All posts by Bill Pratt

Morality, Philosophy, Truth

What Is Objectivity? Part 2

Leave a comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

In part 1 of this post, we looked at contemporary notions of objectivity, as reported by philosopher Tom Howe.   In part 2 we continue to flesh out the concept of objectivity.

Tom Howe quotes philosopher Mary Hawkesworth:

In the context of philosophical and scientific investigations, an objective account implies a grasp of the actual qualities and relations of objects as they exist independent of the inquirer’s thoughts and desires regarding them. In the spheres of ethics, law, and administration, objectivity suggests impersonal and impartial standards and decision procedures that produce disinterested and equitable judgments. Objectivity, then, promises to free us from distortion, bias, and error in intellectual inquiry and from arbitrariness, self-interest, and caprice in ethical, legal, and administrative decisions.

We see the idea of existence “independent of the inquirer’s thoughts and desires regarding them.”  The moral fact, “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” is objective if it is true independent of the inquirer’s thoughts.  Whether a person believes this statement is true or not is irrelevant to its truth.

In addition, Hawkesworth introduces the concept of “impersonal and impartial standards.”  The statement, “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” is objective if it can be judged by a standard which is impersonal and impartial.

Howe finishes his survey of contemporary views on objectivity with the following summary:

First, there is a recurring theme . . . that in some sense objectivity involves the notion of a neutral judgment that strives to be free from all biases, prejudices, presuppositions, preconceived ideas, preunderstandings, or other factors that might distort one’s understanding or conclusions.

Objectivity is almost universally equated with what Richard Bernstein calls “objectivism,” which he defines as “a basic conviction that there is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness, or rightness.”

Objectivity, then, is about judgment without the undue influence of bias or prejudice.  The worldview of the judge is taken out of the judgment as much as possible.  The judge is to tell it like it is.

In a second, and arguably more important sense, objectivity is, as Richard Bernstein states, a “permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal” to on issues of morality, truth, and knowledge.  Any person that denies that this ahistorical and permanent framework exists is thus denying that objectivity exists.  Ironically, the person who claims that ahistorical objectivity does not exist believes this to be true for all time.  To deny objectivity is to affirm it.

Morality, Philosophy, Truth

What Is Objectivity? Part 1

10 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

We’ve recently featured several blog posts centered around the idea of moral objectivity.  Objectivity is also a concept that can be applied to truth, knowledge, interpretation, and even beauty.  Although we’ve tried to carefully define objectivity versus subjectivity, it might be worth revisiting this concept to see what contemporary thinkers have to say about it.

Philosopher Tom Howe provides a brief, but insightful survey of several contemporary views on objectivity in his book Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation. Howe starts things off with a quote from the famous agnostic Bertrand Russell:

Subjectively, every philosopher appears to himself to be engaged in the pursuit of something which may be called ‘truth.’ Philosophers may differ as to the definition of ‘truth,’ but at any rate it is something objective, something which, in some sense, everybody ought to accept.

We start with the idea that something is objective if it is something that everybody ought to accept.  If we take the clear moral truth, “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” this statement would be objectively true if it is a statement that everyone ought to accept.

Howe then describes Paul Helm’s “ontological” objectivity.  According to Howe, “This is basically the question of whether the extra-mental reality exists apart from human perception or is the construct of the human mind.  As Helm puts it, ‘Does the character of the world change with the very fact that we are interpreting it?'”

Here we see another important aspect of objectivity.  Something is objective if it exists “apart from human perception.”  Taking our example again, the moral truth,  “It is wrong to torture a child for fun,” would be objective if the statement was true regardless of whether any human being perceived it to be true.  In other words, if all human beings went extinct tomorrow, it would still be objectively true that torturing a child for fun is wrong.

Here is an interesting thought experiment.  If an intelligent alien race came to earth and began torturing human children, would we react with moral outrage and accuse them of atrocious immoral acts, or would we say to ourselves, “That’s a shame they are torturing kids, but they obviously just have a different moral code than we do.  It must be morally acceptable, under their moral system, for them to torture human children.”

I think that we would obviously be morally outraged.  In fact, this very situation, or something like it, is portrayed in dozens of science fiction movies where intelligent aliens attack and/or torture humans.  The humans in these movies are almost always portrayed as holding the aliens morally culpable, but if moral facts only exist in human perception, then it would be truly bizarre to hold aliens morally accountable.

They might have their own moral facts, or they may perceive no moral facts at all.  Why is it, at least in the movies, humans always assume that hostile aliens have the same moral sensibilities we do?  I submit that it is because the writers of these movie scripts, just like the rest of us, assume moral facts exist apart from human perception.

Attacking aliens aside, this aspect of objectivity seems to confuse many atheists, because they fail to see how something like a moral fact could exist without human minds perceiving it to be true.  For theists, of course, truth also exists in the mind of God, so we have no problem with moral facts being objective in this sense.  If you are a non-theist, you could posit that moral truths exist as brute, fundamental facts of the universe, but this answer merely leads inevitably to the question of why the universe would come furnished with moral facts.

In our next post, we will continue to look at the notion of objectivity.

Morality

Are There Any True Moral Relativists?

39 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

This post is a bit of a rant, but I hope it provides some light on top of the heat.  In 2011 I asked a simple question on the blog and then allowed readers to vote on the answer.  Here is the question: Is the statement, “It is wrong to rape little children for fun,” objectively or subjectively true?

I explained that objectively true means that a statement is “true for all people at all times in all places,” and that subjectively true means that a statement is “a matter of taste, of my personal preference,” like saying that “French roast is the worst tasting coffee.”

299 votes have been cast since I posted the poll question, and disappointingly, only 68% voted that the statement is objectively true.  Think about this: more than 30% of the people who responded to this poll are so morally confused that they fail to recognize that raping a little child for fun is morally wrong for all people at all times in all places.

By casting their votes for the subjective truth of this statement, they are saying that it is possible that for some person, living at some place, in some time, raping a little child for fun is morally acceptable.  But you can’t really feel the total impact of these votes until you read some of the comments left by people who voted for subjective truth.  Here is a sampling:

“Of course I voted for ‘Subjectively’ since there is no objective morality.”

“Morals are subjective, so yes: raping little children is a matter of taste.”

“In my opinion, it is subjective. Everyone has their own sets of morals and values, therefore, their own sets of morality.”

“I voted for subjective because the statement gives an opinion. . . . Many people regard ‘wrong’ in many different ways and the way one regards what is wrong is based on his or her personal opinion.”

“I think it is subjective because to some it is wrong, but to some people, like the rapists themselves, it is good.”

“It’s a matter of fact that it is subjective.  Good or bad is subjective, justice is subjective and many more things that most people assume they aren’t subjective are actually subjective.”

Please keep in mind that I asked about a moral action that is so extreme that there should be no problem arriving at a judgment of its rightness or wrongness.  I didn’t ask about abortion or gay marriage or any other issue where there is moral controversy.  No, I wanted to make it simple.

For a person to say that the moral rightness or wrongness of raping a child for fun is a matter of taste is insanity, not to put too strong a point on it.  The wrongness of raping a child for fun is a fact as much as the fact that 5+4=9.  Only a twisted society could affirm the latter and deny the former.

The only reason I don’t truly panic when I see poll results like this is because 99% of the people who voted for subjectivity are just running their mouths, so to speak.  They don’t really believe what they’re saying.  It’s all about the shock value.  It’s hip to deny objective morality.  Only backward religious folks still believe in that silliness.  We have so moved beyond old-fashioned values.  Can I get a secular humanist “Amen”?

Almost every one of the “subjective” voters really believes in objective morality, and they demonstrate it every day.  They complain when other people talk behind their back, they accuse politicians they don’t like of evil intent, they protest against corporations who profit from child labor, and they demand justice in the courts.  They act, every day, as if there is a common, objective set of moral laws, that everyone should follow.

There have been precious few consistent moral relativists in the history of the world, thank you God.  And the ones who are truly consistent, who truly believe that there is no objective morality and who live that belief out every day in practice, are diagnosed by the psychiatric community.  The diagnosis?  Sociopath.

About the blog

Does Anybody Read This Blog?

15 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Rarely do I comment on the readership of the blog, but for those of you who are regulars, I thought you might be interested to know what the numbers are.  After all, we’ve been at this for almost four years, and if we’re writing, but nobody is reading, what’s the point?!

There are a few statistics that are worth mentioning.  First, the blog, over the last 6 months, has averaged about 11,000 unique visitors per month.  That means that something like 11,000 different people are visiting the actual blog site each month.

Second, over the last 6 months, there have been an average of 23,000 page views per month.

About 75% of the blog site traffic is referred by search engines, where people type something into Google and they are referred to one of the blog pages.  These people typically read one blog post and then move on.  I am gratified that so many people come to the blog for an answer to a question they have, but what I’m even more interested in are the people who come back over and over again.

There are two metrics I track that I think are better indicators of how many people are loyal to the blog, who read it regularly.  These are the people I can count on to return post after post.

The first metric of this type is the number of people who subscribe to the RSS feed.  This number has been steadily growing year after year and now stands at about 400 subscribers.  If you are one of these 400 people, thank you so much for taking time to read the blog on your RSS reader.

The second metric that tracks loyal readers is the number of email subscribers.  Generally, if you subscribe to something by email, you find it valuable.  After all, it’s hitting your inbox 3 times a week, and you can opt out whenever you want.  The current email subscribers stand at 356.  They are the most loyal group of readers, in my estimation, and that is why I encourage anyone who regularly reads the blog to subscribe by email.  You are the group who is the most encouraging to me.

The blog also has hundreds of readers from Facebook and Twitter.  Every blog post is re-posted on Facebook and the title of every blog post is tweeted.  Thanks to @plsconvinceme and @JohnAnkerberg and several others who regularly retweet blog posts.

The blog readership grows by search engine traffic and, of course, other websites linking to it.  There are several websites who regularly link to posts, including apologetics315.com, thepoachedegg.net, winteryknight.wordpress.com, and godresources.org.  I am so grateful for each and every time these sites link to a Tough Questions Answered post.

We’ve come a long way, and our prayer is constantly that we are glorifying God by giving answers to seekers who have tough questions about Christianity.  If you think this blog is successful fulfilling its mission, then please tell your friends about the blog!  Send them the web address today.  May God bless all of you!

Will of God

How Do We Find God’s Will?

1 Comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most insightful books I’ve ever read is Garry Friesen’s Decision Making and the Will of God.  Friesen tackles an important practical need that every Christian has.  When I am making an important decision, how do I find God’s will in the matter?

Friesen documents and builds his case in 500 pages, but I want to give you his basic approach in fewer than 700 words.  Early in Friesen’s book, he lays out his “way of wisdom,” which consists of four principles:

1. Where God commands, we must obey.

In the Bible, the term “God’s will” most often refers to all the commands, principles, and promises that God has revealed in the Scriptures. This first biblical meaning of “God’s will” is best described as God’s moral will. It is fully conveyed in the Bible and so does not have to be “found”—just read, learned, and obeyed. . . .  Yet this simple truth cuts deeper into real life than we usually realize. Every action, thought, motive, attitude, and plan is affected by God’s moral will because its commands go beyond outward actions to search the motives and intents of our most secret desires (1 Samuel 16:7).

2. Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (and responsibility) to choose.

The second principle . . . starts to answer the question, “What do you do when there is no specific command in the Bible to determine your decision?” Where there is no command, God gives us freedom (and responsibility) to choose. The principle actually is not as radical as it may sound. It does not say that God does not care what we decide. It does not mean that there is no further guidance from God (there are two more principles). It does not say that our decision does not matter or that we can do our own selfish thing. It does say that we are morally free to decide. This freedom is God-given. But alongside that freedom is a God-given responsibility to decide.

Grasping the reality of freedom and responsibility has resulted in a very common response to the first edition of the book: “This book is both liberating and sobering. With freedom comes relief that I am not missing God s will. At the same time, being responsible for my decisions means that I cannot blame bad decisions on God.”

3. Where there is no command, God gives us wisdom to choose.

We are never free to be foolish, stupid, or naive. The freedom in the second principle is limited by the guidance God gives through wisdom. Put differently, wisdom is commanded of believers by the moral will of God and must be applied to all non-commanded decisions. I will support this principle by citing numerous biblical commands that exhort believers to act and choose wisely. I will also illustrate it with scriptural terminology and examples. The wisdom books of the Old Testament make a great contribution and can be taken at face value as models of God’s primary method of guidance.  In the area of freedom, it is God who promises to give wisdom when we ask.

4. When we have chosen what is moral and wise, we must trust the sovereign God to work all the details together for good.

God’s sovereign superintendence of all the particulars assures that after we have followed His guidance in the first three principles, God secretly works all the unknowns and details together for good. He is involved in the smallest particulars even when He does not tell us exactly what to do. This work of God gives the peace of mind that God is guiding in everything.

There they are, the four principles for finding God’s will.  I hope I have whet your appetite enough so that you will buy Friesen’s book.  I assure you that you will not be disappointed.

Religion

Are Kids Born with Belief?

11 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

That is the title of an interview with author Justin Barrett in the June 2012 issue of Christianity Today.  Barrett recently released a book, titled Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief, which “builds upon previous research on cognitive development to show that children naturally intuit design—and a Designer—when exposed to the natural world.”

This type of research is important because of the occasional refrain that children must be brainwashed into belief in God, because without brainwashing children would not believe in God.  Put another way, belief in God is unnatural to children and must be forced upon them.  Is this correct?

Barrett’s research leads him to conclude that “virtually all humans are essentially born believers—they have a natural receptivity to religious belief.”  Barrett adds:

We are not starting with unformed blobs that can be shaped into anything we like. Research from developmental psychology suggests children learn some things more easily and are attracted to some ideas more than others. There are certain kinds of ideas that children can learn more easily and rapidly than others, and internalize more deeply, such as believing in gods.

Children have a natural disposition to see the natural world as having purpose. Research has shown that children have a strong inclination to see design in the world around them, but they are left wondering who did it. They also know design doesn’t arise through random chance or mechanistic processes. In fact, children (and adults) automatically look for a person behind purpose or design. By five months old, infants already make the distinction between things that are acted upon and those things that do the acting, that is, intentional agents (like people). And preschoolers’ default assumption is that these agents are super-knowing, are super-perceiving, and are not going to die. If a child is exposed to the idea of a god that is immortal, super-knowing, super-perceiving, the child doesn’t have to do a lot of work to learn that idea; it fits the child’s intuitions.

In response to the argument that belief in God is just another childish belief that children grow out of, Barrett reminds us that

there are all kinds of childish beliefs, such as the idea that other people have minds, that there is a real world out there, that the laws of nature are stable, that my mother loves me. All these ideas are rooted in children’s early developing intuitions. If that is someone’s claim, I accept it; religious belief is in awfully good company.

It seems that the brainwashing runs the other way.  Children have to be inculcated with non-belief, not belief.  Belief in God comes easily and naturally for children.  Telling a child that there is no “immortal, super-knowing, super-perceiving” agent goes hard against the grain.  It seems that God has designed the human brain to be receptive to belief in him.

Atheism, Morality

Can Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

3 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

The arch-atheist Friedrich Nietzsche certainly believed so, but atheists nowadays have largely disavowed their atheist fathers.  Atheists want to shake their reputation as depressing nihilists and instead tell the world how happy they are.  Freedom from religion is your ticket to joy and fulfillment.

In the UK, atheists paid for a bus campaign that featured the following message: “There’s probably no God.  Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”  What a cheerful campaign!

Some in the atheist community, however, disagree with this dressing up of the atheist message.  Julian Baggini, writing for the Guardian, said recently, “Yes, life without God can be bleak. Atheism is about facing up to that.”  Baggini, to his credit, thinks that atheists who tell people to forget God and just enjoy their lives are completely missing the point of atheism.

Baggini writes:

Atheists have to live with the knowledge that there is no salvation, no redemption, no second chances. Lives can go terribly wrong in ways that can never be put right. Can you really tell the parents who lost their child to a suicide after years of depression that they should stop worrying and enjoy life?

He continues:

Stressing the jolly side of atheism not only glosses over its harsher truths, it also disguises its unique selling point. The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy. The more brutal facts of life are harsher for us than they are for those who have a story to tell in which it all works out right in the end and even the most horrible suffering is part of a mystifying divine plan. If we don’t freely admit this, then we’ve betrayed the commitment to the naked truth that atheism has traditionally embraced.

Baggini finishes his essay by reminding atheists of the ever-present threat of nihilism that Nietzsche warned of.

Even more disturbing, perhaps, is the threat of moral nihilism. Atheists are quite rightly keen to counter the accusation that life without God cannot be moral. The British Humanist Association, for instance, claims that “Right and wrong can be explained by human nature alone and do not require religious teaching”. But, just as with happiness, there is a need to distinguish the possibility of atheist morality from its inevitable actuality. Anyone who thinks it’s easy to ground ethics either hasn’t done much moral philosophy or wasn’t concentrating when they did. Although morality is arguably just as murky for the religious, at least there is some bedrock belief that gives a reason to believe that morality is real and will prevail. In an atheist universe, morality can be rejected without external sanction at any point, and without a clear, compelling reason to believe in its reality, that’s exactly what will sometimes happen.

Read that last section carefully, because Baggini is arguing, as we have argued here many times, that atheists have a hard time grounding morality, much harder than the religious do.  Speaking to his atheists friends, he says, “Anyone who thinks it’s easy to ground ethics either hasn’t done much moral philosophy or wasn’t concentrating when they did.”

Baggini also admits that “in an atheist universe, morality can be rejected without external sanction at any point, and without a clear, compelling reason to believe in its reality, that’s exactly what will sometimes happen.”  In other words, on atheism, the ability to rationally reject morality is built into the system.  There is nothing that ultimately guarantees that morality can be grounded, and so an atheist who decides that morality is simply optional is within their rational rights to do so.  And, according to Baggini, that is exactly what sometimes happens.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Do You Tackle Obscure Bible Passages?

2 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Many passages in Scripture are relatively straight-forward to understand.  A person of even minimal intelligence can read and understand much of the Bible.  The greatest obstacle that faces readers of the Bible – the fact it was written in ancient Hebrew and Greek – is largely mitigated by the hard work of Hebrew and Greek language scholars who translate the words of the Bible into modern English.

However, even though we are able to read the contents of Scripture in our own language, we are still faced with obscure passages that seem to elude our understanding.  Why is this? 

The eighteenth century philosopher Johann Martin Chladenius pointed out that the problem is usually a lack of background knowledge.  Jean Grondin, in his book Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, explores Chladenius’s insight:

The obscurity to which Chladenius here refers is that due to insufficient background knowledge. It is indeed often the case, especially with older texts, that the language seems completely clear, though the texts still remain unintelligible because we are lacking in historical or factual knowledge. In other words, we are unacquainted with the subject matter or with what the author really wanted to say.

At first, as I noted above, this kind of obscurity may seem rather trivial. Yet Chladenius here touches on an absolutely fundamental phenomenon of language. Language always tries to express something literally, but this “something” often enough remains in the dark, because the words do not occasion the same meaning or effect in the receiver as intended by the speaker. Chladenius views this as a purely linguistic process, as he explains while introducing his idea of hermeneutics as a universal science: “A thought that is to be conveyed to the reader by words often presupposes other conceptions without which it is not conceivable: if a reader is not already in possession of these conceptions, therefore, the words cannot effect the same result in him as in another reader who is thoroughly knowledgeable about these conceptions.”

When we read the Bible, we must remember that the individual biblical authors are assuming that their readers share a common background knowledge.  This background knowledge can include geography, political rulers, folklore, religious texts, poetry, agriculture, worldviews, and more.  As a modern reader, what hope do we have of knowing these things?

This is where good commentaries and Bible dictionaries come in.  These books provide the background information that enables a modern reader to better understand the ancient biblical writings.  They can provide us with keys to unlock the meanings of obscure passages.

When I sit down to read a difficult biblical passage, I will first read the passage, and then consult several commentaries or dictionaries to gain the needed background knowledge.  Several years ago, I bought the Logos Bible Software package, which enables me to consult dozens of commentaries on my PC.

Even though I have access to so many commentaries, I find myself going back to three of them over and over again:  The New American Commentary from Broadman & Holman Publishers; The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament by Craig S. Keener, from InterVarsity Press; The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures from Victor Books.  All of these commentaries do an excellent job of teaching the background knowledge needed to interpret Bible passages.

Whether you have these particular commentaries or not, it is imperative that you invest in resources that can teach you the background information you need to understand your Bible.  The serious student of the Bible cannot get along without them.

Bible Interpretation

Are All Interpretations Equally Valid?

13 Comments

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Relativism is a constant and ever-present danger these days.  Today I’m speaking, in particular, about the interpretation of biblical texts.  When we open the Bible and read, what happens if we interpret the text differently from those around us?

There are scholars today who claim that nobody has the correct interpretation of a text, because there is no single correct interpretation.   In his book, Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation, Philosopher Tom Howe quotes writer James K. A. Smith as an example of this position:

To privilege one reading as normative (the one correct interpretation) would be to privilege one contingent situationality or tradition over another— a move that would be impossible to justify precisely because of the locatedness of any such justification. There is not a reading that is the reading of the world or a text.

Smith is saying that the tradition and situation in which a reader resides colors his interpretation.  Since each of us lives in a different situation and tradition, then each of our interpretations of a text are different, and none of them can claim to be the one correct interpretation.

Is this true?  Howe strongly disagrees:

According to this approach, conflicts are generated because of the differing “situationality” and “traditionality” that indicate the impossibility of a “privileged reading” or of the very existence of “the one correct interpretation.” . . .  Is there no such thing as the correct or the right interpretation of a text? If there is no “right” or “correct” interpretation, then the problem of conflicting interpretations seems to lose its meaning.

Conflicting interpretations create a problem only if there is an interpretation that is the right one. The fact of conflicting interpretations seems to create difficulty only if one attempts to judge between them in order to arrive at the meaning of the text. In fact, everyone who comments on this question believes that his own interpretation of the problem is the correct one. Even those who claim that differing historical, cultural, and linguistic situations render the notion of a privileged or normative or correct interpretation impossible believe that they have correctly interpreted the state of affairs.

They confidently declare that their interpretation of the problem of interpretation is the correct one, namely, that no one can claim to have “the one correct interpretation.” Those who claim that it is impossible “to privilege one reading as normative” privilege their own reading as normative. When, in the above quote, Smith declares, “There is not a reading that is the reading of the world or a text,” he presents his own reading of the world as the reading of the world.

Smith’s view ultimately self-destructs and, therefore, cannot be true.  Smith wants us to believe that his interpretation is the correct one, all the while arguing that no interpretation can be the correct one.  This is illustrative of the inner rot of any relativistic theory.  By denying objectivity, by denying that absolutes exist, the relativist always wants an exemption for their position.  They seem to be saying, “Every view out there is relative, except mine.  I am the only who has a privileged and absolute position.”

Interpretation of the Bible can be difficult, and there are cultural, linguistic, and historical barriers to overcome, but to throw in the towel and say that no interpretation is correct is simply self-defeating.  The correct interpretation is there, but we have to work for it.

Philosophy, Theology

Does God’s Mercy Cancel Out His Justice?

Leave a comment

Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians claim that God is both merciful and that he is just, but how can both of these be true?  Doesn’t mercy cancel justice, or justice cancel mercy?

Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest church fathers, addressed this very issue in his monumental work, Summa Theologica.  Thomas’s approach in Summa Theologica was to present an objection, and then answer the objection.  Here is the objection:

Further, mercy is a relaxation of justice. But God cannot remit what appertains to His justice. For it is said (2 Tim. 2:13): If we believe not, He continueth faithful: He cannot deny Himself. But He would deny Himself, as a gloss says, if He should deny His words. Therefore mercy is not becoming to God.

In other words, God is just and God cannot deny himself.  If God is just, and mercy is a relaxation of justice, then God cannot be merciful.  How does Thomas answer this objection?

God acts mercifully, not indeed by going against His justice, but by doing something more than justice; thus a man who pays another two hundred pieces of money, though owing him only one hundred, does nothing against justice, but acts liberally or mercifully. The case is the same with one who pardons an offence committed against him, for in remitting it he may be said to bestow a gift. Hence the Apostle calls remission a forgiving: “Forgive one another, as Christ has forgiven you” (Eph. 4:32). Hence it is clear that mercy does not destroy justice, but in a sense is the fulness thereof. And thus it is said: “Mercy exalteth itself above judgment” (Jas. 2:13).

Philosopher Peter Kreeft, commenting on Thomas’s words in his A Summa of the Summa, adds that

Mercy is expressed in forgiveness.  In the word “forgive” is the word “give.”  For forgiveness is not primarily an attitude or feeling, but a gift,  remitting of debt, and therefore it costs the giver something.  God’s forgiveness of human sin cost him dearly on Calvary.  Both justice and mercy were satisfied there.

Further building on the interaction of mercy and justice, Kreeft explains that

mercy, as a property of love, is more primordial than justice.  Justice [as God applies it to mankind] is finite, and proportioned to desert; love can be infinite.  Our very existence is due to love and generosity, not justice, for we were not even there to deserve anything, even existence, before God gave us the gift of existence.

In summary, mercy is more basic than justice, and mercy can therefore complete justice.  To be truly merciful is not to negate justice, but to fulfill it.  Nothing better illustrates this concept than what God did on the cross for mankind.