Study guide: Divine Command Theory

📋 Course Outline

1. Classical Divine Command Theory
2. Scripture and Divine Authority
3. God as Moral Foundation
4. Adams’s Modified Theory
5. Euthyphro and Arbitrariness
6. Strengths and Continuing Criticisms

📖 1. Classical Divine Command Theory

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Divine Command Theory: A meta-ethical theory according to which moral truths depend on God’s will or commands.

★ Must-know

📌 In Divine Command Theory, actions are right because God commands them and wrong because God forbids them.

📌 In Divine Command Theory, a person is morally good by obeying God’s commands, rather than by relying only on feelings or logic.

Further detail

• Divine Command Theory treats moral rules as objective, meaning true for everyone rather than dependent on personal opinion.

• Divine Command Theory connects God’s omnipotence with the power to determine what is morally right and wrong.

💡 Memory Hook

God commands an action → it is right; God forbids it → it is wrong.

📖 2. Scripture and Divine Authority

📝 Essential Points

• Religious believers may consult scripture, including the Bible or the Qur’an, to identify God’s commands.

• Exodus 20:13 gives the command “Do not kill,” which is considered moral in DCT because God commands it.

• Zakat, or giving to the poor in Islam, is considered right in DCT because God commands generosity.

📖 3. God as Moral Foundation

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Metaphysical foundation: A non-physical source that explains why moral rules exist and why they should be followed.

★ Must-know

📌 DCT treats moral truth as absolute and independent of human emotions or changing cultures, rather than as a social agreement or individual feeling.

• In DCT, God’s nature and will form the foundation of moral truth, rather than moral rules being human inventions.

Further detail

• In classical theism, God is described as:

  • eternal
  • unchanging
  • necessary, meaning God cannot fail to exist

• DCT presents morality as:

  • unchanging
  • eternal
  • reliable

💡 Memory Hook

God’s eternal, unchanging nature → an eternal, unchanging moral order.

📖 4. Adams’s Modified Theory

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Modified Divine Command Theory: Robert Adams - A theory holding that moral goodness depends on God’s commands, which come from God’s perfectly loving nature.

★ Must-know

📌 In Adams’s modified theory, an action is morally right when a loving God commands it, and wrong when it goes against the commands of a loving God. - Robert Adams

Further detail

📌 Adams’s modified theory rules out God commanding cruelty or injustice because these would contradict God’s perfectly loving nature. - Robert Adams

• Robert Merrihew Adams was a modern American Christian philosopher who defended Divine Command Theory and developed Modified Divine Command Theory. - Robert Adams

💡 Memory Hook

Classical DCT centers on what God commands; Adams restricts commands to those consistent with God’s perfectly loving nature.

📖 5. Euthyphro and Arbitrariness

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Arbitrariness problem: The objection that if morality is only what God commands, goodness could seem random or change at God’s will.

📝 Essential Points

📌 The Euthyphro dilemma asks whether something is good because God commands it or whether God commands it because it is good. - Plato

• If things are good because God commands them, critics argue that morality is arbitrary and God could command murder or torture. - Plato, Euthyphro

• If God commands things because they are already good, critics argue that morality exists independently of God and God is not its source. - Plato, Euthyphro

📖 6. Strengths and Continuing Criticisms

★ Must-know

• The pluralism objection argues that religions and believers within the same religion disagree about God’s nature and commands, making it unclear which divine commands are correct.

Further detail

• Adams’s modified theory is presented as avoiding the Euthyphro dilemma by grounding commands in God’s perfectly loving nature while retaining God as morality’s source. - Robert Adams

• Adams’s modified theory maintains that God is omnipotent and perfectly good, and that God’s commands are always morally right. - Robert Adams

• A criticism of Adams’s theory is that it relies on belief in a loving God and may offer no moral foundation to people who do not believe in God.

• A criticism of Adams’s theory is that defining God as loving through goodness may be circular because goodness is then defined using itself.