for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary?
In saying, therefore, that things are not good accord- ing to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, with- out realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary? Where will be his justice and his wisdom if he has only a certain despotic power, if arbitrary will takes the place of reasonableness, and if in accord with the definition of tyrants, justice consists in that which is pleasing to the most powerful?2
Defenders of the divine command theory may reply to the arbitrariness argument by contending that God would never command us to commit heinous acts, because God is all-good. Because of his supreme goodness, he would will only what is good. Some thinkers, however, believe that such reasoning renders the very idea of God’s goodness meaningless. As one philosopher says,
[O]n this view, the doctrine of the goodness of God is reduced to nonsense. It is important to religious believers that God is not only all-powerful and all- knowing, but that he is also good; yet if we accept the idea that good and bad are defined by reference to God’s will, this notion is deprived of any mean- ing. What could it mean to say that God’s com- mands are good? If “X is good” means “X is commanded by God,” then “God’s commands are
known as the divine command theory. It says that right actions are those that are willed by God, that God literally defines right and wrong. Something is right or good only because God makes it so. In the simplest version of the theory, God can deter- mine right and wrong because he is omnipotent. He is all-powerful—powerful enough even to cre- ate moral norms. On this view, God is a divine lawgiver, and his laws constitute morality.
In general, believers are divided on whether the divine command theory gives an accurate account of the source of morality. Notable among the theory’s detractors are the great theistic philosophers Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74). And conversely, as odd as it may sound, some nonbelievers have sub- scribed to it. In The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80), the character Ivan Karamazov declares, “If God doesn’t exist, everything is permissible.” This very sentiment was espoused by, among others, the famous atheist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.
Both religious and secular critics of the divine command theory believe that it poses a serious dilemma, one first articulated by Socrates two and one-half millennia ago. In the dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks, Is an action morally right because God wills it to be so, or does God will it to be so because it is morally right? Critics say that if an action is right only because God wills it (that is, if right and wrong are dependent on God), then many heinous crimes and evil actions would be right if God willed them. If God willed murder, theft, or torture, these deeds would be morally right. If God has unlimited power, he could easily will such actions. If the rightness of an action depended on God’s will alone, he could not have reasons for willing what he wills. No reasons would be available and none required. Therefore, if God commanded an action, the command would be without reason, completely arbitrary. Neither the believer nor the nonbeliever would think this state of affairs plausible. On the other
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3James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, 4th ed. (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003), 51. 4Jonathan Berg, “How Could Ethics Depend on Reli- gion?” in A Companion to Ethics, ed. Peter Singer, corr. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 525–33.
12 Á PART 1: FUNDAMENTALS
You can decide to forgo any ethical deliberations and simply embrace the moral beliefs and norms you inherited from your family and culture. But this approach undermines your freedom, for if you accept without question whatever moral beliefs come your way, they are not really yours. Only if you critically examine them for yourself are they truly yours.
The three main divisions of ethics proper are nor- mative ethics (the study of the moral norms that guide our actions and judgments), metaethics (the study of the meaning and logical structure of moral beliefs), and applied ethics (the application of moral norms to specific moral issues or cases).