Divine Command Theory

Classification

Position level

specific

Domains

Ethics

Overview

Divine command theory makes God's will the source of moral obligation. What you are required to do is what God commands, and an act is wrong because God forbids it, not because of anything further about it. Its defenders argue that this explains what is otherwise puzzling about moral demands: their authority over us, their impartiality, and their overriding weight, as the commands of a being who loves every creature.

Its classic objection goes back to Plato's Euthyphro, which asks whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or is pious because they love it. Put to this theory: is an act right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is right? If the first, morality looks arbitrary, since God might have commanded cruelty; if the second, rightness has a source independent of God's command. Robert Adams answered the first horn with a modified theory, on which wrongness is being contrary to the commands of a loving God; the theory assumes that such a God would not command cruelty for its own sake.

Position on

• The Basis of Right Action

Rival positions

• Kantian Deontology

  Question scope: The Basis of Right Action

References

• Plato, Euthyphro 10a (is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved?)
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Theological Voluntarism, §2.1 'Considerations in Favor' (normativity, impartiality, and overridingness), §2.4 (Adams's modified theory, which ties wrongness to the commands of a loving God), and §3.2 'Theological voluntarism and arbitrariness'
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Theological Voluntarism, §2.3 'Which act of divine will?' (that it is obligatory for A to φ depends on God's commanding A to φ)
• Robert M. Adams, 'A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness', in Gene Outka and John P. Reeder Jr. (eds.), Religion and Morality: A Collection of Essays (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1973), pp. 318–347
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), Ak. 4:443 (the theological concept, which derives morality from a divine, most perfect will, is a heteronomous principle and cannot ground morality, which rests on the autonomy of the will)