Abstract

Christian belief and systems of ethics both purport to guide our actions and life. One way of relating Christian belief to ethics is through divine command or divine normative theories of ethics. Yet it is nearly a commonplace of introductory books in philosophical ethics that divine normative theories are untenable. I argue in this dissertation, however, that this philosophical commonplace is misguided. I show that divine normative theories are in fact tenable in the face of the strongest objections that have been traditionally raised against them. ;I carry out this project in a number of distinct steps. After a brief introduction I make a number of distinctions necessary to the adequate understanding of divine normative theories. Next I describe the ethical theories of the most philosophically prominent and influential divine normative theoriests: John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, John Locke, William Paley, Emil Brunner, Patterson Brown, Robert Merrihew Adams, Philip Quinn, and Richard Swinburne. This description of these different divine normative theories provides evidence for the claim that not all divine normative theories are alike and that, consequently, not all can be attacked in the same way. But besides showing that not all divine normative theories are identical, this chapter shows that there is some measure of convergence among divine normative theorists: not all conceptually possible theories are actually advocated. In the fourth chapter I lay out the four historically most prominent objections to divine normative theories. These are the Epistemological Objection, the Euthyphro Objection, the Is-Ought Objection, and the Gratuitous Cruelty Objection. Two of these objections--the Epistemological and the Is-Ought--argue that divine normative theories are untenable because they are internally inconsistent, while the other two argue that their unacceptability stems from their inconsistency with other traditional Christian beliefs. I try to show that divine normative theories are consistent both internally and with traditional Christian belief. Finally, in the last chapter I suggest briefly the outlines of a divine normative theory that obviously stands up to each of the four objections simultaneously