MORAL LAW.

MORAL LAW.

Moral law, the Mormon universe and the nature of the right we ought to choose

By Francis Beckwith page 219

Even this part is pretty boring and confusing, Mr. Beckwith is another "prominent" philosopher and instead to use the scriptures to make his points use his intellect and enticing words and so in many cases it is pretty hard to fully understand what is trying to say, beside He uses to quote few LDS scriptures trying to make something out of them.

God and the source of moral law. page 227

Mr. Beckwith concludes :"moral laws are known non material realities that are form of communication for which we have a sense of incumbency and feel painful guilt when we violate them. Given these characteristics, which metaphysical perspective best explains the existence of the moral law, classical Christianity  or Mormonism? In order to answer this question I will make four points and respond to two objections."

Mormonism's materialist ontology page 228

In the first part Mr. Beckwith is hard to understand because of the terms he is using as ontological, moral properties, materialist, metaphysic and stuff like that to conclude: " Such an all powerful God would not be the LDS God, for as we have seen , he is not the source of the moral law."

Since it is pretty clear to me that Mr. Beckwith is considering moral law as our conscience I will try to answer to his proposition in a simple way. He thinks about God as Him is without this moral law especially because "he is not the source of the moral law" in fact he writes

"because moral laws are form of communication, an activity by which one mind through statements conveys meaning to another mind, it is not clear how the LDS worldview can explain of justify the moral law. For there is no mind or authority behind the moral law in the LDS universe. It is simply there. But this does not seem adequate. Consider this analogy. Moral laws are like statutes; they are rules that one is obligated to obey. This obligation arises when the statutes are the result of the deliberation of a legitimate sovereign. that is, the sovereign has the moral authority to instruct its citizens to obey its statutes ( assuming of course, that statutes do not violate some moral law)."

I will stop here for a while. "it is not clear how the LDS worldview can explain of justify the moral law."

It seems that we have to give them all the answers, clear and sharp but anyway since the philosopher is not using any scripture to support his ideas, I will consider them just opinions or better suppositions. I will use the scriptures to prove my point.

Conscience came with the knowledge of good and evil every person has it, it is the chance that each one of us will be responsible before good without it no one cannot be charged of anything as Mr Beckwith explains:"moral laws are known non material realities that are form of communication for which we have a sense of incumbency and feel painful guilt when we violate them." For what I know no one has never defined what in reality is the conscience of man, so to define them material or not is not accurate but just speculation ( I am saying this in regard to the Bible our common ground here)  but to say that God doesn't have to obey to this conscience is just to ignore the Bible because the Bible maintains that God has this moral law or conscience in fact

Genesis 3:22
22 ¶ And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil

so God has this knowledge also Mr. Beckwith said :"they are rules that one is obligated to obey" this is totally wrong free agency is connected to conscience and it is the key to make people as God Himself, infact God would be able to do evil otherwise he wouldn't be omnipotent but he is free of evil because he knows the truth which makes Him free, in fact blind obedience does' have any reward but obedience by choosing has the reward of justice, God is perfect because always chose the right thing and man is on earth to develop this divine quality. We know what really is the conscience or light of Christ but I won't discuss this here because it is not important what is important here is to show how wrong is the philosopher, he is saying that since we do no know how the moral law came in existence there is no author and therefore there is no authority. It seems to me that Mr.Beckwith is just going around with silly analogies here so if by chance somebody will ask him who was the author of God since he has not answer God cannot be in existence, well if the concept that God is selfexistence it should be valid even for moral law otherwise no moral law because there is no source and no God for the same reason, sorry but I have to play the game with the rules that the philosopher is using.

at page 230  he talks about Platonism and after he is trying to answer to Blake Ostler that maintains:" In my view the doctrine of God's essential goodness is a hard pill to swallow. The upshot of the doctrine is that God is not a moral agent because it is not possible for God to make any morally wrong decision. It is certainly no great moral defect to be so virtuous that one does not make morally wrong decisions; it is quite another problem if the reason no wrong decisions are made is that it is logically impossible to make a wrong decision.....I prefer the Mormon view that God is a person who is worthy of praise and worship precisely because He could go wrong, but in the excellence of his personal character has freely decided to do what is good"

I totally agree with Mr. Ostler because if I knew that God is constrained to do something he wouldn't be free instead being capable to do everything because He is omnipotent and therefore he could do wrong but he does not because of His free agency surely I will have absolute trustworthiness in Him and how we saw God has

Genesis 3:22
22 ¶ And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil
this capability.
at page 235 the philosopher made another mistake
"How should Christian think about their morally good God, who is logically incapable of doing evil?" so He is not omnipotent and also "Since God and humans do not share the same nature, our relationship to the moral law is different from God's relationship to it.
again
Genesis 3:22
22 ¶ And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil
and
Acts 17:28
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Acts 17:29
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
2 Peter 1:4
4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature
so.........
Not only but think about the atonement ad the baptism of Jesus
Matthew 3:15
15 And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer [it to be so] now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.
what law Jesus, God himself, was fulfilling here?
and
Matthew 26:39
39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou [wilt].
Which law God had to satisfy here?  Isuggest you to read Uderstanding free agency Faith and free agency
His points are crushed totally.