The Divine Command Theory

Belief that Morality is Inextricably Tied up with Religion

Dec 25, 2008 Erin Britton

In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the system of morality is based on the idea of divine command.

Although questions of right and wrong are often seen as being extremely subjective and difficult to judge, for many people such moral issues are in fact easily settled. For many people, morality is inextricably tied up with religion. Something is right or wrong, good or bad, for the simple reason that God has ordained that it should be so.

Such a view of morality is described as the theory of divine command and is founded on the principle that it is for God to command and humans to obey. God imposes on worshippers a set of moral injunctions so that virtuous behaviour requires obedience while disobedience is a sin. Such a system of ethical rules should, in theory, banish the concerns that plague subjectivist theories of morality.

In essence, divine command theory claims that:

  1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
  2. Some such propositions are true.
  3. Those propositions are about the attitudes of God.

The Euthyphro Dilemma

Of course, if God did not exist then divine command theory immediately collapses but, even with God, there are still some serious problems threatening the theory. Probably the most serious of these is the Euthyphro dilemma that was raised by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro.

As Plato’s mouthpiece, Socrates engages a young man named Euthyphro in a discussion about the nature of piety. Both men agree that piety is ‘whatever is loved by the gods’ but Socrates goes on to pose a crucial question: are pious things pious because they are loved by the gods or are they loved by the gods because they are pious?

It is on the horns of this question that divine command theory of caught. Is something good good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good? Neither alternative is particularly pleasing to the divine command theorist.

Considering the first part of the question, killing for example happens to be wrong because God commands it but it could have been otherwise. God might have permitted killing as being OK or even made it obligatory and so it would have been so. Following such a reading leaves religious observance as little more than blind obedience to an arbitrary authority. The other alternative fairs little better. If God commands what is good because it is good, clearly its goodness is independent of God. At best this would indicate God’s role as a moral messenger, passing on ethical lessons but not being the source of them.

A counterattack to the Euthyphro dilemma would be to insist that since God is good, God would not command evil. Such an argument does risk circularity or incoherence since if ‘good’ means ‘commanded by God’ then ‘God is good’ will be virtually meaningless. A more promising argument would be that God is identical with goodness and therefore the commands would inevitably be good.

Ultimately, no conclusive and convincing answer has yet been found for the Euthyphro dilemma.

Sources:

Warburton, Nigel (2004) Philosophy: The Basics (Routledge)

Blackburn, Simon (2001) Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (Oxford Paperbacks)

Dupre, Ben (2007) 50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know (Quercus)

The copyright of the article The Divine Command Theory in Philosophy is owned by Erin Britton. Permission to republish The Divine Command Theory in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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Feb 4, 2009 1:23 PM
Andrew Haines :
Erin,

I was wondering what you think of the Euthyphro's eschatological finale? Does it add anything to the main thrust of the dialogue? In other words, do you think that Plato's appeal to the divine judgment, based on morality and at the end of life, makes any claims about moral accountability or moral objectivity that are over and above the capacity to know such via reason alone?

My take on it is that, by mentioning the judgments of the sons of Zeus, he is appealing—in addition to reasonable argument—to an understanding of the gods as themselves bound up with the moral life. What seems to make man's morality so intriguing to the gods is that very fact that they, at least in Plato's mind, ought to be morally exemplary. He makes this claim explicit in Republic IV, when he talks of the gods' goodness, etc.

I think Judeo-Christian morality is often pigeonholed very quickly as being based entirely on divine command. But what of this Platonic initiative to cite the basis of morality not in the commands of gods, or God, but in the very nature of their, or his, divinity. Commands are certainly a part of things for Jews and Christians, but isn't also the intelligible nature of the Creator at the root of what it means for a moral action to be objectively and categorically binding?
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