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Divine Commands at the Foundations of Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Joseph Shaw
Joseph Shaw*
Affiliation:
Wolfson CollegeOxfordUnited KingdomOX2 6UD
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Extract

In this paper I wish to consider one aspect of the role that divine commands seem to play in religious ethics, their role when considered in relation to the foundations of morality. If, as seems to be taken for granted in traditional religious ethics, divine commands have moral force in and of themselves, then at least some obligations are derived from commands. This being so, might not all be? If they were, then divine commands would be what the rest of morality derived from and was founded upon.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2002 , pp. 419 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2002

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References

1 See E.R. Wierenga, ‘A Defensible Divine Command Theory,’ Nous 17 (1983), 387-8.

2 Philip L. Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978), 27; cf. W.K. Frankena, ‘Is Morality Logically Dependent on Religion?’ in Religion and Morality: A Collection of Essays, Gene Outka and J.P. Reeder, eds. (New York: Doubleday 1973), 298.

3 See Quinn, Divine Commands, 28; 48-9.

4 R.M. Adams, ‘A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness,’ in R.M. Adams, The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press 1987), 97, 100; cf. R.M. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods ( N e w York: Oxford University Press 1999), 231-91. God can vary obligations by varying his commands: Adams, ‘A Modified Divine Command Theory,’ 273; cf. Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 255-6.

5 Contrary to Wierenga, The Nature of God: An Inquiry into Divine Attributes (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 1989), 214-15.

6 Mark C. Murphy, ‘Divine Command, Divine Will, and Moral Obligation,’ Faith and Philosophy 15 (1998), 4; Peter Byrne, The Philosophical and Theological Foundations of Ethics: An Introduction to Moral Theory (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1999), 145; Philip L. Quinn, ‘The Recent Revival of Divine Command Ethics,’ Philosophy and Phenomenal Research supp. I (1990), 347-8; J.M. Idziak, ‘In Search of ‘‘Good Positive Reasons’’ for an Ethics of Divine Commands: A Catalogue of Arguments,’ Faith and Philosophy 6 (1989), 47; Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1989), 253; John Chandler, ‘Divine Command Theories and the Appeal to Love,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 22 (1985), 231; S.R.L. Clark, ‘God's Law and Morality,’ Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982), 339; Baruch Brody, ‘Morality and Religion Reconsidered,’ in Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: An Analytical Approach, Baruch Brody, ed. (Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall 1974), 593.

7 Wierenga, ‘A Defensible Divine Command Theory,’ 389

8 Murphy, ‘Divine Command,’ 4

9 Quinn, Divine Commands, 47

10 Plato, Euthyphro 10a

11 W. Frankena, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy,’ Mind 48 (1939) 464-77

12 Frankena, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy,’ 469

13 Frankena, ‘The Naturalistic Fallacy,’ 474

14 Frankena, ‘Is Morality Logically Dependent on Religion?’ 299

15 G.E.M. Anscombe, ‘On Promising and Its Justice, and Whether It Need Be Respected in foro interno,’ in G.E.M. Anscombe, The Collected Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe, Volume 3: Ethics, Religion and Politics (Oxford: Blackwell 1981), 19-20

16 Lewis Carroll, ‘What the Tortoise said to Achilles,’ Mind 4 (1895) 278-80

17 Gilbert Ryle, ‘‘‘If,’’ ‘‘So,’’ and ‘‘Because,’’’ in Philosophical Analysis, Max Black, ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1950), 328

18 Quinn, Divine Commands, 31-2

19 Paul Rooney, Divine Command Morality (Aldershot: Avebury 1996), 112

20 Rooney, Divine Command Morality, 40; Idziak, ‘In Search of ‘‘Good Positive Reasons,’’’ 49-51, 57, 60

21 Clark, ‘God's Law,’ 346; Hugo Meynell, ‘The Euthyphro Dilemma II,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 46 (1972), 232

22 Rooney, Divine Command Morality, 28; Philip L. Quinn, ‘Religious Obedience and Moral Autonomy,’ in Divine Commands and Morality,, Paul Helm, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1981) 49-66; Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793), T.H. Greene and H.T. Hudson, trans. (New York: Harper Torchbooks 1960), 175; contrary to Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Which God Ought We Obey and Why?’ Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986), 363

23 Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) in I. Kant, Ethical Philosophy, J.W. Ellington, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett 1983), 442

24 Kant, Religion, 158-9

25 Murphy, ‘Divine command,’ 8

26 See Joseph Shaw, ‘The Virtue of Obedience,’ Religious Studies 38 (2002) 63-75.

27 S0ren Kierkegaard, (1843) Fear and Trembling; Repetition (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1983), 59

28 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1956-1969) Part III vol. 4, 215; Karl Barth, Ethics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1981), 63; Rudolf Karl Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (London: Nicholson and Watson 1935), 103

29 Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate q.23 a.7 ad 1

30 Vincent MacNamara, ‘Ethics Human and Christian’ in Ethics and the Christian, Sean Freyne, ed. (Dublin: Columba Press 1991), 86, 89; Herbert McCabe, ‘Obedience,’ in God Matters, Herbert McCabe (London: Mowbray 1987), 226-30; Bruno Shuller, ‘The Debate on the Specific Character of Christian Ethics: Some Remarks,’ in The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics, C.E. Curran, ed. (New York: Paulist Press 1980), 216; Eric D’Arcy, ‘‘‘Worthy of Worship’’: A Catholic Perspective,’ in Religion and Morality, Outka and Reeder, eds., 192, 195f., but see 198f. on special commands; Josef Fuchs, Natural Law: A Theological Investigation (Dublin: Gill 1965), 20, but see 21 on ‘positive law.’

31 Murphy, ‘Divine command,’ 9

32 Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law, 33-94

33 Francisco Suaraz, De Legibus Book II c. 6. See John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980), 47, n. 63

34 Adams, ‘A Modified Divine Command Theory,’ 109; Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 249-58.

35 Alston, Divine Nature, 261; Wierenga, ‘A Defensible Divine Command Theory,’ 393-4; Basil Mitchell, Morality: Religious and Secular (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1980), 155

36 Barth, Ethics, 69-70, 77

37 Adams, ‘A Modified Divine Command Theory,’ 115

38 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 13-49

39 Adams, ‘A Modified Divine Command Theory,’ 107

40 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 252-4

41 Alston, Divine Nature, 257-8

42 Chandler, ‘Divine Command Theories,’ 236

43 R.M. Adams, ‘Divine Commands and the Social Nature of Morality,’ Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987), 273; Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 255-6

44 See Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, 45-9, 54f., 342-3, 350.

45 Barth, Ethics, 74

46 Frederick Copleston, A History of Medieval Philosophy Vol. 2 (New York: Image Books 1993), 410. Copleston is presumably thinking of De Veritate q. 23 a. 6.

47 Keith Ward, Ethics and Christianity (London: Allen and Unwin 1970), 89

48 Ward, Ethics, 90

49 Ward, Ethics, 89

50 Richard J. Mouw, The God Who Commands (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1990), 20; James G. Hanink and Gary R. Mar, ‘What Euthyphro Couldn't Have Said,’ Faith and Philosophy 4 (1987), 245; Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘Which God Ought We Obey and Why?’ Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986), 361; Elenore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, ‘Absolute Simplicity,’ Faith and Philosophy 2 (1985) 353-82; Norman Kretzmann, ‘Abraham, Isaac, and Euthyphro: God and the Basis of Morality,’ in Hamartia, the Concept of Error in the Western Tradition, D.V. Stump, E. Stump, J.A. Arieti, and L. Gerson, eds. (New York: Edwin Mellen 1983); Peter Baelz, Ethics and Belief (London: Sheldon Press 1977), 70

51 Rooney, Divine Command Morality, 40

52 John Stuart Mill, ‘The Utility of Religion,’ in J.S. Mill, Collected Works Vol. 10 (London: Routledge 1969), 424

53 Alston, Divine Nature, 268-9, 272-3

54 Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods, 13-49

55 Wierenga, The Nature of God, 229; Wierenga, ‘A Defensible Divine Command Theory,’ 392; Quinn, Divine Commands, 111, 298

56 Wierenga, The Nature of God, 215; Wierenga, ‘A Defensible Divine Command Theory,’ 387; Quinn, Divine Commands, 27

57 Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1993), 209-15; cf. Brody, ‘Morality and Religion Reconsidered,’ 594

58 Scotus, Ordinatio IV dist 46, in Allan B. Wolter, Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press 1997), 183

59 Aquinas, De Veritate q.23 a.6

60 John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio III suppl dist 37, in Wolter, Duns Scotus, 202

61 On the Sabbath commandment, see Scotus, Ordinatio III suppl dist 37, in Wolter, Duns Scotus, 203; on monogamous marriage, see Ordinatio IV dist 33 q1, in Wolter, Duns Scotus, 209-11.

62 Aquinas, De Veritate, q.23 a.6 r

63 Aquinas, Summa Theologica a 2ae q.94 a.2; cf. Aquinas, De Veritate q.21 a.4

64 Amos 2.4

65 Romans 2.16

66 Scotus, Ordinatio III suppl., dist. 37 ad 3, in Wolter Duns Scotus, 207