Ascending Mt. Moriah: Divine Command Theory, Human Free Will, and Ecclesiastical Authority

This past week, I posted about how morality without God rests on a form of self-deception. This post, to my surprise, gave rise to a discussion among my friends about Divine Command Theory, which I abbreviate as DCT in what follows. That discussion has caused me to think more deeply about DCT. In this post, I have explored new thoughts—at least new to me—on how DCT influences our understanding of ecclesiastical authority. I have also discussed other aspects of DCT. What follows is not carefully and analytically argued. Much of it may prove objectionable. It is not intended as an airtight argument, but as my general impressions of DCT’s problems. To discuss those problems, though, I must first briefly identify what DCT is.

Divine Command Theory*

Divine Command Theory (DCT) is a metaphysical theory about what makes an action right or wrong. Advocates of the theory hold that when God commands something, it is obligatory to do that thing. So if God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, then it is morally obligatory (and morally praiseworthy) for Abraham to plunge the dagger into his son.

This view stands in conflict with Moral Realism. Moral Realism, for our purposes, comes in two types: Platonism and Divine Goodness Theories (DGT). Platonism posits universal, eternal moral realities that exist independently of God. These realities fix what is right and wrong, good and evil. When human agents grasp that murder is wrong, they grasp a universal, eternal law that exists independently of what any agent believes. Christian theologians have been reluctant to accept Platonism, as it invokes realities that God did not create and to which he is subject.

DGT, in comparison, import these “Platonic” moral realities into God’s nature. Stated differently, under DGT, God’s nature is essentially good. Thus, when human agents grasp that murder is wrong, they grasp God’s nature, achieving a type of intellectual union with it. This theory, importantly, is different than DCT. For theorists of DGT (keep up with the acronyms) say that God’s nature is fixed and essentially good. God cannot change his nature tomorrow to make murder consistent with it. But DCT roots God’s goodness in his will, which is not fixed. God can command murder one day and revoke that command the next.

One problem a proponent of DGT must face is a lack of divine omnipotence. DGT, after all, maintains that God’s nature is fixed and that God must act consistent with it. God cannot alter his nature. He is what he essentially is. Nor can he act contrary to that nature, for he is essentially good.

Most proponents of DGT address the problem of omnipotence by claiming that acts inconsistent with goodness are not acts of power. Thus, murder is not an act of power. Acts of power, under this understanding, express goodness. And murder does not express goodness.

Advocates of DCT reject this solution. They instead claim that God is not constrained by his nature. He can command anything. At one time he may say, “thou shalt not murder,” and at another, “thou shalt utterly destroy.” If he is not constrained by a fixed nature, he can be omnipotent in the strongest sense of the term. William of Ockham, a well known advocate of DCT, made this move to preserve divine omnipotence. But in resolving the problem of divine omnipotence, DCT creates new ones.

Problems with DCT

The problems created by DCT are manifold. Many may prove soluble. For my purposes, I will focus on two-types of problems. The first type of problem concerns how DCT distorts the divine nature. The second type concerns how DCT distorts our understanding of free will and ecclesiastical power. 

Problems with the Divine Nature

Regarding the first type, DCT safeguards divine power by making goodness purely subjective: goodness is what God decrees. So if God commands the murder of children, it would be morally obligatory and morally good to carry out that command. Under this theory, we should praise those who comply with God’s command.[1]

But we intuitively view the murder of children as deeply wrong, no matter who commands it. By the light of our own reason, we would adjudicate a god who commanded such a thing, as a god engaged in immoral acts. This, to my mind, reveals that DCT fundamentally misunderstands the foundations of moral goodness and moral obligations.

But an advocate of DCT will contend that we simply err in our moral judgments when we adjudicate the divinely commanded murder of children to be wrong. In making this move, the advocate owes us an error theory. In philosophical parlance, an error theory explains why we err in our judgments. Take the analogous case of free will. Some philosophers deny that we have free will. In so doing, they must confront the fact that we experience ourselves as endowed with the capacity for free choice.

Similarly, in this case, the divine command advocate must explain why we err in seeing God’s commands as immoral. If God commanded the murder of a son, why do we experience this event as unethical? Is it merely due to societal convention that we view such an act as wrong?

Each of these answers is plausible enough. They reveal, however, another problem for DCT. For the theory imagines a world where our moral judgments may be radically wrong. When you and I intuit the murder of a child as wrong, we could be mistaken; God may have commanded it. And if we could be wrong about that judgment, we could be wrong about a whole host of pedestrian judgments. Furthermore, we could be right about one judgment today (murder of children is wrong), and wrong about it tomorrow when God decrees the opposite. 

More deeply, then, the God of DCT may have created us in such a way that we cannot recognize good and evil. This, in turn, has some drastic implications for human culpability for sin--an issue I do not grapple with here. Instead, I am more interested in the effects of DCT in more practical affairs. And it is to that issue that I now turn.

DCT’s Effect on Free Will and Ecclesiastical Authority

In addition to the problems listed above, I believe DCT gives rise to several more practical problems. First, it distorts our view of human free will. For our understanding of human free will follows our understanding of divine free will. This is not a necessary truth, but a historically verified contingent truth.

Before DCT gained widespread acceptance among theological circles, Moral Realism of the DGT variety held sway. DGT, as discussed above, modeled divine free will as constrained by the divine nature. God cannot murder a child as it is inconsistent with his nature. Those who held this view, also held an analogous view of human free will. The proper use of freedom, for these theologians, was the conduct in conformity with human nature. But human agents, unlike God, are fallible and weak willed. We often commit acts that are inconsistent with our God-given natures; whereas God, who is infallible, perfectly realizes his nature.

When DCT gained traction, a new model of human freedom arose. Now, human freedom was not the power to actualize a human nature, but the freedom to express one’s will. This, strangely, has caused us to view the proper exercise of human freedom as unconstrained by any moral laws. True freedom, is not freedom to actualize moral laws grounded in essential human nature. No. True freedom is freedom from any constraints on the human will.[2]

DCT has also, in my judgment, had an impact on the notion of ecclesiastical authority and legitimacy. Those who embrace DCT see God’s authority as flowing from his power, not from his goodness. This may be a controversial point. But if God does not have a fixed, essentially good nature, then his authority is grounded in the exercise of his will. Whatever he wills is good because he wills it. Stated differently, we give ascent to God’s commands because those commands flow from the exercise of God’s power, not because they flow from an essentially good, divine nature. And where we give ascent to God because of his power, we worship God because he is powerful.

This, it seems to me, holds some negative implications for ecclesiastical authority. For parishioners who come to see a particular person as uniquely connected God, will come to treat that person's authority in a way analogous to the way they treat God's authority. They will come to believe that this person's authority is legitimate because it is an exercise of authority.

I believe this is exactly the wrong orientation. I believe ecclesiastical authority is legitimate only where it is legitimate. Put differently, legitimacy flows, at least in part, from morality, not solely from authority. A man’s pronouncements are not authoritative merely because he thunders them from atop a figurative ecclesiastical Mt. Moriah. To be sure, we must give latitude to God’s divinely appointed leaders. But that latitude has limits—limits I do not fully explore in this already lengthy post.

Conclusion

In the end, many who suppose themselves advocates of DCT are actually driven by a sense of epistemic humility. Namely, the trust God’s judgments more than their own, including when those judgments are given through earthly authority. This is admirable, and I too strive for that humility. But we should not equate epistemic humility with divine command theory. The former actually assumes, I believe, an objective moral order that God is better able to perceive; the latter assumes no such order and no such perceiving. It instead denies a moral order and holds that God’s commands generate the moral order.

As I hope to discuss in my next post, this view, in its starkest form, is inconsistent with Mormonism’s view of God. I also reemphasize that what I have said above may be objectionable in many particulars. Some of my readers may wish to defend DCT, and there are good defenses of my comments above. But I will ultimately argue that DCT is a flawed metaphysical theory inconsistent with Mormon theism.

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* A great deal of nuisance among divine command theories. I cannot explore all of those nuisances here, and some may rightly accuse me of creating a straw-man version of DCT. But the version I present is the most basic articulation of the theory.

[1] The theory also, I note, distorts divine goodness, leading to the conclusion that God lacks moral virtue because a moral virtue would have to be defined as a habit to do an action that God commands.

[2] For those interested in this point, I commend David Bentley Hart’s book, Atheist Delusions, where this idea is explored in greater detail.