I would like to thank Mr. Allen for his introduction, the committee for offering me this opportunity to speak at the conference and for the topic as they have suggested and for their flexibility in allowing me to take the first of the talks. Moral relativism can seem a bit of an odd topic, you might think, in some ways. What's that going to do with me? Sounds a bit academic. Is it going to be sort of one that would fit better for a school in theology in Larbert, perhaps, rather than an open conference such as, well, hopefully not. I want to give you just some of the sort of problems in our society that are very much real issues, and that spring from a position of moral relativism, which we'll come to. Elective abortion, very much a real problem. Acceptance of homosexuality, transgenderism, repeal of the blasphemy laws, promotion of multi-faith culture. You'll notice even not that long ago, I think, there was uproar when a party political leader suggested that not all cultures are equally valid. This was seen to be radical and controversial, even though there are some cultures that actively promote violence, that degrade women, that deny education to girls, that convulse with the chaos of coup d'etat after coup d'etat, and yet we're meant to accept that all cultures are equally valid. We need to distinguish the difference between those who are moral relativists and those who simply have the wrong morality. They might not be moral relativists at all. They might be absolute in their view of morality, but it's the wrong one. Those who advocate for a multi-faith sort of culture where every religion is treated equally, they're moral relativists. But many of those within these multiple faiths are not moral relativists. They hold that their religion is true, that their religion is best, that their morality, therefore, is the one that ought to be followed, even though it is unbiblical. And so throughout this address, I'm going to be arguing for moral absolutism, But in that I absolutely only mean Christian biblical morality. That and that alone is true morality. Let's consider first of all then ways in which moral relativism has invaded culture. We begin with something like a survey of where we're at. I want to check we understand the issues that we are facing and the impact it is having devastatingly upon our culture and society. Imagine yourself in a conversation. You're having a disagreement with someone else over a question of morality. You are arguing, and we'll use perhaps generic terms, but you're arguing with a man called Muhammad. And there's also in the conversation comes into it a lady who's called, we'll call her Anne. Muhammad objects strongly to Christian doctrine. and the influence of the Bible that there still lingers over aspects of British culture. That can be seen in the coronation of a new monarch, for example, and the versions, at least, and vestiges of his establishment of Christian religion in both Scotland and England. And you argue with Mohammed, you tell him the Bible is what is true. Its influence is vital for the blessing of God on the nation. That far from removing it further, the nation ought to be restoring its influence and returning to the acceptance of its authority. And Anne at this point sort of sidles into the conversation, having overheard what's going on, and she goes to church as well. Doesn't go to your church, but she goes to church and she knows a bit of our Bible. She doesn't really like the kind of person she is, doesn't like arguing, likes to keep quiet more, but she feels if everyone could just get along and everyone would do their own thing, then the whole society would be a better place. Well, in that sort of discussion, it's Anne who has a fundamentally different view of the world than yourself and Mohammed. Anne believes there are different versions of truth out there. She's happy with her, but she wouldn't want to offend Muhammad or anyone else who didn't believe what she believes. Muhammad, on the other hand, accepts that there is only one truth. And the idea of relative truth, relative morality, he accepts that's irrational, that's nonsensical. And so the way of thinking between yourself and Muhammad, even though you fundamentally disagree, It has an aspect of overlap. This sort of thing comes up all the time. This assumption that we are to accept various versions of morality out there, it is increasingly ingrained into the education system. You'll hear it couched in careful language. We must respect others. We want to be a multicultural society. We have to see things even from other people's point of view. But this viewpoint carefully inculcates that dogma of relativism into the thought processes of everyone so that they come to imagine that everyone's viewpoint is equally valid. omit the obvious problems and the irrationality of that position. And so you end up with a culture that's extremely fluid and where we look, therefore, to majority views to give us norms for society. And the rules and principles of democracy become some sort of sacrosanct thing more than over morality itself. I must all accept the outcomes of the majority view without question. And you see, many today have been taught that whilst they can hold their own view, that's it. It's just their own view. It's no more valid than anyone else's view. And so we get folk who agree with us about an issue. Maybe they are personally against abortion. They wouldn't, however, in countenance themselves, imagine having an abortion. But they also somehow got contorted and twisted into the view that whilst they're personally opposed to it, it's really for everyone to make up their own minds. They haven't got any business imposing their morality on someone else. They can't interfere and tell others what they should do in their own lives. And so you can see that even where people might not want to support abortion personally, yet they will be passionately defensive of the supposed right of others to access it when they feel it's right for them. And you get this bizarre hopping between versions of morality. And you can see the outcome. moral chaos, which when there is no norm in society to which men and women and young people can depend and appeal and rely, then in effect nearly any action can be justified depending on a whole range of cultural and familial and societal influences and views. So it would be wrong in our country to mutilate young girls, but it's not maybe wrong in certain African tribes. It would be wrong to use an infamous racial slur in the West, now known just as the N-word, unless you yourself are black, in which case you can use it freely and offensively as much as you like. You see, moral relativism utterly fails to provide any kind of solution Moral relativism expects people to agree to disagree. And so in a moral relativist's world, you can have two contrary moralities existing side by side, but when they get so close as to sort of touch or interact, well then these great big icebergs of morality magically are meant to dissolve into dust. And the problem is, of course, exactly that point, because the place where these moralities dissolve by definition becomes a place of no morality. And an amoral vacuum arises where no morality can be asserted and moral chaos follows. And often those maintaining a moral absolute, they are considered strident, unkind, lacking charity, lacking compassion, a bit nasty, hate-filled, bigoted, But the truth is that without moral clarity, people are damaged. Character is warped, even sometimes permanently, and society becomes dysfunctional, and families break apart. And that's not kind, and that's not loving, and that's not good. One of the reasons for the explosion of marital breakdowns over the last five, six, seven decades is the insane belief A husband and wife can form a stable unit, a family unit, on the basis of, well, they both like climbing hills. They both like kayaking. They both like chess. They have shared interests. They'll get together. They'll meet up. They have perhaps a physical attraction. They'll form a bond. But if they fundamentally disagree about morality, how long can they live together? How can a wife live with a husband who believes it's quite acceptable for him to cheat on his wife? In his moral code, as a product of evolution, he's not doing anything wrong. How can that marriage last? What if the wife believes it's permissible for her to accumulate vast debt, to squander all her assets, to spend and spend, to max out every possible credit card she can get on the basis that, well, we might not be here tomorrow, I can spend it what I like. Oblivious to the chaos she causes. Oblivious to those people who deserve to be paid for services rendered, which she doesn't pay. Businesses go out of existence because of debts that they cannot recoup. and the husband ends up in massive debt too. How long can that last? Friends, if moral relativism leads to chaos, if you just break it down to a single marriage, two people trying to get along together, and they can't because they are in morally different frameworks. And if you multiply that to a whole society, Is it any wonder we have the disasters that we have? It's carnage. Moral relativism has invaded our culture, and it is everywhere, and it is so subtle, and it tears cultures apart. And so the Bible tells us in Isaiah 5, woe to those who call evil good and evil and good evil. And so Paul in Romans 1 declared his own absolute commitment to the truth. And he says, I am not ashamed, in verse 16, of the gospel of Christ. But the culture, and it was the same in Paul's day, is ignorant. In our case, in rebellion against that simple moral code, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. And so the truth of God becomes changed into a lie. and unrighteousness fills itself up, and true understanding vanishes away. That's the chaos and the vacuum of a society that embraces moral relativism, and that's what's described in Romans 1. But friends, we might borrow another Bible phrase and say, we are persuaded better things, better things of you, too, here, that you don't embrace moral relativism. So we are glad to move on to our second point, which will take more time, over moral relativism and the Christian faith. I want to spend really most time on the good stuff, friends, on establishing the biblical positions that we are better equipped to cope with and reject and refute and counteract the invidious evil of relativism. Which is the Christian faith we particularly think of? Well, we'll begin with the Bible. The Bible makes claims to truth, to reality. The Bible is perfectly clear that that's what it's doing. It is not presenting itself as one of many options and a kind of a spiritual buffet for you to pick and choose or pick and mix. It is not putting itself forward even as trying to be the most persuasive option for a moral life. It simply says this is truth. All of this is truth. Here is right and wrong. Here is the only true ethic. Here is not just truth, but truth unchanging, truth unchangeable. Think of the parable of the wise and foolish builders. One builds his whole life on shifting sands. That house can only fall and does only fall. And when does it fall? It collapses particularly in the trials of life. It can maybe seem to stand in the good days when the sun shines and there's no wind. But when the trials come, when the storm comes, when the water rises, when the rain beats on that house, it falls. It's in the trials of life that vague and woolly notions of right and wrong won't do, won't support you. You can't depend on that. You cannot cling to it. It's like sand going through your fingers. It dissolves away. But the Bible speaks in Proverbs 18, 10, the name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth onto it and is safe. The believer can be born up under the great trials of life, building his house upon the rock. What is true is true. God is always God. Good is always good. Justice is justice still. These things do not suddenly shift. Nobody can pull that rug out from underneath us. The Bible holds its own at all times and in all weathers of life, we might say. The Bible and the God of the Bible imparts necessarily His own utter steadfastness to the Word that He has given to us. That's why we can depend upon it. What did God's people need to know when they were in their bondage in Egypt? They needed to know the name of their God. I am that I am. I haven't changed. My dependability and the promises given to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob can still be depended upon to this day. The unchangeable nature of the name of our God sustains all who come to shelter under it. And this absolute truth is then reflected in or encapsulated, you might say, in the moral law. And so we come secondly under this heading, The Bible, moral relativism and the Christian faith, the Bible, but the moral law. God asserts that he alone is the great determiner of right and wrong. The great judges in the book of Judges in the Bible, they are not determining truth and right. They are exercising spiritual discernment to apply the biblical standard to the circumstances they face. And even later after the judges in Solomon's day, when Solomon's fame spread far and wide as he adjudicated between the two women who were each claiming the living child as their own. Solomon exercised great wisdom, absolute, but he did not invent morality. He was relying utterly on the moral law of God. He was applying the existing laws in relation to the fifth and the sixth commandments on our father and mother. He was depending on the true relationship between a mother and child. And thou shalt not kill. It was his commitment to these absolute principles that allowed him to unlock the mystery of what seemed an impossible case, a tragic and complex case. And so the moral law of God must be held as permanently applicable to all people in all places and at all times because it is absolute truth. There is no excuse possible to recuse yourself, as it were, from being under the standard of the law of God. It doesn't matter if someone says to you, or if you yourself would choose to say, oh, I don't believe it. It's not relevant. I don't believe the Bible. It doesn't matter. If you say, I'm of a different religion, again, you're talking past the truth. You're missing the point. whether you have a different faith or not, whether you accept the Bible or not, is entirely beside the point in terms of your obligation to the moral law. And here, cries of bigotry and a whole plethora of phobias are cast at the Christian. We must hold fast to the abiding demands of the moral law of God, and to do so, it's not legalism in any way, shape, or form. Instead we see it, as we will see in fact, it is vital for the gospel and salvation that we hold the absolute standard of the moral law of God. You see what relativism does is it takes a right to determine morality, it tears it out of the hands of God and places it into the hands of people. and systems and cultures and governments who are utterly ill-equipped to replace the wisdom and the morality and the righteousness and the justice of God. What a crazy thing to do. It's like parents, and we get some crazy parents sadly, but handing over all their authority to their two-year-old. So you make it up as you go along. And that's what we've done. Can you imagine the chaos if morality was left for everyone to make up by themselves? Or if every little subculture and local culture and language upon the face of the earth, they could come to their own minds what was right and wrong. And sadly, you can't imagine it because that's what we've got. That's where we're at. We just look around. And so we see how moral relativism cannot sit with the Bible, and it cannot sit with the moral law. Well, friends, nor can it endure when we bring it, as it were, to the white heat of the incarnate Son of God. So we come here to consider this area of moral relativism in the Christian faith in relation to the Bible, moral law, and Jesus. Jesus, far from softening the claims of scriptures or rescinding in any way the demands of law, heartily endorses, reissues, and as it were, reobliges all men to the absolutes of God. He doesn't make excuses because of their culture, their circumstance, their upbringing. He nowhere allows an alternative morality or a relative morality to get a toehold. And most famously of all, perhaps we have it in John 14.6. Jesus said unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. Indeed, that was a very suitable suggested text that accompanied the communication from the committee when this lecture was first suggested. Here, the Savior is not only reiterating the claims of earlier revelation, to absolute authority and morality. He is consolidating it all around himself. He is bringing all of the absolute morality of the Word into the sharpest focus upon his own person. And Jesus then puts himself forward as the antidote to the jelly-like amoeba wobbles of those who posit multiple equally legitimate moralities and truths and indeed realities. He said, I am the reality. Here is what is true and real and right, Jesus as the only Savior of the world. And we know that the world may largely today reject the claims of Christ. But for all the arguments they put forward and all the positions they hold, what you will have noticed is that they cannot gainsay them. They cannot counteract them, they cannot disprove them, they cannot work so fully against them. There is all the difference in the world between opposing something, and many oppose the claims of Christ, and being able to demonstrate that they are false. Because the one thing you cannot ever do is demonstrate that the truth is false. It's impossible. You cannot do it. And Jesus is the truth. The truth, not just truth, but the truth. He without whom there would be no truth. Without whom there could be no truth. Error of every kind then, you notice founders upon the person and work of Christ. That's why all the cults are all defined because they've all had disasters upon the person and work of Christ. And moral relativism is no exception. We bring it to Christ for its most keenly observed failures. Isaiah 60 verse 1, That's where we see things most clearly. Bring it to the light, or the darkness may be exposed. 1 Corinthians 4, 5, Therefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. And then shall every man have praise of God. Another evidence of Christ as the incarnation of absolute morality comes from the words of the Lord in Matthew 5, 17. Think not, I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. So then friends, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, is all the remedy we need to the plague of moral relativism that is upon us. We may have full confidence in him. I want to come to our third main heading, moral relativism and salvation. Now we could have put this as it were under the previous category as well, moral relativism and the Christian faith, but to bring it out particularly into focus, moral relativism and salvation. Consider next the connection between moral relativism and the whole endeavor of salvation. where morality is defined not by God, but by mere men and variously defined by mere men, where you are left to judge your own life and your own actions and your own thoughts, and I am left to judge mine. Well, provided we can vindicate ourselves to the satisfaction of our own consciences, we can pretend that all is well. That position is utterly antithetical to salvation. Once you deny the moral law, you deny sin. Sin is any want of conformity unto a transgression of the law of God, not just any old law mind, not just some arbitrarily imagined morality, the law of God. What was the doleful refrain of the judges? Every man did that which was right in his own eyes. That's the problem right there. In that context where every man did what was right in his own eyes, what did God do? He lead them to judge themselves by their own standards of right and wrong. No, he sent them judges. to save them from their enemies, yes, but especially to take them back to true judgment, to the laws of God as their standards, and therefore to bring them again to the salvation of God. Incidentally, the book of Judges all by itself would prove sufficiently that moral relativism is not some modern day innovation. It's been around for thousands of years. If, in fact, sin is not against an objective standard, then sin cannot be against God alone. And David didn't know what he was talking about in the 51st Psalm, "'Against thee the only have I sinned, and thy sight done this ill.'" Do you see the links? If you have no single moral standard universally applicable, Well, no one can hold you accountable for your actions. No one can judge you righteously by the plumb line of a moral standard of Scripture. If there is no such standard by which we can be judged, but while we can make up our own morality, then we cannot really sin. At least not in any biblical sense. As such, we cannot be sinners. And if we're not sinners, what need have we of a Savior? What purpose the proclamation of the gospel? And if that were true, nor can we be judged by God. We cannot be held accountable to His morality, nor can we be judged by His law. As such, we have no need of being saved by His Son. Well, as the Bible tells us in 1 Timothy 1.15, this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. And then the application of it is not lost on the apostle of whom I am chief. He doesn't say, but I'm not sure about this part. I'll make up my own decisions on these things. He puts himself under the authority of the law. And so Christ says in Luke 19.10, for the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost. Not only our Bibles and our Savior, but indeed salvation too. All these things demand that there must be absolute truth. All these things bear witness to the fact that there is a moral standard. It is this stark, it is this simple. Unless there is absolute biblical morality, salvation becomes an impossibility. And Jesus is no more savior than you or I. And we are of all men most miserable and we're wasting our time. It is that dangerous to the whole enterprise of the gospel. Bless God then. Bless him that the whole of the Christian faith proceeds on the same foundation. There is such a thing as truth. There is such a thing as righteousness. This is what we need. This is what we have lost. Our original righteousness. And this is what the Savior alone can restore, because he is the way, the truth, and the life. Now, our difficulty is dealing with the world as it is now, where this acceptance of the moral law of God is out the window. It's really virtually gone from society. How do we interact? We need to be wise as serpents. When they are so indoctrinated into a false system, into this wicked philosophy, they are almost inoculated against truth. And so when we warn them about sin, their sin, it has next to no effect. When we speak to them of God's law and judgment to come, they look as if we're crazy. and we are the more readily sidelined and ignored. And that takes us, therefore, to our fourth and our final point, which is moral relativism and the church. What do we do about it? What is our responsibility in the face of this prevailing error? How can we even begin? First of all, we need to be aware of the tentacles of moral relativism entering into the church itself. We cannot presume that there's this sharp line and it's nothing to do with us and hasn't affected us. You have heard it said that when you try to assert biblical truth to other Christians sometimes that's just your view. It's not mine. They are playing the moral relativism game. and they need to be called out over it. It is not acceptable to introduce moral relativism into the church of Jesus Christ. We have those who are sinfully content to see the mere whims of man come in and be accepted as valid within the house of God. Friends, the endeavor after God is not to allow everyone to form their own opinion, but for everyone to abandon their own opinion in favor of the declared mind of God unfolded for us in the entirety of Scripture. It is not for me to say, this is my view. Oh, well, that's yours. It's for both of us to abandon our views and discover what is God's view. It doesn't matter what my opinion is. It doesn't matter what my preference is. It matters what say the scriptures. We need the same spirit and indeed the nobility of the Berean. I remember many years ago, friends, I heard a minister who's never in glory. He spoke of one of his congregants in a way I've never forgotten. He said of her, she is exceptional. that she simply wants to know what is biblical so she can do it. That was her summary of her Christian life. What a testimony. And that's it. That's the calling of the Christian church to discover the truth of the Bible and do it. You know, St. Minster also had another saying he used to use, the only thing a Christian has to do is not sin. We have to show what the word says. We have to apply that as the church to the lives of all the members of the church, calling them to obedience to the revealed will of God. Thus saith the Lord, says the prophet. Opinion doesn't come into it. Multiple moralities are nowhere near it. Truth, the way, the truth, the life. I heard someone say recently, and I quite liked it, that they've learned never to go into an argument to win the argument. That's not the aim of an argument. The aim of an argument should be to come at the truth. And that way, even if you lose the argument, you've not lost, because you've discovered the truth. Truth is what matters. And that's the first thing for the church. Beware the tentacles of moral relativism within, and expel it like the filthy leaven that it is. Secondly, the church must grasp the implications for how we are then to witness in this world that is so infected with moral relativism. We need to ourselves know where the world is coming from. There's no point in not understanding where they're at. We need to have compassion and to have pity. On those whose minds have been so twisted, so polluted with this error, they can't understand when you start talking to them about Bible things. It's like you're talking to them in another language. It's like the day of Pentecost without the understanding being given to people. We have to have pity on those who do not know their left hand from their right. They've been indoctrinated into this inoculating mindset by which Satan has done everything in his power to strive to keep them away from the discovery that the law of God is written in their own hearts, and they never knew it. The Bible says it's there, so you and I know that it's there. Let God be true, and every man a liar. If we were to go a few chapters on to where we read in Romans 3, that's what Paul says. even when the person we are witnessing to has no idea about the hidden law of God within them. The Bible reminds us that it is there. And a true grasp of human nature is one of the greatest advantages that the church has at her disposal in dealing with this issue. The biblical Christian has a far, far better understanding of basic human nature than the most eminent psychologist or psychiatrist blinded by their own pride and ignorance. We know what lies within every soul, no matter how vehemently someone denies it to you. That means you have an advantage, Christian, that we should not shirk from. We are not to cede ground. We are not to play the game on their terms. We must not treat them as they imagine themselves to be, without law and without conscience. That's the way we lose. any more than we would treat a man or woman deluded as to their gender. a man who believes he's a woman. We're going to not participate in that delusion. We're not going to humor it. We're not going to give any credence to it. We're right to refuse in any way to encourage it or adopt the delusion of their gender identity. So too, friends, when it comes to dealing with the moral relativist who believes that there is no absolute morality. We're not to cede that ground to them. Not only are we not to adopt it, we're not to accept that that isn't truth, how they are. They haven't worked it out, they haven't thought it through, but it lies within them still to have in their hearts the law of God. We are to proceed on the basis not of what they say about themselves, but what the Bible tells us about them. And the Bible tells us that despite all their protestations, the law is written in the heart. They have a conscience that from time to time bears witness to the presence of that law. And we have a plain pattern offered to us in dealing with this by Paul himself, again in Romans. We read in Romans 1 deliberately. Romans 1 shows us the calamity I think it was Mr. B years ago at a school and theology address who called it the collapse of culture in Romans 1. Here we have this collapsing calamitous culture that is turning away from God. Well, given that that's how Romans 1 begins, it's not surprising that Romans 2 goes on to begin to show the answer of scripture to that collapsing culture that has abandoned the moral absolutes. Romans 2, 14. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves. What does that show you? Verse 15, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another. The law in the heart and the conscience in the soul, it is still there. If we focus, in closing, as we are trying to do now, on Paul's approach here, inspired by the Spirit, his analysis is this. In the culture, in his and ours, they don't seem to have the law, as it were. They may not have any clue about it. They may not acknowledge the authority of it in any sense, and the Romans certainly wouldn't have acknowledged the authority of God's law in any sense. And yet we know that that law is in fact present in the heart, written secretly as it were within. There remains that innate acknowledgement of God and his law that we can look for and work on as it were and expect to discover. When we speak to those who are utterly ignorant of God's law or outright deniers that they're under God's law, who reject the abiding validity of the word of God, They are not as ignorant as they profess and they're not as ignorant as they think. And so they are not so removed from following at least sometimes parts of the law of God as they might imagine. Their conclusions regarding morality, their practice and above all their consciences all demonstrate the reality of the law within. We aim at conscience not because the conscience is unaffected by the fall, nor because conscience offers any infallible guide within a fallen nature, but because that conscience does at times rise up in the heart to accuse the person. on the base of this divine stamp on the heart that cannot be utterly erased. So we do have a way forward, friends. It is not futile to bring the gospel to sinners. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden. Jesus wasn't proposing a sort of subjective view of the gospel there. There are many who have no idea about the burden they bear. Jesus doesn't address people on the base of what they might be feeling. It's not come unto me all you who feel that you could have burden and you feel heavy laden. That's how they are. He addresses man in terms of objective truth. They are laboring under the heavy load of depravity and fallenness and need. It is true that all men possess a conscience that at times will demonstrate even to themselves so they will suppress it that they know something of true morality. We have to walk, friends, by faith is the point, not by sight. If we heed the witness of the world about themselves, we'll get nowhere. We have nowhere to go. We have no common ground to build our outreach or witness on. But if we give heed to what the Bible discloses about the lost, and if we proceed in the base of what the Bible discovers to us, we have indeed everywhere to go. And there's nowhere, there's not a heart on the planet that we may not bring the gospel to. And once you, as it were, tap into the conscience of another individual, it becomes almost impossible for them to maintain a stance of moral relativism. they'll be forced to admit there are matters they count as permanently and irrevocably wrong and wicked. And that's when you have access through conscience, the law of God upon their hearts, and you can build from there. And we will yet see moral relativism dissolved in the face of the truth, the way, the life, and the truth. Thank you for your attention and for your indulgence. I've gone over my time, but I appreciate your time. Thank you.