- In Defense of Christian Ethics, Part 1
- In Defense of Christian Ethics, Part 2
- In Defense of Christian Ethics, Part 3
- In Defense of Christian Ethics, Part 4
In the first two parts of this series, I responded to some of the common objections made against Christian ethics by modern Western non-Christians. These next two parts of this series will be more focused, responding to an extended attack on the coherence and reasonableness of Christian ethics made by philosopher Michael Martin in his book Atheism, Morality, and Meaning[1]Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2002.
Divine Command Theory
The first part of Martin’s attack on Christian ethics is an extended attack on the reasonableness of the Divine Command Theory (DCT) of ethics. According to the DCT, God creates moral truths by an act of His will, such that “a human action is morally obligatory because God commands it; God does not command it because it is morally obligatory” (121-122.) Now, Martin himself acknowledges that Christian theism is not necessarily wedded to a DCT of ethics (114), and that it could be perfectly consistent with God’s omnipotence to say that God communicates moral truth to human beings rather than creating it (144). So, even if he were to demonstrate that DCT is unreasonable and incoherent, this would not necessarily undermine Christian ethics.
Furthermore, even if a Christian does affirm some kind of DCT, it is highly questionable whether fundamental Christian ethical concepts such as union with Christ and being the firstfruits of God’s New Creation can be adequately summarized by simply saying that something is moral because God commands it. Nevertheless, obedience to God’s commands is a prominent ethical theme in Christian Scripture, and many Christians would affirm a DCT of ethics. So, it will be valuable to refute the criticisms Martin makes against it.
The Extreme Divine Command Theory
First, Martin assesses what he calls the “Extreme Divine Command Theory,” according to which things are moral or immoral simply because God says so. In other words, “It is morally required that p = God commands that p” (122-123). Martin’s first objection to this is that this would entail moral anarchy if God does not exist, but most nontheists do not reject all moral truth (125). However, Christians are not claiming that no one can come up with a nontheistic idea (e.g. karma, nirvana) that could theoretically provide a coherent foundation for objective moral truth; they are claiming that in fact moral truth is grounded in God’s commands. As for atheists, they are simply holding to inconsistent and incompatible beliefs if they believe in the existence of objective moral truth while at the same time believing there is no transcendent reality beyond the physical universe.
Next, Martin addresses the possibility that the Extreme DCT only is meant to express what “morally obligatory” means for theists. He objects that this would entail that theists and nontheists actually mean two different things when they talk about what is “moral” or “immoral”; this would mean that a theist and an nontheist could never truly have moral agreements or disagreements in any direct sense, a possibility which Martin thinks is manifestly absurd (126). However, there is nothing absurd in claiming that people with fundamentally different worldviews actually mean different things when they talk about “morality.” When a Christian talks about morality, they mean, “this is conduct that is pleasing to the Lord Jesus Christ.” When a Buddhist talks about morality, they mean, “this is conduct that will lead to achieving Nirvana.” At the practical level, they can agree or disagree about what people should do, but they actually do mean different things when they say something is “moral” or “immoral” Similarly, if by “morality” an atheist means “this is conduct that is in accord with my sentimentalist feelings and intuitions,” they mean something different than a Christian does when they say something is “moral” or “immoral”, even if, at the practical level, they can agree or disagree with a Christian about what people should do.
Another objection to DCT Martin makes is that, if God is transcendent, nonspatial, and nontemporal, it is difficult to conceive of how He could perform speech acts within time and space in order to communicate His commands to human beings (128-130). This is a strange argument. God is omnipotent. He has no limitations. To say that God is eternal and omnipresent means that God is not limited by time and space; it does not in any way place limitations on God’s ability to act. Most people have no problem conceiving of how an omnipotent being can create events in the universe that will communicate His will to human beings.
Martin’s main objection to the Extreme DCT, though, is this: if you really mean that something is moral because God commands it, not the other way around, then you must assume that “God is free to command anything he chooses to command,” which “in effect assumes that God has no essential moral properties that would constrain his choice.” But it follows from this that “There are possible worlds in which God commands cruelty for its own sake and this command is morally required,” which shows that DCT “has morally outrageous consequences.” (127). However, it does not at all follow from the fact that God creates moral truths by His commands that God could arbitrarily make moral commands that are evil. Christians believe that everything that exists is good, and evil is a lack of being/goodness. Good and evil are not different aspects of being; rather, all being is good, and evil is a lack of being. It is simply not the case that if God is omnipotent, He must be capable of issuing evil commands, since God’s attribute of Goodness and God’s attribute of Omnipotence merely refer to different aspects (from our perspective) of God’s one attribute of being the Supremely Perfect Being. Thus, it is logically impossible for the Supremely Perfect Being to issue evil commands.
However, for argument’s sake, let us assume that there could be a possible world in which a creator god commands cruelty for its own sake; would this be a morally outrageous consequence that proves that DCT is absurd? It would only be “morally outrageous” if we assume that the moral truths of this world (e.g., that cruelty for its own sake is wrong) could be applied to this other possible world. But in this other possible world, the moral truth would be that cruelty for its own sake is moral, and so it would not be morally outrageous in that world. Logically, creatures are morally obligated to obey the commands of the one who created them, and so they would be obligated to obey this command of this god in this other possible world. All of this, of course, is merely hypothetical, since, in fact, God would not command cruelty for its own sake in any possible world, but it serves to show that Martin’s objecion to Extreme DCT fails on two levels.
Modified Divine Command Theories
Next, Martin addresses some Modified Divine Command Theories, according to which, “although the command of God is not a sufficient condition for moral obligation, it is a necessary condition,” alongside some other condition (130). Martin’s initial response to the idea that God’s command is a necessary condition for moral obligation is that morality must exist in all possible worlds, and “Even if God exists in this world, why could there not be possible worlds in which he does not exist?” (130). The answer is that, as the Supremely Perfect Being, God necessarily exists, and so must exist in all possible worlds.
First, Martin addresses a Modified DCT according to which, since God is our Creator, we have a moral obligation to obey His commands, just as children have a moral obligation to obey their parents. Martin attacks this theory by arguing that children do not always have a moral obligation to obey their parents; in fact, they sometimes have a moral obligation to disobey their parents (131-135). Certainly, this is true. However, obviously, saying that God is our “Father” and we are God’s “children” is a metaphor, and there are radical differences between the parent-child relationship and the Creator-creature relationship. The reason children do not always have an obligation to obey their parents is because their parents are ignorant, fallible, sinful creatures, just like they are. God, on the other hand, is omniscient, perfectly wise, and perfectly Good, so His commands are always perfect. Furthermore, God is the Creator of our very existence, and we continue to exist only because He continuously causes us to continue to exist; once someone grasps this, they must immediately see that we have an obligation to submit to God’s will and obey His commands, whatever they may be. To think otherwise would be absurd.
Martin next assesses a second Modified DCT, according to which “what is morally forbidden is identical with what is contrary to what a loving God commands” (135). Martin’s first response to this is to argue that an atheist could simply hold to a hypothetical version of this same moral theory: what is moral is what a loving God would command (if He existed). However, a hypothetically existing God could only establish a hypothetical morality, not an actual morality, so this argument fails.
Next, Martin argues that there is “the problem of how a nonspatial and nontemporal being could be loving since a loving being entails loving action and loving action involves a body” (136). However, he provides no support for his assertion that love requires a body. Most people have no problem conceiving of a loving spiritual being. Human love may necessarily involve the body, but obviously God’s love is analogous to human love, not identical with it.
Finally, Martin argues that if moral truth is based on God’s commands, this would entail “that no action would be ethically wrong if there were no loving God,” even if people psychologically felt and believed things were ethically wrong, which Martin finds manifestly absurd (137). However, there is nothing absurd in this claim. Logically, objective moral truth cannot be based in our feelings and beliefs; it must be based in some transcendent reality. According to Christian belief, not only would no moral truth exist, but nothing at all would exist if God did not exist, since He is the Creator of all that exists. Martin claims that there are certain “basic moral beliefs,” such as the belief that wanton cruelty and violence are wrong, which simply must be true even if God does not exist (144). However, his concept of “basic moral beliefs” has no merit. There simply are no moral beliefs that all human beings agree on, and even if there were, this would not prove that they are objectively true.
Defenses of the Divine Command Theory
Next, Martin attempts to refute two defenses of the DCT. First, he addresses what he calls the Essential Moral Attribute Response, according to which God cannot issue immoral commands because of His essential moral attributes; “God’s necessary moral attributes set the standard of morality and without them there would be no morality” (142). Martin’s response is to argue that God being good does not entail that things are good because they are properties of God; it is, after all, logically possible that God does not exist and at the same time that there are moral facts (142-143). In response, yes, it is logically possible to ground objective moral truth in some nontheistic transcendent reality (e.g. karma, nirvana), but in that case, as I argued above, we would actually mean something different when we talk about “morality” than what a Christian means when they talk about “morality.” What Christians are claiming is that in fact morality is grounded in God, that Christian morality is the true one. Martin seems to assume that if we say God is good, then there must be reference to some standard of goodness that is independent of God. However, this is not the case, since God is Goodness itself, and everything else that is good receives its goodness from Him.
Finally, Martin addresses what he calls the Blunting the Absurdity Response, which attempts to argue that, although the idea that gratuitous torture would be morally right if God commands it seems absurd, it is actually not; we cannot know for certain that gratuitous cruelty is wrong in every possible world, and assuming that it is is just moral dogmatism. Martin’s response is to claim that “the belief that cruelty for its own sake is morally wrong is scarcely controversial. Moreover, it is based not on intuitions but on uncontroversial considered judgments” (145-146). However, Martin is simply wrong to claim that the immoral nature of gratuitous cruelty is an “uncontroversial” belief. And even if it were an uncontroversial belief in this world, this would not prove that it would be uncontroversial to people in every possible world, much less would it prove that this belief would be objectively true in every possible world.
Martin’s critiques of DCT thus fail. His argument that DCT absurdly entails that God could command evil things is based on a shallow understanding of Christian theological beliefs about the relationship between God, being, goodness, and morality. And even if we assume (for argument’s sake) that it would be possible for a creator god to command evil things, Martin fails to prove that these things would in fact be objectively evil in all possible worlds.
Notes
| ↑1 | Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2002. |
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Hey, Jed. This is a fascinating topic!
I’m wondering about a couple statements you make here:
“Christians believe that everything that exists is good, and evil is a lack of being/goodness. Good and evil are not different aspects of being; rather, all being is good, and evil is a lack of being” (“The Extreme Divine Command Theory,” paragraph 4).
” . . . as the Supremely Perfect Being, God necessarily exists, and so must exist in all possible worlds” (“Modified Divine Command Theories,” paragraph 1).
Can you explain a bit more about the reasoning behind these statements — what they mean and where they come from?
The idea that all being is good and that evil is a lack of being/goodness goes back at least to St. Augustine. The reasoning behind it is this: Everything that exists is created by God, and since God is perfectly Good, everything He creates must be good. Therefore, everything that exists must be good. If evil is a “thing” or a “substance,” where does it come from? Either God created it (which is impossible, since perfect Goodness would not create evil) or it has a source independent of God (which is also impossible, since God alone is eternal, and is the source of the existence of everything else). Therefore, evil is not a “thing” or a “substance”; rather, it is a lack of being/goodness. “Evil” occurs when a goodness that ought to be there is lacking (e.g. two goods become misdirected and come into conflict with one another).
The idea that God’s existence is necessary goes back at least to St. Anselm. The reasoning behind it is this: God is the Supremely Perfect Being. If God’s existence is dependent on or contingent on something else, then this would be an imperfection. Therefore, God’s existence is not dependent on or contingent on anything else; God’s existence is necessary. God simply IS, and everything that exists is dependent on God for its existence. One might try to imagine a possible world in which only certain things (and not God) exist, but these things would still need to be dependent on God as the source and ground of their being, and so God would also have to BE in this other possible world.
Thanks! 2 follow-ups:
1) Are these ideas widely accepted by modern theologians?
2) Regarding the second idea — that God’s existence is necessary — I’m guessing you’re aware already of some of the objections to this?
For example,
(a) that the argument is circular because it is predicated on what it stands to demonstrate — that there exists (in the first place) a supremely perfect being upon which all else is dependent for its existence.
(b) Or, that by the same line of reasoning we could imagine there exists (necessarily) a supremely perfect being upon which all else is dependent for its existence, but with the difference that this being is perfectly evil and that in fact everything that exists is evil and goodness is not a substance but a mere lack of being/evil.
(c) Or, for that matter, that by the same line of reasoning we could imagine just about any sort of thing we want, call it “supremely perfect,” and say everything else is dependent upon it for existence, and convince ourselves this thing must necessarily exist in all possible worlds.
Objection (a) is the main one; the others are examples of reductio ad absurdum. Anyway, I’m wondering how you might respond to objections like these.
1) Yes, these ideas are widely (though not universally) acccepted by modern theologians. Some Christian theologians have criticized the idea that evil is a lack of being by arguing that evil has qualities that cannot be reduced to a lack of goodness; for example, hatred is something more than a mere lack of love. However, I would argue that there is something that it is good to hate: it is good to hate evil. Hatred is evil only if it is directed at something good. I believe St. Augustine’s claim that all evil actions result from a disordered love for something that is good stands up to criticism.
2) In this apologetics series, I am not attempting to demonstrate that Christian theism is true; I am merely defending the reasonableness and coherence of Christian ethics. In this post, I do not attempt to make an ontological argument for God’s existence; I assume the belief that the Christian God exists, and defend the idea that morality is defined by this God’s commands as reasonable and coherent. Martin argues that, even if God exists in our world, there could be possible worlds in which God does not exist. I would argue that, even if the ontological argument fails to prove God’s existence (because of objection (a)), Martin’s argument is false. If one acknowledges that God, the Supremely Perfect Being, does in fact exist in our reality, then, logically, one must acknowledge that this Supremely Perfect Being, having necessary existence, exists in all possible worlds as well.
As for objection (b), I would argue that the idea of a perfectly evil being is incoherent. Existence is good, so a “perfectly evil being” would have no existence. The “perfect” in Supremely Perfect Being means infinitely good, so the Supremely Perfect Being could not be evil.
The very first objection that was made to Anselm’s ontological argument was a form of objection (c): you might as well imagine a supremely perfect island and thus “prove” that this island must exist, which is absurd. Anselm’s response was that it is of the very nature of islands to come into and out of existence, so even a supremely perfect island would not have necessary existence. His ontological argument only applies to and works for demonstrating that the Supremely Perfect Being exists.
I am not sure whether I accept the ontological argument as successful or not (even St. Thomas Aquinas did not endorse it). I know theistic philosophers have developed more complex and sophisticated forms of the argument that attempt to get around objection (a), but I have not studied these arguments in any depth.
OK!
Regarding 1): Do you recall where St. Augustine makes the claim that all evil actions result from disordered love?
Regarding 2): It is my understanding that analytic philosophers use the language of “possible worlds” to discuss a priori logical possibility. The idea is to hypothesize a world completely different from ours in some key way(s) but still beholden to the laws of logic as we understand them. Note that this is different from a hypothetically existent alternate dimension or connected part of a multiverse.
Given this, my thought is that whatever things may exist in this world make no difference whatsoever, logically speaking, to any possible world we might raise in argument. To say that in this world there is an entity upon which all else in this world is dependent for its existence and that therefore this same sort of entity must be necessary in all possible worlds for the existence of all else in all those worlds is to skip ahead a bit and make an a posteriori claim. The point is to discuss what is a priori possible. Whether or not we think there exists in the real world a supremely perfect being, we wouldn’t want to say that this is a priori necessarily the case.
Of course, by the same token, whether or not we think morality itself (whatever we mean by it) exists in the real world, we wouldn’t want to say this is a priori necessarily the case. So, if Martin is making that claim, then I’m not sure on how he would justify that. On the other hand, the weaker position of saying that there must be SOME possible worlds in which morality exists apart from God is a safe one, I think (depending on what we mean by “morality”).
But, I would agree with Martin that there must be possible worlds in which God does not exist (i.e. it is a priori possible that God does not exist). For that matter, as I see it, nothing that may happen to exist in our world can be said to be necessary as a matter of a priori logic, whether or not we think it is “necessary,” “inevitable,” “perfect,” “supreme,” “infinite,” transcendent,” or anything else in the this world. In short, there are no givens (other than the laws of logic) when jumping between possible worlds.
On these grounds, I would disagree with what you say above, “If one acknowledges that God, the Supremely Perfect Being, does in fact exist in our reality, then, logically, one must acknowledge that this Supremely Perfect Being, having necessary existence, exists in all possible worlds as well.”
Hopefully that makes some sense. These are all pretty fundamental concepts, and I’m sure a lot depends on semantics. What do you think? Is it at least logically possible that God does not exist?
1) I do not recall where St. Augustine makes this claim. I think my understanding of St. Augustine’s views on this issue mostly come from secondary literature about St. Augustine, rather than directly from my reading of his writings.
2) I think your critique is correct; the argument I make that you quote is a form of the ontological argument after all.
What I should have said in response to Martin’s argument is what you point out: just because objective morality exists in this world does not mean that it must exist in all possible worlds.
OK, great. It seems we’re on the same page so far as that goes.
I’ve been ruminating a bit on objection (b) in relation to this too. In your response to this one above, you make the assertion that “existence is good.” I’m assuming you’re following Augustine here in reasoning that since God is good and he created everything that exists, everything that exists is good too.
What I’m wondering is this: Isn’t it logically possible that God is not good (or, at least, not perfectly good)? If we’re in agreement that it is logically possible that God doesn’t exist at all, mustn’t we also allow for the logical possibility that He exists but is quite different from how we might normally define him? In other words, is there a possible world in which God is an omnipotent creator of everything else that exists, but just not very good, maybe even evil? Even if we have to rename him something different, couldn’t such a being exist? In yet other words, couldn’t we imagine a supremely evil being, as in objection (b) (just not a “perfect” being, since this implies goodness), and wouldn’t this be at least logically possible?
To turn the question around and put it yet another way, why do we consider God to be good in the first place? (This is going somewhere . . . I think . . .)
It is not logically possible that God could be objectively evil. To judge God as objectively evil, you would need some objective standard of goodness by which to judge God as not good. And where would this standard come from? If God is the creator of all that exists, then God would have to be the creator of this standard. But it would make no sense for God to judge Himself as evil.
On the other hand, by calling God “evil” you could simply mean that God’s character and God’s ways are so alien to our typical human intuitions about what is “good” that He seems to us to be evil. But in that case, I would say that our subjective standards about what is “good” would simply be wrong, and that God would define what is actually objectively good.
This is what I was trying to get at with my second response to Martin’s main objection to DCT: even if we assume a non-Christian concept of God, and imagine a possible world in which this God commands things we would call evil, those things would not, in fact, be objectively evil in that possible world.
I’m afraid that I didn’t make this entirely clear in my post, but my first response to Martin’s main objection to DCT is a defense of a Christian DCT, while my second response is a defense of DCT based in a non-Christian concept of God. For Christians, “God” does not refer to an abstract omnipotence. For Christians, the starting point for defining the word “God” is the cross of Jesus Christ, where God demonstrated the depths of His love for us by suffering and dying with us and for us. For Christians, God is Trinity, God is Love. For Christians, then, it is impossible that God could command something evil like cruelty for its own sake. For Christians, it is impossible that God could be not Good, and it is impossible that God could not exist.
I would still say that the idea of a “supremely evil being” is incoherent. To exist and to do anything requires goodness. A murderous sniper cannot kill anyone unless he is a “good” shot. A mass-murdering terrorist cannot plan an effective attack unless he possesses intelligence and wisdom, which are good things. It is impossible for there just to be evil all the way down.
Interesting.
Now, I’m curious what you’d say about the last question I raised: Why do we consider God to be good in the first place?
Or, maybe more fundamentally, how would you define what it means to be “good?”
One of the key ideas of classical theism is that we can only speak of God by analogy. Because we are finite and God is infinite, God is, ulimately, incomprehensible to our minds, and thus human language will never be fully adequate to describe God. Yet, if we are going to talk about God, we have no choice but to use human language to do so, even as we recognize that God transcends our human language and concepts.
“Good” means “to be desired or approved of,” “possessing or displaying moral virtue,” or “enjoyable or satisfying.” Initially, God is called “good” in the Old Testament Scriptures because He does good things for Israel, displays “good” qualities like faithfulness and justice, and gives joy and satisfaction to those who have religious experiences of Him. As this vision expands to consider God as the Creator of heaven and earth, there is a recognition that God is the source of all good things, and is thus the ultimate Good.
Now, different people and cultures have different ideas of what is “good”; they desire and approve of different things, have different concepts of virtue, and find different things enjoyable or satisfying. For example, a proud pagan warrior culture might find the idea of Jesus loving His enemies and allowing Himself to be killed by them rather than retaliate to be the opposite of their concept of virtue. Christian theologians have recognized that our subjective human assessments of what is “good” cannot be the ultimate standard of what is good, and that we must actually consider what is good from the perspective of God, the source of all being, to know what is truly and ultimately Good. This does not mean that our human conceptions of what is good are meaningless, however. There is some continuity between our human concepts of good and God’s Goodness, owing to the fact that we are created by God as part of His good creation. Our human concepts of what is good lead us to recognize God’s Goodness, but these concepts are transcended and corrected by God’s ultimate Goodness.
If I’m understanding correctly, you’re acknowledging that none of us actually has a full understanding of what “good” is — what we might call the essence of “goodness” (and what analytic philosophers might call the necessary and sufficient conditions of “goodness”). But, you’re saying we can assume we have a limited recognition of it somehow intuitively because that’s instilled in us simply as being a part of a good creation.
In the Euthyphro, Socrates is investigating the question, “What is piety?” (Can you tell it’s one of my favorites?) In the course of that dialogue he raises the question of “whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods.” I take this to be a very close parallel to, if not essentially the same question as, whether the good is willed by God because it is good, or good because it is willed by God. As the conversation continues, both Socrates and Euthyphro come to agree that neither of those answers is very helpful, because each only describes an attribute of piety and falls far short of getting at it’s essence. In the end, they leave off the discussion without ever answering the central question of the essence of piety (as is often the case in the dialogues).
There is an obvious point related to our parallel discussion here, which is that to describe goodness only in terms of it’s being willed by God is not very helpful in getting us closer to any sort of essential understanding of good. But, this much you have already acknowledged. However, I keep thinking about something more implicit in both versions of this discussion.
If we must admit we don’t know what is good, we may assume it is what is always willed by God (or, in the Euthyphro, by the Gods), that at least God knows, and we can trust God. But, this is an assumption. We can never know this is the case; we could never actually test it. If we try to test it — if, for example, we disagree with one of God’s commands — we must always confront our own limits and admit that after all we don’t know what’s objectively good. When this happens we may assume God knows best and we’re just wrong, so we should trust God.
We may also reason that God is good by definition, that by his very nature as an omnipotent, omniscient, creator and sustainer of all else, he cannot but be good, since he would not judge himself as evil. In this case, too, we are assuming this, choosing to trust God insofar as God makes these claims about himself. Furthermore, as you point out, even if God’s goodness in some other possible world were so utterly contrary to our own ideas of goodness as to appear entirely evil, he would still be, by definition, good.
I guess the point I keep coming back to is that, in all these cases, we are choosing to trust God, that he is in fact good. When I think about the basis of that trust, the foundation of it, both historically and for each individual on a personal level, it is a subjective decision; trust always is. As you point out, “Initially, God is called ‘good’ in the Old Testament Scriptures because He does good things for Israel, displays ‘good’ qualities like faithfulness and justice, and gives joy and satisfaction to those who have religious experiences of Him.”
I would suggest this is not just initially the case, but is for all practical purposes the case for every person who has ever lived. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who would choose to trust God only because they are convinced by the a priori coherence and logic of a God hypothesis in abstract terms. Rather, as you point out, for Christians, God is not abstract. Christians believe he has revealed himself to be good through acting in history and in their lives. What I’m trying to get at is that it is God’s actions that prove his trustworthiness, his goodness, and that this proof of goodness only works from a subjective human perspective. We judge God to be good (or evil) from our subjective perspectives and trust (or distrust) his claims to be objectively good on the basis of these perspectives.
So, what’s my point?
First, if God were, in some other possible world, so utterly different as to appear entirely evil from our human perspective, he may be by definition “good,” but it’s not at all clear to me that we would have to follow his commands or that to do otherwise would be absurd. Rather, it seems to me the decision of whether or not to follow the commands of any sort of being is dependent entirely on our relationship with that being. If we don’t trust them, why would we follow them? If we don’t think they have our best interests in mind, or care about us or some of the same things we care about, or at the very least that there is some benefit to us in cooperating with them, why would we trust them or cooperate with them?
More importantly, since possible worlds are just a way of talking about possibilities in our actual world, I think what’s really at issue here for all of us is whether the real God in this world is trustworthy or not. For an atheist, such as Martin, (and for a proud pagan warrior culture) there are obviously some doubts in the first place about whether God is to be trusted, let alone whether he even exists. Thus, it strikes me that the crux of the argument isn’t really over the internal coherence of Divine Command Theory in general or Christian ethics in particular, but over the external coherence and the epistemic justification of buying into either of these ethical frameworks given the evidence available from our human perspectives.
Martin might not do a good job of making these arguments, but my guess is that this underlies some of the objections to DCT he does raise. For example, the idea that DCT leads to morally outrageous consequences is dependent on our human perspective. As you rightly point out, these might well only appear morally outrageous to us, but for Martin, I would guess, that’s the point. Similarly, to say that one could just hypothesize a purely theoretical good and loving God and that this would work just as well for an ethical framework as a real good and loving God only makes sense from our human perspective. Of course, if God really exists and is good, and he’s given us through prophecy and revelation all sorts of guidance on what’s good, this is better than just speculating and reasoning from a human perspective. But, if we don’t trust this, if we have significant doubts as to God’s existence, or his goodness (from our perspective), or his revelations, we may be epistemically justified in depending on our human reasoning and speculation instead.
In sum, human ethics — the question of what humans should do, how they should live — is a subjective question. It is really a question of “what should I do? how should I live?” We answer this question, as we answer all questions, from a necessarily subjective perspective — it’s all we can do. We may believe in a real objective moral standard or not, but the question of ethics does not depend on this, and it does not end with this either.
That was a lot . . . I’m kind of just unloading my mind here. I guess just let me know what you think about any of it.
I do not agree that ethics is a subjective question. A subjective ethics is meaningless. Ethical claims by their very nature are claims about objective truth. For example, I might say, “You should not be selfish.” If all I really mean by this is “I don’t want you to be selfish” or “I don’t like you being selfish,” then this is what I should say; if I instead say, “Selfishness is wrong,” I am simply miscommunicating. Now, by “You should not be selfish,” I could intend to mean “Selfishness is harmful to society.” Again, in this case, this is what I should say. A person will only agree that they should not be selfish if they assume that human beings are supposed to do what is best for society, an assumption that is by no means self-evident.
Upon further thought, I would define “good” as referring to something doing what it is supposed to do or functioning as it is supposed to function. We cannot separate the question of what is good from the question of purpose. Now, someone can call something “good,” and by that mean that it is “good for me”; it does what I want it to do. This is a subjective definition of goodness. But we may also ask the question of whether, in pursuing something that is good for me, I am doing what I am supposed to do; are my actions objectively good? This is, I take it, what ethics is all about: recognizing that I must sometimes give up what is good for me, subjectively, in order to do what is actually good from a non-subjective perspective.
If God is the Creator of all that exists, then God alone has the perspective to know what the purpose of the universe as a whole is, and thus what the purpose of each individual part of the universe is in the grand scheme of things. Human beings may develop ideas about giving up what is individually, subjectively good for the sake of some particular thing they regard as a “greater good,” for example, sacrificing their lives for the sake of their country. However, only God can tell us whether this thing we regard as a “greater good” is actually good in the even bigger scheme of things. (After all, many people have made great sacrifices for the sake of horrifically evil causes (e.g., Nazism), sincerely believing that the ethical thing to do was to work for the sake of this “greater good.”)
So, I take issue with your suggestion that perhaps we might be justified in rejecting God’s commands if they seem bad to us from our subjective perspective. There is obviously far more to the universe than we are aware of, and humanity might have a role to play in a plan which we only know a small part of. Often, the ethical thing for an individual to do might be to give up what is subjectively good for them for the sake of what is good for humanity as a whole. In the same way, the ethical thing for humanity to do might be to give up what is subjectively good for it for the sake of some even greater good.
I would still insist that it would be absurd for a creature to resist the will of its Creator. We only exist because God chooses to cause us to exist every moment, and we would have no existence at all if He did not. We are completely dependent on God every moment, not only for everything we have, but for everything we are. Given this, I think it is clear that God has a right to demand that we do whatever He wants. We owe it to Him. We have no choice but to trust that He knows best.
OK, thanks.
I have many more thoughts, but I’m not sure if I’d do much of a good job of explaining them in a way that would make sense to you. Instead, I would recommend to you this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-This-Actual-World-Philosophical/dp/0742513998
The title is a bit misleading. It is really a sort of argument for the merits of the pragmatic tradition in philosophy by way of an introduction to that tradition. The author, Martin Benjamin, does a much better job than I ever could of explaining the pragmatic approach to philosophical questions, including ethics. The relevance to our conversation here is that he has much to say about subjective human experience, language, and how those things relate to reality, which I think is where we end up disagreeing most fundamentally. It turns out (I discovered after reading this book) I am something of a pragmatist.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you disagreed strongly with parts of it, but I think, no matter what, it would be helpful in getting an idea of where I and others like me might be coming from. And, just maybe those others would include people like Michael Martin? But, maybe not. After all, I haven’t actually read him.
OK! I will try to get my hands on a copy of it soon and let you know what I think.