https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=DcIHP0d6az4
What is interesting about Genesis is that the first encounter we have with morality in the pages of Genesis, morality is defined not horizontally between humans, but vertically between humans and God. And that’s crucial. It’s God that defines it ultimately. So there is a transcendence from the very beginning. And it’s the loss of that transcendence that we’re seeing damaging our culture today because we’ve lost that common sense of values, that however distorted it has been over the centuries, that we did owe to the biblical tradition. And now we wander in total confusion. And it interests me greatly that the pressure, particularly on young people today, is to look inside for answers to these questions when what we need to be teaching them is, no, look outside and have your mind open to the fact that transcendence is real and that there is a God and there is something bigger. There’s something more than materialism is giving you. Okay. So let’s take that apart a bit. You could imagine that there could be three sources of moral knowledge. That’s the kind of knowledge that orients you in the world. And one source could be the subjective. Now we’ve already talked about the limitations there is that, well, you don’t live very long and what the hell do you know? And what do you mean by the subjective? Like which part of you? And then there’s the danger of elevating yourself to the status of final moral arbiter, which is a kind of Luciferian presumption. Okay. So those seem like bad pitfalls. The next objection you might say is like, okay, well, you can’t do it just subjectively. I am who I am, which is certainly the proclamation in our culture. You could do it by consensus, you know, and that’s more of a, that’s more of the view that, well, the group gets together and sort of decides by general agreement what right and wrong is. And that can shift with time and place, but as long as everybody is willing to abide by the same principles, then we can define them canonically as good or as good. But the problem with that is you run. Yeah, go on. There’s a huge problem with that. You tell me what your problem with it is and then I’ll tell you mine. Well, my problem with that is the Nazi Germany problem. Exactly. It’s like, well, what the hell happens when the whole herd stampedes towards hell? If you’re a consensus person and there’s nothing else there, it’s like, well, there’s no hell, that’s consensus. And so the consensus by definition is right. And so if everyone decides that no Jews would be better, who the hell are you to stand in the way? And, you know, if you’re willing to stand up and say, well, you should stand in the way. Well, right. So upon what grounds do you make that claim? Because it’s not merely subjective. So that brings us back to the problem of transcendent morality. Okay, so you were going to talk about the problems of consensus. Yes, it’s exactly right. That is the problem with utilitarianism. Treating others as you want them to treat you and by consensus is fine if you’ve got equal centers of power. If you’ve got a whole lot of equal centers of power vying with one another, then you can say, if you don’t do this, I won’t do that. But the very interesting thing about the case in point you mentioned, Nazi Germany, Hitler, in his political youth, made treaties, but he tore them up once he had the power. And if people say you shouldn’t do that, he said, what do you mean you shouldn’t? I’ve got the power. So it doesn’t answer the question of why ought you to go with the herd and murder so many Jews. And that’s a huge weakness. It’s all right if you’re dividing ice cream among children, then utilitarianism is fine. Give an equal amount to all of them or you’ll be in trouble. But at the higher level, it’s shot through with this problem of the total absence of any transcendence. The oughtness has to come from above. Okay, so now you talked about power there. And one of the radical claims of the postmodern types, especially people like Foucault, is that the fundamental motivating drive of humanity and perhaps the cosmos itself is power. Now, I think everything Foucault thought about everything is to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt because he was quite the awful creature. And I think he had every reason for putting forward the proposition that there’s nothing other than power because that justified everything he did that was done purely on the basis of power. But there’s another problem that emerges with that proclamation, which is a kind of self-evident problem. And I would think this is something the rationalists have a very difficult time with, which is if I can compel you to do something, why don’t the next two propositions follow logically? First of all, if I can compel you, the mere fact that I can indicates precisely that I’m actually a better man than you, because if you were better than me, you could compel me. And of course, this is might makes right, but might makes right is a very powerful doctrine. And almost all the pre-Christian pagan societies operated on that basis in the most fundamental manner. And the aristocratic justification was something like, well, you’re a peasant and the cosmos has established that you’re a peasant and I’m an aristocrat. And so screw you. And actually morally speaking, because if you weren’t a useless slug, you wouldn’t be a peasant. And that’s a very, very difficult argument to generate a counter proposition to. And the corollary argument is, well, if I can force you, clearly I’m more powerful than you are. And that means that I have every moral right to do so. And in fact, you don’t even get to object because you’re too lowly to object. And that’s the way of the world, man. Yeah, but it reflects a series of values that needs to be questioned. Where do these values come from? To argue that the cosmos made me an aristocrat and you a serf is a very tenuous argument. And in the end, it seems to me that we’ve got to ask ourselves the fundamental question, what basis have we for valuing human beings as unique? And again, I refer to your comment on Genesis, we’re made in the image of God. That gives us huge dignity and value. It was something my parents got across to me when I was very young. And as a Christian, even at the bigger level, the idea that there’s a higher value even than the created value, which is the whole topic of Exodus. And I was utterly fascinated by your conversations on Exodus because the valuation of people that is reflected in the Passover lamb and the sacrifice, in that God accepts them on the basis of a sacrifice. And it seems to me that actually leads me now that I think of it, and into another direction. One of the problems of establishing rules of any kind seems to me that many of them bypass the heart of Exodus. It’s very noticeable that the law of the commandments comes after the Passover sacrifice, after the redemption. And in the New Testament, the parallel thing for Christians is the sacrifice is first, the acceptance is settled. It’s not on the basis of your moral behavior or life, but that empowers you to live so that the moral commandments in the letters of Paul, for example, come after the discussion of the sacrifice that gives you a true value. Now that is something that is lacking at the heart of our culture. We have no answer ultimately to the big questions of guilt and the whole problem. Nobody likes the word sin, but that’s what it is. The moral damage we cause to ourselves and other people. And setting up rules and regulations is hugely important. We need them. They’re in the New Testament and in the Old Testament, but I notice that one of the major messages of Exodus is first redemption. And redemption is by the blood of the Passover lamb, to put it in the biblical language, and then the teaching. And the same exactly in the New Testament. So let’s delve into that. Well, so what appears to happen, as far as I can tell, in the post-paradise lost transition in Genesis, is that human beings are called upon to sacrifice. And you see that particularly in the story of Cain and Abel, because two patterns of sacrifice are laid out in that story. And one is genuine sacrifice, and that’s Abel, and the other is half-hearted, self-deceptive, instrumental sacrifice, and that’s Cain. And not only does that not go very well for Cain, it engenders bitter, murderous resentment, and then eventually the horrors of war, because Tubal Cain, whose Cain’s descendant, is the first artificer of weapons of war. And it’s after that story that the flood comes, and also the Tower of Babel. And so there’s two forms of sacrifice outlined, and someone reading that, who’s a rationalist, might object, well, why is sacrifice necessary? And I think that’s actually an utterly clueless rejoinder, and here’s why. So, for example, if you’re going to be a scientist, you know, there was a woman, I think her name was Barbara McClintock, and she spent her whole life studying variations of colour in so-called Indian corn. And with a consequence of that was she discovered a variety of facts about genetic structure that led to technological improvements in cancer treatment, but she laboured in isolation for decades. Now, you might say, well, what was her sacrifice? And that’s pretty obvious. Her sacrifice was that there was a trillion things in the world she could have been interested in and pursued, and she sacrificed every single one of them to the curiosity that made itself manifest in relationship to this strange genetic anomaly. Right? And the thing is, every time you focus your attention on one thing instead of the multitude of other things, you’re making a sacrifice. Okay, so you have to sacrifice in order to attend and act. There’s no way out of it. And so then the next question emerges. Here’s another element of sacrifice. If you’re immature, there’s only the present. As you become more mature, there’s only the present and there’s only you. As you become more mature, there’s the future at longer and longer durations, and there’s other people. And so what you do as you mature is you sacrifice you and the present to the future and everyone else. And if you don’t do that, then you stay dangerously immature and psychopathic, right? Because you’re completely self-centred and narcissistic. And so that’s not good for you, because narcissistic psychopaths tend to fail and it’s certainly not good for everyone else. So you have to sacrifice to attend and act, and you have to sacrifice to mature. And then you might say, well, what’s the sacrifice that’s most pleasing to God? And the answer to that has to be something like, well, yourself, right? You have to offer up everything to what’s transcendent. And I think that is the sacrifice that you described that’s an a priori act before the coming of the law, right? It’s the willingness to voluntarily lay everything on the line in the pursuit of truth and life more abundant, something like that. And I think that is the pattern that’s laid out in the Christian story. It looks to me like that’s the pattern.