Talbot School of Theology Professors David A. Horner and J.P. Moreland recently published a new book — . Here, they share more about the book with the Good Book Blog.

Good Book Blog (GBB): Congratulations on the publication of your new book! Thanks for answering a few questions for us. First of all, what is “metaethics”?

Horner and Moreland (H & M): Metaethics is the branch of ethics that examines the foundations of morality — its underlying assumptions and philosophical and theological (worldview) commitments. Some of the most interesting ethical questions and debates today are metaethical ones, such as ‘Is morality something grounded in the nature of things, or is it a human construction? Are moral values objective, or are they relative to different individuals or cultures? Does morality depend on God, and if so, how?’

GBB: Why is it important that we address questions like these?

H & M: Questions like these are not only interesting, but hugely important — particularly for followers of Jesus seeking to understand and defend a Christian understanding of morality in today’s context of moral skepticism and relativism. It’s crucial that Christians be able to engage the current issues and debates in this area intelligently and effectively. But contemporary metaethics is a challenging field, with its own distinctive concepts and technical terminology. Moreover, thinking carefully about central metaethical questions requires engaging with some other quite challenging areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, semantics, and philosophical psychology.

GBB: What is your book like? What do you actually do in your book?

H & M: In Metaethics: A Short Companion, we have written a “companion” for the journey into the subject — a road map that provides a basic understanding of metaethics and its central concepts, issues and concerns, with special attention to those aspects of particular interest to followers of Jesus. It’s the first introduction to the field of metaethics from a distinctively Christian perspective.

We defend a robust understanding of theistic moral realism, the view that moral values and obligations are real, objective and grounded in the nature and will of God. We conclude that a fully biblical understanding of morality, seen as a response of obedience and gratitude to a good and loving God, not only makes the best sense of our common moral intuitions; it is the only one that can ultimately satisfy our deepest moral and spiritual longings.

GBB: Can you give us a taste of the book?Perhaps some representative quotes from the book?

H&M: Here are 13 quotes that will give you a taste for what we are doing in this book.

‘Normative ethics studies questions about what sorts of things (actions, character traits, states of affairs) are right or wrong, good or bad. Metaethics asks what we mean by terms like “good” or “right” and whether they represent real features of the world.’ (p. 4)

'Moral realism’s basic claim is that some things are right and some things are wrong (or good or bad), regardless of people’s beliefs, preferences, or attitudes regarding them.' (p. 7)

'According to eighteenth-century philosopher Samuel Clarke, basic moral truths and duties such as promoting the good and treating one another justly “are so notoriously plain and self-evident, that nothing but the extremest stupidity of mind, corruption of manners, or perverseness of spirit, can possibly make any man entertain the least doubt of them.” The existence and ubiquity of basic moral convictions like these are part of what a plausible metaethical theory needs to be able to account for and justify.' (p. 8)

'What all forms of [metaethical] constructivism share is the conviction that moral status is conferred by us as human subjects—by our psychological or volitional activity of valuing, prescribing, endorsing, and the like. On this view, for example, what makes abortion morally right or wrong is our attitude toward it, not something “in” or “about” abortion itself.' (p. 61)

'According to a 2011 nationally representative survey, 47 percent of American emerging adults affirmed that “morals are relative, there are not definite rights and wrongs for everybody.'” (p. 67)

'[Rational subjectivism] assumes that one’s desires are in the proper working order, lacking only sufficient information and rest. But this we have compelling reason to doubt. It’s obvious on a biblical understanding of the human condition that human agents can be quite well-informed concerning nonmoral facts, manifestly calm, cool, and collected, and yet desire the most terrible things. Humankind is fallen and deeply broken spiritually and morally. As Paul observed, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). One need not hold Christian presuppositions, however, to recognize the reality of brilliant, well-informed yet profoundly evil people.' (pp. 76-77)

'Impartiality alone . . . is insufficient for arriving at or grounding justice. If impartiality is plausibly construed (in Jeremy Bentham’s terms) as “everybody to count for one, nobody to count for more than one,” a larger group of “ones” will always “count” more than a smaller group. Notoriously, such a view will justify the practice of slavery as long as there are fewer slaves than non-slaves.' (pp. 81-82)

'We have noted that a particularly attractive element of constructivist theories is their ability to connect morality with persons, personal relationships, and personal motivation, which are important aspects of common moral experience. Theistic moral realism provides a rich, ultimate grounding for these features of morality without falling prey to the objections we’ve seen to constructivist views. Understanding moral facts as grounded in a Person who is our good and loving Creator, who stands in personal relationship to us and the company of His creatures, enables us to make ultimate sense of these intuitions about the nature and grounds of morality.' (p. 90)

'Since 1910, naturalism has slowly become the dominant understanding of reality and knowledge in America. This is a simple fact of history, and since the 1960s, naturalism has been ensconced as the authority on what is real, what can be known, and what is allowed into conversations taking place in the public square.' (p. 94)

'[A]n appeal to emergent properties has always seemed suspect to us if it is offered as an explanation: “emergence” is not a solution but a name for the problem to be solved. It is a label and that’s all. . . . [Proposed as a solution], emergence seems to be a case of getting something from nothing, a case of magic without a magician.' (pp. 130, 132)

'At best, in a nontheistic world in which ultimate reality is impersonal and non-moral, moral facts exist only as brute, inexplicable, ad hoc features that could hardly engage our affections and desires. Why would or should we care about them, much less order our lives around them, any more than we do the existence of numbers, colors, or other abstract properties? How could brute facts impose duties, much less evoke guilt or blameworthiness when they are transgressed? Yet each of these features of morality makes perfect sense within the context of persons and personal relationships. Only in a theistic world, in which ultimate reality is a Person—a moral Person with a moral character and intentions and who acts for moral reasons—is morality deep, at home at the very heart of what is real.' (p. 145)

'[S]ecular psychologists Edmund Bourne and Lorna Garano cite three reasons for the present cultural epidemic of anxiety and depression: the rapid pace of our lives, our inordinate individualism with the loss of community and connectedness to others, and the belief that moral relativism is the only option in metaethics.' (p. 155)

'[T]he Christian worldview—its ontology, its analysis of human motivation and the human condition, its ultimate grounding of all of reality, including moral reality, in the relationality and love of the triune Godhead—provides unrivaled, compelling resources for making sense out of morality. This is what metaethics is all about. Morality points to moral realism, and moral realism points to a Christian theistic metaethics.' (p. 176)

Listen to the recent Think Biblically podcast episode on Horner and Moreland’s new book, How to Think Biblically about Morality and Ethics.


is available for purchase on Amazon and at other book retailers.