โ Scribed by Hardy Jones
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The traditional divine command theory, a doctrine accepted by many theists, says that God is the source of moral right and wrong. Morality is based on God's will or God's commands. Whatever God commands persons to do is right ; whatever he forbids persons to do is wrong. Whatever God commands is right because He commands it; whatever God forbids is wrong because He forbids it. This view is familiar, and many of the objections to it are also familiar. In his stimulating paper, "A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness," Robert Merrihew Adams develops an interesting new version of the basic view. I shall try to show why this position should be rejected--by theists and non-theists alike.
Adams' proposal is best understood as an effort to avoid a serious objection to the old, unmodified theory. Actions such as cruelty, dishonesty, and injustice are commonly regarded as wrong. A divine command theorist can agree with these intuitive, commonsense moral judgements because he thinks God has forbidden such acts. That is, perhaps, the way things are now. But what might have been? God could have commanded certain persons to be cruel, to inflict suffering deliberately and for its own sake. If He had ordered us to torture others, then some acts of torture would be right. Furthermore, even though torture is wrong now, it could become right if God's will changes, ff God decrees, "As of 1979, torture, cruelty, and assault will be right," then, according to the divine command view, those acts will be right (as of 1979). But, surely, they would not be right; and such theories of morality must be rejected. Now what of Adams' modified theory ? This new position holds
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