Sterba’s Argument from Evil and Objections to Divine Command Theory

Divine law theories of metaethics claim that moral rightness is grounded in God�s commands, wishes and so forth. Expressivist theories, by contrast, claim that to call something morally right is to express our own attitudes, not to report on God�s. Ostensibly, such views are incompatible. However, we shall argue that a rapprochement is possible and beneficial to both sides. Expressivists need to explain the difference between reporting and expressing an attitude, and to address the Frege-Geach problem. Divine law theorists need to get past the Euthyphro dilemma, and to avoid moral externalism. This paper shows how a combined theory helps us to achieve this.

A divine command theory of morality contends that actions are morally required if and only if and because God commands those actions. An action is morally permissible if and only if and because God permits that action. An action is morally wrong if and only if and because God prohibits that action. The word “because” here refers to an immediate and direct dependence relationship. Defenders include John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Piere d’Ailly, Jean Gerson, Gabriel Biel, Francisco Suarez, Descartes, Samuel Pufendorf, John Locke, George Berkeley, John Gay, William Paley, and John Austin. In the early twentieth century, most philosophers believed a line of argument pressed in Plato’s dialogue: the Euthyphro discredited divine command theories. However, they underwent a revival in the 20th-century analytic philosophy of religion due to the seminal works of Philip Quinn and Robert Adams. Their theories will be discussed in this article (see Formulating the Theory). The viability of divine command theories remains at the forefront of discussions about the relationship between religion and morality. This work will focus mainly on the development and debate around divine command theories in contemporary analytic philosophy, though some historical references will be discussed.

It is widely believed that the Divine Command Theory is untenable due to the Euthyphro Dilemma. This article first examines the Platonic dialogue of that name, and shows that Socrates’s reasoning is faulty. Second, the dilemma in the form in which many contemporary philosophers accept it is examined in detail, and this reasoning is also shown to be deficient. This is not to say, however, that the Divine Command Theory is true—merely that one popular argument for rejecting it is unsound. Finally some brief thoughts are presented concerning where the real problems lie for the theory.

Divine command theory (DCT) is experiencing something of a renaissance, inspired in large part by Robert Adams’s 1999 masterpiece Finite and Infinite Goods. I argue here that divine commands are not always necessary for actions to be morally obligatory. I make the case that the DCT-ist’s own commitments put pressure on her to concede the existence of some moral obligations that in no way depend on divine commands. Focusing on Robert Adams’s theistic framework for ethics, I argue that Adams’s views about good, evil, reasons, and the nature of moral obligation suggest that there can be moral obligations that exist independently of any divine commands. My argument proceeds through the development of an example in which there is a moral obligation that is not even partially grounded in a divine command. I focus primarily on Adams’s view because, many contemporary divine command theorists work in a broadly Adams-ian framework, so the argument that I advance here poses a challenge for many contemporary versions of DCT.

People who do not believe that there is a God constitute an obvious problem for divine command metaethics. They have moral obligations, and are often enough aware of having them. Yet it is not easy to think of such persons as “hearing” divine commands. This makes it hard to see how a divine command theory can offer a completely general account of the nature of moral obligation. The present paper takes a close look at this issue as it emerges in the context of the most recent version of Robert Adams’ modified divine command theory. I argue that, despite a valiant attempt to do so, Adams does not succeed in giving an adequate account of the moral obligations of non-believers. More generally, I claim that if divine commands are construed as genuine speech acts, theists are well advised not to adopt a divine command theory.

Virtue theory has occupied a place of relative prominence within the Christian intellectual tradition. But there is a problem facing it: how one contemplates the virtues and vices will ultimately depend upon deeper accounts of the good and the right. Accordingly, virtue theory is incomplete, at least when taken by itself. Our task in this paper is to show that neither of the standard approaches to explaining the metaphysical foundations of morality within the Christian tradition—natural law theory and divine command theory—are sufficient to fix this incompleteness. We thus propose a combination of natural law theory and divine command theory to remedy the matter. The upshot of our argument, then, is this: what counts as a virtue ultimately depends upon the natural law and divine commands.

Introduction: The Secular Outlook. 1. Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism. The Alpha Privative. Atheism and Liberal Concepts of God. Atheism as an Unpopular Position. A Definition of Atheism. Motives for Atheism. Atheist Values. Spiritual Excellences and the Liberal Decalogue. Agnosticism. The History of Agnosticism. Huxley and Russell. Pascal s Wager. Pascal s Insight. Atheism or Non-Theism? 2. Freethought I: Criticism of Religion. Ecrasez l Infame . Religion and Evil. Religious Violence. Father and Daughter. How to Discover a Relationship between Religion and Violence. Ramadan v. Hirsi Ali. Religion per se . Textual Relativism. Can Translation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Can Interpretation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Why Are Moderates so Reluctant to Criticize Religion? The Bible on Apostasy. Biblical Terrorism: The Story of Phinehas. Biblical Violence and Modern Legal Practice. The Book of History. Some Objections. 3. Freethought II: Freedom of Expression. Mill on Liberty. Khomeini v. Rushdie. Fukuyama Giving Up on the Arab World. The Limits of Free Speech. The Deontological and Utilitarian Justifications for Free Speech. Clifford on the Duty to Critique. Freedom of Speech and Philosophers on the Index. Intolerance not Restricted to Islam. Giniewski v. France. Freethought under Fire. People Are not Being Insulted for Having a Religion. Racism without Race. Social Criticism not Identical with the Urge to Provoke. Flemming Rose on Why He Published the Danish Cartoons. The Theory of Evolution: Too Controversial to Defend? Is There Another Way to Discover the Truth than by Free Discussion? 4. Moral and Political Secularism. Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostles Creed. Who Are You to Tell Believers What to Believe? What Judaism, Christendom, and Islam Have in Common: Theism. Divine Command Theories. Abraham and Isaac. The Story of Abraham in the Qur an. The Story of Jephtha. Adherents of Divine Command Theory. Command Ethics or Divine Command Ethics? An Assessment of Divine Command Ethics. Kierkegaard and Mill. Kohlberg and Moral Education. Religious and Secular Ethics. Worship. Kant s Struggle with Moral Autonomy and Free Speech. Kant s Legacy in Nineteenth-Century German Theology. Schleiermacher as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics. Armstrong s Plea for Liberal Interpretation. A New Way to Look at the Sacredness of Scripture? Classic Books and Sacred Books. Violating the Integrity of the Text. Is Hermeneutics the Only Way to Modernize Traditions? Is Islam Secularization-Resistant ? Two Kinds of Reformers: Liberal Islam and Secular Islam. Selected Reading. Index.

Theists commonly hold that God endows humans with rights. Standard explanations draw on natural law theory or divine command theory. However, the natural law account does not give God a central role in explaining our rights, and the divine command account does not assign human nature a significant explanatory role. A successful theistic explanation of human rights must meet three conditions: (1) God must directly explain human rights; (2) human nature must also directly explain human rights; (3) this dual contribution must explain why morality forbids rights violations by grounding the deontic reasons associated with rights. I propose a holiness account of rights. On this view, God endows human nature with rights by making human nature holy, and God does so by fashioning humans with one of God's essential properties: the capacity to love. This theory satisfies all three conditions and explains the deontological character of rights.

One prominent response, based on the work of Robert Adams, Edward Wierenga, and others, to the Euthyphro objection to the divine command theory is to point out that God is essentially omnibenevolent. The commands of an essentially loving being will not be arbitrary since they are grounded in his nature, nor is it possible for a loving God to issue horrendous commands such as the gratuitous torture of infants. This paper argues that this response is inadequate. The divine command theory attributes to God the power to make an action morally obligatory. Given the reasonable assumption that any omnipotent being has the same powers as God, contemplating the commands of a malevolent deity is enough to cast doubt on the claim that any being, loving or otherwise, has the power to make an action morally obligatory just by commanding it.

Early Ashʿarites (including al-Juwainī) espouse divine command theory. Al-Ghazālī, however, rejects divine command theory and offers a new semantics for moral terms. He advocates a self-centered consequentialist ethical theory. The chapter provides an overview of al-Ghazālī’s ethical theory and his moral epistemology, according to which reason has no power to discover the moral status of actions. Based on al-Ghazālī’s consequentialist ethical theory, the argument for strict adherence is reconstructed to reject the reliability of our independent moral judgments. The argument implies that we have to follow Scriptural injunctions in their literal sense. The argument’s reliance on consequentialism, however, generates some worries for the argument.

John Hare proposes a version of “divine command theory.” Like Kant, he worries that if we don’t believe in God, morality becomes unstable. Lest we lose hope and abandon our moral efforts, we can place our trust in the super-sensible author of nature, God, who rewards us by creating the conditions for our happiness. Hare argues (as Kant does) that God can grant us happiness in equal measure to our virtue. Still following Kant, Hare argues that God makes the moral law and gives it to us. Though we are able to identify our moral obligations and honor them for their own sake, a “moral gap” exists between how we ought to live and the way we can live without “outside” assistance from others including God. This “outside” assistance is an effect of divine grace. To the question of why we should be moral, Hare turns to the philosophical theologian, Duns Scotus, who argued that to love God is to obey God – in other words, to love God is to will what God wills for us to will – our obedience.

Linda Zagzebski proposes a formal framework for an ethical theory in which the incarnation is central and the imitation of Christ the basic normative idea. Her formal framework of exemplarism makes it possible to utilize the advantages of narrative ethics within a formal theory. She then sketches a practical form of exemplarist virtue theory that she calls Divine Motivation (DM) theory. In this theory, all evaluative concepts are derived from the concept of a good motive, and God's motives are the metaphysical ground for all value. Zagzebski argues that DM theory is more distinctively Christian than such law‐based theories as divine Command theory and Natural Law theory.

Purpose This study aims to investigate how religiosity influences Islamic bank customers on customers’ social responsibility (CnSR) directly and indirectly toward customers’ materialism and ethics. Design/methodology/approach In total, 653 participants were recruited, and structural equation modelling was used to examine research frameworks. Findings Religiosity has a positive and significant effect on Islamic bank consumers’ materialism, ethics and CnSR. Furthermore, materialism has a positive and significant role in Islamic bank consumers’ ethics and does not have a positive and significant role in CnSR. Furthermore, Islamic bank consumers’ ethics has a positive and significant effect on CnSR. This study also demonstrates that religiosity has a positive and significant effect on CnSR directly and indirectly toward Islamic bank consumer materialism and ethics. Research limitations/implications This study investigates Indonesian Islamic bank consumers. Therefore, future studies must analyze various approaches across different regions to obtain comprehensive information about the social responsibility of Islamic bank consumers. Practical implications The regulators and shariah supervision board need to develop regulations on the Islamic banking system, including corporate and consumer social responsibility. Originality/value This study contributes to extending knowledge of the divine command theory towards developing a new view of Islamic bank consumer religiosity and social responsibility.

This chapter answers various epistemic challenges to divine command theory, and extends the moral argument by offering a few epistemic variants of it; in the process it also stresses that divine command theory is not primarily an epistemic theory so much as a metaphysical one. In fact, since the “way of being” is not the “way of knowing,” as the medievals put it, certain moral commitments stand with greater epistemic privilege than religious ones, but rather than this fact undermining the moral argument, it in fact is a requisite condition for a workable moral apologetic, since the moral premises must be at least as strong as the theistic conclusion—another reminder of the rational need for God's goodness to be analogically explicable and not so unrecognizable that it robs ascriptions of goodness to him of determinate content and implicates speakers in an egregious equivocation. This chapter also argues that theistic ethics, rightly understood, never involves a genuine conflict between what's morally required and what's rational to do.

Morality is argued to be in a state of decline in the contemporary West. This article identifies two dominant strands of moral decline sociology: the ‘cultural pessimists’ and the ‘communitarians’. The article argues that these two dominant assessments of moral loss are underwritten by a set of assumptions concerning ‘society’ as the necessary source of morality and a disparaging view of emotion, body and self-authenticity culture. Drawing on Bauman, Ahmed, Irigaray and Taylor, the cultural pessimist and communitarian diagnoses of the moral present are critiqued as offering an overly pessimistic account of contemporary morality that ignores society as a ‘morality-silencing’ force and denies the ethical significance of self, emotions, body and therapeutic ideals of self-improvement and authenticity.