Title: "Does the Bible Presuppose Natural Law?"
Conference: Evangelical Theological Society (Southwest Regional)
Location: New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, LA

Introduction

How do we know what is moral? Consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics—the three most predominant metaethical systems—each answer this question differently depending on how they answer another question: What is morality? Once a system at least has a tentative definition of the nature of morality, it can take a stab at explaining how we learn morality. Virtue ethicists, like myself, have classically given the response that a person learns virtue through imitating virtuous people. If someone would like to cultivate patience, that person should observe and mimic patient people. Already, we have an issue. When a person tries to become virtuous that person must first recognize the virtue in other people before imitating them. This implies that the person already knows something of virtue. What is the nature of that knowledge? When attempting to glean ethical data from the Bible, one does well to ask whether it presupposes innate moral knowledge and natural law.