The Knowledge of God

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“Which shew 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;”

Romans 2:15 KJV

UECF.NET summary

Keller builds a version of the classic moral argument. He observes that people who explicitly deny objective morality — insisting all values are relative or evolved social conventions — nevertheless act, argue, and protest as though some things (child abuse, genocide, betrayal of trust) are really and universally wrong, not merely distasteful to them personally or their culture. This gap between theoretical relativism and lived moral conviction is, for Keller, itself significant evidence: people know more about morality than their own worldview can account for.

He then argues that a consistently naturalistic account of the universe can describe where moral feelings and social rules came from (evolutionary pressure, cultural convention) but has a much harder time explaining why any moral claim is actually, bindingly true rather than just useful or widely felt. If moral values are ultimately just chemical reactions or survival strategies, calling something "truly evil" becomes hard to justify as more than a strong preference. A transcendent moral order grounded in God's own character, by contrast, gives moral claims the kind of objective, binding weight that our actual moral experience — our real outrage at real injustice — seems to require. Keller frames this not as proof beyond doubt but as another strong clue: the moral knowledge nearly everyone actually lives by fits a moral universe with a Lawgiver better than it fits a universe of blind, valueless physical process.

Main themes

• Lived moral conviction often outruns what a person's stated worldview can justify.
• Naturalism can describe the origins of moral feeling but struggles to ground binding, objective moral truth.
• Real moral outrage at real injustice presupposes a standard beyond personal or cultural preference.
• This moral clue functions cumulatively alongside the other clues in chapter 8, not as an isolated proof.

Key ideas

• Almost everyone protests some things as really wrong, even while officially denying objective morality exists.
• Describing the evolutionary or social origin of a moral feeling does not by itself justify treating that feeling as objectively true.
• A transcendent moral Lawgiver accounts for binding moral "oughts" more naturally than an impersonal universe does.
• This is the classic "moral argument," echoed by thinkers such as C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity.

Important concepts

• Moral argument — The argument from the existence of objective moral obligations to a transcendent moral Lawgiver as their best explanation.
• Is-ought gap — The philosophical difficulty of deriving binding moral obligation ("ought") from purely descriptive facts about the world ("is"), which naturalism must confront.
• Natural law — The idea, reflected in Romans 2:15, that a basic moral awareness is written on the human conscience rather than learned from scratch.

Related Bible references

• Romans 2:15
• Micah 6:8
• Amos 5:24
• Romans 1:32

Practical Christian application

• Notice the next time you feel moral outrage at an injustice, and ask yourself honestly what that outrage assumes about right and wrong.
• Discuss with a relativist friend whether they actually live as if all moral claims are equally valid — and listen for the gap between theory and practice.
• Thank God for conscience as a gift that keeps pointing you back toward him, even imperfectly.

Questions for study