What is Divine Command Theory?

Many religious people are going to simply say: “God commanded it, and as a result, I will do it”. This reveals, in part, an extremely common ethic whereby one must obey the objective universal rules God has commanded. In this article, I will give an exposition on Divine Command Theory, similar to what I did on Virtue Ethics, which I encourage you to see here.

Deontology is an ethical theory in philosophy that is more concerned about what we ought to do (duty-based ethics) than what kind of person we are (virtue ethics) or the consequences that derive from our actions (Consequentialism). As Alexander and Moore put it “For such deontologists, what makes a choice right is its conformity with a moral norm. Such norms are to be simply obeyed by each moral agent; such norm-keepings are not to be maximized by each agent” (2020). Furthermore “Deontology is an ethical theory that uses rules to distinguish right from wrong” (University of Texas). Two things are critical to note. Firstly, Deontologists by and large do not care about the consequences of following their obligations. As noted by the University of Texas

“suppose you’re a software engineer and learn that a nuclear missile is about to launch that might start a war. You can hack the network and cancel the launch, but it’s against your professional code of ethics to break into any software system without permission. And, it’s a form of lying and cheating. Deontology advises not to violate this rule. However, in letting the missile launch, thousands of people will die” (n.d).

Another famous example is if the Nazis come to your door when you are hiding Jews, and they ask you where the Jews are, what do you do? A deontologist is going to say do not lie because that is your duty, obligation, or divine command, even if the consequences of those actions result in mass murder.

The other important point is that a lot of deontologists do not care about how you feel about the rules you must follow. Emmanuel Kant, for example, thought “the only possible genuine goodwill is respect for the moral law… That is, when you do something because it is the right thing to do, that alone counts as goodwill” (Kranak, 2019). It is clarified “This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy doing good things. It just means that this shouldn’t be the reason underlying the action. The important point is that the reason you do an action should be because you have determined that it is the right thing to do” (Kranak, 2019). So now that we have that covered, let's look at Divine Command Theory.

A Divine Command Theorist (DCT, which is an ethical theory under deontology) is going to propose the idea that “...moral obligation consists in obedience to God’s commands” (Austin, n.d.). For the Divine Command Deontologist, the goal of life is to live by the commands God has given us. This has the advantage of being rather simplistic sounding. God commanded it, so I am going to do it. Furthermore, it has the advantage of explaining and defending the “objective metaphysical foundation for morality” (Austin, n.d). Another advantage is the concept of the afterlife. While the afterlife, alone, cannot be a sufficient reason to deem an action good (meaning action A is not necessarily good or could even be seen as bad, if the sole motivation is because of an afterlife system based on rewards or punishments), it certainly can be helpful to know that, while your obedience to moral law may not give you happiness or cause your suffering, there will come a day where that no longer is the case. Remember that DCT is one of the Deontological theories, meaning that whatever is true of that field of thought in general, can be applied here. That will be discussed more in the last section.

In life there tends to be disagreement about everything and Divine Command theorists are no different. The disagreements here seem to be, in part, what God commands. If we see scripture as containing true divine commands and statements, which of those are we to follow? Should we still stone people? Go to war? Moving into the New Testament also gives us some challenges as well. Are women allowed to preach? Should we still Baptize and how? Regardless of how you answer these questions, we can all agree that we don’t agree on these things. There are many other examples, but the point is that there is disagreement among Christian DCT advocates.

Another point to make is the disagreement about how this theory should be formulated. For example “A strong version of Divine Command Theory includes the claim that moral statements (x is obligatory) are defined in terms of theological statements (x is commanded by God)” (Austin, n.d). However, these theories do exist on a spectrum. Here is a list of 5 statements that may be held by any given DCT proponent.

“Moral norms are good or bad solely because they were issued by God.
Moral norms stem from the nature of God.
God is somehow involved in morality.
Commands of God are coextensive with demands of morality.
Belief in God is required for proper moral behavior” (Eyghen, 2023).

As you can see, these statements exist in a spectrum and do not agree with each other.

Divine command theory has been a part of many different kinds of theistic faiths. As a result of this, there is a long history of this concept so I will not be getting into its history, simply because it is too expansive. Concerning the Bible, DCT advocates point to many places. The law of Moses is commonly pointed to as suggestive of DCT. It is written “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecc 12:13). Here the teacher (presumably Solomon) concludes the entire discussion of his wise teaching by saying that obedience to the commands of God is the basic obligation of all people. Here DCT advocates can find objectivity, morality grounded in God's words to people, and more. All of which makes a Deontological DCT view possible. Furthermore, God expects people to be obedient to his words throughout scripture (Joshua 1:7-8, Deut 6:4-9, James 1:22-25).

DCT has a long history of positives and negatives (see here for more discussion of that). Despite any disagreement or controversy, we can all agree that God is very important in discussions regarding how we should live our lives. God truly cares about us, and how we live, as it is written “...what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). In the next article I write regarding ethics, we will pit CVE (Christian Virtue Ethics) against DCT (Divine Command Theory) to see which normative ethical theory is better. The specific situation we will address (to spread awareness and possibly reveal flaws in these theories) is Child Marriage.

References:

Alexander, L., & Moore, M. (2021). Deontological ethics. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/ethics-deontological/

Austin, W, M. Divine command theory | Internet encyclopedia of philosophy. (n.d.). Retrieved January 23, 2024, from https://iep.utm.edu/divine-command-theory/

Deontology. (n.d.). Ethics Unwrapped. Retrieved January 23, 2024, from https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/deontology

Kranak, J. (2019). Kantian deontology. https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-ethics/chapter/kantian-deontology/

Van Eyghen, H. (2023). Debunking divine command theory. Religions, 14(10), 1252. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14101252

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