Divine will/divine command moral theories and the problem of arbitrariness

Religious Studies 48 (4):445 - 468 (2012)
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Abstract

A well-known objection to divine will/divine command moral theories is that they commit us to the view that God's will is arbitrary. I argue that several versions of divine will/divine command moral theories, including two of Robert Adams's versions of the DCT and my own divine preference theory, can be successfully defended against this objection. I argue that, even if God's preferences are somewhat arbitrary, we have reasons to conform our wills to them. It is not a fatal objection to divine will/divine command moral theories if they imply that God's will/God's commands is/are arbitrary, to some extent

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Thomas L. Carson
Loyola University, Chicago

Citations of this work

Theological voluntarism.Mark Murphy - forthcoming - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Al-ghazālī's divine command theory.Shoaib Ahmed Malik - 2021 - Journal of Religious Ethics 49 (3):546-576.
Commands as Divine Attributes.Omar Farahat - 2016 - Journal of Religious Ethics 44 (4):581-605.

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References found in this work

The Methods of Ethics.Henry Sidgwick - 1890 - International Journal of Ethics 1 (1):120-121.
Ethics.William Frankena - 1967 - Philosophy of Science 34 (1):74-74.
The Virtue of Faith.Robert Merrihew Adams - 1984 - Faith and Philosophy 1 (1):3-15.

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