Divine Command Theory Of Religion

Revelational Christian Ethics is the discovery and the study of God’s manifestation of Himself to humanity by His divine historical acts and His inspired word. Existing outside our material world, God progressively unveils Himself to us by both general and special revelation. Through general

The Divine Command theory states that” an act is morally required just because it is commanded by God, and immoral just because God forbids it.” (Lecture Notes pg. 42, slide #2.) This theory says that since God has said that it is something we must do to be good, that we must do it. Many religions believe and live by this saying that “it is the will of God or the Gods”. I truly believe that God has done his work and is still at work and since He did create us, He does know what good and evil is and does have authority to tell us what is good.

Someone who would believe a statement such as this one would most likely be in agreement with the Divine Command Theory---the reason being that the main claim in this theory is, all that is morally right, is right because God commands it so. Therefore in order to believe in the Divine Command Theory, one would need to be a strong believer in God---and would truly believe that if there were no God, morality would be absent. With this in mind, if God is the creator of all that is morally right, and there turns out to be no god at all, then nothing is morally wrong or can be capable of being morally wrong---would be a statement that non-believers of the Divine Command Theory would believe, and believe that morality can exist on its own, with or without a God. In this paper I will focus on the Divine Command Theory in relation to the statement above, and those who would oppose this statement. In doing so, I will attempt to show why I believe that those opposing this statement have a more plausible view.

Divine Command Theory theorizes that God it is the author of moral law and the right actions are those willed by God and that God clearly defines right and wrong. This allows the concept that sometimes situations are only right or good because God deems it so. In the simplest terms, God can determine right and wrong since he is omnipotent. Since God is all powerful, he can establish moral norms. Critics of Divine Command Theory believe that if a specific action is only right because God wills it so then evil acts would also be right since God willed them into existence. For example, if God wills murder or torture than these actions would be considered morally right.

Ethics can be defined as ‘Human moral conduct according to principles of what is good or right to do’. In Christianity there are certain ethical teachings, mainly The Ten Commandments, Beatitudes, and Jesus’ commandments of love. The Ten Commandments are derived from the Old Testament which defines what people must do in order to serve God faithfully and gives direction on how to live a life according to the covenant and in essence to be a good Christian person. In the New Testament the Beatitudes and Jesus’ commandments of love are found. With love being the main concept of these teachings, they and the Ten Commandments can be seen as alike as they

The Divine and Command Theory states that an action is right or wrong if God commands it. Divine Command Theorists would say that anything God commands is morally correct, but do not like the fact that cruelty or suffering could be morally right. They believe that any command God gives, He is commanding it because it is morally correct. Meaning that this is the better option for us, but this is where I

The divine command theory states that “An act is morally required just because it is commanded by God and immoral just because God forbids it” (Shafer-Landau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, p.67). In interviewing an Elder of a local Jehovah’s Witness congregation on the ethics involved in religion, he agreed that the divine command theory is correct, and that there are many commands and things that are forbidden in the bible that are considered to be God’s standards for the way we live our lives. But, when asked the modified version of the Euthyphro Question: is an action morally right because God commands it, or does God command an action because it is morally right, (Shafer-Landau, The Ethical Life, p.57) he picked the latter. Despite agreeing with the statement that the divine command theory makes, picking the latter is not uncommon even if the first affirms the theory. The statement that God commands an action because it is morally right, “implies that God did not invent morality, but rather recognized an existing moral law and then commanded us to obey it” (Shafer-Landau, The Fundamentals of Ethics, p.67-68). This does not make the Elder’s message wrong, in fact most theists don’t follow the divine command theory. This is based on the fact that if the theory were true, whatever God says is a command, and therefore morally right, but God could have said that rape, murder, and stealing is morally right if that was the line of thinking.

The divine command theory is put forth for people who believe in God. The theory implies that good actions are morally worthy as a result of their being commanded by God. God, for these individuals, include people from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim faith. Individuals, because of these propositions, believe that it is their moral obligation to abide to God 's commands; which is, what is morally right is what God desires. This theory states the idea of objectivity between what’s right and wrong. If God makes

Divine command theory is a theory that believes that what is willed by God is morally right. Another portion of this is that in order for a belief to be morally right a knowledge of God is required. This knowledge of God being required can be seen as a weakness due to atheists and agnostics not being able to be morally right. Some of the more notable philosophers that brought about various forms of divine commandment Theory have been Saint Augustine, John Calvin, and William of ockham. A prime example of divine command theory in modern practice is The Ten Commandments among Christians. The Ten Commandments are from the Old Testament in the Bible and are a basic set of rules to follow. This basic set of rules that was set forth by the divine is commonly what this theory is based on.

The Divine Command Theory is the assertion in ethics that an action is morally right if, and only if, it conforms to God’s will. This premise ties together morality and religion in a manner that seems expected, since it provides a solution to arguments about moral relativism and the objectivity of ethics. On the other hand, in Plato’s Euthyphro, Socrates questions whether something is right because God commands it, or whether God commands it because it is right. The ethical implications of the Euthyphro problem suggest that the relationship between morality and religion might not be as straightforward as suggested by the Divine Command Theory.

The conflict between the Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro objection come with questions about who sets the rules of morality, and how it can be assumed that these rules are justifiable. On one hand, the Divine Command Theory defends the idea that an act is morally right because God commands it and wrong because He commands against it. This sets God’s will as the foundation of ethics, making morally good actions those that comply with His commandments. This religion-based concept becomes problematic when it runs into the Euthyphro dilemma, founded from Plato’s Euthyphro dating back to 395 BC. The argument centralizes on why it is that God commands rightful actions, bringing in the question of, “Are moral acts commanded by God because they are morally good, or does God command things to be right because He has good reasons for them?” The Euthyphro argument creates its foundation on the idea that either God has reasons for His commands, or that He lacks reasons for them. This divides up the Divine Command Theory in two ways, either making the theory wrong or portraying God as an imperfect being. If God does have reasons for His commands, then these reasons are what would make the actions right or wrong. God’s reasons would stand as the basis of morality, instead of God’s commandment itself. God having reasons would insinuate that goodness existed before any direction from God because otherwise, there wouldn’t be any commandment. Morality would have to stand independent

The Divine Command theory of ethics is a theory that states that an act is right or wrong and good or bad based on whether or not God commands or prohibits us from doing it. This means that the only thing that makes an action morally wrong is because God says it is. There are two sides to this theory; the restricted and the unrestricted. The restricted theory basically says that an action is obligatory if and only if it is good and God commanded it; the unrestricted theory states that an act is only obligatory if it is commanded by God, it is not obligatory if it is prohibited by God and it is optional if and only if God has not commanded nor prohibited it.

Sophocles’ famous play “Antigone” highlights a problem in what was then the prevalent worldview for most pious Greeks, that of Divine Command Theory. Divine Command Theory is a philosophical paradigm, or worldview, which essentially states that an action is good if and only if it has been commanded by a divine entity, which, to quote St. Thomas Aquinas, “all men know as God.” The problem arises in what happens when there exist multiple deities, such as is the case with the Greek and Roman pantheons. Socrates himself argues about this in the famous work Euthyphro, underscoring the fact that this is a problem which has been around for a very long time. It would seem that the existence of multiple deities destroys the possibility of there being a coherent system of morality. What, for example, would be the course of action if one god were to prefer one action which is opposed to another action preferred by a different god? In the Greek mythology which serves as something of a backdrop for Antigone, it was not at all uncommon for the Olympian deities to be at odds with each other about this or that thing, or even outright conflict. Another problem raised by a polytheistic Divine Command Theory is the question “Do the gods command an action because it’s morally right, or is it morally right because the gods command it?” The polytheists must by necessity choose the first option, for reasons that will be explained later in the paper. This paper will take the position that the

In this paper, I will discuss about the Divine Command Theory and Euthyphro Problem and show how the Euthyphro Problem makes the Divine Command Theory morality arbitrary. Also, I will discuss why one does not have to reject the belief in God due to the Divine Command Theory cannot give a satisfactory answer to the Euthyphro Problem. First, I will define what the Divine Command Theory is and discuss its attractive features that answer the problem about the objectivity of ethnics. Second, I will define the Euthyphro Problem. Also, I will discuss how the Euthyphro Problem makes the Divine Command Theory morality arbitrary and show how it makes the doctrine of God’s goodness meaningless. Finally, I will discuss why one does not have to reject the belief in God just because one rejects the Divine Command Theory.

In the bible it says that God made heaven and earth which include stones and rocks. God is the omnipotent one so then he must be able to lift a rock, therefore if God is unable to lift a rock then that signifies that he is not omnipotent. Either way it shows that God cannot be the most powerful if he is not able to lift a rock. It wouldn’t make sense for God to make a rock that he himself cannot lift, it doesn’t make sense because it would be a contradiction. His omnipotence is not something independent of God’s nature. It is part of his nature. God has a nature and his attributes operate within that nature, as does anything and everything else.