Euthyphro’s God-Loved Piety as a Modified Divine Command Theory: A Review Essay


Introduction

In Plato’s dialogue the Euthyphro,[1] Socrates argues against a common moral notion that piety (or holiness) is a matter of what the gods say it is. Socrates asks the following question: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?”[2] Plato takes the position that piety is defined without reference to the gods. Contemporary criticisms of the role between morality and God’s commands continue the discussion found in the Euthyphro.[3] The view that God’s will is what is relevant in determining the moral status of certain acts is called theological voluntarism or divine command theory (hereafter, DCT).[4] For the purposes of this essay, DCT claims two things: (i) God ultimately determines what is moral and (ii) the morally right thing to do is based upon God’s commands understood as statements of the divine will. However, DCT seems to illicit a dilemma similar to the one imposed by Socrates to Euthyphro concerning God and morality. Does God call something moral because it is moral, or is something moral just because God calls it moral? If God calls something moral because it is moral, then morality is prior to God’s commands and, therefore, is independent of God. If something is moral because God says it is, then this means that whatever God says is moral is moral. However, does this also mean that God’s declaration of what is moral arbitrary since God could have willed contrary commands? Both possibilities are troubling for adherents of DCT.

In this paper, I explore the use of Euthyphro’s dilemma in contemporary criticisms of DCT. After providing summaries and an analysis of Plato’s argument against Euthyphro, I give a general account of the features of DCT and the role of Euthyphro’s dilemma as a criticism of DCT. I explore two lines of thought that accept the conclusions of the horns of the dilemma and argue that these concessions are flawed such that advocates of DCT need to find a way to through the horns of the dilemma. I then argue that Plato’s own theory of the Forms, specifically, the Form of the Good, offers a way through the horns if we consider a modified DCT in which God’s commands flow out of his necessarily good nature making God the transcendent Good.[5] With this modified DCT in hand, I respond to two objections: (a) this only moves the Euthyphro dilemma one step back and (b) what are the moral obligations of reasonable non-believers? Finally, I conclude that a properly modified DCT escapes Euthyphro’s dilemma and is a reasonable ethical theory for the theists who hold it.

Plato’s Argument Against Euthyphro

After a couple of false starts, Euthyphro offers his final definition for piety as “what all the gods love” and impiety as “what all the gods hate.”[6] Socrates (Plato) asks the following question concerning this final definition for piety: “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?”[7] Socrates explains that his question is based upon two principles: (a) there is a difference between acting upon something and something being acted upon and (b) if two things are identical, then one must share every feature of the other. The first principle seeks to point out the difference between affecting or causing something and being an effect that is affected by a cause. He illustrates with examples of something being carried, led, or seen versus something carrying, leading, or seeing:

It is not being seen because it is a thing seen but on the contrary it is a thing seen because it is being seen; nor is it because it is something led that it is being led but because it is being led that it is something led; nor is something being carried because it is something carried, but it is something carried because it is being carried.[8]


With this general pattern established, Socrates gets Euthyphro to agree that “being loved” fits the same pattern. Socrates determines that piety is different from “being loved by the gods” since the reason for why the gods love certain actions is because of the pious thing itself; that the gods love certain things is an effect of the thing itself being pious. Using the second principle concerning identity such that two things are identical if they share every feature of the one with the other, Socrates says that since there is a difference between acting and being acted upon, piety and that which is loved by the gods is not the same thing.[9] According to Peter Geach, Socrates is using the Leibnizian principle “that two expressions for the same thing must be mutually replaceable salva veritate – so that a change from truth to falsehood upon such replacement must mean that we have not two expressions for the same thing.”[10] Thus, since piety and what is loved by the gods is not the same thing, then Euthyphro’s final definition for piety fails. According to Plato, piety is not grounded upon what the gods love but is independent of them.

Two Things Euthyphro Could Have Said

There are two objections to Socrates’ (Plato’s) argument for piety being independent of the gods. First, Euthyphro could agree that while his claim is an identity claim (piety is what is loved by the gods), this does not imply any causal or “because” relation similar to the passive verbs of being seen, being led, or being carried.[11] The ambiguity of the use of the word “because” in answering “why” questions leads to this confusion. To illustrate this ambiguity, suppose that Jack loves Jill. If someone asked why Jack loves Jill and the answer was “Because she is beloved,” we would think this is an odd way of answering. It is odd because the context and phrasing of the question implies that one is using “because” in the sense of seeking reasons (e.g. she’s intelligent, fun, and pretty) for why Jack loves Jill. However, if one asked why Jill is beloved, then the answer “Because Jack loves her” is appropriate. Jill is beloved in virtue of Jack loving her. With this in mind, Euthyphro could tell Socrates that the property of being pious is identical to the property of being loved by the gods, but this in no way commits him to a “because” relation in which the love of the gods is the reason for pious things being pious.

Second, along these lines, Euthyphro could have attacked Socrates’ use of the Leibnizian principle of substitution in this context.[12] Since a “because” claim is an answer to a “why” question, any response one gives is context dependent. In the case of co-referential terms, one cannot guarantee that substituting one term for another will result in the same truth value as the previous sentence in an opaque context.[13] For example, suppose the statement “Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent is sitting next to her” is true. However, the statement, after substituting the co-referential terms, “Lois Lane believes Superman is sitting next to her” is false. Even though Clark Kent is identical to Superman, the truth value of who Lois Lane believes is sitting next to her is not the same. Similarly, Euthyphro could tell Socrates that while he could admit that piety is co-referential to what the gods love, this does not mean that the Leibnizian substitution argument proves in this opaque context that the two are not the same thing.[14] Peity could very well be the same thing as what the gods love. Thus, Euthyphro could have defended his answer that peity is what all the gods love in these two ways to blunt the force of Socrates’ (Plato’s) question that will re-emerge in discussions of the relationship between God’s commands and morality.

Divine Command Theory and Euthyphro’s Dilemma

To reiterate, DCT involves two claims: (i) God ultimately determines morality and (ii) God’s commands are an expression of His divine will for what one ought to do. There are a number of advantages that divine command theorists point to in favor of their theory. First, supporters of DCT say it provides an objective metaphysical foundation for morality.[15] If one is committed to the existence of objective moral truths, then these truths fit well in a theistic framework. In a purely naturalistic framework, the existence of objective moral truths, especially with costly moral obligations for the agent, seems rather perplexing.[16] Mark Murphy states it this way: “Both theists and nontheists have been impressed by the weirdness of normativity, with its very otherness, and have thought that whatever we say about normativity, it will have to be a story not about natural properties but nonnatural ones.”[17] Second, DCT provides an answer to the question of where our moral obligations come from. Our moral obligations come to us from God in the form of commands.[18] This is very straightforward. Third, DCT provides an answer to the question, “Why be moral?” The answer is relatively simple: we should be moral because we are morally accountable to God such that evil people will be punished and good people will be rewarded.[19]

Though Plato’s original argument against Euthyphro’s position on piety and the gods is not successful, contemporary philosophers view Euthyphro’s dilemma as a persistent problem for advocates of DCT. Euthyphro’s dilemma attacks DCT by asking the following question, “Does God command us to do the morally right thing because it is the morally right thing, or is the morally right thing morally right because God commands it?”

If one opts for the first horn, that God commands us to do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, then the question arises “how is it that it is God who ultimately determines what morality is? God, in DCT, is supposed to be the moral ultimate, but this answer to the dilemma undermines the sovereignty of God in determining what is good or evil. On this horn, God loses His moral ultimacy because God’s action of determination is similar to the way a wine connoisseur determines what a good wine is. “Determine” in this sense refers to recognition. Like the expert wine taster who recognizes what a good wine tastes like, God, in this recognition sense, determines what is moral by reliably passing on to us the information of what is moral. God becomes a good, even an infallibly good, detector of what moral goodness is. However, God simply being reliable in recognizing what the morally right action is undercuts the claim of DCT that God is the ultimate determiner of what is moral. According to this objection, God becomes superfluous to morality as an unnecessary fifth wheel. God Himself becomes subject to a standard of goodness outside Himself. The goodness of an action is independent and antecedent to God commanding it.[20]

If one opts for the second horn of the dilemma, that God commands us to do the morally right due to the simple fact that God commands it, then we have a second sense of the word “determine” here. In this sense, “determine” has a causal or agency connotation similar to how I determine what color car I am going to purchase amongst a variety of colored cars at the dealership. That I choose the red one over the blue one is up to me and my predilections. I am the agent that chooses it. In the case of God and morality, God chooses what He will command as the morally right thing to do. However, if the divine will of God is not constrained by anything but determines what is good simply because God chooses it, the advocate of DCT is faced with two difficulties. The first difficulty is a charge of committing a tautology that leads to arbitrariness. If the morally right thing to do is defined as what God commands, then there is no seemingly deeper reason for why certain right actions are right than to say that God commands it. For example, if, in answer to my daughter asking why she can’t stay up late on a school night I replied with the parental catchall phrase, “Because I said so” most of us would not judge such a reply as a good explanation. Similarly, to call something good just because God commands it does not seem adequate as an explanation of calling something good; to say that God commands what is morally right is just to say that God commands which does not offer any more information. The second difficulty is that if there is nothing grounding what the divine will commands, then what is to prevent horrendously evil things from being commanded? If God commands that we torture babies for fun, then does that mean that torturing babies for fun is the right thing to do? This seems morally absurd and arbitrary. In this view, the God of DCT is not worthy of worship. According to Louise Antony, “the only kind of reason one could have for worshipping him is prudential. He’s a powerful Guy.”[21] Of course, the prudential motivation of rewards and punishments is an inadequate and immature theory of morality. Walter Sinnot-Armstrong illustrates this way:

Compare a small boy who thinks that what makes it morally wrong for him to hit his little sister is only that his parents told him not to hit her and will punish him if he hits her. As a result, this little boy thinks that, if his parents leave home or die, then there is nothing wrong with hitting his little sister. Maybe some little boys think this way, but surely we adults do not think that morality is anything like this.[22]


Following the horns of the dilemma, we see that God’s relationship to morality is either unnecessary because of the independence of morality (the Independence Problem) or morally arbitrary (the Arbitrariness Problem). As Bernard Williams says, “Any appeal to God in this connection either adds nothing at all, or it adds the wrong sort of thing.”[23]

In the next sections of this paper, I will explore two responses to these problems which “bite the bullet” in embracing a horn of the dilemma. I argue that these concessions are flawed such that the DCT theorist cannot accept them. Instead, he needs to find a way to go through the horns of the dilemma.

Biting the Independence Bullet

Some philosophers who criticize DCT, such as Richard Swinburne, are quite comfortable with morality being independent of God. Swinburne argues that moral properties are supervenient on nonmoral properties, and this supervenience is logical supervenience.[24] Swinburne is stating the philosophical idea that if A supervenes on B, then this means that if there arises a difference in A, then there must have arisen a difference in B. For example, if killing someone is not bad in one possible world, but bad in another one, then there must be a difference between the two worlds to make one not bad and the other one bad. According to Swinburne, it follows from the fact that there are contingent moral truths that there are logically necessary moral truths – general principles of morality – that exist independently of God’s commands.[25] Swinburne states the distinction between contingent moral truths and logically necessary moral truths this way:

…there are two kinds of moral truths…when an object a has a certain moral property, say M, its possession of it is entailed by it possessing certain natural properties, say A, B, and C. Then it is a necessary truth that anything which is A, B, and C is M; but a contingent truth that a is M or that there is an object which is a and M.[26]

In his view, the fact that there are necessary moral truths does not detract from God’s goodness since God is still all-good and deserving of worship. But unlike classical theists that view God’s existence as necessary existence, Swinburne views God’s existence as a contingent truth.[27] So, when God commands necessary moral truths, He is only commanding what is our duty anyway. Swinburne’s solution to Euthyphro’s dilemma is two-fold:

(1) Necessary moral truths are independent from God, but this does not reflect badly on God since this is of logically necessity, and it is no limitation on God that He can only do what is logically possible.

(2) Contingent moral truths are due to God’s commands.[28]

As for commands in general, including contingent moral truths, God could command for a variety of reasons such as (a) giving us further motivation to do what is morally obligatory; (b) coordination of purposes; and (c) making humans do the type of good that is not obligatory but is good to do when a competent authority issues a command.[29]

Two objections could be lodged at Swinburne’s acceptance of the independence of morality from God.[30] First, there is a difficulty with categorizing general moral principles as logically necessary moral truths. Swinburne argues that if there is a contingent moral truth, then this means there is a logically necessary moral truth. However, this does not necessarily follow and commits the problem of induction.[31] If a certain object, a, has a moral property, M, and certain natural properties X, Y, and Z, it does not follow by necessity that everything that possesses X, Y, and Z also possess M. This type of move, from the particular to the universal, is only legitimate when moving from a particular claim that is already necessarily true to a general and universal claim that is necessarily true. For example, it is a necessary truth that a particular plane triangle’s internal angles add up to 180 degrees. From this, one can justifiably move to the universal claim that all plane triangles’ internal angles add up to 180 degrees.[32] However, Swinburne cannot make a similar move from contingent moral truths to necessary moral truths. Thus, Swinburne’s model for morality’s independence from God is problematic because of the problem of induction.[33]

Second, even if we can categorize general moral principles as logically necessary moral truths, this does not mean that they are necessarily independent from God. William Lane Craig argues that Swinburne’s view of necessary moral truths being independent from God assumes that necessary truths cannot stand in explanatory relations of priority to one another.[34] Craig thinks this is obviously false and offers several theological and non-theological examples of necessary truths with explanatory relations of priority that are asymmetric:

1. “States of consciousness exist” is necessarily true because “God exists is necessarily true.”

2. The axioms of Peano arithmetic are explanatorily prior to “2+2=4.”

3. “No event precedes itself” is necessarily true because it is necessarily true that “Temporal becoming is an objective and essential feature of time.”[35]

So, necessary moral truths do not necessarily entail the independence of morality apart from God. Thus, with these two objections in mind, if there is an acceptable way of explanatorily grounding morality in God’s existence asymmetrically, the advocate of DCT does not have to bite the independence bullet of the Euthyphro dilemma.

Biting the Arbitrariness Bullet

Few argue that if God did command horrendous evils be done, then by virtue of the fact that God commands it, such evils actually become good and are our moral duties to do them. This is a very radical claim that few theists, let alone advocates of DCT are willing to hold. One exception is William of Ockham.[36] According to his line of thought, it is possible that God could command that it is our duty to engage in what are seen to be immoral acts, such as theft, adultery, and murder, but this is a mere logical possibility. In the actual world, these things are not commanded by God because of God’s character in the actual world. Imagining such a different world than the actual one would involve dramatically different fundamental attributes of God that for any serious theist, this would be imagining a world with different laws of nature. According to Richard Joyce, in such imagined worlds, we probably should not presume to have any kind of moral intuitions about them.[37] So, to say that God could have commanded what we believe is an evil action in a logically possible world, is not to say that it is evil in such a world. Our moral intuitions about these drastically different worlds break down.

I suspect that the emphasis that God commanding what our moral intuitions tell us is evil is only a mere logical possibility and not a real possibility gives little comfort to advocates of DCT. If our moral intuitions are such that we cannot trust them to give us at least some knowledge of radically different worlds that God could have created, then how can we trust them to give us at knowledge of the moral order in our own world? I do not find such skepticism concerning our moral intuitions to help those who bite the arbitrariness bullet. I would have to agree with Antony, Sinnott-Armstrong, and Williams that if God commands what is good based upon no reasons beside the fact that God issues a divine command, then God would not be worthy of worship but only worshipped out of prudence. Prudence dictates that it is insane to defy an Almighty God. But this is simply power worship. Against the accusation of power worship, Geach replies, “But since this is worship of the Supreme Power, it is as such wholly different from, and does not carry with it, a cringing attitude towards earthly powers.”[38] This, however, is an inadequate response because Geach does not explain how the difference between God and earthly powers is morally compelling. In fact, Geach’s reply assumes that God must be good or worthy of worship in order for there to be a difference such that one should not cringe. The problem with biting this arbitrariness bullet is that it undermines the classical theistic view that God is truly good. This is too high a price for the advocate of DCT. We are in need of a modified version of DCT.

Modified Divine Command Theory

The Euthyphro dilemma offers two unacceptable choices for the advocate of DCT: (a) morality is independent of God (Independence problem) and (b) God’s divine command of what is moral is arbitrary (Arbitrariness problem). Thus, DCT must be modified in order to find an acceptable and reasonable alternative to God being either superfluous to morality or God’s command making morality arbitrary. The hint to go through the horns of the dilemma is found in Plato’s Republic[39] in his discussion of the Form of the Good.[40] The Form of the Good causes and is the source of all the other Forms such as Knowledge and Truth but is even more beautiful than they.[41] The Form of the Good is the last thing to be seen as it truly is and is the cause of all that is correct and beautiful in anything.[42] Thus, in Plato’s thought, the Form of the Good transcends the other Forms. The Form of the Good is the standard of all goodness. In offering a modified theory of divine command, Robert Adams sees God as the infinite or transcendent Good.[43] God as the transcendent Good possesses the supreme degree of intrinsic excellence.[44] Adams states that his theistic view of the Good as God historically matches the Platonistic account of the Good in a broad sense:

The role that belongs to the Form of the Good in Plato’s thought is assigned to God, and the goodness of other things is understood in terms of their standing in some relation, usually conceived as a sort of resemblance, to God…To the extent that I am following Plato at all, it is as an exemplar that I am conceiving of the Good itself. If God is the Good itself, then the Good is not an abstract object but a concrete (though not a physical individual) individual. Indeed it is a person, or importantly like a person.[45]

God’s existence is metaphysically necessary such that the standard of goodness is defined by the divine nature as possessing a supreme degree of excellence. God is essentially and necessarily good just as God necessarily exists.[46] God’s commands, then, are expressions of the divine will that flows out of His necessarily good nature. Thus, God’s nature is the standard of goodness and is defined this way for all possible worlds.[47]

With this alternative, Euthyphro’s dilemma is a false one. Instead of judging God’s commands as either being independent of Him or arbitrary, the modified DCT advocate would say that goodness is not independent of God or an arbitrary command of God, but actually finds its grounding in God’s nature and character. Instead of a purely Platonic conception concerning the objectivity of goodness such that something is considered good only if it conforms to objectively true abstract principles (the Forms), the modified DCT supporter would say that something is good only if it conforms to God’s character or nature.[48] William Alston offers the following illustration of what it means for God to be the standard of goodness such that goodness is not independent of Him:

Let’s say that what makes a certain length a meter is its equality to a standard meter stick kept in Paris. What makes this table a meter in length is not its conformity to a Platonic essence but its conformity to a concretely existing individual. Similarly, on my present suggestion, what most ultimately makes an act of love a good thing is not its conformity to some general principle but its conformity to, or imitation of, God, who is both the ultimate source of the existence of things and the supreme standard by reference to which they are to be assessed.

Thus, God is not like the expert wine connoisseur that must consult objective principles of what makes a good wine. Instead, God simply acts in accordance with His character which is essentially good. So, God’s commands are not arbitrary such that He could have commanded us to do evil actions and call those actions good. On this view of divine command, it would be impossible for God to command us to act in ways that are not the best.[49]

On Adams’ view, a divine command is a communication by God that is an expression of His divine will which is consistent with his necessarily good nature. The divine command issues moral obligations on us that are social requirements of conformity.[50] According to Adams, these divine commands need not be communicated to us solely through scriptures and prophets and received solely by a certain type of theist, but can also arise in all human beings through a variety of resources such as “natural law,” conscience, inclinations, social requirements, and rational assessments.[51] Adams states:

On this view, the divine ethical requirements will not form an entirely separate system, parallel and superior to human systems of social requirement. Rather, human moral systems will be imperfect expressions of divine commands; and the question of their relation to God’s commanding will be whether and how far they are authorized or backed by God’s authority, not whether or how they agree with an eternal divine commandment laid up in the heavens.[52]

Ton Van Den Belt agrees with this point that the will of God could be made known through non-theological methods.[53] This is an important feature of Adam’s modified DCT because the objections in the next section lodged against it are based upon questions concerning the epistemology of divine commands and not on the ontology of divine commands.

Two Objections to the Modified View

One objection to the modified DCT that locates goodness in the very nature or character of God is the charge that this only moves the question back one step. Euthyphro’s dilemma could be restated: Is God’s nature good because it is good, or is God’s nature good because it is God’s nature? If God’s nature is good because it is good, then God’s nature must conform to an antecedent standard of goodness in order to call God’s nature good. If God’s nature is good because it is God’s nature, then this is an arbitrary definition of God’s nature. Alston thinks such a question amounts to a repeat of Platonist predilections that are no better than the theistic view.[54] He writes:

Whether we are Platonist or particularist, there will be some stopping place in the search for explanation. An answer to the question, ‘What is good about?’ will, sooner or later, cite certain good-making characteristics. We can then ask why we should suppose that good supervenes on those characteristics. In answer either a general principle or an individual paradigm is cited. But whichever it is, that is the end of the line….I would invite one who finds the invocation of God as the supreme standard arbitrary, to explain why it is more arbitrary than the invocation of a supreme general principle.[55]

Thus, for the advocate of a modified DCT like Alston or Adams, God is the explanatory ultimate and since His nature is necessarily one worthy to be worshipped, His nature is not arbitrary.

However, Dale Tuggy offers an epistemic argument that Alston’s challenge can be met such that we should accept the invocation of a supreme general principle as less arbitrary than the invocation of God being the standard of goodness.[56] He asks us to suppose a Nazi prison guard tortures to death a child solely for the guard’s amusement. Tuggy says this is bad and wrong because it is an example of the act-type ‘A morally aware being torturing an innocent solely for the fun of it,’ and necessarily, all tokens of this act-type are bad and wrong.[57] An advocate of modified DCT would say that such an act is wrong because it is opposite of God’s command to love one’s neighbor, and it is bad “simply because God would never do such a thing; he has not propensity whatever to torture merely for the fun of it.”[58] Tuggy holds that his explanation is better because there is an intelligible connection between the explained and the explanation with a higher epistemic status for theists who do not hold to DCT, while God as the ultimate moral standard has no appeal in itself.[59] It’s only appeal is for theists who wish to hold to the conjunction of the following propositions:

(1) Realism about moral goodness and obligations.

(2) God has moral reasons for his commands.

(3) Beings which logically cannot act otherwise are not subject to obligations.

(4) God is essentially perfectly good.[60]

I am not persuaded by Tuggy’s argument that his alternative is evidently more intelligible with higher epistemic status than DCT. A supporter of DCT can certainly agree with Tuggy’s act-type as expressing an intelligible connection, but wonder why is it bad and wrong for a morally aware being to torture an innocent solely for the fun of it? I certainly agree that such acts are bad and wrong but what grounds this belief? Tuggy would have to say, in line with his own explanation of the moral ultimate, that this moral principle is just the way it is; it’s a brute fact about morality and that’s all. However, Tuggy’s “Platonist predilections” (called by Alston) assume that this general moral principle is self-supporting. However, the advocate of DCT may admit that a general moral principle is epistemically independent and epistemically self-supporting though it is not ontologically independent and ontologically self-supporting.[61] The modified DCT allows one to recognize that since God is the source and creator of human beings that He created us such that we are able to make sound judgments of morality without necessarily having to trace this ability back to the ultimate standard.[62] Thus, we can recognize epistemically that general moral principles are true without bringing God into the epistemic picture. This, however, cannot be done ontologically for moral principles for it requires a belief in the cosmic coincidence of the existence of objective moral principles, human beings that perceive objective moral principles, and God’s non-existence. Paul Copan writes:

Do objective moral values exist independently of human beings (a priori)? If so, it is a huge, cosmic coincidence that these values somehow “anticipated” our eventual arrival on the scene and happen to correspond to our moral constitution. If not, how could value, dignity, rights, and moral freedom emerge from valueless, material, determined processes? Naturalism and moral realism are massively mismatched.[63]

Of course, these claims are getting into the debate between theists and atheists on God’s existence which moves beyond the scope of this paper. However, one can say that it is obvious that if God does not exist, then such a non-existent being cannot be the determining factor of what is good or bad (or right and wrong). However, if God does exists, then His will on what our moral obligations are, especially of obligations that are costly to the moral agent, is of profound significance.[64] Thus, short of a disproof of God’s existence, the modified supporter of DCT should see no good reason for accepting Tuggy’s thesis that his moral ultimate is preferable.

A second objection to a modified DCT is that it does not explain the moral obligations of reasonable non-believers.[65] Wes Morriston has recently argued that the modified DCT of Adams cannot offer an accounting of the nature of moral obligations for reasonable non-believers defined as people who are not unreasonable for not believing in God. Since a command is a speech act within the context of a social requirement that one person tells another person what to do, a successfully issued command must be delivered to the intended recipients.[66] If this is so, then how can a reasonable non-believer’s moral obligations be understood as arising from God’s commands since He has not spoken to her about what she should or should not do? Suppose one says that it is possible for one to receive a command without being aware of being addressed by anyone.[67] Morriston argues that this response removes the social requirement content from Adams’ theory since the reasonable non-believer is not aware of her relationship with her creator. If one says that for non-believers, “receiving” a divine command amounts to just whatever brings them to have correct views of their moral obligations, then Adams’ view has no advantages over competing divine will theories of DCT where the divine will does not necessarily need to be expressed to others.[68] Thus, it would seem that Adam’s version of DCT does not apply to her.

Morriston’s argument assumes that a valid command occurs only if the recipient is aware of the social requirement between the commander and herself. This assumption is doubtful since there is a counterexample in human social relationships. In human relationships, there are examples where we do have moral obligations arising from commands even if one is unaware of any social relationship or social requirements behind them. For example, suppose a man receives an anonymous note in the mail that commands/demands him to pay child support for an unknown child that he fathered ten years ago. Though he was unaware of such a social relationship and requirement to this child, he is still under the moral obligation to obey the command to pay child support if such a social relationship exists. The key factor is whether or not the social relationship and social requirements exist and not whether or not one is aware of them. Morriston’s objection confuses the epistemology of moral obligations and commands with the ontology of moral obligations and commands. Similarly, the reasonable non-believer would still be under God’s commands in her moral obligations though her knowledge of the ultimate source of those moral obligations (i.e. God’s commands) is veiled from her.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Euthyphro’s dilemma is a false one that offers only two alternatives to understanding divine command theory as morality being independent of God or morality being arbitrarily commanded by God. After exploring some concessions that “bite the bullet,” I argued that these concessions are misguided and unacceptable to advocates of DCT. Instead, a modified theory of divine command was offered such that God is necessarily good, and it is His nature and character that is the exemplar of what goodness is. God’s commands to us are an expression of that goodness and become our moral obligations. Thus, DCT is a reasonable ethical theory for the theists who hold it.



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[1] Plato, Euthyphro, trans G.M.A. Grube, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 1-16.

[2] Euthyphro, 10A.

[3] William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 35; J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist: The Debate between Theists and Atheists (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1993), 99-100.

[4] Mark Murphy, “Theological Voluntarism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, located online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/voluntarism-theological, pg. 1 of 30.

[5] I draw on Robert Merrihew Adams’ modified divine command theory in his Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14.

[6] Euthyphro, 9E.

[7] Ibid., 10A.

[8] Ibid., 10C.

[9] Ibid., 10D.

[10] P.T. Geach, “Plato’s Euthyprho: An Analysis and Commentary,” Monist 50 (1966): 376.

[11] Richard Joyce, “Theistic Ethics and the Euthyphro Dilemma,” Journal of Religious Ethics 30.1 (2002): 51-53.

[12] Ibid., 53.

[13] Ibid., 54.

[14] Ibid., 55.

[15] Michael W. Austin, “Divine Command Theory,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, located online at http://www.iep.utm.edu/entries/divine-c/print, pg. 3 of 19.

[16] Ton Van Den Beld, “The Morality System With and Without God,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 4.4 (2001): 383-399.

[17] Murphy, 5.

[18] Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig, “The Kurtz/Craig Debate: Is Goodness without God Good Enough?” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, eds. Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 30.

[19] Austin, 3-4.

[20] Louise Antony, “Atheism as Perfect Piety,” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, eds. Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 69-71.

[21] Ibid., 75.

[22] Walter Sinnot-Armstrong, “Why Traditional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality,” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, eds. Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 109.

[23]Bernard Williams, “God, Morality, and Prudence,” in Divine Commands and Morality, ed. Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 136.

[24] Richard Swinburne, “What Difference Does God Make to Morality?” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, eds. Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 152-153; Richard Swinburne, “Duty and the Will of God,” in Divine Commands and Morality, ed. Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 126.

[25] Swinburne, “What Difference Does God Make to Morality?” 153-155.

[26] Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 186; Quoted in Simini Rahimi, “Swinburne on the Euthyphro Dilemma. Can Supervenience Save Him?” Forum Philosophicum 13.1 (2008): 18.

[27] Swinburne, “What Difference Does God Make to Morality?” 156.

[28] Swinburne, “Duty and the Will of God,” 125-126.

[29] Swinburne, “What Difference Does God Make to Morality?” 161.

[30] Swinburne actually seems to embrace both horns of Euthyphro’s dilemma by hanging each type of moral truth (necessary and contingent) on each horn (independence problem and arbitrariness problem).

[31] Rahimi, 20.

[32] Rahimi, 20-21.

[33] For brevity, I do not mention Rahimi’s other argument found in pages 22-26 of his paper. He argues that Swinburne’s use of the principle of supervenience does not imply the logical (analytical) necessity of general moral principles but actually contradicts it.

[34] William Lane Craig, “This Most Gruesome of Guests: A Response by William Lane Craig,” in Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?: A Debate on Faith, Secularism, and Ethics, eds. Robert K. Garcia and Nathan L. King (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 170.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, Vol. 3 (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 103-110.

[37] Joyce, 65.

[38] Peter Geach, “The Moral Law and the Law of God,” in Divine Commands and Morality, ed. Paul Helm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 173.

[39] Plato, Republic, trans G.M.A. Grube, rev. C.D.C. Reeve in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), 971-1223.

[40] Republic, 508A-517C.

[41] Ibid., 508E.

[42] Ibid., 517C.

[43] Adams, 3.

[44] Ibid., 14.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid., 42-49; For a defense of the necessity of God’s goodness see Thomas V. Morris, Anselmian Explorations: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 42-69.

[47] Adams, 49.

[48] William P. Alston, “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, ed. William Lane Craig (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2002), 291-292.

[49] Alston, 290.

[50] Ibid., 262.

[51] Ibid., 263-264.

[52] Ibid., 264-265.

[53] Van Den Beld, 397.

[54] Alston, 293.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Dale Tuggy, “Necessity, Control, and the Divine Command Theory,” Sophia 44.1 (2005):60.
[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid., 60-61.

[60] Ibid., 61.

[61] John Milliken, “Euthyphro, the Good, and the Right,” Philosophia Christi 11.1 (2009):153-154.

[62] Alston, 294.

[63] Paul Copan, “Morality and Meaning Without God, Another Failed Attempt,” Philosophia Christi 6.2 (2004): 301.

[64] Van Den Beld, 389-395.

[65] Wes Morriston, “The Moral Obligations of Reasonable Non-Believers: A Special Problem for Divine Command Metaethics,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 65.1 (2009), 1.

[66] Ibid., 3.

[67] Ibid., 8.

[68] Ibid., 3-4, 8