Is a man free to act in a moral manner?
The problem of the freedom of the will. The Bible teaches that man was created with moral responsibility, but sin has corrupted his morality. While sinners may act in morally proper ways, sin has to be dealt with first, if one is to please God, and God deals with sin through the redemptive work of Christ. But what of the ethics of the unbeliever? How has he answered these questions? There are three main approaches taken in secular thinking: Naturalism, Idealism and Existentialism. Naturalism Naturalistic Ethics presupposes that 1) nature is the ultimate reality, 2) man is essentially an animal, and 3) truth and right are intrinsically time-bound and changing. Elementally, naturalism takes many forms…a business man who decides that while honesty is the best policy as a commercial rule, yet now and then considers it is permissible to strike it rich by clever duplicity; the college student who accepts grading as necessary, but does not hesitate to cheat occasionally, especially on finals;
