Obviously, the new topic I am proposing strikes a chord with me. I do not believe that there is such a thing as being morally responsible. Since the day of the fall of humanity (ie. Genesis 3 and forward) human beings forfeited any possibility of ever becoming morally responsible. Before and after Christ, human beings cannot possibly be morally responsible creatures before God. Now some will argue that there is an arena in which before one another a modicum of responsibility becomes necessary within public life. And yet within that arena to believe that to be morally responsible could ever occur outside of God's judgment and wrath is to declare that humans can behave and modulate public behavior beyond God's sight or at least declare that God is pleased with our standards of morality/measurement. What has changed in Christ is that sinners are forgiven, not to return from forgiveness to create moral standards in which now they believe they have reached God's favor. Forgiveness is only received within the moment at which God has forgiven a sinner and which a sinner has received that forgiveness. This cannot be extrapolated into the public sphere as received by a body of people.
All of which prompts the question: responsible to whom, or to what? It appears that your answer is: to God. And since none of our moral actions is adequate to secure God's favor, we can never be morally responsible before God. Further, you suggest that any ethical sytem we devise is also subject to "God's judgment and wrath." Well, OK. So where does that leave morality? One conclusion consistent with your position, Pr. Rahn, is that morality has no place in theological discourse -- that morality has nothing to do with the descriptions Christians offer of the proper relationship between God and human beings.
But that doesn't entail that it is not possible to be morally responsible in any sense whatsoever. We can't be morally responsible before God, but we can be morally responsible before one another. As long as we seek the highest level of moral excellence available to fallen human beings -- filthy rags before God, to be sure -- we can fufill our God-given vocations in morally responsible ways in this life. Can't we?
Morality is a product of Kantian philosophy which on the one hand does acknowledge God but only within the bounds of its own acknowledgment of God, ie. through its own idea of who God is. What results from this is human fashioning of morality that secures for itself measures which may indeed secure but then at the same time these humanly devised standards of measurement are ascribed with divine value .
I'll second Fr. Slusser's earlier puzzlement. Morality is the product of Kantian philosophy? What does that mean? What happened to Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, not to mention a host of more recent moral thinkers? I'm no fan of Kantian ethics, but even I can't blame Kant for everything.
Tom Pearson