The Divine Command Theory is the concept that God commands X; therefore, X is morally permissible. This concept brings about a series of question; the most prominent of which is the dialog found in the Euthyphro which states: “Is the pios loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” In monotheistic terms it would be transcribed as follows “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?” For the theist this presents a dilemmas that requires an explanation of why all moral things are moral and why that would cause God to look upon them with such favor. Conversely, it also requires an explanation of why God would command something that seems to have no moral truth.
The atheist may utilize the previous dilemma as an argument against the theist. This could be done as follows:
1. X is moral.
2. Thus, God must command X.
This causes God’s omnipotence and omniscience to be severely limited. This is due to 1,2 because God could not command Y which is not moral instead of X because he would be commanding something beside what is moral (pious). Thus, his omnipotence is limited to choosing only X and not Y. Furthermore, his omniscience is limited; this is due to the fact that the knowledge that God possesses about moral concepts etc. is limited to the obvious qualities that X or Y hold. Now if one simply responds by saying whatever an omnipotent/omniscient being says is good must surly be good already and must become good due to God’s power making it so. This beings about some further logical problems. For example, one could say that God could then create world A that holds as virtues murder, rape, incest, genocide, hate, racism, and things such as: love, charity, etc are held as vices.
St. Thomas Aquinas stated that the dilemma is false: yes, God commands something because it is good, but the reason it is good is that “good is an essential part of God’s nature”. So goodness is grounded in God’s character and merely expressed in moral commands. Therefore whatever a good God commands will always be good.
I personally think that Aquinas has made a valid point. However, I would like to propose my own solution to the dilemma present in the Euthyphro. It is a follows: If God is omniscient/omni benevolent, then God must know weather X is moral or not moral, and weather X is beneficial or not beneficial to the state of men. I feel that there are certain truths and laws that exist that are eternal and exhibit qualities/properties that make them moral or not. So, if God is characteristically good, then God could only command that which is good. Therefore, that which he commands must exhibit properties that are good. This idea that God commands men to follow that which is good does not make God limited or = to man’s ability to make moral decisions; actually, it demonstrates God’s omniscient qualities because he possesses the ability and goodness to help man know what concept/truth/law possesses the desired properties that improve man’s existence.
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August 30, 2007 at 2:41 am
Bad
Aquinas’s answer does not really even address the essential problem. At best, it is simply an arbitrary assumption on its own (i.e., that God is or cares in the least about the good: something that we can never have any degree of certainty on when dealing with such a being)
February 1, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Opus
I agree that Thomas Aquinas did not have it quite right but not in the way the above commenter has it. I think Aquinas is wrong about most things not in the sense of being altogether mistaken but in the sense of being correct about incomplete data. His error is more like that of Sir Isaac Newton’s in his theory of gravitation instead of that of the astrologists.
Newton was correct altogether insofar as he satisfied the data then available, but he was hopelessly wrong in describing the universe as it really existed. When additional data began to accumulate in the late nineteenth century (the planet Mercury simply refused to obey Newton), new, more complex formulas were required. Newton then began to give way to Einstein, and by the middle of the twentieth century, a complete replacement had been effected.
I think the same thing is true about Christian thinkers and philosophers of the past. As new and better understandings of God’s revelations become available, these men’s ideas must give way to more complete explanations that incorporate more data. It seems certain that the progressive nature of human understanding and learning can apply as much to Christianity as to the natural sciences so that as time goes on, more and more data about God and His revelations must lead to better and more complete theologies. By this process, older explanations—such as Aquinas’ (or Calvin’s or Wesley’s for that matter)—must give way to newer. We must grow from infancy to childhood, from childhood to adolescence, and from adolescence to manhood. I do not believe that Christianity has yet reached manhood—witness the nonsense that passes for knowledge in most churches, which I believe to be a sort of localized regression—but we must have an advantage (due to more and better data) over our distant forbears.
I also disagree with the previous commenter on the question of whether we can know whether God is or cares about “the good”. I think there is enough evidence to answer that question in the affirmative unless we should rather ignore Mercury and cling to Newton.
February 2, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Bad
Nope. In the case of a being with the purported qualities of a God, there is no way we can ever reliably establish anything about its character, motives, or intentions. Unlike a person with a limited number of actions, relationships, and lifespan, a supernatural all powerful being could be up to just about ANYTHING, including fooling us into thinking the wrong things. This is not a problem any advance in philosophy can solve: it is simply a core problem to hypothesizing this sort of being, period. Doing so causes more problems than it could possibly ever solve.
February 3, 2008 at 1:00 am
Opus
You are approaching the question exactly opposite to the way in which Christians do. You argue that it is impossible to know whether any proposed god satisfies any arbitrary idea of “good”. The Christian attacks the matter the other way round. To him, good is defined as that which God is, intends, and does. The only way to dispute this is to simply deny that any such god exists. If he does, then he is, by definition, what Christians say, but if he is not what they say, then this particular god cannot exist. This is a tautology. The question is not “Can we can know whether God is good?” but “Does the Christian God exist?”
March 18, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Grant
St. Thomas Aquinas stated that… “good is an essential part of God’s nature”.
Can you let me know if your reference is Summa Theologica, The Goodness of God (Question 6, Article 3)?
Thank you, Grant