Are There Ethics in the Hebrew Bible?: A Response

Philip Davies, Univ. of Sheffield, has posted a piece entitled "Are There Ethics in the Hebrew Bible?" Dr. Davies is a learned (Oxford and St. Andrews) and experienced theologian largely in the area of Hebrew Bible, (i.e. Old Testament), intertestamental period, and rabbinic literature. His thesis is quite simply stated and clear.

I repeatedly hear advocates of religion asserting that it is religion that gives humans ethics that bestow value on human life. I have rarely heard anything so ridiculous in my life.

He then goes on to demonstrate that the Hebrew Bible is monarchial in focus with commands given and obedience expected citing the Decalogue as a prime example, even equating the consequence of expected obedience as likened unto the Nuremberg defense--we were only doing our job. Also, regardless of how good the rules are, people should not rely on rules alone.
 
Moving beyond the Torah to wisdom literature, the author affirms that the universe "was created with a moral as well as a natural order, and right behavior consists of discerning and respecting that order" with its inherent wisdom, but there are two serious flaws: 1) things do not exactly work out when respecting the order, and 2) the tendency to equate wisdom with divine instruction and even worse to expect the instruction to be written down. And of the prophets, the proclamations ("rants," Davies) are totalitarian in nature because "the Bible is culturally totalitarian—unsurprisingly, because it emanates from a totalitarian world of monarchic societies."
 
In one sense this line of reasoning is correct: we should expect the prophets to speak in a way that the populace understands, and we are better off obeying from an inward desire. However, we need guidance as to what the expectations are and why they are expected, which leads to Davies' definition of ethics and its concomitant view of guidance.

But ethics is about doing what is good because it is intrinsically good. . . .Ethics develop in a society where individuals have to make their own moral judgments about intrinsic goodness.

This is the crux of the matter, and it begs a question: is there such a thing as intrinsic goodness? This is not easy as to answer as may be thought. Firstly, there is the matter of creation itself as originally formed. In the Genesis 1 account, God saw that his creation was good in days three through five and at the end of day six saw it was very good. God is by nature good (Exodus 33:19) and as creator of the universe, it will bear the marks of his nature and order (Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 1:19-20). So, yes there is goodness in all things insomuch that it is a reflection of God's glory. But, and this is important, creation's goodness cannot be considered intrinsic, but extrinsic, since the source of the goodness is God. Creation has no goodness that is somehow separate from the one who made it.
 
More to the point is the question: does mankind have intrinsic goodness? The answer is no easier than the above. Genesis 2:7 seems to tell us that man was a special project for God. Rather than speaking him into existence the creator "formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature." Psalm 8:3-8 continues this exalted status of the human race:

3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

This is a lofty position that would cause someone to acknowledge that man as a race must have intrinsic goodness for God to be willing to place such responsibility into his hands. Couple with that the aforementioned creatorial act, and the case is apparently closed. But it is not. Although man has a higher status than everything around him and is unique in that he carries the "breath of life," any goodness in man is still extrinsic in that it originates in and reflects God. Beyond that is the matter of sin. Romans 3:9-18 gives a scathing review of what mankind is and how we operate as a result of sin. Nobody in that condition would be considered as having intrinsic goodness.
Secondly, could ethics be based on inherent goodness if such was possible? How is ethics defined?[1]

ETH'ICS, n. The doctrines of morality or social manners; the science of moral philosophy, which teaches men their duty and the reasons of it.
1. A system of moral principles; a system of rules for regulating the actions and manners of men in society.

This definition fits Davies' contention that society determines ethics, yet a problem still remains. Who determines what is considered good? What does it look like? How is it measured? To what is it compared? I concede that people have an understanding of goodness. That is not the issue. Rather what is the standard by which people understand goodness. Society cannot determine a proper ethic based on goodness, because society's norms are subjective and changing. The objective standard must exist outside of humankind.

Davies has evidently taken the common position that the writings of the Hebrew Bible are extrapolations of an evolving Torah. Wisdom literature is regarded as religious common sense, and prophets are merely insightful spokesmen who speak out on social issues in a way they believe God would say it, if he would deign speak to them (which of course he never does). This is not the case. Regardless of when one determines the final form of the documents occurred, the standard raised in the Bible is external to mankind. Left to itself humanity, or any segment thereof, could not attain to the standard of goodness given in those pages. We would not know how.
 
Contra Davies, the commands and precepts given in Scripture are concrete examples of goodness we are to follow. They are not exhaustive. That is not required as we have the example of the triune God in sacred writ. He is our standard and source.

[1] 1828 edition of Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, found at http://1828.mshaffer.com.