So far I have briefly looked at two general, though certainly not exhaustive, secular options for understanding morality. This time I will look at one way of understanding morality and its relationship to God. Next week I will conclude with one last option.
The perspective I want to consider today is called Divine Command Ethics. Divine Command theory has a relatively long history in Christian thought since the time of William of Occam (after whom the phrase "Occam's Razor" is named). Divine command theory – hereafter DCT – basically states that our moral obligations come from what God commands. God commanding an action makes that action morally binding to us.
A famous objection to this view, though at the time was not called DCT, is Euthyphro's Dilemma, which you might have remembered from a while ago. The dilemma basically asks two questions: Is something good because God wills it or does God will it because it is good? Moreover, we could frame it this way: Is something right because God commands it or does God command it because it is right?
You can either say that moral obligations or duties are arbitrary because God has decided what they are because of what He has commanded us to do, or you can say that morality is independent of God and thus God must consult what is good and right before He can issue a command.
If you are a conservative orthodox (not "Orthodox" as in Eastern or Greek Orthodox) Christian, then either option should bother you. To say that God can just determine what is right or good simply by commanding it would seem to make God someone almost impossible to track. Would God suddenly change his mind tomorrow about generosity, love, and sacrifice and command us not to do those things?
What about horribly wicked things like rape, torturing the innocent, and murder? Could or would God suddenly change His mind tomorrow and command us to do those things? Is that even a remote possibility?
These are questions that have occupied several great minds of the Christian faith for centuries. Today, there are many different variations of DCT that I do not have the time to go into. Needless to say, there are at least two reasons for why it is still a live option for Christians today.
First, it preserves the sovereignty of God. If God has full reign over His creation, then He has the power and right to command whatever He wants and is not unjust or unfair to do so. Just as a parent can dictate the rules for his or her home for the child because they are in charge, so can God dictate what the moral rules or obligations are because He is the one who created the universe and placed us in it.
Second, it does have at least a kind of simplicity to it. Think about the law and traffic for a second. Initially, when I tell someone they cannot speed over 80 miles per hour because it is illegal, that seems roughly clear enough at first. Or if you were to tell a child that it is time for him to come inside because his curfew is 9:00 pm, simply telling him that his parents told him to come inside might suffice.
Third, it really captures the idea of authority. If the police are legal authorities who enforce traffic laws and we are under their care, then we are legally obligated to obey their orders. The same concept applies to the military and other domains of authority figures.
There are many critics of DCT – theistic and atheistic – but the point of today's piece was just to get you to see the simple elements of what a DCT looks like. Next week, we will tackle one more theistic option. Stay tuned!
