before
that that which is the object of love, that which limits and
conditions love, that which furnishes the norm and reason for
love, cannot itself be love, nor hold merely equal rank with love.
A double standard is as irrational in ethics as in commerce, and
it leads in ethics to the same debasement of the higher values,
and the same unsettling of relations, as has resulted in our
currency from the attempt to make silver regulate gold at the same
time that gold regulates silver.

B. The Scriptural View.—According to the Scriptures, the ground of moral obligation is the holiness of God, or the moral perfection of the divine nature, conformity to which is the law of our moral being (Robinson, Chalmers, Calderwood, Gregory, Wuttke). We show this:

(_a_) From the commands: “Ye shall be holy,” where the ground of obligation assigned is simply and only: “for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16); and “Ye therefore shall be perfect,” where the standard laid down is: “as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mat. 5:48). Here we have an ultimate reason and ground for being and doing right, namely, that God is right, or, in other words, that holiness is his nature.

(_b_) From the nature of the love in which the whole law is summed up (Mat. 22:37—“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God”; Rom. 13:10—“love therefore is the fulfilment of the law”). This love is not regard for abstract right or for the happiness of being, much less for one’s own interest, but it is regard for God as the fountain and standard of moral excellence, or in other words, love for God as holy. Hence this love is the principle and source of holiness in man.

(_c_) From the example of Christ, whose life was essentially an exhibition of supreme regard for God, and of supreme devotion to his holy will. As Christ saw nothing good but what was in God (Mark 10:18—“none is good save one, even God”), and did only what he saw the Father do (John 5:19; see also 30—“I seek not mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”), so for us, to be like God is the sum of all duty, and God’s infinite moral excellence is the supreme reason why we should be like him.

For statements of the correct view of the ground of moral
obligation, see E. G. Robinson, Principles and Practice of
Morality, 138-180; Chalmers, Moral Philosophy, 412-420;
Calderwood, Moral Philosophy; Gregory, Christian Ethics, 112-122;
Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:80-107; Talbot, Ethical Prolegomena,
in Bap. Quar., July, 1877:257-274—“The ground of all moral law is
the nature of God, or the ethical nature of God in relation to the
like nature in man, or the imperativeness of the divine nature.”
Plato: “The divine will is the fountain of all efficiency; the
divine reason is the fountain, of all law; the divine nature is
the fountain of all virtue.” If it be said that God is love as
well as holiness, we ask: Love to what? And the only answer is:
Love to the right, or to holiness. To ask why right is a good, is
no more sensible than to ask why happiness is a good. There must
be something ultimate. Schiller said there are people who want to
know why ten is not twelve. We cannot study character apart from
conduct, nor conduct apart from character. But this does not
prevent us from recognizing that character is the fundamental
thing and that conduct is only the expression of it.

The moral perfection of the divine nature includes truth and love,
but since it is holiness that conditions the exercise of every
other attribute, we must conclude that holiness is the ground of
moral obligation. Infinity also unites with holiness to make it
the perfect ground, but since the determining element is holiness,
we call this, and not infinity, the ground of obligation. J. H.
Harris, Baccalaureate Sermon, Bucknell University, 1890—“As
holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, so holiness is the
supreme good of man. Aristotle perceived this when he declared the
chief good of man to be energizing according to virtue.
Christianity supplies the Holy Spirit and makes this energizing
possible.” Holiness is the goal of man’s spiritual career; see _1
Thess. 3:13—_“to the end he may establish your hearts unblamable
in holiness before our God and Father.”

Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his Friends,
272—“Holiness and happiness are two notions of one thing....
Unless therefore the heart of a created being is at one with the
heart of God, it cannot but be miserable.” It is more true to say
that holiness and happiness are, as cause and effect, inseparably
bound together. Martineau, Types, 1:xvi; 2:70-77—“Two classes of
facts it is indispensable for us to know: what are the springs of
voluntary conduct, and what are its effects”; Study, 1:26—“Ethics
must either perfect themselves in Religion, or disintegrate
themselves into Hedonism.” William Law remarks: “Ethics are not
external but internal. The essence of a moral act does not lie in
its result, but in the motive from which it springs. And that
again is good or bad, according as it conforms to the character of
God.” For further discussion of the subject see our chapter on The
Law of God. See also Thornwell, Theology, 1:363-373; Hinton, Art
of Thinking, 47-62; Goldwin Smith, in Contemporary Review, March,
1882, and Jan. 1884; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 195-231,
esp. 223.