The horns of divining morality
Divine Command Theory (DCT) contemplates a moral framework that traditionally places deity as the progenitor of moral value, making a divine entity (or entities) the bedrock, and therefore the authority that underpins morality.
This essay will examine DCT as an approach to moral frameworks, and how Plato’s Euthyphro impinges upon these, addressing some of the theological apologia that has emerged in order to vindicate the question raised by Plato by asking what underwrites anything of moral value.
The core feature of a normative moral framework is its ability to prescribe a moral value upon actions, providing an intellectual framework to determine whether an action is wrong, obligatory, or permissible. Impermissible or wrong actions are those that have been expressly forbidden as they affect a bad outcome. Obligatory actions are those that we are compelled to perform to preserve a moral order; and permissible actions are those that do not affect a moral significance according to the framework. (Edward, Gert, & Gert, 2020)
In its simplest form, the currency that lends DCT its authority is divinity itself, as it is intuitive to think that the creation of the world should grant the authority to command what is wrong, what is obligatory, and what is permissible within it (Wierenga, 1983, p. 387). This definition has been criticised as weak as it fails to provide a reason for why creation should qualify the gods to determine what is good and what is bad (Wierenga, 1983, p. 388).
This ambiguity is famously demonstrated in Plato’s dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro, where the former elicits two distinct relationships between piety (insofar as acting in accordance to what the gods like) and goodness from his interlocutor, resulting in one of two propositions (Plato, 2013, pp. 218–219):
(i) An action is inherently good, and therefore the gods like it
(ii) The gods like a particular action, and therefore it is deemed good
This exposes a problem with moral frameworks underwritten by authority by challenging the framework to commit to one of the two propositions. In the case of (i), if actions are themselves good, as then good is external to the gods (or god) — eroding the magisterial quality of divine beings as they are themselves can be measured by this external moral standard; or jettisoned altogether in favour of the standard itself. In the case of (ii), if an action is deemed good because the gods like it, then good becomes contingent to what the gods find likable or attend to; and we have no other standard by which we can measure their quality of being good — making good (and corollary, bad) arbitrary. This property of being arbitrary exposes the moral framework to abuse. DCT defies any moral framework that bases its foundation on authority to accept one of the two possibilities that it presents, with either case undermining its authority.
To help navigate this dilemma for theology, a proposition p can be added: the gods are by their very nature loving and omnipotent, and will therefore promote a divine command that is always and objectively good. This is a special case of (ii) that relies on metaphysical claims. This conjunction of p & (ii) accepts that the good is contingent, but allays the concerns of abuse by means of faith (Adams, 2013, pp. 220–221). Consequentially, if we cannot justify p, the theory would remain vulnerable to the challenge of arbitrariness posed in Euthyphro, and if one is unwilling to accept (i) — that good is external to authority — then terms such as “right” and “wrong” diminish their meaning (Adams, 2013, p. 221). For the world’s dominant theologies that observe an omnipotent creator, God, the challenge remains in justifying and demonstrating p to be true.
One of the arguments against p is to do with the issue of communicating divine commands. Even if we accept His existence prima facie, for God to preside over a universal moral framework justly, He will have to make His commandments known to all humankind (Weilenberg, 2020, p 543). Christian apologetics has a long history of addressing this challenge through the idea of natural law, most notably adopted into Christian scholarship by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica (ST 2.1). In this defence, Aquinas makes the claim that all acts of virtue (that is, the morally right, or good) are prescribed by the “natural law”, encoded in human nature, along with the tools of reason so that humanity can deliberate to understand them (ST 2.1.3 resp). This appeal to natural law is also offered by modern philosophers, if there is reason to believe that God is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then Aquinas’ views on natural law would be sufficient to address the issue of communication, adhering to the qualified case of p & (ii). For observers of God, this can be satisfactory so long as p holds.
Another argument against the veracity of p is the epistemic leap that one has to make about the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God. One way to urge this conclusion is to consider the weight of Adams’ analysis: the doomed fate of arriving at objective moral reasoning — through natural law or otherwise — if there is no God to authorise it (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p. 221). Craig makes this assertion in search of an objective morality, claiming that the only moral framework that is not arbitrary is one that is established by God (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p. 225). Sinnott-Armstrong claims in rebuttal that if objective moral value can be determined through natural law, as Craig agrees, and can be understood without the need to observe a God, then Craig is unwittingly committing to proposition (i) from Euthyphro (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p. 228). Further, Sinnott-Armstrong urges us to proceed with bootstrapping this objective moral framework without regard for God, in spite of Craig’s forewarning that a lack of divine authority consigns it to being baseless, and therefore arbitrary (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p. 227).
Craig has argued elsewhere that the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dichotomy, and offers instead what he calls a third option: God is the source of goodness, and is therefore inseparable from, and identical to good (Craig, 2010, pp. 135–6). In doing so Craig aims to unify goodness and God, avoiding the consequences of Euthyphro’s proposition (i); and asserting a guarantee that God and goodness is not a matter of predilection, arresting the consequences of Euthyphro’s proposition (ii). On its face, this seems to be an argument for p & (ii) redressed — that God is loving, and therefore always promoting goodness — except for some interesting consequences about the objectivity that Craig stresses in his debate with Sinnott-Armstrong (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p. 227). For this goodness to be objective, God must be inert on the discretion of what is good — or told another way, unable to exercise His will over it — which is at odds with God’s ability to reason about His will (Adams, 2013, p. 223). Alternatively, if God is indeed able to exercise His will over this goodness, then it is subject to God’s will (as opposed to objective), collapsing Craig’s third alternative into proposition (ii) from Euthyphro (Morgan, 2019, p. 20).
Tellingly, both Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong accuse each other of the alternate consequences offered in Euthyphro, and tending caution about how this substrate may undermine each other’s moral framework. Craig asserts that Sinnott-Armstrong’s pursuit of a moral framework in a universe without God will amount to an arbitrary set of rules that are, by definition, subjective — analogous to case (ii) from Euthyphro (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p. 226). And Sinnott-Armstrong labels Craig’s approach to objective morality as a commitment to proposition (i) from Euthyphro, claiming that good is external to God, and urging that God in this case is redundant (Craig & Sinnott-Armstrong, 2012, p 228–9).
The Euthyphro dilemma has profound consequences for any moral framework that proclaims an authority for its justification, regardless of whether God, gods, or even when irreligious anchors such as nature stand in place of divine superintendence. The first written account of natural law as the authority of our moral value is written in Cicero’s Re De Publica, proclaiming, and distinctly in the spirit of a universal humanism (Alonso, 2012, p. 166):
“True law is right reason in agreement with nature, it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting;”
(Cicero & Keyes, p. 3.22.33)
Despite Adams, Aquinas, Craig, Sinnott-Armstrong and Cicero coalescing on this point, embedded in this claim is the acceptance of one of the horns of the Euthyphro dilemma. For adherents of God, Euthyphro’s first horn (i) is a non-sequitur; and the external qualification p must be antecedent to disarm the second (ii). For atheists — either observers of rival gods, or no god at all, such as with Cicero and Sinnott-Armstrong — whilst they proclaim to be committing to Euthyphro’s first horn (i), their humanist perspective functions in place of p, with their antecedent being the disposition of human wellbeing as paramount. It may be intuitive to think of this as true, as humankind is a part of nature; but amidst the flourishing of nature, humanity’s wellbeing remains an arbitrary goal.
References
Adams, R. M. (2013). A New Divine Command Theory. In R. Shafer-Landau, Ethical Theory : An Anthology (pp. 220–224). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Craig, W. L. (2010). Can We be Good Without God? In W. L. Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision. David C Cook.
Craig, W. L., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2012). God and Objective Morality: A Debate. In R. Shafer-Landau, Ethical theory : An anthology (pp. 225–229). Somerset: John Wiley & Sons.
Edward, Gert, B., & Gert, J. (2020, Fall). The Definition of Morality. Retrieved from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition): https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/morality-definition/
Morgan, J. (2019). Can we have ethics without religion? On Divine Command Theory and Natural Law Theory. In G. Matthews, & C. Hendricks, Introduction to Philosophy: Ethics (p. 20). Montreal: Rebus Community.
Plato. (2013). Euthyphro. In R. Shafer-Landau, Ethical theory : an anthology (pp. 218–219). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Thomas, A. S., & Province, D. E. (1998, Jan 11). Of the Natural Law. Retrieved from The Summa Theologica, Benziger Bros. edition, 1947: https://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FS/FS094.html#FSQ94A3THEP1
Weilenberg, E. J. (2020). Divine command theory and psychopathy. Religious Studies, 542–557.
Wierenga, E. (1983). A Defensible Divine Command Theory. Noûs, 387–407.
