Divine Command Theory (AQA A-Level Religious Studies): Revision Notes
Divine Command Theory
Understanding meta-ethics
Meta-ethics explores two fundamental questions:
- What does moral language mean?
- How can moral statements be justified?
These questions are interconnected. By attempting to justify moral claims, we discover what we're actually doing when using moral language. By examining the meaning of moral language, we begin to understand how to justify its claims.
Second-order language and questions
Meta-ethics uses what we call second-order language. Whilst an ethical statement concerns what is right or wrong, a meta-ethical statement is about what it means to claim that something is right or wrong. The questions we ask as part of meta-ethics are therefore second-order questions.
Three approaches to meta-ethics
There are broadly three different approaches to defining what we mean by 'good' and how we judge ethical statements:
- Ethical naturalism
- Ethical non-naturalism
- Ethical non-cognitivism
Ethical naturalism and non-naturalism hold that moral claims are about facts. These are cognitive theories because they explain moral language in terms of what moral facts we can know. Ethical non-cognitivism holds that we cannot know these things and tries to find an alternative basis for moral claims.
Secular versus religious ethics
Defining the distinction
Secular ethics refers to non-religious ethics based on moral intuition or general values. It is justified through reasoned argument and the application of values to moral dilemmas. Secular moral arguments aim to appeal to everyone based on shared experience and reason.
Religious ethics derives moral values from God or a divine realm. Divine Command Theory is an example of religious ethics.
Common ground
In many cases, moral conclusions are shared by secular and religious people. Everyone shares common experience and reason, and many secular values align with world religions. For example, both religious and secular thinkers agree that theft and murder are wrong.
Key difference
The point where religious ethics parts company with secular ethics concerns religious sources of authority that secular ethics cannot share:
- The belief that God or gods wish people to behave in certain ways (e.g., Jesus' response to the woman taken in adultery, or his teachings on Sabbath laws)
- Particular moral commands found in religious scriptures (e.g., Moses receiving the law on tablets of stone)
Obedience to the will of God is therefore a key feature in deciding right or wrong for a religious believer. For believers, belief in God or scriptural authority may be sufficient warrant for a moral choice. All ethical discussion will be restricted to considering how God's moral law should be applied in particular situations.
Basic principles of Divine Command Theory
Core definition
At its simplest, Divine Command Theory argues that whatever God commands must be good, because God is the source of all goodness. What God forbids must be evil.
Challenges in interpretation
This is not always straightforward because it leaves open the question of how we know exactly what God commands or forbids. Throughout history, different religions and denominations have taken different views about what God or Ultimate Reality requires morally.
Example: Differing religious views on meat eating
Many Buddhists and Hindus argue against eating meat based on ahimsa (non-violence), whilst other religions approve of meat eating and have specific laws about animal treatment and slaughter (kosher and halal rules).
We should not assume that there will be a definitive religious rule applicable to everyone, commanded directly by God in every situation. Nevertheless, the fundamental principle of Divine Command Theory is that people should act in a way that reflects the will of God as they best understand it.
Christian Divine Command Theory
Protestant rationale
Protestant Christianity offers a straightforward rationale for Divine Command Theory:
- God as Creator: God is the Creator of everything
- Organic link: There must be an organic link between Creator and created, reflected in Genesis 1:26-27 where humans are created in God's image
- Moral character: Most theologians interpret 'God's image' to mean that humans share God's rational and moral character
- Following commands: It follows that human moral behaviour should literally follow God's commands
- Sola Scriptura: For Protestants who live by the doctrine of Sola Scriptura ('by scripture alone'), God's commands are seen specifically in scripture
- Summary: Divine Command Theory is based on both God's moral character and God's moral commands, understood as statements of God's will
- Central commands: The heart of these commands includes the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) and Jesus' ethical teachings, particularly the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7)
Historical examples
John Calvin
Calvin used Divine Command Theory to justify his view of predestination in The Institutes of the Christian Religion:
The will of God is the supreme rule of righteousness, so that everything which he wills must be held to be righteous by the mere fact of his willing it.
Calvin's key theological argument is that God cannot be 'caused' to do anything, as this would imply a force external to God. Since God is omnipotent, to challenge or question God's will would be asking for something greater than God (an impossibility). For Calvin, Divine Command Theory is a natural result of the absolute power and sovereignty of God.
Karl Barth
In the twentieth century, Barth presented a similar argument in his Church Dogmatics:
How can God be understood as the Lord if that does not involve the problem of human obedience? ... The doctrine of God must be expressly defined and developed and interpreted as that which it also is at every point, that is to say ethics.
Barth argued that whilst people have always tried to understand ethics and define what is good, this is not his concern in terms of Christian doctrine. Man's obedience to God is the answer to all questions about ethics.
The commands of God set Christian ethics totally apart from general discussions about what is good or right, and totally override fallible human debate on moral issues. Christians should listen to and seek to understand secular ethical principles, but the Christian approach should be critical and not one of compromise. For Barth, the question of good and evil has been decided once and for all in the decree of God, by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Catholic perspective
The Catholic Church has a similar argument, though not generally presented as a 'divine command' theory based on authority alone.
Catholics believe that Christ gave to the leaders of his Church, particularly the Pope (Bishop of Rome), the authority to make pronouncements on matters of doctrine and ethics. This does not make the Pope infallible in ordinary matters, but special pronouncements made on the basis of his authority as Pope are considered infallible.
For Catholics, such pronouncements represent the will of Christ and should not be challenged based on human reason or evidence. This structure of religious authority means that pronouncements relevant to moral issues can be given an authority claimed to come directly from God.
Strengths of Divine Command Theory
1. Grounded in God
For religious people, Divine Command Theory grounds their moral behaviour in the teachings of a factually-existing God. Most believers see God as all-knowing and all-loving, so they have the advantage of believing that God's commands must be right and the best way of promoting love in human relationships.
2. Universal rules
The rules are universal and right for all times and places. This avoids the problem of sorting out different moral ideas in different countries at different times.
3. Clear and straightforward
The system is clear and straightforward. What God says is 'good'/'bad' or 'right'/'wrong' must be 'good'/'bad' or 'right'/'wrong'.
4. End-goal to morality
Most Christians link God's moral commands with the promise of life after death for those who keep them (and the threat of punishment for those who do not), so there is an end-goal to morality.
5. Perfect judge
God does not have any weaknesses of human judges. He is omniscient and omnipresent, so is totally aware of people's good and bad deeds. In other words, God is a totally fair judge.
Weaknesses of Divine Command Theory
1. Biblical reliability
Even if the moral commands in the Bible come from God (and not from humans), we cannot tell whether they are as God gave them. We have no 'original' version of any Old Testament book. The texts we use today are in many cases attempts to reconstruct what might have been the original meaning. The New Testament exists only in Greek, whereas Jesus spoke Aramaic, so we do not know what might have been lost or changed in translation.
2. Immoral commands in the Bible
Examples of problematic biblical commands:
- Slavery: Paul's Letter to Titus gives moral advice to slaves, requiring them to be 'submissive to their masters' and 'give satisfaction in every respect', which appears to condone slavery
- Homosexual behaviour: Leviticus 20:13 states that if a man lies with a male as with a woman, 'both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death'
If some commands are seen as immoral, then Divine Command Theory offers no real solution to the normative ethical question of which moral commands should be followed.
3. The problem of autonomy
Many people think that to be morally good, a choice must be made freely. Divine Command Theory does not really offer free choice because the promise of heaven and threat of hell mean that people will choose to follow God's commands out of self-interest. Morality should be based on reason, not on religious belief.
4. The Euthyphro Dilemma
For many, the biggest objection to Divine Command Theory is a logical problem known as the Euthyphro Dilemma (found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro). It may be expressed in a single question:
Is conduct right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?
If you accept the first option, then God loses moral goodness:
The implication is that whatever God commands must be good by definition, and you are not in a position to challenge it from your own experience or reason. This leads to the specific problem of God making immoral commands.
In the Old Testament, there are stories where God commands the slaughter of innocent children as part of destroying local inhabitants as the Children of Israel enter the Promised Land. These appear to sanction genocide and ethnic cleansing, going against fundamental values in secular ethics and other biblical images of God requiring justice, fairness and love of strangers.
Are we justified in calling any recorded command from God 'right' just because it appears in scripture? If so, do we assume such commands apply to all people at all times, or might they be responses to particular situations different from our own? How do we resolve apparent contradictions between divine commands?
If you accept the second option, then God loses omnipotence:
The implication is that God commands an action because it is good in itself. This leads to problems because we can ask, 'How does God know that it is good in itself?' The answer can only be that God recognises a moral law external to himself that he must obey. In that case, God is subject to the moral law and loses his omnipotence.
These difficulties seem to show that Divine Command Theory must be wrong, because taking either option means morality no longer relies on God.
Attempted solutions to the Euthyphro Dilemma
Several solutions have been offered:
- William of Ockham (1287-1347) suggested a 'bite the bullet' approach by adopting the first option. God is omnipotent and omniscient, so even if God commands murder or genocide, those commands must be obeyed. This is not a popular solution
- God's nature equals God's character: God and goodness are identical, so God's moral commands must be good. This sounds reasonable but still gives no answer to why God commands genocide and murder in the Bible
- Corrupt biblical text: Some suggest the text of problematic Bible passages is corrupt and does not mean what it says. This gets us nowhere because if some parts are corrupt, other parts can be corrupt too. If scripture is corrupt, we have no hope of knowing what God's commands might be
There is no universally accepted solution to the Euthyphro Dilemma. As a meta-ethical theory, Divine Command ethics is not without philosophical and practical problems. Where God's supposed commands conflict with autonomous human ethics or our intuitions about right and wrong, it raises the 'problem of evil'.
Key issue: If God's commands align with human ethical thinking and intuitions, they appear unnecessary. But if they contradict them, we have the problem of reconciling them with the belief that God is benevolent.
Classification as non-naturalism
Divine Command Theory is a non-naturalist theory because it holds that the source of 'good' is not in nature at all, but in a supernatural being (literally 'above nature') – God.
Key Points to Remember:
- Meta-ethics asks second-order questions about what moral language means and how moral statements can be justified, rather than making first-order claims about what is right or wrong
- Divine Command Theory states that whatever God commands must be good because God is the source of all goodness, and what He forbids must be evil
- The distinction between secular and religious ethics lies not in moral conclusions or underlying values, but in the authority of God and religious scripture as sources for moral commands
- Christian Divine Command Theory is grounded in God as Creator, humans made in God's image with rational and moral character, and commands found in scripture (particularly the Ten Commandments and Jesus' teachings)
- The Euthyphro Dilemma presents a major logical challenge: either conduct is right because God commands it (making God lose moral goodness), or God commands it because it is right (making God lose omnipotence)
- Strengths include grounding morality in God, providing universal rules, offering clarity, providing an end-goal, and ensuring a perfectly fair judge
- Weaknesses include biblical reliability problems, apparently immoral biblical commands, the problem of autonomy, and the unresolved Euthyphro Dilemma