Evaluating Non-Biblical Moral Frameworks from a Biblical Perspective

A central claim of Christianity is that the Holy Bible contains God’s revealed moral law — universal, objective, and authoritative truths about ethics and human conduct that apply to all people across all times and cultures. This view aligns with the moral universalist position that there are absolute ethical standards that hold true regardless of subjective perspectives or cultural context.

However, this position faces a significant challenge from the observable reality of cultural variation in moral norms and social practices across different societies. For instance, consider the multitude of religions worldwide that claim to be the sole objective truth, or ponder the existence of pre-biblical societies — how can they be judged morally by the Bible’s teachings if those teachings were not explicitly revealed to them?

According to moral relativists, moral truths and obligations are constructed and defined within the specific cultural context of a society. They arise from the ethical beliefs, value systems and normative practices that society shapes and internalizes as morally binding for itself. From this perspective, attempts to judge a culture’s morality by an external ethical code like biblical scripture that the culture outright rejects as binding seems to lack justification. Moral relativists argue that moral facts and duties are relative to each societal framing, not universal and imposed from the outside.

Despite this challenge, this paper will argue that cultural variation in moral norms and practices does not undermine the universal authority and objectivity of the Bible’s moral teachings. I will contend that while human fallibility and subjective cultural lenses inevitably color interpretations, the common human ability across societies to discern right from wrong via moral sentiments points to an inherent ethical capacity. This innate moral faculty suggests there may be an underlying objective ethical foundation that the Bible’s teachings are tapping into, allowing the scriptures themselves to still be viewed as the objective source of divine moral truth, despite varying cultural interpretations.

Establishing a Universal Moral Framework

The apostle Paul states in one of his epistles that “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). To address the question of cultural moral variations, we must first examine the foundations for a universal ethical framework transcending any single culture or religion. While the Bible serves as the primary source of divine moral revelation for Christianity, a broader look at core theological concepts points to ethics grounded in the very nature of rational, conscious beings.

In pre-biblical societies without access to scripture, there seemed to exist an innate sense of right and wrong — an awareness that certain actions are permissible and others not. This moral consciousness arises not from an external set of rules, but as a consequence of being rational agents with the capacity to make free choices.

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

I John 4:8

The foundation of God's government is love. Nature and the Bible both tell us of God’s love. Our Father in heaven gives us life, wisdom, and joy. Consider the wonderful and beautiful things of nature. Think of the many ways they provide for the needs and happiness of all living creatures. The sunshine and rain tell of the Creator’s love; the hills, seas, and plains speak of Him. He supplies the daily needs of every creature.

The eyes of all look expectantly to You, And You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand And satisfy the desire of every living thing.

Psalms 145:15–16

“God is love” is shown by every opening flower and blade of grass. Lovely birds singing their happy songs tell us of God’s tender care. The bright flowers that sweeten the air and the tall green trees of the forest remind us that He wants to make His children happy. God created humanity perfectly holy and happy. The earth was beautiful as it came from the Creator’s hand. Nothing was spoiled or dying.

The Bible shows us God’s character. God Himself has told us of His everlasting love and pity. When Moses prayed, “Show me thy glory,” the Lord answered, “I will make all my goodness pass before thee.” For God’s goodness is His glory. When the Lord passed before Moses, He said,

I the Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in faithfulness and truth; who keeps faithfulness for thousands, who forgives wrongdoing, violation of His Law, and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished.

Exodus 34:6–7

But genuine love demands the ability to choose to not love. And free will entails risk. God doesn’t want to love robots; he wants to love free beings with the capacity to genuinely reciprocate and reflect His love. Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s law — his law of Love — and disobedience brought sadness and death.

Ultimately, it is this universal human capacity for love that Paul points to as evidence of an innate moral law “written on the heart”. Even those without scripture demonstrate an intuitive grasp of fundamental virtue and vices.

‘When the Gentiles (non-Jews) sin, they will be destroyed, even though they never had God’s written law. And the Jews, who do have God’s law, will be judged by that law when they fail to obey it. Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right. For merely listening to the law doesn’t make us right with God. It is obeying the law that makes us right in his sight. And this is the message I proclaim — that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life. ‘

Romans 2:12–16

So, in addition to the Bible’s direct moral teachings, Christianity affirms that all rational beings intrinsically operate under universal moral norms by virtue of our very nature as conscious, free-willed agents made in the image of God with the capacity to love. A truly perfect being must possess the ability to freely choose right from wrong and consistently do good — the essence of moral perfection.

This universal ethical framework governs not just biblical cultures, but all societies composed of morally conscious persons granted the ability to love. It grounds an objective moral reality that all people can potentially tap into, regardless of their exposure to any specific moral doctrine or scripture. Given this backdrop, we can turn to examining pre-biblical societies like the Canaanites who did not receive direct divine moral revelation. Though they lacked the Bible’s teachings, Christianity holds that as rational agents, they still bore moral responsibility based on the ethical truths accessible through the proper use of their God-given faculties. Moreover, biblical narratives depict God ultimately judging all peoples based on universal standards of justice, mercy, and righteousness, implying the existence of an objective ethical foundation that even those without scripture can be held accountable to. God will “repay each one according to their works.”

Even amid the diversity of moral codes and cultural value systems, there appears to be some degree of convergence around certain core ethical principles across human societies. For instance, most cultures have some sense of the impermissibility of murder, lying, stealing, and other acts that violate the well-being of others. This convergence toward shared moral values suggests there may be universal ethical truths that different peoples intuitively grasp despite varying interpretations and applications.

Ultimately, the diversity of cultural beliefs does not undermine the universality of the Bible’s moral teachings because those teachings are grounded in an objective ethical framework inherent to all rational, free-willed beings. Scripture simply expresses and articulates more clearly the moral truths our very nature as God’s image-bearers grants us awareness of. This establishes a sturdy foundation to incorporate the Bible’s moral specifics while accounting for the moral variations arising from imperfect human understanding and applying those truths across different cultural contexts.

The Issue of Biblical Interpretations

Moral disagreement doesn’t even end within societies historically shaped by Christianity. As they can exhibit profound moral divergences on numerous key ethical issues. For example, there are varying opinions on how to biblically address social justice issues, with some advocating for active involvement and others cautioning against aligning the church too closely with secular movements. The role of women in church leadership and the home is another subject debate. Even beliefs about sexuality, including same-sex relationships and gender identity, are debated within Christianity.

This diversity seems sharply in tension with the biblical depiction of God’s moral instructions as universally applicable and binding for all people in all places. The general reasoning posed by this objection can be summarized as follows:

If the Bible contains universal, authoritative moral laws from God, it should produce general uniformity in core moral norms and practices across sincere Christian cultures.

There exists radical diversity in foundational moral norms and social practices exhibited by historically Chirstian cultures, despite all supposedly deriving guidance from the same biblical scriptures.

The magnitude of this ethical variation across cultures seems unexplainable if the Bible conveyed a coherent system of universal divine commands.

Therefore, the morality contained in the Bible cannot be genuinely universal and authoritative for all people. Prevailing cultural values appear to shape Chirstian moral norms substantively than consistent biblical exegesis.

While the objection of cultural moral variation appears weighty, it rests on an oversimplified view of how divine moral truths become embodied across cultures.

The apostle Paul's writings provide a fascinating case study on navigating universal moral truths amid cultural pluralism. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul addresses a specific ethical dilemma facing the early church—whether it was permissible for Christians to eat food that had been sacrificed to pagan idols.

The context was that in Greek culture, a common practice was to sacrifice meat to idols before selling or eating it. For new converts from this pagan tradition, eating such sacrificed food carried immense spiritual baggage and felt tantamount to idolatry. However, other believers from more cosmopolitan backgrounds saw the idol rituals as ultimately meaningless superstitions now that they understood the one true God.

Paul engages this conflict by first affirming an objective spiritual reality — “we know that an idol is not really a god and that there is only one God” (1 Cor 8:4). He dismisses the pagan idols as non-entities, mere “so-called gods” without true divine status (8:5). And yet, Paul recognizes that “not all believers know this” deeper truth (8:7). Some new converts still psychologically associated idol food with idolatrous pagan rites that violated their conscience.

This leads Paul to instruct the more “enlightened” believers to be mindful of how exercising their spiritual freedom could negatively impact those still overcoming superstitious pagan baggage. As he writes, “you must be careful so that your freedom does not cause others with a weaker conscience to stumble…for if they violate their conscience by eating food that has been offered to an idol, you are sinning against Christ” (8:9,12).

Paul’s guidance balances the objective reality that idols are false gods, with the subjective limitations of human moral development that require sensitivity. His stance implies a both/and position — universal spiritual truths coexisting with differing individual/cultural perspectives on how to properly apply and interpret those truths.

On one level, Paul upholds an objective moral fact — idols are man-made fictions, so eating food sacrificed to them is inherently permissible. And yet, he validates the struggle of those still culturally conditioned to associate such food with idolatrous sin based on their imperfect subjective understanding. While they remain objectively mistaken about the nature of idols, Paul insists their sincerely reformed consciences be accommodated until their moral development can progress.

The apostle recognizes the existence of overarching spiritual and moral absolutes that hold universal authority. However, he makes space for acceptable variations in how those objective truths get specifically embodied and applied across different cultural contexts and individual levels of ethical maturity.

What remains constant is the underlying reality of the moral facts and duties. But human fallibility in accessing perfect moral knowledge means some degree of pluralism in how those ethical absolutes get understood and lived out, despite an ultimate convergence around core values like holiness, love for God, and protecting the spiritual growth of others.

Paul’s pastoral guidance provides a model for upholding the universality of moral truth revealed in scripture, while accounting for the cultural variations and inevitable human limitations in interpreting and applying those truths with precise uniformity across contexts.

Although interpretations inevitably involve human fallibility, the Bible can still be upheld as an objective, universal moral authority. A key distinction must be made between the inherent universal truth and authority of God’s moral commands in scripture, and the unavoidably imperfect human processes of interpreting and living out those commands across diverse contexts.

Moreover, while interpretive pluralism exists, the Bible communicates clear, transcendent moral teachings that rise above any single cultural context. These include the inviolable dignity of human life, sexual ethics, prohibitions against theft, murder, exploitation of the vulnerable, and more. From the biblical perspective, genuine knowledge of these objective moral standards remains available despite cultural variations in how they are perceived and applied.

Additionally, Christian theology provides further conceptual resources to preserve scriptural moral authority amid cultural diversity. The doctrine of sin acknowledges the universal impairment of human moral judgment. And the belief in the Spirit’s continuing work of moral sanctification across cultures helps explain persistent ethical blind spots and disagreements — even as humanity retains access to divine moral revelation.

Ultimately then, in cases like the multitude of Christian denominations, the situation is not that God has revealed fundamentally different moral truths to different people. Rather, it is that people interpret differently the singular moral truths God has revealed in Scripture, due to the inescapable limitations and cultural lenses of human understanding. The existence of interpretive diversity reveals the constraints of the human condition, not a lack of objective moral reality.

Final Remarks

In summary, this paper has argued that the existence of cultural moral variation across societies not historically shaped by Christianity, and even within Christian societies, does not negate the biblical claim to containing universal, objective moral truths from God.

First, we affirmed the intrinsic universal authority and objectivity of the moral pronouncements of a perfectly good, omniscient divine being as the eternal source and ground of ethical reality. Second, we distinguished between the inherent universal truth of these scriptural moral claims, and the limited, fallen human processes of hermeneutically grasping, culturally embodying, and behaviorally living out those truths across diverse contexts. Third, we saw how the Bible still successfully communicates core ethical norms and virtues that transcend cultural relativism.

By upholding scriptural moral objectivity while acknowledging human interpretive limitations creating pluralism, Christianity can consistently embrace both moral universalism and the reality of ethical diversity. Core biblical virtues and prohibitions transcend relativism, while allowing contextual variations in embodiment.

​​Bibliography

​​Foundation, The Lockman. 2020. Holy Bible, New American Standard. La Habra: The Lockman Foundation.

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