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1 Crime is rising because the fear of hell is declining— or so said Britain's Secretary of State for Education and Science John Patten in 1992. The British newspapers deemed the argument so preposterous that they gave it a lot of ink. Patten argued that Britain needed a renewed fear of damnation and hope of redemption in order to return to civility.

The secretary's essay not only drew sharp reaction in the press, it also sparked a considerable debate over the moral foundations of modern society. One critical editorial gives the flavor of the prevailing opinion. Entitled "Hell: who needs it?" it concluded with this parting shot: "We may well need to renew our sense of the bad and the good, but the renewal will not be prompted by thoughts of a dreadful eternity elsewhere, even if we imagine Mr. Patten to be there with us, sharing it!"

On our side of the Atlantic, the popular press has likewise regularly fed us stories about the need to "renew our sense of the bad and the good" and about how we need to rediscover America's moral foundations. Time and Newsweek have splashed former drug czar William Bennett and his "Virtuecrats" on their covers and sympathetically described their "crusade against America's moral decline." These now regular articles seem to take for granted that there is a moral void at the heart of our society.

While Christians should applaud this reopening of the debate about morality, we do not have to be satisfied with how it is being conducted. There is a tension, an ambivalence, that pervades this discussion. Oxford philosopher Basil Mitchell calls this tension the "dilemma of the traditional conscience." It is the quandary faced by those who affirm traditional moral convictions but who deny the theological framework that historically provided those convictions with meaning and motivation. Without the framework, it is not clear whether or why those convictions of right and wrong are true or why they should be followed.

Our cultural debate over morals and virtues does not meet this dilemma head-on. One Time article came the closest by offering the opinion that "interestingly, and perhaps reassuringly, some of the most thoughtful ethicists feel that the elements for an enduring moral consensus are right at hand—in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, with their combination of Locke's natural rights and Calvin's ultimate right." But this merely evades the issue. What remains unacknowledged is the obvious fact that for Locke and Calvin these rights are ultimately grounded in the will of a living God.

Perhaps it is time to admit that Mr. Patten was on to something.

2 I do not believe there is any adequate account of moral authority or of moral motivation on secular principles. More specifically, I believe we need God, heaven, and yes, even hell, to make sense of morality. Indeed, we need to define our very selves in light of these eternal realities. If there is no God, no heaven, no hell, there simply is no persuasive reason to be moral.

I do not mean to claim there is no reason at all to behave morally without these beliefs. A person might decide to adhere to traditional morality if he thought it a good thing that most people should behave that way. But there is a profound difference between being moral and believing it is a good thing to behave morally most of the time. This is a key point in the virtue tradition, and one of the main reasons for its appeal.

But there is a deeper reason why it ultimately makes no sense to be moral without God, heaven, and hell. Being moral is often at odds with self-interest. There are times when virtue may exact a large price and occasions when commitment to moral integrity can even cost moral agents their own lives.

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June 16 1997, Vol. 41, No. 7