Duties and Divine Commands

In the last post, I talked about an ethical view called consequentialism. Consequentialists believe that the moral status of an act (right, wrong, permissible) is determined solely by the merits of its consequences. A non-consequentialist ethic denies this claim. Indeed, according to non-consequentialists, there can be actions we should perform no matter the consequences.

In this post, I am going to focus on one theory of ethics that is non-consequentialist. The theory essentially says that right and wrong is determined by God’s prescriptions. Indeed, according to the divine command theory, just what is meant by right or wrong is that God has either commanded it or forbidden it.

The view can be explained by responding to its objections. In this post, I will focus on the Euthyphro dilemma, famously posed by Plato, and the abhorrent command objection.

Divine Command Theory

According to the divine command theory of ethics, an action is morally wrong if it breaks a command given by God. Divine command theory makes sense of much of what Christians take to be how the moral life works. God has revealed to his people what he expects from them in a
codified set of rules found in the Bible. The law codes of both the Old and New Testaments lay out restrictions and prescriptions for a moral life. Further, God has made human beings with a conscience that accuses all human being of having done wrong. Thus, even those who have not read the Bible have an awareness of the moral status of various actions based on God’s law “written on their hearts” (Rom 2:15).

Euthyphro Dilemma

The immediate question for such a theory involves the relationship between God and his commands. Upon a moment’s reflection, we can see a problem: How does God come up with his commands? Does he come up with them by willing them or does he come up with them because he knows what is right and wrong? These questions generate dilemma for divine command theorists. [1]

Suppose God comes up with commands by willing them. Since there are no moral laws that precede his commands, he wouldn’t have any way to judge whether they are good or bad. Indeed, it seems that any command he comes up with is morally correct merely because he wills it to be. However, it would follow that God could have made commands that we would consider immoral. For example, God could have decided to make a rule that permits killing for fun. The problem with taking this view is that there wouldn’t be anything intrinsically wrong with killing for fun. Morality would be arbitrary.

On the other hand, suppose that there are moral rules prior to God’s commands. If so, then any command God issues must be in accordance with those moral rules. However, on this view, God is not independent. He lacks the property of aseity. Aseity is the property of being independent. If anyone has such a property, God does. But to suppose that God must submit his law code to a superior authority is tantamount to saying that he is not God.

Theists have sought to solve the problem in a variety of ways. Some have chosen to embrace one of the horns of the dilemma. For example, William of Ockham argued that whatever is right and wrong is solely dependent upon what God decides. God could, if he wanted to, command the opposite actions to those found in the ten commandments. Even today, God could rescind the commands he has previously given and provide a new set of commands. [2] Other theists have opted to embrace the other horn of the dilemma. Though God rules over all, he is subservient to an existent realm of abstract ideas including goodness. They believe it is better to modify or drop the idea of divine aseity
than to admit that morals are arbitrary.

A better response involves going ‘through the horns’ of the dilemma. According to those who hold to a modified divine command theory, a moral command is not arbitrary nor is it ‘outside’ God. Instead, moral commands are such because they are in accordance with the nature of God. God’s nature just is the way it is. Not even God could change it. As a consequence, God determines which acts are just and which are unjust based on his knowledge of his own nature. For example, since God is love, his commands will not contravene his love. [3]

Abhorrent Commands

There is a further objection made to the modified divine command theory described above. According to the abhorrent command objection God could, if he so wanted, issue an abhorrent command (such as the command to torture a child for fun). If he actually issued such a command, then the modified divine command theory is false. We would be forced to embrace one of the other options.

For the objection to threaten the modified divine command theory, there must be an explicit command that is abhorrent. The objection cannot merely pose a hypothetical situation in which God issues an abhorrent command. He must actually issue such a command. Consider the following conditional statement:

If God issues a command to rape, then rape becomes morally obligatory

The response to this is relatively easy: The antecedent is false. God has not issued a command to rape. Thus, the statement is trivially true since all conditional statements with false antecedents are true.

However, we do have putative examples of abhorrent commands. One example is God’s command to Abraham to murder his son. Thus, we have a conditional statement in which the antecedent is true:

Usually, we could avoid the problem by saying that the antecedent is false. But in this case, God really did command Abraham to kill his son. Thus, we are forced to accept that God could make all sorts of immoral activities good merely by commanding them. So, what are we to do? Jerry Walls and David Baggett offer the following options: [4] First, one might suggest that Yahweh is not God. Perhaps it is someone masquerading as God who deceives Abraham. This is not an option for Evangelical Christians since the Bible reports that it is God who commands Abraham, and the Bible contains no errors.

Second, perhaps it is true that God can issue abhorrent commands. A voluntarist who says that God can (and does) override a moral law and in so doing makes the action morally permissible may hold that God can issue an abhorrent command. Given that we have rejected this view in our discussions of the Euthyphro dilemma, this option is not open to us either.

Third, it is possible that the reports of God issuing the command are false (or not literal). The report of God’s command serves only as a pointed story illustrating the great faith of Abraham. Again, however, if the report is false, then the Bible contains errors. But this contradicts the doctrine of inerrancy.

The final option is to argue that the command is not abhorrent. Baggett and Walls argue for this view. They suggest that there are other statements in the Bible that, taken together, render the command consistent with God’s nature and his other commands.

First, the purpose of the command is the testing Abraham not the killing of Isaac. A command that is truly abhorrent must be given by someone who intends the commanded action to be performed. Since God does not intend for Abraham to kill Isaac, it is not an abhorrent command.

Someone might argue that it strains credulity to suppose commands can be issued without intending them to be obeyed. However, aren’t there other cases in which a command is issued for purposes other than having the command carried out? Consider a parent of a rebellious child who never obeys a command. When issuing a command, the parent might attempt to get the child to comply by issuing a command, knowing the child will do the opposite. “Stay up all night watching TV!” a parent might say all the while hoping that the child will be consistent and disobey the command by going to bed. Hence, commands are not always given with the intention of having the action they prescribe performed.

Second, God has promised to fulfill his promise through Isaac and cannot do this if Isaac is dead. Abraham is so sure of God’s promise that he reasons that even if he does kill Isaac, God will raise him from the dead (Hebrews 11:19). Thus, even Abraham knows that God does not intend the result to jeopardize the promise he has made to Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation. Thus, in context, God is not issuing an abhorrent command.

In reading the command in context the reader has no doubt that God does not want Isaac to die. Indeed, Baggett and Walls write: “Including Abraham’s story in the history of revelation was a much more powerful way to show that God does not, in fact, want child sacrifice than just to say so.” [5] Thus, God’s command to Abraham is not an abhorrent command.

Another putative example of an abhorrent command is God’s command to the Hebrews to wipe out the Canaanites (Deut 20:16-18; Josh 6:16-21). Surely the indiscriminate killing of both combatants and civilians is immoral. But then we seem forced to admit that some of God’s commands are to perform immoral acts.

I must admit, I have found this to be a very difficult objection to answer. Recently, though, my friend Dr. Welty has posed a solution that I find satisfying. [6] Perhaps you will too. It is based on two principles.

First, God has the right to take life. No one else has this right. He has it in virtue of being creation’s creator (Gen 1) and sustainer (Acts 17:25, 28). In virtue of his relation to his creation, he possesses the rights over it.

Second, God has the right to delegate. If God has the right to perform an action, he has the right to delegate the responsibility to perform that action to someone else. He can do so via a divine command. What follows from this is that not just anyone can perform the task. It is an individual or group who have become delegates. Importantly, a delegate can have the delegated right to perform actions otherwise impermissible. Dr. Welty shows that we are used to delegating rights to others in certain circumstances. Consider the following analogy from Dr. Welty. “If I have the right to restrict television watching when my children misbehave, then I can give the babysitter the right to impose
that punishment.” [7]

In the analogy, ordinarily, the person who is the babysitter ought not punish another person’s child, but as the babysitter, she must punish the children of another parent. In the case of holy war, those who are delegates are ordinarily obligated not to kill innocent children. But as delegates they must do so. The command that God gives to the Israelites is a command which delegates the action God has a right to perform. It is only as God’s delegates that Israel must kill all who remain in the land. But non-delegated Israelites are not permitted to kill innocent children. If they did so, they would be punished. Further, once the act is completed, there is no further license to carry on killing people.
Indeed, to do so would be murder, an act forbidden by God.

Someone might ask: doesn’t this entail that there is nothing intrinsically wrong in killing an innocent child? It seems we are unable to avoid taking a voluntarist view: morality is solely dependent on God’s will and could have been otherwise. How does one avoid falling into the voluntarist trap?

The important part of the solution is the delegation part. As mentioned, delegation of a right that you don’t have by someone who does can obligate a person to perform actions that would otherwise be immoral. The analogy of a babysitter being obligated as the babysitter to do something she is ordinarily forbidden from doing shows that we think it is okay.

Furthermore, the command to the Israelites to wipe out the Cannanites does not abrogate the command for the person to not kill innocent children. People act in roles, performing actions unique to them in that role. For example, a judge can pass judgment, but I can’t. The judge is acting on a delegated right and obligation (by the state) to pass judgment. A football ref can issue a penalty to a player when he is the official referee of a game, but he can’t issue a penalty to a player when he is watching someone else’s game.

Another objection rests on the idea that it would be a wrong act if it is an unjustified killing. According to this objection, one cannot merely say, it is wrong unless God commands it. One must be able to justify the command, giving a sufficient reason for the killing, rendering it a non-murder.

In the case of punishment, we can give a reason based on the view of justice upheld by God in lex talionis. But with the Canaanite infants, we cannot appeal to the same reason. After all, they do not deserve to be killed. Nor can we offer a kind of future-crime reason such as “if they are left to live, they will commit evil acts” because such a view can only be upheld on consequentialist grounds and we are supposed to be considering a non-consequentialist ethic.

But something close to the consequentialist reason can be offered: God cannot both allow the Canaanites to go on living as they are and avoid the steady flow and increase in their evil. This may sound strange but let me explain. It is often assumed that God can get whatever he wants. Surely, he is all-powerful. He can just make everything the way he wants. But what is forgotten is how he might be able to get what he wants without making things worse. It is likely that God cannot get the Canaanites to do what he wants because they do not want what he wants. The Canaanites do two things well: they kill their children in pagan worship and train their children in immorality to do the same. They are perpetuating evil from one generation to the next with no sign of letting up. Dr. Welty says, “Perhaps an early death spares these children from growing up and likely repeating the crimes of their parents’ idolatrous practices on an ever-larger scale.” [8] So, God acts to restrain the
quantity of evil perpetrated by the Cannanites. Since, this is a moral justification for an action, God is justified in issuing the command.

The objection to this solution will likely appeal to equality. Why do this to the Canaanites and not to others? Surely the children of Israel do likewise and yet they are given more grace. There are two replies to this problem. First, the children of Israel are harshly punished for their unfaithfulness. God uses the Assyrians and Babylonians to manifest his anger against their sin. But more importantly, the objection assumes that God must treat each person equally. However, this is not part of the biblical view of justice and grace. God has no obligations to equally distribute his favor or mercy (or anything else for that matter). He does not have an obligation to be merciful or save everyone.

Conclusion

The divine command theory remains one of the most popular Christian ethical theories, especially among evangelicals. In this post, I have attempted to show that the modified version is an improvement on Ockham’s and that it can survive two of its strongest objections.

References

[1] The dilemma is found in Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue. ↩

[2] William of Ockham, “Sententiarum IV,” Opera Plurima, vol 4, q. 8, 9. ↩

[3] Robert Adams, “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). ↩

[4] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God : The Theistic Foundations of Morality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 141–142. ↩

[5] Baggett and Walls, Good God, 141. ↩

[6] Greg Welty, 40 Questions About Suffering and Evil (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2024), 97–99; 101–103. ↩

[7] Welty, 40 Questions, 98. ↩

[8] Welty, 40 Questions, 102. ↩