Ethical Decisions: The Divine Command Theory

I believe that God commands it because it is already right or wrong. This could possibly mean that whether or not God exist, those right or wrong actions were already right or wrong instinctively. The only difference is that, some people believe that they need a creator or God to tell them what is morally correct or wrong to believe it is.

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 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.

Divine Command Theory is based on whether God will approve of the actions or not, this leads people to believe that they know something about what their God will approve of (Holmgren and Geirsson, 2010). There is no recorded founder of Divine Command Theory, but people who follow it usually follow a God or Gods. If a person decides that an act is wrong without taking into account the rules or laws they should be following they will be going against Divine Command Theory. Divine command theory is a Deontological approach. Deontological systems of ethics are duty based, it is based mostly on the principle that decisions relating to a person’s ethics should be made based on rules. If a decision is deontological it is based on whether the action

The divine command theory states that an action is only moral if commanded by God. A utilitarian believes an action is moral if it benefits everyone associated with the action, whether it is being done for or to them. The Egoism theory says that something is done so that it may benefit the person’s self-interest. Robin would be immoral in the divine command theory, and theory of utilitarianism and does not fall under egoism.

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

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

For centuries people have contemplated what makes actions morally right or wrong. They have searched for some fundamental moral principle that can be applied to every moral dilemma. From these efforts various theories of morality have been developed, all of which have their own successes and shortcomings. Many religious believers look to the Divine Command Theory for moral guidance. This theory states that if God commands you to do act A, then it is your moral obligation to do A. An issue with the divine command theory is that it suggests that God could have chosen to make killing morally right and helping other wrong which is against our deep moral convictions. Another theory is Act Consequentialism, which states that you ought to act in a way that produces the most optimific (greatest balance of benefits to drawbacks) results. By Act Consequentialism the method to making the right moral decision is to determine what is intrinsically good/bad and what the options for acting are, then choose the act that yields the best consequences. There are several situations in which the optimific act is unjust (i.e. harvesting ones organs to save multiple people). In trying to correct this issue Rule Consequentialism was developed, which states that an action is morally right if and only if the actions accords with optimific rules. This theory often leads to favoring rules over the good or faces similar issues as Act Consequentialism. The Kantian perspective helps to deal with the

The Divine Command Theory is a theory that says an action or behavior is considered right or wrong if it is commanded or condemned by God. Anything that God commands must be good, and anything that he denounces must be evil. According to DCT, a person is not moral without believing in God (Pojman 188-9). The DCT can be applied to Sir Thomas More’s reasoning and actions in his life.

In The Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels writes about The Divine Command Theory. The Divine Command Theory is a set of rules in which God created that Christians, Jews, and Muslims must follow. Humans, however, are free agents and have a choice of what to do. If humans choose to live as they should, then they must follow the rules set in place by God; He is the one who decides what is right and what is wrong. This theory, however has some major flaws.

Divine Command Theory is defined as “ethical principles are simple the commands of God” (Pojman p.356). Basically, this theory states that “morally right” means “commanded by God” and “morally wrong” means “forbidden by God” (Rachels p.53). The positive feature of the Divine Command Theory is that it solves the old problem about the objectivity of ethics by providing an answer as to why anyone should bother with morality (Rachels p.53). According to this theory, if nature of what is right and what is wrong depends on God’s command, then we have to wait until judgment day to deal with the consequences of our actions due to them begin immortal (Rachels p.53). But there is

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.

Moral Nihilism states that the world contains no moral features and under this theory are two theories which are error theory and expressivism. The reason that both of these theories are under Moral Nihilism is because they both believe the statement that there are no moral features in the world and that no moral judgements are true. The defining point of Error Theory is that it believes that our moral judgements try and always fail to describe the moral features of things. Although expressivism is a little different, they believe that morality doesn’t exist, but they don’t think there is anything is wrong with it. They believe that at the core of our moral believes that there is no true

The Doctrine of the Mean. (Written by a disciple and includes religious aspects of Confucius’ views.)

As God’s children we must understand that the practice of moral excellence is not an option but a divine command from God, that is, if we really want to spend eternity in heaven. Why is moral excellence a divine imperative? The reason why is because without it, we cannot enter heaven. God wants us to understand that without moral excellence we cannot spend eternity with Him in heaven. This was made clear by the apostle Peter, who after discussing the Christian graces, he concluded the following, “For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble: for thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:8-11). Consequently, if we reason correctly about these verses, we will then arrive at the conclusion that without moral excellence, and the rest of the Christian graces, we will not be able to have an entrance into the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ.