AN ANALYSIS OF THE MODIFIED DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
Louis Pojman
The following is the full text of “Appendix 1: An Analysis of The Modified Divine
Command Theory” as appeared in the fifth edition of Louis Pojman’s Ethics: Inventing
Right and Wrong (Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006). This Appendix was
removed in the sixth edition. – James Fieser
In Chapter 10, I argued that the Divine Command Theory (DCT) had severe problems
that made it unacceptable as a moral theory. Since many religious people, theologians,
and philosophers hold to something like this theory and might suspect that I did not
examine its most sophisticated form, it is necessary that I look at what, to my knowledge,
is the most plausible version of the theory.
Sophisticated divine command theorists seek to answer two criticisms—the
“redundancy” and the “arbitrary” objections—without giving up the essential insights of
the DCT. One example of such a modified version of the DCT is that of Robert Adams.1
Adams is moved by the objection that the DCT allows for the possibility that God could
command acts that are patently vicious. For example, he could command me “to make it
my chief end in life to inflict suffering on other human beings, for no other reason than
that He commanded it” (p. 526).This will not do. Accordingly, Adams suggests a
modification of the DCT:
According to the modified divine command theory [MDCT], when I say “It is
wrong to do X” [at least part of ] what I mean is that it is contrary to God’s
command to do X.“It is wrong to do X” implies “It is contrary to God’s
commands to do X.” But “It is contrary to God’s commands to do X” implies “It
is wrong to do X” only if certain conditions are assumed—namely, only if it is
assumed that God has the character which I believe Him to have, of loving His
human creatures. If God were really to command us to make cruelty our goal, then
He would not have that character of loving us, and I would not say it would be
wrong to disobey Him. (p. 527)
By the MDCT, God’s command is a necessary but not sufficient condition for full ethical
validity.The command must also be issued from the motive of love or, at least, be
consistent with the character of love. Since we have other values (our secular “ethical”
values), it would not be “wrong” for us to disobey a command of God to make gratuitous
suffering the goal of life. If God did command this, “my concept of ethical wrongness
(and my concept of ethical permittedness) would ‘break down.’” Although this is
logically possible, it is “unthinkable that God should do so” (p. 528).
If I understand Adams, his argument boils down to this:
1. Necessarily, for any person S and for all acts A, if A is forbidden (required) of
S, then God commands that not-A (A) for S. Likewise, if A is permitted
for S, then God has commanded neither A nor not-A for S.That is, God’s
command defines our ethical duties, as the divine command theory
affirms.
2. It is logically possible for God to issue command C: S must engage in
gratuitous cruelty.
3. If C, S would be permitted (nonmorally) to disobey God (since S has other
values besides ethical ones). In this case, ethics would break down for S.
4. Since God is love, it is unthinkable for God to command C.
A fully ethical act is defined in this way: 5. Necessarily, for any person S and for
all acts A, A is forbidden (required) of S, if and only if God commands that not-A (A) for
S, and the command is issued in a state of love. Likewise, A is permitted for S, if and
only if God, in a state of love, has commanded neither A nor not-A for S. A complete
moral command is so if and only if it fulfills two necessary and jointly sufficient
conditions: God commanded it, and he did so in a state of love. There seem to be two
levels of meaning to the words wrong, permitted, and right—an ethical one and a
nonethical one that actually may override the ethical use. Although Adams refers to the
second type of use as “nonmoral,” it has all the features of a moral obligation or
permission: It overrides other duties. So, let us call this type of duty our “secular ethical
duty,” since it refers to those values we arrive at through reason. On the one hand, God’s
command makes something an ethical duty; but on the other hand, we may not be
required to obey the command if it is not made in love.
Adams states rather mystically that the believer will have a Platonic/Moorean
view of ethical goodness. It is an unanalyzable, nonnatural property residing in God, and
our attribution of the term good to God suggests that “God has some important set of
qualities which one regards as virtuous in human beings” (p. 534). Adams argues that it
makes no sense to say that God has duties, for that implies that there must be some
higher/outside authority from whence come commands, which is logically impossible.
A CRITIQUE OF THE MODIFIED DIVINE COMMAND THEORY
A critic may challenge Adams’s ingenious reformulation of the divine command theory
and argue that his version of the MDCT is not a divine command theory at all but merely
a modified version of the autonomy thesis. It is an example of act agapeism, the theory
that one has a duty to act out of love and never to act against what is the loving thing to
do. Agapeism is suggested by certain passages in the New Testament, such as: “God is
love” (1 John 4:8) together with “Love is patient and kind. . . . Love does not insist on its
own way . . . it does not rejoice in wrong but rejoices in the right. . . . Make love your
aim” (1 Cor. 13:4–6; 14:1).
Love turns out to be the criterion of highest value, and a command is not a fully
ethical command unless it is done in love. God can—but must not—act out of character.
Here is how we might reconstruct the MDCT as offered by Adams in terms of
Euthyphro’s dilemma:
1. God doesn’t command the right (in the sense of require) because it is right;
rather, the right is right because God commands it (DCT).That is, God’s
command is what makes an act formally ethical.
2. But, God must properly command what is (consistent with) loving. Otherwise,
the command is not an ethical command we must obey (one that overrides
all other duties).That is, although an unloving command might be formally
right, we would be permitted to disobey it. In other words, the secular
ethic may override the formally ethical obligation.
3. But, love is defined as being benevolently concerned for the good of its object.
It has to do with human flourishing. So, even God cannot make something
ethically good that does not conform to what is good for his creatures.
4. So, God can properly command only what is good. His love connects the right
to the good, so that he commands us to do what is right independent of his
commands.
5. There is a contradiction between premises 1 and 4.Therefore, one of the
premises must be rejected.
If we prefer the MDCT to the DCT, then we must say that the DCT is false, and
the MDCT becomes equivalent to the autonomy thesis: God commands the Good (or
right) because it is good (or right), and the Good (right) is not good (right) simply because
God commands it. Furthermore, if this is correct, then we can discover our ethical duties
through reason, independent of God’s command. For what is good for his creatures is so
objectively (e.g., being tortured gratuitously is not good for them, and being happy and
wise is good for them).We do not need God to tell us that it is bad to cause unnecessary
suffering or that it is good to ameliorate suffering; reason can do that. It begins to look
like the true version of ethics is what we called “secular ethics.”
Adams might reply that this argument doesn’t represent his position, for he
distinguishes the Good from the right. It is God’s command that defines the right, but
other values (e.g., love) may define the Good, so that the right and the Good may not be
in harmony. When the right defies the good, the good may override the right. As Adams
says, it would not be wrong to disobey God when he commanded something that was
heinous from the point of view of our deepest notion of the Good. The believer’s
“positive valuation of doing whatever God may command is not clearly greater than his
independent negative valuation of cruelty”—even if God should command it. But
normally, we think of morality as being that which overrides all other duties, our highest
duty. Indeed, isn’t that part of the motivation of the divine command theory in the first
place, to link God to our highest moral duty? By bifurcating our value system in this way,
Adams leaves us with a dual value system, which seems to create more problems than it
solves.
If my revisionist interpretation of Adams’s argument is correct, then by making
love a necessary condition for God’s proper command, Adams’s modification of the DCT
transforms the DCT into its opposite, the autonomy thesis. He does not seem to recognize
that love serves MDCT ethics in exactly the same way that the Good serves autonomous
ethics. Even as an act is right (at least in teleological systems) only if it serves the Good,
so likewise with the MDCT—an act is right only if it issues from love. Proponents of the
autonomy thesis typically make goodness a necessary condition for rightness, whereas the
MDCT makes love a necessary condition; and love, it turns out, is simply a functional
term for the Good.
Of course, Adams would probably reply that, at most, what this shows is that the
autonomy thesis is part of the MDCT but not the whole. It is goodness plus God’s
command that determines what is right. But, the question arises, what does God add to
rightness that is not there simply with goodness? It is not simply that God knows more
outcomes than we, for the autonomy thesis would gladly grant that. If love or goodness
prescribes act A, what does A gain by being commanded by God? Materially, nothing at
all.
In a later article, “Divine Command Metaethics Modified Again” (see note 1),
Adams seeks to make a distinction that might answer the objection just made. He tries to
distinguish two senses of ethics: the real one and the functionally equivalent one. Both the
DCT and autonomous ethics might result in the same principles, but they are nonetheless
not the same. He refers to Saul Kripke’s thesis of natural kinds, which goes something
like this: Suppose that on some other planet (or someplace on our planet) there is a
substance W that seems functionally equivalent to what we call water. Would W be
water? No, Kripke says. Water is necessarily H2O, and anything that is functionally
equivalent to water but not H2O would not be water, no matter how similar in taste,
touch, and physiological effects. Likewise, avers Adams, although ethical principles that
do not arise from God may be functionally equivalent to those that do, they are
nonetheless not really ethical principles; they are simply look-alikes.
How valid is this analogy between water and ethics? It seems to be a distinction
without a difference. For if both ethics (MDCT) and secular ethics have human (or
sentient beings’) flourishing as the goal, what difference should it make whether the very
same principle issues from a special personal authority (God) or from the authority of
reason? After all, don’t we need to use reason even to adjudicate revelatory claims to
divine authority? Otherwise, how could we distinguish the devil’s commands from
God’s?
If we reject this position, and with it the Divine Command Theory itself, we need
to consider the implications of the second horn of Euthyphro’s dilemma—that which
posits God as commanding the Good because it is good.
At this point, we must ask whether there is any need for theists to go to such
enormous pains to save the Divine Command Theory. Why should they be threatened by
the autonomy thesis? If there is an inherent logic to goodness that precludes God’s
inventing right and wrong, why should that bother religious people? It is widely
recognized that God’s omnipotence isn’t threatened by the fact that the laws of logic exist
independent of him. Why should the fact that there is a logic to ethics be troubling to the
notion of God’s sovereignty or omnipotence? Couldn’t it be that God’s sovereignty
comes in, not at the point of inventing morality once creation is in place but at the point
of deciding what kinds of beings to create?
Suppose that God creates people on two planets in the universe: our Earth and
Planet X. His creative will allows him to construct two admirable but different systems.
We have some idea of how things work on Earth. On Planet X, God created humanoids,
beings like us but with exometallic skeletons and limbs that replace themselves like our
fingernails do and who reproduce by spontaneously cloning their cells rather than by
sexual intercourse. In fact, Xians are never tempted to fornicate or commit adultery
(although disloyalty is a problem). Likewise, since they feel very little pain, torture is not
a possibility (although suffering is).
On both Earth and X there are rules designed to ameliorate suffering and promote
the survival and flourishing of rational beings. There are many rules in common—for
example, ones prescribing truth-telling and beneficence and proscribing disloyalty and the
killing of innocents. But X does not have a rule against adultery, torture, or dismembering
humanoids.
God, who loves variety, could have created us like Xians, but he didn’t. Had he
done so, we would have had some different moral rules than we do. Instead, he chose to
make us the way we are, so that certain rules of conduct are necessary for our survival and
well-being. They are necessary since even God can’t change them now that he has made
us the way we are. Moral right and wrong are solid facts, just as solid as those of
arithmetic or logic or chemistry.
If this is correct, then morality has an independent rationale. It may indirectly
depend on God, assuming he exists, in that he could have created us with a different
nature. But, once God creates rational beings like us, the moral law takes on a life of its
own that even God must respect.
Of course, the question that takes precedence here is whether there is a God and
whether he is totally benevolent. But this gets us into metaphysics and the philosophy of
religion, subjects outside the perimeter of this work.
NOTE
1. Robert M. Adams, “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness,” in,
Religion and Morality: A Collection of Essays, ed. Gene Outka and John P.
Reeder (Anchor, 1973). I have not been able to respond to all of the richness of
this challenging article. The major portion of the essay is reprinted in Philosophy
of Religion, ed. Louis Pojman, pp. 525–537 (Wadsworth, 1987). For convenience,
the page numbers in the text refer to this anthology. Also see Adams’s “Divine
Command Metaethics Modified Again,” Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (1979).
Philip Quinn’s Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford University
Press, 1978) is a closely argued defense of a position very similar to Adams’s.