The Doctrine of the Christian Life

John M. Frame

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781629955513
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The third volume of Frame's Theology of Lordship series, this book focuses on biblical ethics, an analysis of biblical ethical teaching focusing on the Ten Commandments.

PART ONE

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INTRODUCTORY CONSIDERATIONS

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CHAPTER 1

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Introduction

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The Christian life is a rich journey, and it is not easy to describe. Without any pretense of comprehensiveness, I try to describe it in this volume as living under God’s law, in God’s world, in the presence of God himself. Those of you who have read other books of mine will recognize that triad as indicating what I call the normative, situational, and existential perspectives, respectively. Those of you who haven’t read other books of mine can learn about that triad in the present volume.

We begin now with some introductory considerations. After defining terms and relating ethics to God’s lordship, I shall discuss ethics itself from three perspectives: situational (the history of ethical thought), existential (a Christian ethical method), and normative (ethical principles, following the pattern of the Ten Commandments). But first we should address a couple of important introductory questions:

WHY STUDY ETHICS?

We should study ethics at least for the following reasons:

Servants of Jesus are people who have his commandments and keep them (John 14:21). Over and over again, Jesus tells us, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15; cf. vv. 21, 23; 15:10; 1 John 2:3–5; 3:21–24; 5:3). Jesus’ “new commandment” is “that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). Love is to be the mark of the church, distinguishing it from the world: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (v. 35). This is not to say that we are saved by works, obedience, or keeping commandments. It is simply to say that if we want to be disciples of Jesus, we must be devoted to good works (Titus 3:8; cf. Matt. 5:16; Eph. 2:10; 1 Tim. 2:10; 5:10; 6:18; 2 Tim. 3:17; Titus 2:7, 14; 3:14; Heb. 10:24; 1 Peter 2:12). If we are to be devoted to good works, we must know what works are good and what ones are bad. So we need to study ethics.

One purpose of Scripture itself is to promote ethical behavior. The familiar passage 2 Timothy 3:16–17 reads, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” Note the ethical focus here. God breathed out the words of Scripture so that we may be trained in righteousness, so that we may be equipped for every good work. Of course, Scripture has other purposes as well. Many have emphasized that Scripture bears witness to Christ, and so it does (Luke 24:27; John 5:39). But Scripture presents Christ as one who equips us to be lights in the world (Matt. 5:14). Consequently, a great amount of Scripture is devoted to defining and motivating our good works.

In one sense, everything in the Bible is ethical. Even when Scripture expounds doctrinal propositions, it presents them as propositions that ought to be believed. That ought is an ethical ought. Indeed, all the content of Scripture ought to be believed and acted upon. The whole Bible is ethics. Of course, the Bible is not only ethics. It is also narrative, for to understand the history of redemption we must have recourse to everything in Scripture. So the whole Bible is narrative as well as ethics. Similarly, the whole Bible is doctrinal truth, wisdom, evangelism, apologetics, and so on.¹ But we have not understood the Bible until we have understood its ethic.

This is another way of saying, as I did in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, that theology is “the application of the Word of God by persons to all areas of life.”² Any study or teaching of the Bible is an attempt to answer human questions, to meet human needs. Those questions or needs may be relatively theoretical (e.g., “What is the meaning of ratzah in the sixth commandment?”) or relatively practical (e.g., “When should I remove life support from my dying father?”). But they are all practical in the sense that they deal with human questions and needs. In that sense, all theology is addressed to people to help them think and live to the glory of God.³ So all theology involves ethics.

The study of ethics is enormously important for our witness to the world. We live in an age in which people are greatly concerned about ethics. Every day, the news media bring to mind issues of war and peace, the environment, the powers of government, abortion and euthanasia, genetic research, and so on. Many people seem very sure of the answers to these ethical questions. But when you probe deeply into their positions, you find that their conviction is often based on little more than partisan consensus or individual feeling. But the Bible does give us a basis for ethical judgments: the revelation of the living God. So discussions of ethical questions open a wide door for Christian witness.

People are far more open to discussing ethics than to discussing theistic proofs or even “transcendental arguments.” Philosophy does not excite many people today, and many do not even want to hear personal testimony and the simple gospel. But they do care about right and wrong. Christians who can talk about ethics in a cogent way, therefore, have a great apologetic and evangelistic advantage.

It is true that many do not want to hear this witness today. They consider Christianity a “religious” position and therefore one that should not be discussed in the public square. But this view is utterly unreasonable, and that unreasonableness should be pressed. Why should religious positions be excluded from the debate, especially when secular positions have been unable to present a convincing basis for ethical judgments? As I shall indicate in this volume, the main currents of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought have become bankrupt, confessedly unable to provide any basis for distinguishing right from wrong. I believe that many people today are hungering for answers and are willing to look even at religious positions to find them.

I shall argue as well that all ethics is religious, even when it tries hard to be secular. In the end, all ethics presupposes ultimate values. It requires allegiance to someone or something that demands devotion and governs all thinking. That kind of allegiance is indistinguishable from religious devotion, even if it doesn’t involve liturgical practices. So the line between religious and secular ethics is a fuzzy one, and it is arbitrary to use such a line to determine who is entitled to join a dialogue on ethics.

But more important than the ability to talk about ethics is the ability to live it. This is true of our witness to the world. People see how we live. Even Christians who are not articulate or eloquent can make, through their actions, a great impact on others. Jesus comments on the importance of our works to our witness: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

WHAT SHOULD BE OUR ETHICAL BIAS?

Before we begin our study, there is another question we need to ask. All of us are biased in favor of certain conclusions, even at the outset of our study. We cannot be neutral. But we ought to be self-conscious, even critical, of our biases.

There are those who enter the field of ethics with a goal of dispelling legalism. Perhaps they were raised in a church that imposed all sorts of rules on the kids and they didn’t like it. So as ethicists they want to emphasize our freedom as individuals to make decisions for ourselves.

Others enter the field disgusted by the moral decline in our society. They may also be impressed by the rigorousness of Scripture and the high cost of discipleship. They are attracted to an ethic that does not compromise with worldliness, a radical ethic of discipline and self-control.

We tend to describe the first type of ethic as liberal, the second as conservative. Down through the years, ethicists have tended to divide into conservative and liberal parties. For example, in ancient Judaism there were the schools of Shammai (conservative) and Hillel (liberal). Catholicism has had Jesuits (liberal) and Jansenists (conservative). The liberal tendency to find loopholes in the moral law, to justify apparent sin, has given casuistry a bad name. The conservative tendency toward harshness and austerity has given moralism a bad name.

In this book, I urge readers not to side with either tendency. The point of Christian ethics is not to be as liberal as we can be, or as conservative. It is, rather, to be as biblical as we can be. So this book will seem to be more liberal than the majority on some issues (e.g., worship, cloning, just war, gambling, deceiving) and more conservative on others (e.g., the Sabbath, the roles of women, stem cell research). God’s Word has a way of surprising us, of not fitting into our prearranged categories. Jesus rebuked both the conservative Pharisees and the liberal Sadducees; Paul rebuked bothlegalists and libertines. Understanding God’s will rarely means falling into lockstep with some popular ideology. We need to think as part of a community, listening to our brothers and sisters, but we also need the courage to step aside from the crowd when God’s Word directs us in that way.

So in this book I will be drawing some fine distinctions, as theologians are wont to do. I do this not to gain a reputation for subtlety and nuance, but simply to follow Scripture. My goal is to go as far as Scripture goes, and no farther, to follow its path without deviating to the left or the right. I trust God’s Spirit to help us thread these needles, to help us find the biblical path, even when it is narrow and relatively untraveled. May he be with writer and reader as we seek to walk by the lamp of God’s Word.

1. So I call all of these perspectives on the nature of Scripture. See DKG, 191–94. On apologetics as a perspective on the whole Bible, see Ezra Hyun Kim, “Biblical Preaching Is Apologia,” a D.Min. project submitted to Westminster Theological Seminary in California, Spring, 2000.

2. DKG, 81.

3. Thinking is part of life, and so it too has an ethical dimension. It is subject to the authority of God’s Word. Thus, epistemology can be understood as a subdivision of ethics. See DKG, 62–64.

CHAPTER 2

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An Ethical Glossary

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Definitions are never a matter of life and death. Scripture gives us no directions for defining English words. So two people may use the same term with different meanings, without differing in their actual views. One theologian, for example, may define faith as intellectual assent, while insisting that trust always accompanies it. Another may define it as trust, while insisting that intellectual assent always accompanies it. The differences between these two theologians should not be considered significant at this particular point. We may define terms as we like, as long as our definitions don’t confuse people or mislead them on substantive issues.¹

In this chapter, I will define some important terms, indicating how I will use these terms in this particular book. These definitions are not necessarily best for all situations, even for all discussions of ethics.

ETHICS AND THEOLOGY

The first group of definitions will relate ethics to other theological disciplines. The earlier ones review discussions in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God.

Knowledge of God

I use this phrase to mean a personal, covenantal relationship with God, involving awareness of his self-revelation, an obedient or disobedient response to that revelation, and the divine blessing or curse upon that response.²

This definition connects our knowledge of God to his lordship (see chapter 3) and to ethics, as I define it below.

Doctrine

Doctrine is the Word of God in use to create and deepen one’s knowledge of God, and to encourage an obedient, rather than disobedient, response to his revelation. Or, more briefly, doctrine is the application of the Word of God to all areas of human life.

This definition is built upon the use of the Greek terms didaskō, didachē, and didaskalia, espe...