[MENTION=14304]Trent[/MENTION]
I looked up your blog that you linked. I only looked at the one page, but I noticed some interesting points.
Here are some things that caught my eye:
In Christ, our conscience is no longer aware of the judgment or penalty of the law. It has no value of right and wrong.
Anything based on self-imposed law is behind and irrelevant. It truly is dead.
If I do not have revelatory knowledge of a purged conscience then how will I partake in good works
From these statements, it seems that you are talking about grounding morality in Christ. However, I'm not for sure. The first statement has an odd structure. By the parts that I bolded, it seems that you are suggesting that, in turning to Christ, we actually loose sight of moral rightness and wrongness. I'm not sure if that's what you intended, but it leads one to question, "If being moral is what I desire, why turn to Christ if I already have the moral view?" (this is the question I'm wondering how your view tackles).
In the next line, however, you seem to say that the moral view one had prior to turning to Christ becomes irrelevant in turning to Christ. Then you learn the word of Christ, and the moral values therein. This seems to imply that these two moral codes are different. So, I must ask, do you take there to be more than one "true" moral code, and simply that the word of Christ is better for external reasons (perhaps for the reason of accepting Christ to get to heaven)? Or would you rather say that the early moral code is self-inflating in some sense, and is not a "true" morality (or perhaps a lesser morality)? For this reason then, one ought to change to the moral code of Christ. However, both of these solutions seem to have problems.
If you purpose multiple "true" moral structures, then you loose the weight of morality. The weight of morality is in its entailment, the prescribed "ought" of actions. Generally morality is seen as being grounded in logic, something fundamental to reality. This is to say that being immoral is to be literally wrong (irrational). However, if you allow for multiple "true" moralities, then you loose this logical entailment. Entailment is necessary truth, but multiple truths lead only to suggestion. In rejecting the suggestion, you are not necessarily wrong. Perhaps you could say if one agrees to
some moral code then they are not necessarily wrong, but to disagree will ALL moral codes you would be. To this I would say that these different moral codes will produce contradicting results. To do the moral good for one might be immoral in another. Therefore, you are simultaneously right and wrong. This is a contradiction.
Now, a potential solution to this problem is to say that the pre-Christ's word morality is actually a "lesser morality" in some sense. Then you can establish a hierarchy of moralities. Now you have an answer to our original question (why should I change to Christ's word), and you can say that, within a contradiction, the superior morality takes precedence. Entailments come from within each morality, but broad contradictions appeal to this hierarchy for entailed solutions. However, this point is not immune to my next point.
On the other hand, if you want to say that the earlier moral code is not a "true" moral code, but is rather a code alternative to the true morality in Christ's word, then you seem to be grounding morality entirely in Christ's word. Here I will add some assumptions, so feel free to correct me if I am misinterpreting. I take Christ's word to be an extension of (or literally is) God's word. In truth, the word of Christ is the word of God, and it is for that reason that it is the moral truth. So, we have grounded morality in the word of God. Now another assumption. As I understand God, he is a perfectly free, omnipotent being (not sufficient categorizing, but this is all that is relevant to my point). Quite literally, he can do
anything he wants. Now suppose that God states that it is morally wrong to torture puppies for fun. By the definition of God, it is at least
possible for God to, let's say in another universe, make it morally wrong to not torture puppies for fun. This is a contradiction. Now you might say that's irrelevant though because I'm talking about another universe. However, it really isn't. From where the moral code is entailed is
only God, so we need only know about God to know what is moral. However, by the nature of God, there is no
logical entailment, so morality seems to loose its weight. However, then you might say that the entailment doesn't come from logic, but instead comes from the mere fact that it is the command of God. However, this move actually is circular.
Watch this conversation example:
[Me]: What is the right thing to do?
[You]: God's word.
[Me]: Why is God's word the right thing to do?
[You]: Because God commands it.
[Me]: Ok, so what gives God's command the weight that it has?
[You]: God's word. (the bible)
Because of this circularity, the moral rule you are talking about looses the entailment for anyone who does not grant the assumption of God's word. In other words, it only works for those that already take God's word to be true.
Now, all that being said, this does not say that God's word isn't moral. All this means is that it isn't moral because it is God's word. This entire point is what is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma, as described by Plato. The solution is not that the moral is God's word. Rather, it is that God's word is moral, and the moral is some external (to God) feature that, being an omniscentient being perhaps, God is always correct about.
On a completely separate side note, I noticed you used the term "logos". I was confused because I knew that word only as the Latin root word for "logic" or "reason" from when I read Plato or Aristotle. I looked it up, and I didn't know it had a second meaning: "the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning". I never knew that.