If God does not exist everything, is permitted: a Kierkegaardian perspective

In the Brothers Karamazov, Ivan’s philosophical and theological ideas are complex and develop in the course of the novel. However, near the beginning of the novel in Book 2 Chapter 6 an idea is attributed to him by a character named Miusev. He reports that at a recent meeting Ivan began by saying that if love has existed between people it is only because they have believed in immortality. Moreover without the belief in immortality there would be no morality and everything would be permitted. If someone ceases to believe in God, then logically he should be an egoist and even become an evil doer. Ivan is asked by the Elder Zosima if this is his view and he says “Yes, it was my contention. There is no virtue if there is no immortality.” (p. 70) The Elder seems to commiserate with Ivan, accepting that indeed he neither believes in God nor in immortality.

There is no need however, to go into the ins and outs of Ivan’s theology, nor be overly concerned about who said what and when in the novel. The idea that is being put forward is that morality and love of other human beings in some way depends on immortality with the implication that immortality depends on God. The implication is that God and immortality are really one and the same belief or at least interconnected. To cease to believe in the one is to cease to believe in the other.

But why should this be so? It is worth investigating in what way morality is dependent on belief in God or perhaps more accurately in the existence of God. 

Let’s look at the situation from the point of view of someone contemplating doing wrong. If by wrong we mean something like theft or murder, why do I not do these things. One reason is that there are laws and there is the police and I realise that if I commit a crime there is a reasonable chance that I will be caught and punished. I therefore decide out of self-interest not to steal from a shop or to commit murder, because I don’t want to end up in prison or have some other punishment given to me.

The problem with this is that if everyone thought in this way, law would rapidly collapse. The population of a country massively outnumbers the police. If everyone sat waiting for their chance to break the law, when they thought there was a chance of getting away with it, how could the police catch all of them? The law works only insofar as a minority of people are criminally minded. The majority do not break the law because they are scared of the police or punishment, but because they think breaking the law is wrong. But from where do we get this other sense of wrong, meaning morally wrong?

Moreover, what of things which most of us consider to be wrong, which are not illegal? Why should couples remain faithful to each other, why should we not tell lies? Is it that we fear that if we are unfaithful perhaps our marriage will break up, or if we tell lies then no one will trust us further? But what if we know at this moment that we can tell a lie and get away with it? What if we are in another country when we have the chance to be unfaithful? And yet we might choose not to be. Why do people act sometimes in a way that suggests self-sacrifice, why are people kind and altruistic?

It’s worth focussing on how we actually learn morality. We learn morality normally from a mother who watches. From an early age, she sees me do something and says don’t do that. If I continue to do the thing which is wrong she may punish me. Let’s say I steal sweets from the sweet jar. The first time, she says don’t steal sweets. It’s wrong. And so I learn not to steal sweets while she is looking. I may think that I can steal sweets when she is not looking and so when she is in another room I creep up to the jar and steal a sweet. But mother is cleverer than me, she has counted the sweets. I’m asked did you steal a sweet. I say no. She knows better. She counts out the sweets, one is missing. I’m punished, moreover she shows disapproval and I want that approval. I feel shame. In time I don’t steal from the sweet jar even when I know that I could get away with it. This feeling of guilt is developed in a myriad of ways such that eventually about a whole mass of matters I have an internalised sense of guilt when I contemplate doing wrong. This is what we call conscience. It is based on the the idea of mother somehow overseeing what I do, even when she is not there.

But when I grow up and can reason about these things, why do I not realise that I can throw off this conscience? Mother is now far away. I know that she will not discover if I take from the sweet jar. Who else can be overseeing me. The police observe. And so I should be careful not to be caught. But this is simply a matter of self interest and we are back to the idea of morality being simply a matter of law.  What about God? Can he take the role of the mother watching to see if I steal from the sweet jar? Perhaps. But if I begin to study philosophy I quickly realise that this whole matter of God’s existence is rather uncertain. Descartes is not even certain of the existence of the outside world. Perhaps all my perceptions are deceptions.  Any course of philosophy seems to see scepticism win out. First year philosophy classes are dominated by questions like “How do I know the sun will rise tomorrow?” But if I don’t even know this, how can the fact that a God who might exist might be observing me steal from the sweet jar, motivate my behaviour? Is God indeed not just an extension of the observing mother, who created my conscience in the first place?

Moreover I quickly realise when studying philosophy that there are lots of systems of morality that do not depend on God. Each major philosopher seems to have such a system. One says that I should do that which leads to the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Another thinks that I should imagine what would happen if everyone followed a course of action and act accordingly. There are any number of such systems and they don’t all mention God. But why should I follow such a system? Who is to make me? Perhaps its in my self interest to do so. But that is not morality. That is just another form of egoism. Perhaps I realise that its my duty to follow a particular philosopher’s system of morality. But why should I follow my duty? Perhaps I realise that rationality calls for me to follow a particular morality. But then why be rational? Let me be irrational just so long as I get what I want.

This is our problem. Either I follow the system of morality out of self interest in which case it is really the same as law (Just a matter of pragmatism and self-interest), or I follow the system out of duty. But then I already am moral. But whence this morality as it can not be coming from the system? There is obviously circularity here.

The problem of morality goes far back. The problem is stated as well as anywhere in Plato’s Republic with the story of the ring of Gyges. If I had the ring of Gyges which makes me invisible, such that I could get away with any crime, would I refrain from doing so. Only if I I would refrain from doing wrong, even if I could get away with it, can I be said to be truly moral. 

The idea of the watcher is present here also. If no one can watch, because I am invisible would I steal from the sweet jar. I don’t steal from the sweet jar, even when mother is not around, because she has shown that sometimes she knows better than me. Eventually I internalise this into conscience and I don’t steal even when I know I would get away with it, because I have this thing called conscience taught by my mother. But what if I realise that I’m being a mug, that this conscience thing is just a fraud? Why then not put on the ring of Gyges and do what I wish so long as I can get away with it?

Of course, here God can play a role. Even if someone wears the ring of Gyges and can do what he likes on Earth, God observes him. The idea of God and with it the idea of immortality is the idea that even if you get away with immorality on earth, even if you are a criminal who is never caught by the law, still God watches. God is the ultimate mother and the fundament which underpins conscience. God’s justice, the fact that he can reward or punish can be seen as a reason to be moral, for it may seem to solve the problem of the ring of Gyges. Even if I am to get away with evil here and now, it may not be rational to do so if I am to be punished later in eternity. God is like a universal police force. The lawbreaker may not be sent to prison on earth, but there is the equivalent of prison after death. Is this the reason that Ivan thinks that if there is no immortality then everything is permitted?

The observant mother is now in the transcendent sphere and able to judge according to how I lived my life. There is no chance that I can escape detection. All my sins will be found out. But this is our problem. If I do good in order to gain salvation or to avoid hell, then this is really no different from law. It is my self interest in the long run to do good. Out of egoism and selfishness, it would be rational for me to choose to do good in order to obtain a reward and to avoid punishment. But this is no more morality than the person who is law abiding solely because he fears the police. The police have simply been transferred to a transcendent realm with powers to detect every crime even those committed with the ring of Gyges.

Perhaps the solution is in this way. The idea that I can treat God as a policeman who rewards and punishes like the police and the courts is to misunderstand the nature of God. Salvation both does and does not depend on what I do, how I live my life. My actions are both necessary and unnecessary. Salvation is by faith alone and by good works. In Kierkegaardian terms, salvation is a matter of both Religiousness A and Religiousness B, inwardness and externality, relation to self and relation to other. In the Reformation debate between Protestantism and Catholicism we must hold together both sides of the argument even though they contradict each other, we must have both Luther and the Pope, works righteousness and faith alone.

What this means can be explained in the following way. I must believe that how I live is decisive for my salvation. This is Kierkegaard’s religiousness B and decisive Christianity. Therefore I must want to witness to the truth and imitate the life of Christ as far as is possible. The lesson that Kierkegaard has to teach us indeed is that my faith is my action. This is the importance of the Epistle of James in his work. What is it is to suppose that someone has faith. It is to see that he acts in certain ways. This was the lesson from Wittgenstein. How can I know if I can whistle a tune? I must whistle it. How can I know if I have faith? I must act according to it. There is no faith without action. Once I understand that faith is action, then there can be no question of faith without it. But and here is the crucial point. Although I believe that how I live is decisive for my salvation, I cannot bargain. God’s choice is free and from the point of view of eternity already made.

Thus I cannot act in order to obtain a reward and to avoid a punishment. I recognise from my faith the need to act as a Christian or try to act as a Christian. I also recognise that these actions are crucial. Following Kierkegaard again, only through relating to other people, through living the Christian life, do I create the self that God can save. But I must trust in God. I realise when faced with God that nothing that I could do would be enough. Therefore I am absolutely dependent on his love and grace for my salvation.

This is not something that can be understood, for it depends on a Kierkegaardian paradox. Christian morality is the paradoxical unity of salvation by faith alone and salvation by means of good works. This is a genuine contradiction, and something that we cannot understand. A similar contradiction exists in the two ideas that salvation is a matter of predestination while how I live is decisive for whether I obtain salvation. This is to look at the matters from the point of view of eternity and from the point of view of temporality. The combination of the positions is the truth. Just as Christ was the eternal in time. So my salvation is the eternal in time. It is an absolute paradox and a matter for faith, not for reason. It is for this reason that the Bible at times seems contradictory on this matter. The thief on the cross will be with Jesus today in paradise, but salvation is a matter of waiting until the Day of Judgement. But this too is just the paradoxical combination of the eternal point of view with the temporal point of view. We cannot expect to fully understand these matters. Here indeed is is something that cannot be fully expressed, something that defeats language and thought.  

Thus I believe both that my good works are decisive for my salvation, that how I live my life is crucial and that nothing I do could ever be good enough. I am saved from egoism by my realisation that God’s choice is free and that I am absolutely dependent on his love and grace. Thus I am not acting in order to gain salvation, for there can be no bargaining with God. Faith is action. It can even be said that I am saved by faith alone. For when I understand that faith is not, or not merely a matter of inwardness, I realise that faith is simply what I do.

If faith is only inwardness, it is only the relationship to the eternal. In Kierkegaardian terms this is paganism the relationship to God. The incarnation brings the eternal into time and enables us to relate externally. The only way to relate to Christ as a Christian is to love Christ and to try to live as he did. This means action. Once I understand this then action inevitably follows.

It is the free choice of God that makes Christian morality and means that it is neither a matter of law nor a matter of egoism. God’s free choice means that Christianity can never be a matter of self-interest. I have no guarantee, no matter how saintly I live my life. Thus we have the Bible story of the The workers who turn up late getting just the same. I can not gain God’s perspective. But I know that God is love and therefore I have hope.

But what I realise also is that finally my way of relating to God is through Christ. When I try to relate to the eternal, the infinite, the omniscient and omnipotent then I deal with what I is forever distant and remote from my life. I can try to relate inwardly and I can have a sense of this faith, but it is not concrete. It's like the idea that I can whistle the tune. Until I actually do whistle it, there is no whistling. Likewise with faith, it comes into existence through my actions. But when I begin relating to Christ, through imitation, witnessing. I relate to something, someone concrete. I can follow his lead. And through the fact that Christ is paradoxically both God and man, I in this way relate to God.

In Kierkegaardian terms it is the paradoxical combination of religiousness A (relating to God, through inwardness), (the eternal), (relation to self), (Protestantism, salvation by faith alone, for it has already from the point of view of eternity been determined), and religiousness B (Relation to Christ), (the temporal), (relation to another), (Catholicism, the idea that my salvation is not yet determined and depends on how I live my life). It is this combination that creates morality.

It is this combination also that creates the self that can be saved. This shows indeed that God is the fundament of morality. If God does not exist then ultimately everything is permitted. It is for this reason that Ivan is to be pitied. Through his lack of faith he puts himself in a position, which makes it impossible for God to save him, for he has no self to save. Following Grushenka’s story in the Brothers Karamazov, God needs at least one onion in order to grab the self.

For Ivan, God is dead and everything is permitted. The unbeliever unbelief is for him the truth for he has put himself in a position where God can not help him. This is his eternal punishment. His eternal punishment is not that God judges him and condemns him, but that God cannot even judge him, cannot even notice him. His hell is that his atheism turns out, for him to be quite accurate. 


Brothers Karamazov, Translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky, Vintage, 1992