First Letter to the Editor
A response to
I found Kim McCall’s
recent article “What is Moral Obligations in Mormon Theology?”
(November-December, 1981) to be very interesting, but ultimately
unsatisfying. The final result is a
type of antinomianism in which righteousness is derived solely from the
intention to act morally. In the
process, McCall has overlooked the most obvious resolution of the dilemma and
has raised some interesting questions about the distinctive Mormon doctrine of
God.
It would seem to me
that the most obvious way of deriving moral obligation within the confines of
the Mormon world-view would begin with McCall’s assertion that “right and wrong
are essentially independent of divine will or decree. . . .” It is entirely possible, then, to hold that
right and wrong are simply self-existent, eternal realities. Furthermore, the very existence of right and
wrong imply moral obligation. If right
and wrong do not carry moral obligation with them, then they are meaningless
terms. This point of view, as well as
McCall’s, raises interesting questions about the nature of God. If we are ontologically independent of God,
then God did not create us. If right
and wrong are self-existent and do not derive from God, God is not the source
of moral obligations. If the elements
were not created by God, then God is not the ground of existence. In what sense, then, is God really God?
In making it
possible for us to be like God and coequal with God, Mormon thought has
deprived God of that which makes him worthy of our worship.
God is God in name
only. In essence, he has become nothing
more than Superman. Just as in secular
thought, existence and morality have no divine ground. It is a matter of happenstance that we exist
as moral beings.
More conventional
theists, such as myself, cannot worship a God who is simply a reflection of the
limitations found in human experience.
Right and wrong have their ground in God. To affirm this does not imply, as McCall holds, that God’s
judgments are inherently capricious.
Rather, such judgments are based on God’s love for his creation and on
his trustworthiness. Our moral
obligation, then, derives from God’s desire that we act in ways which are
consistent with the purposes he had in creating us. We are obligated because God is God, and we are not.
A. Bruce Lindgren
RLDS, Independence
Missouri
World Headquarters