Religious people have yet to come to grips with Plato’s Euthyphro argument (originally couched in terms of piety rather than morality, but the principle is the same): we […]. But this trivialization is not what we mean when we assert that God is morally good. Because of its placement, the list was not considered binding for the Catholic church, and in light of Martin Luther’s demands, the Catholic Church examined the question of the Canon again at the Council of Trent, which reaffirmed the Canon of the Council of Florence. Your statement that “different denominations accept different parts of the Bible” is incorrect. Therefore, prior to that point there was no morality. What makes this question so effective is that if the interlocutor accepts either part of it he is often logically forced into conclusions that may conflict with other beliefs he has, therefore creating a logical dilemma for him. Moreover, Adams claims that the following is a necessary truth: “Any action is ethically wrong if and only if it is contrary to the commands of a loving God” (132). Most advocates of Divine Command Theory do not want to be stuck with the implication that cruelty could possibly be morally right, nor do they want to accept the implication that the foundations of morality are arbitrary. God therefore retains his supreme moral and metaphysical status. The “Bible” is the same for all. It would be neither morally right nor wrong for you to choose one path over the other. The first horn of the dilemma posed by Socrates to Euthyphro is that if an act is morally right because God commands it, then morality becomes arbitrary. The Divine Command Theory states that morality is “somehow dependent upon God ” and that it “consists in obedience to God’s commands”. In what follows, I will, following Wierenga, take Divine Command Theory to include the following claims: (i) God in some sense determines what is moral; (ii) moral obligations are derived from God’s commands, where these commands are understood as statements of the revealed divine will. The Euthyphro dilemma is often thought to present a fatal problem for the divine command theory (aka theological voluntarism). In his “Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorists”, William Alston (1990) offers some advice to advocates of Divine Command Theory, which Alston believes will make the view as philosophically strong as it can be. For Aquinas, to say that God can do all things is to say that he can do all things that are possible, and not those that are impossible. That certainly would explain why every moral theory attempted to date has failed to adequately explain all aspects of morality. At the other end of the spectrum is the view that the commands of God are coextensive with the demands of morality. Hence, the advocate of a Divine Command Theory of ethics faces a dilemma: morality either rests on arbitrary foundations, or God is not the source of ethics and is subject to an external moral law, both of which allegedly compromise his supreme moral and metaphysical status. Finally, in answer to your question about “Whom should you believe?”, the answer is neither. “Must There Be a Standard of Moral Goodness Apart from God?”, Murphy, Mark. It is not possible for a loving God to command cruelty for its own sake. That is, being moral does not guarantee happiness, so we must believe in a God who will reward the morally righteous with happiness. Vatican I: on April 24, 1870, approved the additions to Mark (v.16:9-20), Luke, (22:19b-20,43-44) and John, (7:53-8:11) which are not present in early manuscripts. The Divine Command Theory also says that it’s basis is that it is “ultimately based on the commands or character of God” (Austin). The authority for making theological decisions always lies in the original Hebrew or Greek. Moreover, people can, have, and do live purposeful lives apart from belief in God. Given that the moral law exists internal to God, in this sense, God is not subject to an external moral law, but rather is that moral law. Wierenga opts for a view that lies between these strong and weak versions of Divine Command Theory. Alston formulates the Euthyphro dilemma as a question regarding which of the two following statements a divine command theorist should accept: 1. In Divine Command Ethics Modified Again and later in his monograph Finite and Infinite Good, Adams puts forward the view that “ethical wrongness is (i.e., is identical with) the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God”. Therefore, in this sense, elements of religion certainly do and should borrow from moral concepts, but moral conceptions may exist separate from religion. On a law conception of ethics, conformity with the virtues requires obeying the divine law. I don’t like his viewpoints or his argument. 1983. So any action that is actually wrong could have been morally right, including, say, acts of torturing innocent children for fun. Religious faith is not necessary for having a life of purpose. If something is right because God commands it, then it follows that something would be just as right if God commanded otherwise. However, around 100 A.D., Jewish rabbis revised their Scripture and established an official canon of Judaism which excluded some portions of the Greek Septuagint. For example, use of the term “ought” seems to suggest a verdict on an action, and this in turn suggests a judge. The defender of this type of response to the Euthyphro Dilemma, to avoid the charge of arbitrariness, should explain why God created us with the nature that we possess, rather than some other nature. Ken is stupid. Decisions did not have “moral” consequence because morality did not exist yet. Email: mike.austin@eku.edu God is the source of morality, because morality is grounded in the character of God. All decisions were in essence of the same nature as our diverging sidewalks example. In regard to your comment about a “Baptist” Bible, you should know that among all protestant denominations, there is not even one authoritative translation. This should not be viewed as an anti-religious argument, rather simply as an invitation for deeper thought into the issues. Divine Command Theory has been and continues to be highly controversial. The argument was inspired by Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, which contains the question “Are morally good acts willed by god because they are morally good? to say that God defines morality for us, is the same as saying ‘its good b/c God said its good. However, these responses show that the believer herself has some logically prior criterion of goodness based on something apart from the mere fact that God exists or that God created the universe. The second option, that God commands something because it is right and that is obvious to Him in His infinite wisdom, avoids the arbitrariness of the previous option, but introduces a new problem which takes us back to the beginning: if God commands something because it is right, then in accepting that argument you have abandoned a theological concept of right and wrong, insofar that it would be right whether or not God commands it. While there may be differences in translations (the Catholics do have their own English translation, although they do not go so far as to say other translations are incorrect), the translations are simply tools for us to use since most of us do not speak ancient Greek or Hebrew. Moreover, even if such a person believes that her religion is correct, there remains a plurality of understandings within religious traditions with respect to what God commands us to do. Of course humans are going to disagree as to what this all means, after all we are fallible creatures. “At the time the Christian Bible was being formed, a Greek translation of Jewish Scripture, the Septuagint, was in common use and Christians adopted it as the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. A satisfactory answer will include the claim that there is something valuable about human beings and the nature that we possess that grounded God’s decision, but it is incumbent upon the proponent of this response to defend this claim. On the Modified Divine Command Theory, the moral law is a feature of God’s nature. 1986. The last objection to note is that given the variety and number of religions in the world, how does the divine command theorist know which (putatively) divine commands to follow? Philip Quinn (1978, 1998) offers the following two statements, which he takes to be equivalent: For Quinn, then, an agent is obliged to p just in case God commands that p. God is the source of moral obligation. Some Possible Advantages of Divine Command Theory, A Persistent Problem: The Euthyphro Dilemma, Other Objections to Divine Command Theory, Conclusion: Religion, Morality, and the Good Life. These dispositions are good, even if they are not grounded in a disposition to obey God. Those who do evil will be punished, and those who live morally upstanding lives will be vindicated and even rewarded. This seems to go against God’s previous command, contained within the Ten Commandments, against theft. The answer is, of course, the right one, but that does not get you anywhere. Boylan’s position contrasts with Kierkegaard’s, who is generally interpreted as believing that Abraham’s action is justified by a suspension of the ethical, so that in this case the religious trumps the ethical.
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