Divine Command Theory

What do you need to know? God as the origin and regulator of morality; right or wrong as objective truths based on God’s will/command, moral goodness is achieved by complying with divine command; divine command a requirement of God’s omnipotence; divine command as an objective meta-physical foundation for morality. Robert Adams’ ‘Modified Divine Command Theory’ (divine command based on God’s omnibenevolence). Challenges: the Euthyphro dilemma (inspired by Plato); arbitrariness problem (divine command theory renders morality as purely arbitrary); pluralism objection (different religions claim different divine commands). Issues for analysis and evaluation will be drawn from any aspect of the content above, such as: Whether morality is what God commands. Whether one of Divine Command Theory, Virtue Theory or Ethical Egoism is superior to the other theories.

What is Divine Command Theory?

It suggests that morality in some way depends, at least in part, upon the will of God. The view that God is the origin and regulator of morality. God’s act of commanding something as good or bad is what makes it good or bad. E.g. 10 commandments & Aquinas’ notion of the ‘divine law’ – God’s revelation to humans.

Outline Phillip Quinn’s simple version of divine command theory

• Act A is wrong (forbidden) if and only if it is contrary to the command of God

• Act A is right (required) if and only if it is commanded by God

• Act A is morally permissible if and only if it is permitted/not forbidden by the command of God

• if there is no God, then nothing is ethically wrong required or permitted.

What does moral rightness mean?

willed by God

What does moral wrongness mean?

being against the will of God

What does it mean to say that DCT is a metaethical theory?

• it gives an explanation for why moral judgements can be said to be universal and absolute.

• It attempts to provide an objective metaphysical foundation for morality-something that concepts of good and bad are based upon.

• it gives an explanation for why we ought to be moral

What does it mean to say that DCT is a normative ethical theory?

• it tells us what we ought to do- God’s commands create an obligation for us to follow them.

What are William Lane Craig’s views on the DCT?

• If God exists then the objectivity of moral values, duties, and accountability is secured.

• If God does not exist then morality is just a human convention, it is wholly subjective and non-binding.

• In the absence of God actions that we once considered good or evil would no longer count as good or evil because if God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.

• we cannot be truly good without God.

• Objective moral values are rooted in God. God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured.

• God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commands which constitute our moral duties or obligations.

• In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the whole moral duty of man can be summed up in the two great commandments: First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind, and, second, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.

• Atheistic hypothesis contrasts - If atheism is true then objective moral values do not exist. - there is no foundation for them if God does not exist. We have no moral obligations to do anything.

• We can live a moral life without God and theism but we need God to formulate a system of ethics.

• If God exists, there is a sound foundation for morality. If God does not exist, then, as Nietzsche saw, we are ultimately landed in nihilism.

   

What does Richard Taylor think about the source for moral obligation if there is no divine lawgiver?

in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well- it is not possible to retain moral obligations without a divine lawgiver.

A duty is something that is owed . . . . But something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation . . . . The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough . . . . Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, and referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawmaker higher . . . . than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations can . . . be understood as those that are imposed by God. This does give a clear sense to the claim that our moral obligations are more binding upon us than our political obligations . . . . But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of a moral obligation . . . still make sense? . . . . the concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart form the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone. 

 

What is meant by the Euthyphro Dilemma? where did it come from?

• came from Plato

• Are right actions right because God commands them and are right actions commanded by God because they are right?. It is a philosophical problem that is concerned with the idea of morality related to God.

God’s Omnibenevolence is the idea that God is perfectly good. However, the Euthyphro dilemma shows that there are two ways we could understand God being perfectly good.

What is a Dilemma?

when there are two ways something could be, each way leading to a problem. The two options are called horns.

What does the first horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma suggest?

What does the second horn of the Euthyphro Dilemma suggest?

• that what God commands is intrinsically good independently of God.

  • this suggests that God is perfectly good because he perfectly follows an intrinsically good moral standard that is separate from God.

  • The problem this leads to an apparent conflict with omnipotence since this external moral standard is beyond God’s power to control.

What do divine command theorists attempt to do in response?

-defend the second horn from the arbitrariness problem

-or reject the Euthyphro dilemma as a false dilemma.

How does the first horn lead to a conflict with God’s omnipotence?

• it seems to require that goodness is a standard which is independent of God and has some objective status of its own.

• that would mean that God would be just as judged by that standard as we are

• God would not have the power to change it or what’s good would ultimately reduce to his command.

• God not being able to do something or being held to a higher standard undermines his omnipotence and conflicts with it.

How does the second horn lead to the arbitrariness problem?

• This is the problem that if what is good is only good because God commanded it to be so, then it seems that God could change his mind tomorrow and command that murder is good, which would mean that it thereby became good on the divine command theory view.

• Furthermore, it seems that God’s choice of murder to be what he commanded as wrong must have been random and arbitrary.

• On divine command theory, there was nothing wrong about murder until God commanded it wrong, but that means there was nothing that could have prompted God’s choice for it to be wrong.

• Once it is admitted that the only thing which confers rightness or wrongness is God’s command, then it seems that absent his command, nothing has any rightness or wrongness and his choice of what to command must therefore be completely random.

• This also seems to bring God’s reasonableness into question. If God is acting arbitrarily then he cannot be acting based on reason alone.

William of Ockham

•Accepts horn 1 of the dilemma.

•An action that is currently considered morally wrong would become morally required if God commanded it.

•God cannot change self-evident principles e.g. that good ought to be pursued, but his command would change what sorts of actions are good and therefore what should be pursued.

•While this is a logical possibility, it is not something that God would do.

x Does not solve the problem that morality is arbitrary.

x It may be argued that we only have an obligation to follow God’s commands if he is good, but a good God would not command things such as rape and murder. If God did, we would have no obligation to follow these commands.

William Alston

•Argues that the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dilemma – the theist can ‘grab both horns’

•Rejects horn 1 because the implication would be that God is only good if he follows his own commands, but this makes no sense. God’s own goodness must be understood independently of God’s commands – he is perfectly good.

•This may imply horn 2- that God’s goodness is determined by some independent standard.

•Rejects horn 2 – God Himself is the supreme standard of goodness. He is not good by virtue of any qualities He has e.g. God is good and that is why His being loving makes being loving good.

•God as the supreme standard of goodness represents a logical explanatory stopping point.

x Does not avoid the charge of moral arbitrariness. If God is good in spite of any qualities he may possess, then if God happened to have a different character(e.g. cruel instead of loving) then those qualities would become good. Why take this particular individual as the standard of goodness without reference to what makes Him good?

What is a necessary condition?

a condition that is required or must be met for a statement to be true.

What is a sufficient condition?

a condition that, on its own, is enough to make the statement true.

According to standard DCT, what makes an action morally obligatory to perform?

We are morally obliged to perform an action if God commands it.

For the standard version of DCT, the fact that God commands an action is both a necessary and sufficient condition of it being a moral obligation.

According to modified DCT, what makes an action morally obligatory to perform?

God’s commanding of an action is a necessary condition of an action being morally obligatory, but it is not, on its own, sufficient – there must also be another condition met. The command must also come from a loving God.

How did medieval theologians attempt to solve the Euthyphro dilemma?

By appealing to a third option of God’s nature, making it a false dilemma.

A false dilemma is one which poses two options when really there are others. Arguably there is a third option than the two proposed by the Euthyphro dilemma. This third option is that what God commands is good because it accords with God’s omnibenevolent nature.

K Rogers quote

“God neither conforms to nor invents the moral order. Rather His very nature is the standard for value.”