Immanuel Kant, though a rather bright fellow, built an imaginary wall. He taught that there are two worlds, the noumenal and the phenomenal. The latter was that world which could be experienced by our senses, what we see, hear, taste, touch and smell. The former was where the actual thing-in-itself dwelt. God Himself, being spirit, resides exclusively in the noumenal realm, since the wall between the two worlds is unable to be scaled. According to Kant, you can’t get from the phenomenal world to the noumenal. Paul, inspired by the far brighter, indeed omniscient Holy Spirit, disagrees, arguing in Romans 1 that we know the unseen God by the things we see. But, being sinners, we suppress that truth in unrighteousness.
The unbelief of the unbeliever, according to Paul, flows out of their own belief. That is, knowing they stand guilty before a holy God, and not being too copacetic about so knowing, they posit a universe with no god, and more important still, no holiness, no guilt, no law that they fail to measure up to. Trouble is, because they yet bear the image of God they are utterly unable to leave law behind. They deny the existence of a transcendent law-giver, and a transcendent law, but can’t keep themselves from scolding the rest of us. A naturalistic, or phenomenal world, is one in which we may be able to learn a thing or two about what is. But it is impossible to move from is to ought. Nothing of what is can tell us what ought to be.
Which doesn’t stop them from trying. Those of us who affirm a transcendent law-giver are regularly pilloried for being judgmental, insensitive, hypocritical, haters. Suppose that is precisely what we are. Why, I can’t help but wonder, do these folks think we ought to change? I mean, it is what it is. They may privilege latitudinarianism, sensitivity, consistency and love, but who died and made them the royal court? Abolish the law that makes homosexuality, abortion, fornication and drunkenness sin, and you have no law left to make insensitivity a sin. If there is no law you can’t even complain if those of us who believe there is a law impose it on you with all the swagger and gentility of the Nazis. Well, you can complain, but it places not the least obligation on us to stop doing so. They’re just appealing to a law they deny exists.
I regularly challenge my students this way- when one of your friends comes around with their moral relativism, their denial of a transcendent standard of right and wrong, see how long it takes for them to affirm such a standard. How soon will they be telling someone what ought to be done, hating on some person or behavior? They can’t help themselves. Even the motive to persuade us that they are correct is grounded in an ought rather than an is- that we ought to believe what’s true.
Here though is one final ought. I’ve written this not so we can laugh at the folly of unbelievers. Rather my desire is that we would have pity on them, stuck in their own is-ness. We ought not to laugh, but to seek to help these image bearers to see that they and their worldview fell off a great wall, and that only the King’s Man can put them back together again.
