This year the New Zealand apologetics organization Thinking Matters ran a “Confident Christianity Conference” in Auckland. I was asked to speak at this conference on the topic. Does Morality Need God? Below is a slightly streamlined version of the talk I gave.

This brings me to my second contention: If God exists, a divine command theory would provide a coherent account of our fundamental assumptions about moral requirements.

I outlined four assumptions about the kind of requirements morality imposes upon us. These were

1. Inescapability: moral requirements apply to us irrespective of whether following them contributes to any ends or aims we currently desire.
2. Impartiality: moral requirements are justified from an impartial perspective.
3. Authority: agents always have conclusive reasons to do what is morally required and never have sufficiently good reasons for doing what is morally wrong.
4. Accountability: if something is morally required, we are guilty and liable to blame if we fail to do it and lack an adequate excuse.  

I will make three points.

First, If God exists, the assumption that wrongness is identical to the property of being contrary to God’s command would coherently account for all these assumptions. Consider the fact that moral requirements are “inescapable.” If God commands someone to do something, this command is addressed to them, regardless of whether it contributes to any ends or aims they currently desire. So, the imperative in question is inescapable.  Similarly, consider the impartiality of moral requirements. God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, essentially benevolent, and impartial agent. So what God commands is co-extensive with prescriptions that a benevolent, impartial person who was fully informed and reasoning correctly would endorse.  A command is also a paradigmatic example of a prescription that involves a demand for which we hold people accountable through standard practices such as blaming. That is how a command differs from other prescriptions, such as a piece of advice or a suggestion. So, if the property of being morally required is identical to the property of being commanded by God,  we would expect it to be true that we are accountable to moral requirements.

Second, if God exists, the thesis that wrongness is identical to the property of being contrary to God’s command would vindicate the assumption that it is always in our long-term self-interest to follow impartial demands. A divine command theory entails that moral requirements are what we are accountable to God for doing. Unlike human beings, God’s commands are co-extensive with what is demanded from an impartial point of view, and people can never violate these norms secretly without being detected.  

Third,  all attempts to refute a divine command theory have failed. It’s widely claimed that divine command theories were refuted by an argument called “The Euthyphro Objection.” This objection is named after a dialogue written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato in the 4th century BC. Plato’s original argument is somewhat obscure and applied only to polytheistic religions (those religions that believe in many gods). However, the version used by philosophers today is an adaptation of Plato’s argument for use against monotheistic faiths. Critics of divine command theories appeal to three arguments loosely associated with Plato’s dialogue. These are (1) the anything goes objection, (2) the arbitrariness objection, and (3) the vacuity objection. I will address each of these briefly in turn.

The Anything Goes Objection

One objection is that a divine command theory makes morality arbitrary because anything at all could be right or wrong. King and Garcia explain the alleged problem in this way:

[Divine command theory] implies that it is possible for any kind of action, such as rape, not to be wrong. But it seems intuitively impossible for rape not to be wrong. So [Divine command theory] is at odds with our common-sense intuitions about rape.[1]

This objection assumes it is possible for God to command rape. Divine command theorists contest this assumption. They do not contend that moral requirements depend on the commands of just anyone. They base moral obligations on the commands of God conceived in a particular way. God is an all-powerful, all-knowing, essentially loving, just, immaterial person who created the universe on their conception. Given this, the claim that God could command people to perform a horrendous act like rape holds only if it’s possible for an all-knowing, loving, and impartial person to command rape. This is unlikely. The reason critics use examples like rape is that they view them as actions that no virtuous person could ever knowingly entertain. However, suppose, for the sake of argument, it is possible for a just and loving, omniscient person to command rape. Rape would only be commanded in situations where a just and loving person, aware of all the relevant facts, could endorse it– and under these circumstances, it’s hard to see how one could take for granted it was morally wrong.

 Arbitrariness

A pervasive objection is that divine command theories make morality arbitrary because that nothing is right or wrong prior to God’s command; God can have no reasons for issuing one set of commands instead of another. Oppy explains the objection.

Could it have been, for example, that murder, rape, lying, stealing, and cheating were good because God proclaimed them so? Surely not! But what could explain God’s inability to bring it about that murder, rape, lying, stealing and cheating are good by proclaiming them so, other than its being the case that murder, rape, lying, stealing, and cheating are wrong quite apart from any proclamations that God might make?[2]

However, this is implausible. Suppose God has character traits such as being essentially loving and impartial. In that case, God can and would have reasons for prohibiting actions like rape, murder, or cheating, quite apart from whether these actions are antecedently wrong. Antecedent to any command on God’s part, these actions won’t have the property of being morally prohibited. But they could still have other properties such as being cruel or harmful or unjust or detrimental to human happiness— or being expressions of hatred, for example. And a loving and impartial God could prohibit these actions because these actions have these non-moral properties.

Divine command theories do not entail that morality is arbitrary. If anything, the opposite is the case. A divine command theory entails that actions will be wrong in virtue of certain non-moral properties those actions have. Non-moral properties would provide an informed, loving, and impartial person with reasons to prohibit those actions.

 Vacuity Objection

A third objection is that divine command theories entail that the doctrine of the goodness of God is rendered vacuous. Someone can only be morally perfect if he has duties and acts in accordance with them. But, seeing God does not issue commands to himself, a divine command theory entails that God has no obligations. Consequently, God cannot be God.

This objection assumes that God’s goodness should be explicated in terms of God faithfully discharging his duties. But there is no reason why we must understand God’s goodness in this way. In Christian creeds like the Westminster Confession, God’s goodness is understood as possessing certain character traits, such as being loving, impartial gracious, merciful, long-suffering, truthful, forgiving, etc. If God’s commanding an action makes it required, God cannot have an obligation to do these things; that does not mean God does not do them. God does not have to have a duty to do something in order to do it.

To recap: unless we assume that prudential and impartial commands never conflict, we cannot account for our fundamental intuitions about morality. Second, secular accounts of the kind of accountability we have to morality undermine this assumption. Fourth, a divine command theory would, if true, both vindicate this assumption and coherently account for our fundamental assumptions about morality.  Finally, standard objections against a divine command theory fail. The conclusion is this. If we assume God exists, a divine command theory can coherently and defensibly account for these fundamental assumptions in a way a secular theory cannot.

[1] Nathan L King, “Introduction”, in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics, eds. Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 11.

[2]  Graham. Oppy, Best Argument against God (Hampshire: Palgrave Pivot, 2014), 44.

Tags:   Anything goes Objection · Arbitrariness Objection · Divine Command Theory · Euthyphro Dilemma · God and Morality · Graham Oppy · Nathan L King · Plato3 Comments