Reading 1: The Divine Command Theory

The book of Deuteronomy, chapter 22, verse 11, says that people must refrain from wearing fabrics made of wool
and linen mixed together. The First Epistle to Timothy, chapter 2, verse 9, prohibits women from wearing braids or
gold chains. And Leviticus lays out restrictions against tattoos and gossip, among other things.
For billions of people, the source of these edicts - the Bible - is the answer to the question of where morality comes
from. In a sense, that's what the Bible is for. If your worldview tells you that that God is the creator of everything, it's
reasonable to believe that he'd also create a divine rule book, a sort of owner's manual for human morality.
And no matter who you think wrote that manual, many people feel that, in order for morality to really be binding – for
it to be something we all have to adhere to – it can only originate with God.
This is the oldest and most widely held ethical theory in the world. Philosophers call it divine command theory: the
belief that what's moral and what's immoral is commanded by the divine, whether it's the Judeo-Christian God, or
some other deity, or group of gods.
People have been going to the gods to figure out how to behave since the start of recorded history and for good
reason. Just one benefit of the divine command theory is its simplicity. How do I know what to do? Easy. Go ask
God. Check the rule book.

But, there are a whole lot of things that most of us think are totally fine, but are actually, expressly forbidden by
certain rule books, in this case, the Bible. And that raises a few questions.
For example, many observant Jews follow the rule about not wearing wool mixed with linen, but Christians don't.
Most of them probably don't even know that that rule exists. And yet they consider other rules from the Old
Testament - like the Ten Commandments - to still be binding. So, why?
For that matter, why does First Timothy prohibit women from having braids, but not men? And if tattoos, smack-talk,
and gold chains are forbidden, then, technically speaking, is all of modern culture a violation of God's word?
The Dilemma in God’s Commands
Divine command theory addresses many of our biggest questions about right and wrong, which is why it's the ethical
theory of choice for much of the world. But it also presents a true dilemma.

Over the millennia, there have been plenty of objections to the idea that morality comes from God. One of the most
devastating critiques and one that philosophers still grapple with today came from Plato. He wrote an entire book
about his problems with the divine command theory, a dialogue called the Euthyphro.
The dialogue, like most of Plato's works, stars his real-life teacher, Socrates and Socrates' main interlocutor-of-the-
day, named Euthyphro. The dialogue is set outside of the Athenian courthouse, as the two men sit, awaiting their
respective trials.
Socrates is preparing to defend himself against the charges that will ultimately lead to his death - among other things,
he was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens and not having the right kinds of beliefs about the gods.
Meanwhile, Euthyphro is getting ready to bring murder charges against his very own father!
Socrates is shocked to hear that Euthyphro is prosecuting his dad, and this gets the two into a spirited conversation
about morality and how we know what's moral and what's not.
Euthyphro is a divine command theorist, and he is certain that prosecuting his own father is the right thing to do,
because he believes the gods have commanded it. But, Socrates isn't so sure. And he asks a question that many
believe still hasn't been adequately answered. It's now known as the Euthyphro problem.
The question Socrates asks can be framed something like this: Are right actions right because God commands
them? Or are right actions commanded by God because they are right?
This might not sound like much of a distinction at first, but these two scenarios are actually quite different. In fact,
many feel that with this, Socrates has presented us with a true dilemma.

Philosophers have actually likened a dilemma to holding an angry bull by the horns. So, the two unpleasant options
are known as horns.
If you choose the first horn of Socrates' dilemma, then you're accepting the proposition that right acts are right
because God commands them. And this means that you're accepting that God's command alone is simply what
makes something right.
So in this view, God makes goodness. And by extension, this suggests that anything God commands is right. And
maybe you’re OK with that, because you believe that God only commands good things, like honoring your parents
and not stealing or lying or killing.
But those of you who know your Bible will remember that God does command killing when he feels like it. For
example, when he commanded Abraham to kill his own son. And some thinkers are bothered by the thought that
morality could at any moment become totally different depending on what God feels like commanding that day.
All it would take is a word from God and we could be suddenly be living in some sort of ethical Bizarro World where
things that we currently think are horrible and cruel would instantly be considered good and righteous. Consider this
example.
You're going about your day minding your own business, when suddenly God shows up, or at least he
claims to be God. And he tells you that he's changed his mind about morality. The 10 commandments are
out, he says, or rather, they've been reversed. You are now commanded to kill, steal, commit adultery, and
so forth. God says he understands that this is confusing, but he assures you that he knows best, and this
has been part of his plan all along. He was just waiting for humanity to be ready for it. So he instructs you to
go forth and begin carrying out his commands. To do otherwise would be to sin.
So, how do you process this information? Do you assume there must be something wrong with your brain? Or that
something's gone wrong with God? Or do you obey?
This scenario is just one problem that comes with accepting the first horn of Socrates' dilemma. It makes God's
commands and the morality that stems from them arbitrary. If God determines the rightness and wrongness of
everything, just by saying so, then the entire concept of goodness and value becomes vacuous. Because, it means
that saying "God commands what is good," is really just saying, "God commands what he commands." The idea of
what's "good" doesn't really mean anything anymore.
So, what about the second horn of the dilemma? Does it make sense to say that God commands things because
they're good? Maybe this doesn't seem like a problem, but it means that God isn't omnipotent. Because there's at
least one thing – value – that doesn't stem from God. Instead, someone or something else has created it, and God
just uses it. So, if you're committed to the belief that God created literally everything, not just the physical world,
then you're going to have a hard time accepting this horn.
And then there's another problem. This view also means that something outside of God in some sense binds him and
his commands. If there's some standard of goodness that God has to stick to when making commandments, then
that means there must be things that God can't command. And if the ethical rules of the universe come from some
source other than God, then why can't we just go straight to that source, too, and figure out morality for ourselves,
the same way God did? Once you go down this road, you soon find that God and his religious texts must be
superfluous, a shortcut to understanding the original source of knowledge.
So maybe now you're seeing why the Euthyphro Problem has been around for thousands of years. Whichever horn
you choose, it presents serious problems for the divine command theorist. Either God is bound by a standard
outside of himself, or God’s goodness doesn't really mean anything. The Euthyphro Problem has caused plenty of
ethicists, including theistic ones, to reject divine command theory altogether. But the theory has other problems, too.
Like, how do we know what God commands? This takes us back to the Bible verses I mentioned earlier. There are a
lot of very explicit instructions - like about fabrics and hair braids and gold chains - that most Bible-reading theists
don't consider binding. So how do we know which commands are binding, and which ones God retracted
somewhere along the way? Do we get to decide? And if we do, how are those instructions still commandments?
Wouldn't they be more like recommendations? I don't know about you, but the Ten Recommendations just doesn't
have the same ring to it. A good moral theory is one that will generate answers to questions like these, and divine
command theory seems to fall short in that regard.
Natural Law Theory
Thomas Aquinas thought morality was important for everyone, and that being a good person was a vital part of God’s
plan for each of us. But he knew that not everyone had been exposed to the Bible, or had even heard of God.

So, what bothered him was: How could people follow God’s moral rules – also known as the divine commands – if
they didn’t even know about the guy who made the commandments? Aquinas just couldn’t believe that God would
have expectations for us, if he didn’t also give us – all of us – a way to meet them.

So, Aquinas’ theorized that God made us pre-loaded with the tools we need to know what’s Good. This idea became
known as the natural law theory. And there are a lot of versions of this theory still circulating around today. But
Aquinas’ original take on natural law is by far the most influential, and the longest standing.

How influential? Well, if you’re Catholic or a member of any of the major Protestant denominations, or were raised in
any of those traditions, then you’re probably already familiar with how Aquinas saw the moral universe and your
place in it.

The theory of natural law is based on the idea that God wants us to want things – specifically, good things. Aquinas
argued that God created the world according to natural laws: predictable, goal-driven systems whereby life is
sustained, and everything functions smoothly. And as part of this natural order, God made certain things that were
good for his various creatures.

Sunlight and water are good for plants. Meat is good for cats, and plants are good for bunnies. And – because God is
awesome – he instilled all of his creatures with an intuitive desire for the things that he designed to be best for them.
The things that we’re designed to seek are known as the "basic goods," and there are five of them.
1. Pursue Good, Avoid Evil (Note: humans do this instinctively thanks to reason given by god)
2. Preserve Human Life
3. Reproduction, Educate one’s offspring
4. Avoid Offense
5. Shun Ignorance

The first thing that all living things just naturally want, Aquinas said, is self-preservation – the drive to sustain life.
Aquinas thought God built all creatures with a survival instinct, and this appears to be pretty much true. I mean, we
naturally avoid dangerous situations like swimming with hungry sharks, and when we find ourselves in danger, we
don’t have to stop and ponder the options before getting ourselves to safety.

After preserving our own lives, our next most pressing basic good is to make more life – in other words, to reproduce.
Some beings are able to do this on their own, but since we need to coordinate matters with a partner, God kindly
instilled us with a sex drive, and made the process feel good, to make sure that we do it.

But once we manage to achieve our second basic good – reproduction – we need to educate those kids we just
made. For humans, that’s going to mean stuff like school and lessons in morality. But even non-human animals need
to teach their babies how to hunt and avoid predators. Otherwise, the offspring they worked so hard to create aren’t
going to survive long enough to reproduce themselves, which, of course, is the goal of everything.

And while these first goods seem to apply to a pretty wide swath of creation, some of the basic goods are just for
humans, because of the particular kind of being we are. For instance, Aquinas thought we are built with an instinctual
desire to seek God. He believed we seek him in our lives, whether we’ve been exposed to the idea of God or not.
Next, taking a page out of Aristotle’s book, Aquinas also said that humans are naturally social animals, so it’s part of
our basic good to live in a community with others. While short periods of solitude can be good, he believed that we’re
basically pack animals, and our desire for love and acceptance, and our susceptibility to peer pressure, are all
evidence of this.

Now, since we naturally want to be part a pack, it’s a good idea not to alienate our pack-mates. So, basically,
Aquinas said we recognize the basic good of not pissing everybody off. I mean, he didn’t actually say it that way, but
if he did, I’m sure it sounded a lot better in Latin. The point is, Aquinas said we feel shame and guilt when we do
things that cause our group to turn against us, and that was another basic good.

And finally, Aquinas said we’re built to shun ignorance. We’re natural knowers. We’re inquisitive, and we want to be
right. This is another trait we share with non-human animals, because knowledge promotes survival, and ignorance
can mean starving to death or ending up as someone else’s dinner.

So these are the basic goods, and from them, we can derive the natural laws. We don’t need the Bible, or religion
class, or church in order to understand the natural law, Aquinas said. Instead, our instinct shows us the basic goods,
and reason allows us to derive the natural law from them. Right acts, therefore, are simply those that are in
accordance with the natural law.

Positive and Negative Injunctions

So how does this whole system work? Well, I recognize the basic good of life, because I value my own life. And that’s
clear to me, because I have a survival instinct that keeps me from doing dangerous, stupid stuff. Then, reason leads
me to see that others also have valuable lives. And from there I see that killing is a violation of natural law. So, for
each negative law, or prohibition, there’s usually a corresponding positive one – a positive injunction.

For example, "Do not kill" is a prohibition, but there’s also a positive injunction that encourages us to promote life.
And I can take that positive injunction of promoting life to mean anything from feeding the hungry, to caring for the
sick, to making healthy choices for myself. And we could do the same thing with each of the basic goods.
The basic good of reproduction leads to a prohibition, don’t prevent reproduction, which is why the Catholic Church
has been opposed to birth control. And the positive injunction there is: Do procreate! Do all the procreating you want!
And if you think it through – using your God-given reason – you’ll be able to see how the other natural laws are
derived from the basic goods.
Objections
But, of course, as with the Divine Command Theory, the theory of Natural Law raises plenty of questions. For
example, if God created us to seek the good, and if we’re built with the ability to recognize and seek it, then why do
people violate the natural law all the time?! Like, if this is supposed to be something so intuitively obvious that even
plants and non-human animals can manage it, why is the world so full of people-killing and offending others and folks
who do everything but seek God?

Aquinas had two answers for this: ignorance and emotion. Sometimes, he said, we seek what we think is good, but
we’re wrong, because we’re just ignorant. And yes, that happens. I mean, there once was a time when cigarettes
were literally what the doctor ordered. Back then, we thought we were promoting our health, but we were actually
hurting it. No matter how awesome God made you, or your desires, you have to have some understanding of how to
be awesome.

But ignorance can’t account for all of the stupid things we do. Aquinas, again following Aristotle here, said that, even
though we’re rational, we’re also emotional creatures. And sometimes, we see what we should do, but emotion
overpowers our reason, and we fail to do the things we know we should.
Following the natural law makes our lives work better. But while it seems to have a lot more going for it than divine
command theory, natural law theory has its share of critics as well.

First of all, it’s not going to be appealing to anyone who doesn’t believe in God. You can tell me God set the world up
according to natural laws, but if I reject that whole premise, there’s not a lot you can do to convince me. Another
objection comes from 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume, in the form of what’s known as the is-ought
problem.

Hume said it’s fallacious to assume that just because something is a certain way, that means that it ought to be that
way. But that’s basically what natural law theory does all day long. We look at nature and see that creatures have
strong survival instincts, so from there we conclude that survival instincts are good.

But, are they? I mean, to me, yeah, because it helps me stay alive. But my survival instinct could also cause me to do
all sorts of things that look immoral to other people. Like killing you and crawling inside your still-steaming body, to
stay alive in a blizzard. Not that I would do that, but just for example.
Moreover, what if conflict arises among the basic goods such as life against reproduction in cases of ectopic
pregnancy or self-preservation against avoiding offense such as whether to eat rather than give the money to another
who also has not eaten for days.
Likewise, we can observe the existence of sex drives and conclude that reproduction is good. But, sexual drive is
also used by bad people to excuse horrible immoral things, like committing sexual assault. And for that matter, is
reproduction always good? Is it something all beings have to do? Am I sinning if I choose never to have children?
And what about bodies that can’t reproduce? Or people who don’t want to reproduce or have partners that they can’t
reproduce with, does their inability to conceive make them immoral?

As you can see, for all it has going for it, natural law theory can pretty quickly open some big old cans of
philosophical worms.