A Second Look at Lying and the Ethics of the New Christian Right

James Clark

A Response to Trueman, Crenshaw, and Cline

Not long ago, Ben Crenshaw suggested in an article that deception is sometimes commendable. The claim was incidental to the larger point of the article in question, but Carl Trueman took issue with it in an article of his own. Trueman’s article, in turn, prompted two responses, the first from Timon Cline and the second from Crenshaw himself.

The exchange was, at one level, about the ethics of lying in particular. More broadly, what was under discussion were the very principles of Christian ethics—specifically, what makes an action moral or immoral. Notwithstanding the objections of Trueman and others, Cline and Crenshaw are correct to say that deception is sometimes commendable. At the same time, some of the arguments they make in support of this claim—regarding the nature of moral and immoral actions—are infelicitous. On this occasion, the correct ethical conclusion was reached in spite of questionable premises, but the outcome may not always be so salutary, as faulty metaethical foundations are liable to result in disaster both temporal and spiritual. Simply put, souls are at stake when the question at hand is so basic as what makes an action immoral and how such actions can be avoided in difficult cases. Hence, the argument presented here is twofold: first, that some actions are intrinsically immoral, regardless of intent or circumstances; second, it is nonetheless the case that deception is not always sinful, for while lying is inherently sinful, not every deception constitutes a lie. Before commencing the argument proper, a synopsis of the debate between Trueman, Cline, and Crenshaw follows.

A Brief Summary of the Exchange

The incident was kickstarted by a few lines in the closing paragraph of Crenshaw’s original piece:

What Trueman fails to grasp is that in a negative world setting, the tangible human goods for which political Christians are striving take priority over the procedural means necessary to achieve those goods (unlike in the positive world of a gentleman’s politics in which shared political ends but disagreement over means elevates procedure and decorum as the lynchpin for resolving differences). Rahab understood what Trueman doesn’t, and she was commended for her faith (Hebrews 11:31)—not for some kind of wily pragmatism or will to survive. Politically active American Christians who defy the enemies of God and wage war against evil, and who necessarily employ crude memes, subterfuge, and even deception toward these ends, will likewise be commended for their faith.[1]

In reply, Trueman charged Crenshaw with “ignoring basic New Testament teaching on Christian behavior” and criticized his “lack of serious engagement with the Bible…. True, he does point to Rahab and gestures toward the New Testament by citing Hebrews 11:31. But to make her behavior normative for Christians today in our current circumstances is not a straightforward move.” Trueman granted, in principle, that there could be “situations where Christians may be called on to act similarly [to Rahab], but it is quite simply no easy task to reach such a judgment [italics original].” On the whole, though, Trueman emphasized the “many obvious New Testament concepts and passages that present themselves as unequivocally normative for Christian believers and that are far less tricky to interpret than Rahab and Hebrews 11,” suggesting that the case of Rahab is not broadly applicable for Christians today:

Crudity, duplicity and even dishonesty [are] all justified because Crenshaw has decided that America in 2024 is analogous to Jericho in redemptive history and worse than first-century Rome. That paragraph needs to be marked, pondered, and remembered. It is a transvaluation of Christian values if ever there was one.[2]

Although Trueman alluded to many New Testament passages as ostensibly supporting his position, the only verses he quoted were 1 Peter 2:1, 11–12, and 15:

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander…. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation…. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

When Cline interjected not long after, he began by establishing some basic premises:

Lying is a sin. It is to speak with a “double heart,” saying what you know to be false or intending truth for falsehood. This does not include mistaken declarations if they are earnest but does include negligence. The ninth commandment in particular calls out false testimony, i.e., “a mind or intention to deceive or hurt,” the epitome of lying. And no man should ever sin willfully.

Nevertheless, he noted that “further distinctions can be made.” “A parable or fairy tale,” for example, “is not a lie. Neither is concealment a lie.” In short, there are cases where deception is not a lie, i.e., not sinful.

That said, he indicated that while it is possible to deceive without being guilty of lying, Rahab and the Hebrew midwives did in fact sin with their deceptions:

What of the Hebrew midwives and Rahab? We must distinguish between their work and their execution, says [William] Perkins. Saving children and the allied spies was “a fruit of faith and the feare of God, and it is commended: but the manner of putting these works in execution by lying, is not approved.” And yet, “the faith and the feare of God are imperfect in this life, and therefore they are joined with many frailties: and actions of faith are mixed with sundry defects and sinnes.”

The lesson here is that “we must be shrewd, prudent, and even, at times, deceitful, concealing the truth and feigning myths but without losing our souls. This is not the same as justifying any reprehensible action by favorable results. But this casuistry does take circumstances and aims seriously [italics original].” Cline went on to quote William Ames to the effect that “the goodness of an action depends first and foremost on the will, which is often accepted with God, though outward work itself be absent.” Indeed, Cline continued, “In all cases, a truly good action is one ‘referred to God as the chief end.’ True goodness requires, ideally, integrity of all causes, and yet, ‘in time of danger’ we may look not ‘so much upon the means which God uses,’ since God can use any means for good. Sin, for Ames, is at bottom a resistance to God and conscience.”

In other words, “Sometimes, being aware of the times in which we live, we must use crude means out of necessity with prudence according to good ends. Necessity may, for example, force men to break the Sabbath to survive, for the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, etc.” This is justified because “formal–we might say constitutional–strictures can be violated for the sake of attending to a higher end, viz., the protection of the nation itself.”

To summarize, “Morally, the ends govern and the intent behind the means exonerates them, per Perkins, which is not to insinuate a blank check offering. For if a man speaks the truth but intends to lie, he is nevertheless a liar.” In closing, Cline reiterated that “‘[the] nature of sin lies not in the action but in the manner of doing the action,’ as Perkins said, following Augustine.” He also quoted Thomas Wood, himself quoting Jeremy Taylor, to the effect that “the lie is the less evil, and therefore it is no sin when it is chosen to avoid that which for aught we know is the greater.”[3] Finally, he reminded readers that “Crenshaw did not advocate for ‘lying,’ but ‘deception.’”[4]

Crenshaw himself soon addressed Trueman, claiming that “a balanced response would have…recognized that universal Christian moral norms and exceptions to those norms both have a place.” This point was made multiple times by Crenshaw, noting as he did that Trueman “assumes what he hasn’t proven: that biblical injunctions preclude exceptions,” and stating that in his original piece, “I assumed the truth of explicit commands from Scripture that Christians must follow (Ten Commandments, New Testament virtue/vice lists, the fruits of the Spirits, other imperative exhortations) and I assumed that despite this moral baseline, both Scripture and Christian history give examples of exceptions when circumstances or greater goods require unorthodox ethical judgments.”

Like Cline, Crenshaw held that “necessary circumstances” may induce Christians to “resort to subterfuge and deception. Granted, negative world conditions means that those necessary circumstances may be far more frequent, but they are exceptional and necessary nonetheless.” Yet Crenshaw also pointed out that “I never countenanced crudity simpliciter, vulgarity, or outright lying…. While all lies are deception, not every deception is a lie.” He then maintained that his affirmation of Christians using deception fits within a larger framework of Christian thought, which he said includes the idea that “our moral conduct, while guided by God’s commands, must ultimately be fitting to the good ends for which we strive.” Aware that this last claim was likely to provoke criticism, he went on to say the following:

This is not a utilitarian or consequentialist ethic; nor can it be reduced to the maxim that “the ends justify the means,” often wielded as a slur to silence debate. A better way to articulate it is that the means must be appropriate and proportional to accomplish the ends. If our ethical imperatives are so categorically and moralistically rigid that they prevent us from doing the good that God commands of us, then a re-evaluation of our ethical theory is in order. Christian moral action that achieves the ends to which God directs us is what is truly honorable, not sincerely and dutifully following a compendium of biblical ethical injunctions.[5]

The preceding paragraphs more or less encapsulate the key claims and ideas discussed throughout this exchange. The next section will be concerned with assessing these claims.

The Nature of Moral and Immoral Action

It should be noted from the outset that Trueman’s response to Crenshaw’s original article is short on concrete substance. As mentioned previously, Trueman alludes to multiple New Testament passages, implying that they support his argument, but the only Scripture he actually quotes is a few verses from 1 Peter 2, as if the exhortation to “put away…all deceit” settles the matter when it is not clear from this verse alone what constitutes “deceit.” Ultimately, Trueman concedes that “Christians may be called on to act similarly [italics original]” to Rahab, but he cloaks this concession in woolly, hesitative language expressing concern that such a conclusion is not “straightforward” or “easy” to reach. Whether or not the conclusion is “straightforward” says nothing about the legitimacy of that conclusion.

Cline and Crenshaw, for their part, are right to say that deception can be commendable. However, they seem to be of two minds regarding the arguments they make in support of this. On the one hand, they state (correctly) that some kinds of deception are not sinful, with Cline giving examples. On the other hand, the bulk of their responses appears implicitly to grant their opponents’ premise that deception of any kind is sinful, which leads Cline and Crenshaw to spend a considerable amount of time explaining why it is nonetheless sometimes permissible for Christians to deceive. As we have seen, three discrete, mutually exclusive claims are made in support of this contention:

1. It is better to commit the lesser evil of deception than to allow a greater evil to pass.

2. The lower obligation of telling the truth can be superseded by a higher obligation (e.g., “the protection of the nation”). Put differently, moral absolutes have exceptions.

3. If the end (i.e., the intention) of the deception is good, then it renders the act of deception (which is bad in itself) good also.

Unfortunately, all three of these rationales are dubious. Beginning with #1, the belief that there are situations in which Christians have no choice but to commit sin by violating at least one moral obligation—often known as “conflicting absolutism”—initially appears to be merely a claim about ethics but has horrendous implications for the classical doctrine of God. This is so because God, in His divine simplicity, is not merely good, He is Goodness itself—His moral laws flow from His nature, such that any conflict between these goods would reflect conflict in the Godhead:

Given the essential nature of goodness as depicted by Aquinas on philosophical-theological grounds, one would have to presume the ultimate unity of the goal toward which the manifold way leads. Similarly, one would need to postulate the ultimate unity of the basic human values inasmuch as they represent modes of participation in the one, utterly simple good. What this means is that in cases of conflict among these values one would need to presume in principle the possibility of an ordering that served to resolve the conflict. To exclude this possibility is to imply that the good is fundamentally fragmented, an implication that on Aquinas’s terms would suggest further the fragmentation of God’s very nature.[6]

Furthermore, to say we live in a world that sometimes compels us to do evil makes God into a devil:

In a case of supposed moral conflict, each of the conflicting rules is obliging moral evil as well as moral good…. It seems such is the case in every alleged instance of moral conflict. Command A obliges an action that is evil according to command B, and command B obliges an action that is evil in reference to command A. To put it bluntly, in situations of moral conflict, God is obliging one to commit moral evil. It will do no good to evade the issue by running to the condition that enabled or caused the conflict (viz., the fallen state of the world and the sinful choices of men). Nor will it do to run to the fact that each of the commands also commands moral good. Nor will it do to protest that God has made a way to resolve it all by telling us to minimize evil. The fact remains: if there is a true moral conflict, such that one command obliges action that another command prohibits, then God requires moral evil. And any God who requires moral evil is himself a devil and not the God of evangelical and biblical faith.[7]

Undoubtedly, sometimes it can be difficult to determine the right course of action, and the belief that irresolvable conflicts are occasionally inevitable is not without precedent in the Christian tradition.[8] Even so, the account of the moral life as one of tragic necessity is an inversion of the Christian vision rightly understood: “The idea of tragedy is finally inimical to the Christian construction of reality, a construction whose ‘narrative,’ among other things, counterbalances the tragic subplot of Jesus’ crucifixion with the comic denouement of his resurrection.”[9] The Christian story is ultimately one of freedom, not bondage:

There is no tragedy in the Bible. This is not to say that there is no innocent suffering. For instance, Abel and Jephthah’s daughter are both innocent victims of an untimely death. But the stories of their death, as told in the Bible, are not allowed to raise any theological problem. The evil is caused by man, and the moral is that we can and should choose to avoid the sins of Cain and Jephthah. Human freedom is real and effective. It can cause evil, to ourselves and others. Equally it can realize good. The choice is ours.[10]

The Christian moral life, then, is characterized not by tragic necessity, but by comic liberty—in light of Christ’s redemptive life, death, and resurrection, we know that God has guaranteed a good ending to all those who love Him. The moral quandaries we face in the meantime may be perplexing, but we are forever free to live out the good to which Christ calls us in our choices, without compromise.[11]

Regarding #2, the idea that there is a hierarchy of moral obligations in which lower ones can be superseded by higher ones is known as graded absolutism. The appeal of this ethical theory is that it allows one to resolve apparent moral dilemmas without being guilty of sin. However, the notion of moral absolutes for which there are exceptions is nonsense, a contradiction in terms:

There simply is no such thing as a non-binding, yet applicable moral rule. Obligation is part of the denotative meaning of a rule or law. A rule is a statement of obligation. Remove the obligation and you are left with a string of words or at most a descriptive sentence, but not a moral rule.[12]

It may be objected that identifying exceptions to moral absolutes in difficult cases is a standard discipline within Christian moral theology known as casuistry (one that Cline appeals to throughout his response). In truth, the search for exceptions to moral rules—or as one churchman has called it, a “series of rules for the evasion of rules”[13]—is better described as the corruption of casuistry.[14] Properly understood, casuistry is “no more than the attempt to extend the principles of morality to unforeseen cases and new problems.”[15] This is a “necessary and laudable”[16] endeavor, but to carve out exceptions for moral absolutes is effectively to nullify them:

Where is our list of exceptions to stop? If we have once begun to make exceptions, why should we hesitate to add one or two more to the catalogue? Yet this is one method by which the law is ‘adapted’ to fit hard cases. In addition to being dangerous it is morally illegitimate, because—if the hard cases genuinely deserve exception—the law should so have been stated as never to include them. The only proper procedure is to labour towards the understanding of the law until we are able to state it in a form which will exclude whatever merits exclusion, without employing the device of official exception. Anything else is not an ‘adaptation,’ but only an emasculation of the law.[17]

On the suggestion that laws should be understood and formulated so that they exclude hard cases altogether, more will be said later. For now, it suffices to say that there is no limit on how many exceptions can be devised if the idea of “moral absolutes with exceptions” is admitted in principle, thereby rendering the force of moral absolutes null and void in practice.

As for #3, there is no question that intention plays a role in determining the morality of one’s actions. Given that Cline and Crenshaw affirm this, they cannot rightly be called consequentialists, as some have accused them of being,[18] for the simple reason that in consequentialist systems intention has no moral significance at all—the outcome is all that matters.[19] However, while the end or intention of an act does determine in part the morality of the act, it is not the case that a good intention can turn an otherwise immoral act into a good one. Indeed, the very nature of intrinsically immoral acts is that they are unalterably wicked—such acts are normally called sins, and sin is traditionally defined with reference to God’s laws, as in the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Q. 24. What is sin?

A: Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the reasonable creature.[20]

Sin is more than the violation of God’s laws, but it is certainly not less—“resistance to God,” which is how Cline, citing Ames, in part defines sin, cannot but include violating God’s laws, if words are to mean anything at all. If then, it is correct to say that sin is defined in part by the violation of God’s laws (let us say His moral laws specifically, for the purposes of this discussion), and if God’s moral laws forbid certain actions, then it follows that these actions are sinful by their very nature. This logic can be summarized in the following syllogism:

Major premise: All violations of God’s moral laws are sins.

Minor premise: Certain actions are violations of God’s moral laws.

Conclusion: Certain actions are sins.

It is therefore erroneous to say, as Perkins does, that “the nature of sin lies not in the action but in the manner of doing the action,” or (in the words of Ames) that “the goodness of an action depends first and foremost on the will,” if by these statements we are to infer that there is no such thing as an intrinsically immoral action.[21] As seen above, the Westminster Larger Catechism affirms the reality of such actions, in keeping with the larger Christian tradition going back at least to Augustine, who, in strenuously maintaining that there is not “any sort of lie that is not sin,”[22] classifies lying as one of these intrinsically immoral actions. This belief in the reality of intrinsically immoral actions has remained a basic principle of Christian ethics up to the present, and it is “the majority view within the Reformed tradition.”[23]

Part of what it means to say that certain actions are sinful by their very nature is that they retain this nature regardless of intention or circumstances. Again, from the Westminster Larger Catechism:

Q. 99. What rules are to be observed for the right understanding of the ten commandments?

A. For the right understanding of the ten commandments, these rules are to be observed:

…

5. That what God forbids, is at no time to be done.[24]

If certain actions are “at no time to be done,” this implies that not even good intentions and mitigating circumstances can make “what God forbids” permissible, which principle is also in accord with the broader Christian tradition.[25] The moral nature of an action is thus collectively determined by three elements: “(1) the object, which is the directly intended action itself; (2) the end, or overall purpose (or combination of purposes); and (3) the circumstances, referring to the time, place, manner and other relevant aspects. It only takes one of these elements to be defective to render the action bad or evil, while all three must be in proper order for the action to be considered good.”[26]

But of what value are all these abstract principles, it could be asked, in the face of concrete hard cases? If conscience dictates that a lower moral norm be violated for the sake of upholding a higher one, who are we to gainsay conscience? For according to Ames (cited by Cline), the essence of sin is resistance to conscience as well as God. To be sure, it has commonly been held in the Christian tradition that to violate one’s conscience is a sin. However, one’s conscience can be malformed and make incorrect judgments about what is right in a given situation, such that following its guidance would “also be a sin.”[27] When this occurs, the appropriate course of action, according to Aquinas, is not for people to follow their conscience into sin, but to “set aside their mistaken consciences and replace them with well-formed ones.”[28] A sure sign that one’s conscience has gone astray is when it “mandates the performance of an act that is contrary to the natural law or an explicit command of God.”[29] In fact, on Aquinas’s account, “Conscience does not oblige by virtue of its own power, but by virtue of divine precept; for conscience does not dictate that something is to be done for the reason that it seems to itself, but for this reason, because it is a commandment from God.”[30] If this is the case, to pit one’s conscience against God’s commands is nonsensical.

In sum, attempting to defend deception in some cases by appealing to the necessity of choosing the lesser evil, prioritizing a higher moral obligation, or emphasizing one’s good intentions is a dead end, out of step with the larger tradition of Christian ethics. Yet justifying some cases of deception by distinguishing them from lying rightly defined remains a viable approach, albeit one that is sadly underdeveloped in the articles by Cline and Crenshaw. Before taking up this task in Part 2, it is in order to say a few words about the necessity of conceiving and articulating moral laws with precision.

The Importance of Defining Laws Rightly

Earlier the possibility was raised that, rather than seeking to identify exceptions to moral laws in hard cases, we should instead take care to understand and formulate moral laws in such a way that hard cases are excluded by them entirely. This process is imperative because the alternative is for moral laws to be inadvertently gutted, our own overly rigid formulations pressing us to devise myriad exceptions just so we can bear them:

Not conscious hypocrisy, but moral rigorism—its very antithesis—is the real begetter of the worst excesses of casuistry. Not men of low passions, but men of high principles, first made its abuse a necessity. Where a man imposes upon himself, or a society imposes upon its members, principles of too sweeping, too academic a character, and does so moreover with the determination to enforce them on all occasions and at all costs—(as who would not, if they are principles of vital importance?)—a crisis will arise at which the principles involved must either be defied or evaded.[31]

Casuistry rightly practiced is thus meant to deepen our understanding of moral laws so that we can better articulate what they do and do not require of us, rather than identifying situations in which we can set aside the laws completely:

Each extension of a law must involve some modification of it, and each new example of its application must be allowed, though perhaps in no more than the slightest degree, to throw new light upon its essential character, and reveal such accretions of the unnecessary and accidental as still cling to it. Where this is realised, and the consequent adjustments and reformulations of the law are wisely made, casuistry is the friend and servant of morality. Where, on the contrary, the law, down to the last jot and tittle of its contemporary formula, is treated as immutable, casuistry becomes its enemy. It resorts to shifts and sophistries which, however generous in their original intentions, are bound to weaken the fibre of morality and bring the study of hard cases into disrepute.[32]

Hence, when we are confronted by apparent moral dilemmas that seem intractable unless we violate a moral absolute, we can be confident that a “misunderstanding of moral norms”[33] is taking place, and that a failure to articulate those norms correctly and precisely has occurred. This is a cornerstone of the approach to Christian ethics known as non-conflicting absolutism—if God’s moral laws are inviolable and never truly conflict with one another, then any apparent conflict must mean that we do not really understand what the relevant laws require of us in our situation. It is no accident, then, that non-conflicting absolutism is also sometimes known as “casuistical divinity”[34]:

Nonconflicting absolutism focuses on discerning the true spirit of the law in order to understand better and define the letter of the law and thus avoid a skewed or legalistic approach to morality. In so doing, nonconflicting absolutism attempts to avoid creating a moral duty to sin, like conflicting absolutism, or trivializing the concept of absolute, like graded absolutism.[35]

On this approach, “‘exceptions’ are no more than cases to which the rule, properly understood, does not apply.” [36] This is crucially distinct from both conflicting absolutism and graded absolutism, where in the former one must resolve to sin and cast oneself upon God’s grace, while in the latter a moral obligation is real but superseded. In the case of lying, there are situations in which deceptions are not lies at all and are therefore permissible. Part 2 will be devoted to elaborating this distinction between lying, which is inherently sinful, and deception, which is not.

Editor’s note: This article was also published at the North American Anglican.

Image: The Alchemist (1684), Jacob Toorenvliet (1640–1719).

  1. Ben R. Crenshaw, “Nietzscheans in Negative World,” American Reformer, 18 May 2024, https://americanreformer.org/2024/05/nietzscheans-in-negative-world/, italics original. ↑
  2. Carl R. Trueman, “Honorable Conduct in the ‘Negative World,’” Ad Fontes, 21 May 2024, https://adfontesjournal.com/web-exclusives/honorable-conduct-in-the-negative-world/. ↑
  3. Thomas Wood, English Casuistical Divinity During the Seventeenth Century (London: SPCK, 1952), 112. For the original source, see Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, vol. 2 (London: 1660), Bk. III, 88. ↑
  4. Timon Cline, “Good Deceit,” American Reformer, 1 June 2024, https://americanreformer.org/2024/06/good-deceit/. ↑
  5. Ben R. Crenshaw, “The Ends Justify the Memes,” American Reformer, 5 June 2024, https://americanreformer.org/2024/06/the-ends-justify-the-memes/, italics original. ↑
  6. Edmund N. Santurri, Perplexity in the Moral Life: Philosophical and Theological Considerations (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1987), 101. See also William F. Luck, “Moral Conflicts and Evangelical Ethics: A Second Look at the Salvaging Operations,” Grace Theological Journal 8, no. 1 (1987): 28, https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gtj/08-1_019.pdf; Robert V. Rakestraw, “Ethical Choices: A Case for Non-Conflicting Absolutism,” Criswell Theological Review 2 (Spring 1988): 255, http://www.preciousheart.net/love/Rakestraw-1988.pdf; David Clyde Jones, Biblical Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994), 132; and David W. Jones, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2013), 91–92. ↑
  7. Luck, “Moral Conflicts,” 27, https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gtj/08-1_019.pdf. See also Rakestraw, “Ethical Choices,” 245, http://www.preciousheart.net/love/Rakestraw-1988.pdf. ↑
  8. See, e.g., M. V. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). More recently, the reality of moral dilemmas has been defended by Kate Jackson-Meyer in Tragic Dilemmas in Christian Ethics (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press, 2022). ↑
  9. Santurri, Perplexity, 203–204, italics original. For a book-length argument against the conception of the moral life as one of tragic necessity, see Daniel McInerny, The Difficult Good: A Thomistic Approach to Moral Conflict and Human Happiness (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006). ↑
  10. D. D. Raphael, The Paradox of Tragedy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1960, repr. New York: Routledge, 2022), 44–45. ↑
  11. For more on conflicting absolutism, see John S. Feinberg and Paul D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), 29–30; Jones, Biblical Christian Ethics, 130; Norman L. Geisler, Christian Ethics: Contemporary Issues and Options, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), 83–96; and Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 88–92. ↑
  12. Luck, “Moral Conflicts,” 22, https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gtj/08-1_019.pdf. Compare Rakestraw, “Ethical Choices,” 246, http://www.preciousheart.net/love/Rakestraw-1988.pdf; Jones, Biblical Christian Ethics, 134–35, and Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 96–97. For more on graded absolutism, see Rakestraw, “Ethical Choices,” 246–47, http://www.preciousheart.net/love/Rakestraw-1988.pdf; Jones, Biblical Christian Ethics, 133–36; Geisler, Christian Ethics, 97–115; and Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 93–97. ↑
  13. Charles Frederick D’Arcy, Christian Ethics and Modern Thought, 103, quoted in Kenneth E. Kirk, Conscience and Its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1927), 120. See also Daniel A. Westberg, Renewing Moral Theology: Christian Ethics as Action, Character and Grace (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 19. ↑
  14. For more on the historical development and corruption of casuistry, see Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988). ↑
  15. Kirk, Conscience, 125. See also Westberg, Moral Theology, 16. ↑
  16. Kirk, Conscience, 125. ↑
  17. Kirk, Conscience, 124. ↑
  18. See, e.g., this remark from Andrew T. Walker, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary: “The idea we would take Rahab’s deception within a redemptive-historical heremeneutic and flatten that out to mean justifying ethical-political consequentialism within the modern nation-state’s political frame is reckless hermeneutics. Consequentialism is an alien ethic to the NT (Rom. 3:8)”: https://x.com/andrewtwalk/status/1793092075107303907. ↑
  19. See, e.g., Lucien F. Longtin and Andrew J. Peach, An Introduction to Catholic Ethics (Arlington, VA: National Catholic Educational Association, 2003), 66, and Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 7. ↑
  20. “Westminster Larger Catechism,” Q. 24, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-larger-catechism/. See also Heinrich Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Lutheran Publication Society, 1889), 239; Henry Eyster Jacobs, A Summary of the Christian Faith (Philadelphia: General Council Publication House, 1905), 101; John Theodore Mueller, A Handbook of Doctrinal Theology (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1934), 210–11; Philip Melanchthon, The Loci Communes of Philip Melanchthon, trans. Charles Leander Hill (Boston: Meador Publishing Company, 1944), 82; Henri Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. III, Moral Philosophy, trans. J. P. E. O’Hanley (Charlottetown: St. Dunstan’s University, 1949), 104; Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. I (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1950), 528; Dominic M. Prümmer, Handbook of Moral Theology, trans. Gerald W. Shelton (Cork: The Mercier Press, Ltd., 1956), 67; Henry Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, vol. I, Human Acts, Law, Sin, Virtue, 8th ed., ed. L. W. Geddes (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1959), 203; and The Anglican Church in North America, To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), Q. 1, 23. ↑
  21. The idea that there is no such thing as an intrinsically immoral action can be found in the writings of Peter Abelard and Duns Scotus, the former of whom is associated with the philosophical school of Nominalism. See Peter H. Sedgwick, The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology (Boston: Brill, 2019), 86–87, 131. ↑
  22. Augustine, On Lying, trans. H. Browne, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887), § 42, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1312.htm. ↑
  23. Bruce P. Baugus, The Roots of Reformed Moral Theology (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2022), 236. On the reality of intrinsically immoral actions in the Christian tradition, see also Richard Hooker, Laws I.8, in The Works of Mr. Richard Hooker, vol. I, ed. W. S. Dobson (London: G. Cowie and Co., 1825), 178; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II.18.2 co., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Benzinger Brothers, 1920), https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2018.htm#article2; Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, 83; Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, 55; Ralph McInerny, Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), 85–86, 89; Romanus Cessario, Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 174; Longtin and Peach, Catholic Ethics, 68; G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in Human Life, Action and Ethics: Essays by G. E. M. Anscombe, ed. Mary Geach and Luke Gormally (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2005), 181–82; Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung, Colleen McCluskey, and Christina Van Dyke, Aquinas’s Ethics: Metaphysical Foundations, Moral Theory, and Theological Context (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 92; A. J. Joyce, Richard Hooker and Anglican Moral Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 192; Steven J. Jensen, Living the Good Life: A Beginner’s Thomistic Ethics (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 123–35; Westberg, Moral Theology, 67, 129; Sedgwick, Anglican Moral Theology, 88, 99, 131, 247, 249; Daniel R. Heimbach, Fundamental Christian Ethics (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2022), 242; and Baugus, Reformed Moral Theology, 182, 210–11. ↑
  24. “Westminster Larger Catechism,” Q. 99, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-larger-catechism/. ↑
  25. See, e.g., Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, 98; Francis Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. III (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1953), 38; Prümmer, Moral Theology, 23; Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, 58; McInerny, Ethica Thomistica, 79–80, 86, 89; Cessario, Moral Theology, 174–75, 177; Longtin and Peach, Catholic Ethics, 149; DeYoung, McCluskey, and Van Dyke, Aquinas’s Ethics, 92; Jensen, Thomistic Ethics, 129, 132; Westberg, Moral Theology, 67; Sedgwick, Anglican Moral Theology, 88; Heimbach, Ethics, 246, 250–51; and Baugus, Reformed Moral Theology, 211–12. ↑
  26. Westberg, Moral Theology, 58, italics original. See also Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, 93–102; Prümmer, Moral Theology, 20–24; Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, 53–63; Ralph McInerny, Aquinas on Human Action: A Theory of Practice (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 80–83; Cessario, Moral Theology, 166–83; Longtin and Peach, Catholic Ethics, 148–52; DeYoung, McCluskey, and Van Dyke, Aquinas’s Ethics, 90–96; Jensen, Thomistic Ethics, 130–33; and Westberg, Moral Theology, 58–70. ↑
  27. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas, 119. ↑
  28. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas, 121. ↑
  29. Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas, 121. ↑
  30. Thomas Aquinas, In II librum Sententiarum, d. 39, q. 3, a. 3, ad 3 (Mandonnet, 1004), quoted in Dougherty, Moral Dilemmas, 154. ↑
  31. Kirk, Conscience, 121. ↑
  32. Kirk, Conscience, 125. ↑
  33. Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 98, 101. ↑
  34. Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 97. ↑
  35. Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 101. For more on non-conflicting absolutism, see Rakestraw, “Ethical Choices,” 239–67, http://www.preciousheart.net/love/Rakestraw-1988.pdf, and Jones, Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 97–101. ↑
  36. Oliver O’Donovan, “Christian Moral Reasoning,” in New Dictionary of Christian Ethics & Pastoral Theology, ed. David J. Atkinson and David H. Field (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 126. See also Rakestraw, “Ethical Choices,” 249, http://www.preciousheart.net/love/Rakestraw-1988.pdf, and Baugus, Reformed Moral Theology, 237–38. ↑
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James Clark

James Clark is the Book Review Editor at The North American Anglican. His writing has appeared in Front Porch Republic, Journal of Classical Theology, and Evangelical Quarterly, as well as other publications.