J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Talbott School of Theology in California, has just published a new book, The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning. (More on the book at the end of this post).
Hewitt's interview with J. P. Moreland centers mainly on evangelicals and the left-leaning direction of current politics.
Moreland: ... I have a lot of concerns as an Evangelical about the Obama presidency precisely because I’m a Christian Evangelical.
HH: What kind of concerns?
JPM: Well, the first, as a Christian, the first thing that I see can be understood by the difference between negative and positive rights. A negative right is a right for me to be protected from harm if I try to get something for myself. A positive right would be my right to have something provided for me. If health care is a negative right, then the state has an obligation to keep people from
preventing me from getting health care and discriminating against me. If health care’s a positive right, then the state has an obligation to provide it for me. As I read the New Testament, the government’s responsibility, and by the way, I think the Old Testament prophets say this, too, is I read the prophets in the New Testament, the government’s job is to protect negative rights, not to provide positive rights. So as a Christian, I believe in a minimal government. It’s not the government’s job to be providing the health care benefits for people. So I will be looking to see if Obama does things to minimize the role of government in culture, and to provide for as much human freedom as possible. . .
Moreland: The key to an Evangelical political involvement is what is called natural moral law. Natural moral law is the belief that there is objective morality that can be known by all people from Creation, without the Bible. Natural moral law teaches that there is a right and wrong in the Created world, that can be known by people, without having to turn to the Bible. This is important because the Evangelical does not want to place the state under Scripture. That would be to create a theocracy, and that has never been a good idea. What we want is we want to place the state under the natural moral law. Therefore, if an Evangelical is going to be for traditional marriage, and it’s going to be against gay marriage, it cannot use Scripture to argue that case in the public square. It can be preached from the pulpit that this is a Biblical view, but when it comes to political engagement, it is not our attempt to place the state under the Bible, but to place it under the natural moral law. So it would follow, then, that Christians need to learn how to provide independent arguments for traditional marriage that do not require premises from the Scriptures.
On his new book, The God Question: An Invitation to a Life of Meaning, Moreland explains its purpose:
The God Question is primarily a book that I wrote to be used as a handout to an unbeliever who is skeptical about Christianity or God’s existence, thinks God’s Santa Claus, but would be willing to read something. And what I try to do is I try to express the idea in here that it is extremely rational to believe there is a God, and that Christianity is really true. And then I close the book with five chapters on now that I’m convinced that there may very well be a God, and that Jesus Christ may be His Son, how can I enlist as Jesus follower without becoming religious. And so it’s largely a book that’s addressed to that cynic or that critical uncle that shows up at Thanksgiving and has skeptical problems with religion, but would be willing to read something.
I might add that I once heard J. P. Moreland lecture at a Veritas Forum on a university campus some years ago, and he did an absolutely magnificent job. I have profited from several of his books, including Love God With All of Your Mind: The Place of Reason in the Life of the Soul.