Q&A: God and Morality
God and Morality
Question
Hello Rabbi,
1. I’m trying to understand what God’s role is with respect to morality. Is He the factor that determines the laws of morality (which makes certain acts objectively moral without falling into moral relativism), or is He the one who gives morality its binding force (which is what obligates me to listen to the moral command)? Or is He both?
2. In addition, if God is the one who determines morality, and not only the one who gives it binding force, what do we do in light of the fact that there are countless moral dilemmas in which we do not have the “divine information” about what is moral, and therefore how one ought to act? So even if God is the legislator of morality, in practice that carries no real weight, because we do not know this law.
Answer
See columns 456–457. Even if He is the legislator, those laws were still not written down anywhere. We understand them through our conscience. If there is a dispute, there are different arguments by which to decide, and there are rules for cases of doubt. Just like in Jewish law (even though there, there are commandments and details that are ostensibly complete).