Divine command theory and the Euthyphro question

Program / Course 22: Christian Ethics / Lesson 1.4

What you will learn

• State divine command theory and the question from Plato’s Euthyphro that challenges it.
• Describe the main versions of the theory and the replies to the objection.
• Explain how Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant writers relate God’s will to the good.
• Identify the difference between a theory of what makes acts right and a theory of how moral duties are known.

The big idea

Divine command theory says that what makes an action morally right or wrong is, at least in part, that God commands or forbids it. Plato posed a puzzle in the Euthyphro: is something holy because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is holy? Applied to God, the question is whether the good is good just because God wills it, or whether God wills it because it is good. Christian traditions have answered in different ways, and many deny that the two options are the only ones.

Key terms

Divine command theory

The view that moral obligations depend on God’s commands, so that actions are right or wrong because God commands or forbids them.

Euthyphro dilemma

The question, from Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, whether what is pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or is pious because the gods love it.

Voluntarism

The view that God’s will, rather than his intellect, is the ultimate ground of what is good and right. William of Ockham is often named as a voluntarist.

Intellectualism

The view that God’s will follows his wisdom, so that he wills what is good because it is good. Aquinas is often named as an intellectualist.

Arbitrariness objection

The charge that if goodness depends only on God’s will, then God could have commanded cruelty and made it good.

Divine nature theory

The view that goodness is grounded in God’s own unchanging nature, so that his commands express what he is and are neither arbitrary nor independent of him.

Obligation

A binding requirement to act or refrain. Many philosophers distinguish what is good from what is obligatory.

Background

In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates meets a man who is prosecuting his own father for a killing and claims to be acting piously. Socrates asks what piety is. Euthyphro says it is what is dear to the gods. Socrates asks whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious, or is pious because it is loved. If the first, then piety is something independent of the gods’ love, which they merely recognize. If the second, then it seems arbitrary: whatever the gods happened to love would be pious.

Christians who say that God is the creator and lawgiver face a version of the puzzle. Scripture presents God’s commands as righteous (Psalm 19:7-9). It also presents God as himself good and just (Genesis 18:25). The question is how these fit together. Over the centuries Christian thinkers have given several answers, and they have debated whether divine command theory is an account of moral obligation, an account of what goodness is, or both.

The debate matters for how Christians think about the moral law. If morality depends only on God’s will, then moral knowledge may depend on revelation, and the ethic seems close to obedience. If morality is based in God’s nature and reason, it can be explored by philosophy as well as faith. Both emphases appear in the traditions.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The theory and its appeal

The theory has strong attractions for believers. It makes God the Lord of morality and not subject to something higher. It fits the biblical picture of God commanding Abraham, Moses and the prophets. It also offers an answer to those who ask why morality binds: because God, who made human beings, has commanded. Many Christians, Jews and Muslims hold some form of it.

The theory usually appears in a modified form. Few defenders say that anything God might command is good. They say that obligations, in particular, are created by God’s commands, while goodness itself rests in God’s nature. This distinction is central to the work of philosophers such as Robert Adams, who defended a form of the theory in which wrongness is being contrary to the commands of a loving God.

Step 2: The dilemma

The first horn of the dilemma says God commands the good because it is good. Then goodness is independent of God, and God seems to answer to a standard outside himself. The second horn says the good is good because God commands it. Then God could have commanded cruelty or hatred and made them good. The objection is that this makes morality arbitrary and God’s goodness empty, since to say God is good would only mean God does what God commands.

Some medieval thinkers appeared to accept something like the second horn. Duns Scotus and William of Ockham stressed the freedom of God’s will, and Ockham is sometimes read as holding that God could have commanded even hatred of himself. Interpreters debate how far they meant this. Many later Protestant scholastics took a more moderate line.

Step 3: The replies

The most common Christian reply says that the dilemma is false. God is not a being who looks at a standard outside himself, nor one who arbitrarily picks what to command. God is the good itself. His commands flow from his nature, which is perfectly loving and just. So the good is neither independent of God nor arbitrary. Aquinas holds that God’s will is always in accord with his wisdom and goodness, and that the eternal law is God’s own reason. Augustine, speaking of God as supreme good, points the same way.

This reply faces further questions. If God’s nature determines what he commands, is God free to command otherwise? Some say that God’s freedom is not a freedom to do evil but the freedom of perfect goodness. A critic replies that this may reduce the commands to consequences of God’s nature, and so to a form of natural law.

Step 4: Hard texts and the difference between obligation and goodness

Defenders of divine command theory often point to hard biblical cases, such as the command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22), as showing that God can set aside a general rule. Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling uses the story to explore this. Many Jewish and Christian interpreters stress that the story ends with God stopping the sacrifice, and that the narrative treats such a command as a unique test, not a general license. Others, including some critics, say the story shows the danger of the theory. Interpreters disagree widely, and the lesson on using Scripture in ethics returns to such cases.

A further distinction is useful. A theory about what makes acts obligatory is different from a theory about how people come to know what is obligatory. A natural law thinker can hold that God commands the good and also that reason can discover much of what he commands. A divine command theorist can hold that God commands what is good and that Scripture is the main way to know the commands. The two views are not always rivals.

1. Does this account say that goodness or obligation depends on God’s will?
2. How does it answer the charge that morality would then be arbitrary?
3. How does it answer the charge that God would then answer to a standard above him?
4. Where does it say moral knowledge comes from: revelation, reason or both?
5. What does it do with biblical commands that seem to conflict with ordinary moral sense?
6. What would be lost if the view were true, and what would be lost if it were false?

Examples

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching, following Aquinas, holds that God’s will is directed by his wisdom and goodness, so that the moral law is a rational order and not a set of arbitrary decrees. Some commands are of natural law and known by reason. God is not subject to a standard above him because he is himself the supreme good. A strong voluntarism is not the church’s teaching, though the late medieval debates left a legacy.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers speak of God’s will as always in agreement with his nature and of his commands as expressions of love, pointing human beings toward communion. The Greek Fathers, such as Gregory of Nyssa, stress that God is goodness itself. Orthodox theologians are generally wary of both a God bound by an external standard and a God of bare will, and prefer to speak of God’s energies and personal love.

Protestant

Many Protestants, especially in the Reformed tradition, emphasize God’s sovereign will and his law as the rule of life, and some writers lean toward divine command language. Reformed scholastics nevertheless generally held that God’s commands reflect his holy nature. Lutheran and Anabaptist writers stress obedience to what God has revealed in Christ. Contemporary Protestant philosophers such as Adams and C. Stephen Evans have defended modified divine command theories.

Secular and philosophical

Many secular philosophers regard the Euthyphro question as a decisive objection, because they think that morality cannot depend on a divine will. Some deny that morality needs God at all. Others, such as defenders of moral arguments for God, argue that objective moral facts are best explained by a divine source. The question remains open among philosophers.

Jewish and Muslim views

Jewish tradition affirms that the commandments come from God, and its commentators debate whether they have reasons accessible to human beings. Medieval Muslim theologians were divided between those who held that goodness is defined by God’s command and those who held that reason can know good and evil. These debates shed light on the Christian one.

Why it matters

How a Christian understands the relation of God’s will to the good shapes how they read the Bible, how they speak to people who do not believe, and how they deal with hard texts. It also affects confidence: those who think morality is mere command may find it fragile, and those who think it is independent of God may wonder why God matters. The traditional reply that God is the good is worth understanding carefully.

Common misunderstandings

Knowledge check

Think it through

1. Does the traditional reply, that God is the good, seem to solve the dilemma or only to restate it?
2. How would you explain to a friend why God’s commands are not arbitrary?
3. What do you make of the story of Abraham and Isaac in the light of this lesson?
4. Is it more comforting or more troubling to think that morality is grounded in a person and not an impersonal order?

Independent assignment

Answering the dilemma

In your notebook, write 400 to 600 words. State the Euthyphro dilemma in your own words. Then write the strongest version of the reply that God’s nature is the standard, and the strongest objection to it. Finish by saying which of the Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant statements in this lesson you find most helpful and why. Do not send this to anyone or post it anywhere.

Further study

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Read the questions on law and on the goodness of God’s will.
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Moral Arguments for the Existence of God Read for the relation of morality and God in contemporary philosophy.
• C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity Read Book 1 for a popular argument about the moral law.
• Gregory of Nyssa, Dogmatic Treatises, etc. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, vol. 5) Read selectively for the Eastern emphasis on God as goodness itself.
• Genesis 18:25 Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?
• Psalm 19:7 The law of the Lord is perfect.
• Genesis 22:1 The testing of Abraham.