The Poison of Subjectivism

How did the moral law get written? Lewis looks at this question in his essay The Poison of Subjectivism. He addresses a common question in his essay, "Are these things right because God commands them, or does God command them because they are right?" His point is that we neither are right, neither could be right on its own, but both together, somehow must be right. We cannot see this, we cannot understand this exactly. All that could be said about this is that God is good, or God is love (ultimately a similar concept). Lewis says this by saying, "God is not merely good, but goodness, goodness is not merely divine, but God."

You could then say that whenever good is done, God is brought to earth, whenever someone loves (truly loves) they bring a bit of God to earth.

Anyway, why can we not understand the concept of goodness, or the concept of how moral law came about? Lewis proposes a concept of a cube coming into a 2D plain. This cube would either appear as 6 separate squares, or as just one side of the cube, either way you would not be able to see all of the cube. I like this analogy, let me develop it.

Assume you are in existance only in a 2D plane. You either face the positive direction or the negative direction, you move either up or down, or the the right or to the left. There is no depth, there is nothing beyond the 2D plane. Now the fact that a 3D world exists would not be evident unless it was revealed. Suppose that the God living in this 3D world decides to show himself. He simply puts his finger into the plain and withdraws it.

When the finger enters, it would first appear as a dot, then grow into a circle, then as it retracts it would shrink back into a dot and disappear. People who saw this may be taken aback. This "point, then circle, then point" simply appears, then disappears. A science man may say that this was nothing, just a point circle then point. But a religious man may say that this is something greater putting its influence on the 2D world. Even if people believed this, they would never be able to explain it. They simply could not rap their mind around it, because it is a concept that doesn't seem to exist.

This concept could be much compared to goodness. We cannot fully understand it, but we cannot ignore the fact that it happened (or exists)

In Christ,

Ben