People oftentimes make the case that the God of the Bible, Yahweh, doesn’t act according to His own moral principles.  And I suppose that from an atheist’s perspective, in which Yahweh is actually a figment of the Jewish imagination, they would be correct: in two specific circumstances, one concerning the genocide of the Canaanites, and the other a pardoning of an adultress, He does seem to contradict His laws.  But ironically, this very argument against the Jewish God’s lawful nature further proves His existence.

For instance, in [1] Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche made the case that classical Judeo-Christian morality, the fixed principles of a moral system, were too inflexible to provide the human race with any meaningful system of behavior, although it is a system which is intended to engineer the optimal function of humanity.  It is for this reason he labeled the man who would rise above traditional morality [2] The Ubermensch, the champion of humanity who deals justice and progress according only to a combination between rationality and circumstance.  In this sense, Nietzsche correctly understood that fixed law itself was not enough to make humans reach their optimal state.  They would need an intelligent utilitarian will, an executive power which transcends moral law and seeks the most highly beneficial outcome in circumstances which law could not properly address.

With this in mind, the people who claim God acts as a moral relativist have forgotten something very important about law.  Law prescribes the best general principles of behavior, due to limited human knowledge about behavioral outcome.  But laws are not always the most functional principles for every circumstance: they sometimes just prescribe enough restriction to optimize liberty, while harnessing human tendencies toward evil.

For example, some actions like adultery are always wrong, no matter the circumstance.  But in the case of prohibiting murder, we as humans recognize a need to prohibit the taking of human life outside an act of self defense or legitimate justice, despite a common understanding that society would be better off without [3] certain dangerous, free-roaming criminals.  But if we were to legitimize the extra-legal killing of potential criminal threats, would anyone be safe?  In this particular circumstance, although restraining certain dangerous criminals with force–or killing them–may very well benefit society, the individual citizen is impaired from doing so under the premise that killing can only safely take place under the procedure of law, or in self-defense.

As such, it is fair to say that while proper law requires a general maximization of benefit, and minimization of harm (something which can only be objectively weighed not by limited human knowledge and rationality, but by God Himself), these oftentimes general principles do not provide the maximum benefit in specific circumstances.  It is for this very reason, the oftentimes incalculable weighing of general versus specific benefit, that there exists no higher governmental and moral principles than the ones prescribed by God in the Pentateuch, as God Himself has weighed the moral value, the costs, and the benefits of such laws.  To suggest otherwise would be nothing less than arrogance, a declaration that in our human wisdom, we can draft better social principles and in effect be more loving than our own engineer.

But assuming a being could understand the eternal ramifications of behavior, His behavior could adopt more utilitarian principles instead of fixed reactions to fixed circumstances.  In effect, assuming His character was geared toward the maximum benefit of His creation, His Law would be “living” instead of fixed, a perpetual execution of goodwill which would occasionally appear arbitrary to the finite mind, but would in reality possess total righteousness, sometimes violating the wording of the Law, but never the purpose.  So non-believers may call God’s behavior relativistic, but it is far from moral relativism: He operates only to the maximum benefit of mankind, according to their benefit and His good pleaure, and His behavior is simply beyond the understanding of common law in that it takes into account everything which human beings cannot.

But in contrast, the human needs law because he is simply neither knowledgeable nor moral enough to handle total executive power.  For this very reason, when God will not provide clear instructions about extra-legal moral procedures, humans are morally inclined to form expressedly-inflexible social contracts in the interest of restricting men, as anything but legal rigidity would allow for chaos and totalitarianism.

And this brings me to my next point.  Usually, when atheists or opponents of Divine Law propose that it is ineffective and obsolete, they usually draw attention to two particular circumstances in which God “violates” His own code.  First, in the killing of peoples who had little-to-no contact with the people of Israel (the Canaanites), and therefore according to human standards deserved no declaration of war; and second, by abandoning His own law against adultery.

The first circumstance is one which has been dealt a good bit of attention in my writings and the [4] works of others, and so I will not give it much attention here. The fact of the matter is, the [5] Canaanites engaged in human sacrifices, all forms of sexual perversion, and a general standard of lawlessness, and God decided that the land would be better used to usher in the Kingdom of God, through the [6] miraculous preservation of the Jewish people, the [7] fulfillment of highly-improbable prophecy to confirm the Bible’s divine authorship, and the [8] birth of Jesus Christ.  Between the atrocities of the Canaanites and the worldwide [9] benefit of the Law and the Gospel, God determined that an establishment of Israel in Canaanite territory (territory, which I must remind the reader, is [10] God’s to give and take) was entirely moral, and that these most beneficial happenings could not take place–at least not free of intolerable suffering–with Canaanite survivors.

But the second circumstance, in which [11] Jesus obstructs the execution of an adultress–an execution [12] He personally demanded–, is one which receives almost universal praise amongst the left, and is most threatening to Christian legal standards.  In this particular case, it could be argued that Jesus, by admitting to the woman’s crime yet letting her escape punishment, issued a universal declaration of Divine Law’s defunct nature, that the Law of Grace was to rule the human from this point forward, and that humans were free to adopt whatever law they saw fit.

But in the admittance of Christ’s forgiveness, most forget that Jesus Christ possesses characteristics which we do not, characteristics which place Him above the Law, should He see fit to act in such a way.   The first overlooked characteristic is that God alone knows the woman’s heart, and how forgiveness will impact her.  The second is that He alone was to receive that woman’s penalty by dying for her on the cross, making Him alone worthy to forgive her from legal penalty.  And third, that He alone understood the direct and indirect ramifications of allowing an adultress to go free.

Yet while it may be argued that as disciples of Christ, we have an obligation to follow in His footsteps, and thus to permit adultery, there are certain aspects in which we must never attempt equality out of respect for His deity.  The first, that we do not consider sins to be solely against us as He does; the second, that we do not require others to worship us as He does; and the third, that we do not assume equality of knowledge and possession of executive goodness as He does, the two requirements which would place us beyond the constraints of express law.  If we can assume these restrictions of discipleship [13] to be moral, then reason insists we remain under the authority of the Law, although not suffering its eternal penalty.

With this in mind, assuming that this law served a purpose–that being, to discourage adultery under the strongest of prohibitory measures, and to promote the strong nuclear family–we can also assume that Jesus Christ knows who will and will not be affected most poorly by such a decision of clemency.  In this particular case, it is clear He understood well that freeing the woman would be more beneficial than executing her, and thus in the interest of goodwill, He allowed her to go.  But we cannot personally gauge such a situation, being of limited knowledge, and thus are incapable of taking his action as a universal declaration of adultery’s legality.  As of this day, we still neither know why He determined she should go free, nor what ramifications her liberty had upon her neighbors. We simply know that both His reasons are good, and that acts of physical adultery are heinous enough for mortals to prohibit with the force of law, or He would have commanded us otherwise.

I would like to make one final comment before I finish.  Those who claim The Law has no relevance in modern society, as it has been “thoroughly replaced” by grace, are rarely interested in abandoning law altogether.  I believe that this highlights a most important attitude, that these people firmly believe that humanity is to be its own master, that God’s ideas about law have no bearing upon a truly free mind, and that there exists no real objective “goodness” in law.  If this is the case, then I say there’s no point in God having declared His Law at all, or that people need forgiveness because they break it.  After all, why do others ask forgiveness of God, if not for the fact that they’ve deviated from His nature of goodwill, as partially revealed through the very procedure of Divine Law?  And furthermore, if there is no objective goodness in law, then why do these people oppose Divine Law on moral grounds?

In conclusion, the contrast between Man’s ignorance and God’s omniscience oftentimes gives the impression that we also may act without law.  But the truth is that God is not acting without law: He is simply applying his perfect knowledge with executive power, a marriage of justice and action for which we would do well to thank Him.  After all, it’s better to have a God who acts when He should, than a God who sits on the sidelines waiting for human approval.  Don’t you think?