Divine command theory

Divine command theory (also known as theological voluntarism) is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by God's commands and that for a person to be moral he is to follow God's commands. Followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions in ancient and modern times have often accepted the importance of God's commands in establishing morality.

Numerous variants of the theory have been presented: historically, figures including Saint Augustine, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Søren Kierkegaard have presented various versions of divine command theory; more recently, Robert Merrihew Adams has proposed a "modified divine command theory" based on the omnibenevolence of God in which morality is linked to human conceptions of right and wrong. Paul Copan has argued in favour of the theory from a Christian viewpoint, and Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski's divine motivation theory proposes that God's motivations, rather than commands, are the source of morality.

Semantic challenges to divine command theory have been proposed; the philosopher William Wainwright argued that to be commanded by God and to be morally obligatory do not have an identical meaning, which he believed would make defining obligation difficult. He also contended that, as knowledge of God is required for morality by divine command theory, atheists and agnostics could not be moral; he saw this as a weakness of the theory. Others have challenged the theory on modal grounds by arguing that, even if God's command and morality correlate in this world, they may not do so in other possible worlds. In addition, the Euthyphro dilemma, first proposed by Plato (in the context of polytheistic Greek religion), presented a dilemma which threatened either to result in the moral arbitrariness of morality itself, or to result in the irrelevance of God to morality. Divine command theory has also been criticised for its apparent incompatibility with the omnibenevolence of God, moral autonomy and religious pluralism, although some scholars have defended the theory from these challenges.

Although "divine command" is the standard term in the literature, God addresses people in all sorts of ways. The scholastics distinguished between five different forms of God's revealed will, and they can be summarized in a Latin dactylic hexameter, "Praecipit et prohibet, permittit, consultit, implet". Praecipit means "gives precepts to". Precepts tell people to do something. They can include warning, admonishment or exhortation. Prohibet means "prohibits". A prohibition is a command not to do something. Permittit means "permits". A permission is not a command because a person is permitted both to do the thing and not to do it. Consultit means "counsels". They can include advice, instruction or invitation. They are different from commands as the latter generally generate obligation, and there is normally some expectation of condemnation if the command is not carried out. Finally, implet means "fulfils", which are directly effective commands. They do not need language-using human recipients. An example is "Let there be light", and there is light. Sometimes "command" is taken to mean the whole family of speech acts, but sometimes it only includes those prescriptions which generate obligation.

Philosophers including William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), St Augustine (354–430), Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308), and John Calvin (1509–1564) have presented various forms of divine command theory. The theory generally teaches that moral truth does not exist independently of God and that divine commands determine morality. Stronger versions of the theory assert that God's command is the only reason that a good action is moral, while weaker variations cast divine command as a vital component within a greater reason. The theory asserts that good actions are morally good as a result of divine command, and many religious believers subscribe to some form of divine command theory. Because of these premises, adherents believe that moral obligation is obedience to God's commands; what is morally right is what God desires.

Divine command theory features in the ethics of many contemporary religions – including Judaism, Islam, the Bahá'í Faith, and Christianity – as well as featuring in numerous polytheistic religions. In ancient Athens, citizens commonly held that moral truth was tied directly to divine commands, and religious piety was almost equivalent to morality. Although Christianity does not entail divine command theory, people commonly associate the two. DCT can be a plausible theory to Christians because the traditional conception of God as the creator of the universe parallels the idea that he created moral truths. The theory is supported by the Christian view that God is all-powerful because this implies that God creates moral truths, rather than moral truths existing independently of him, which seems inconsistent with his omnipotence.

Saint Augustine offered a version of divine command theory that began by casting ethics as the pursuit of the supreme good, which delivers human happiness. He argued that to achieve this happiness, humans must love objects that are worthy of human love in the correct manner; this requires humans to love God, which then allows them to correctly love that which is worthy of being loved. Augustine's ethics proposed that the act of loving God enables humans to properly orient their loves, leading to human happiness and fulfilment. Augustine supported Plato's view that a well-ordered soul is a desirable consequence of morality. However, unlike Plato, he believed that achieving a well-ordered soul had a higher purpose: living in accordance with God's commands. His view of morality was thus heteronomous, as he believed in deference to a higher authority (God), rather than acting autonomously.

Scholastic philosopher John Duns Scotus argued that the only moral obligations that God could not take away from humans involve loving God, as God is, definitionally, the most loveable thing. Scotus argued that the natural law, in the strictest sense, contains only what is self-evidently analytically true and that God could not make these statements false. This means that the commands of natural law do not depend on God's will, and thus form the first three commandments of the Ten Commandments. The last seven of the Ten Commandments do not belong to the natural law in the strictest sense. Whilst humanity's duties to God are self-evident, true by definition, and unchangeable even by God, mankind's duties to others (found on the second tablet) were arbitrarily willed by God and are within his power to revoke and replace (although, the third commandment, to honour the Sabbath and keep it holy, has a little of both, as humanity is absolutely obliged to render worship to God, but there is no obligation in natural law to do it on this day or that). Scotus does note, however that the last seven commandments: