Abstract

Jean Porter’s natural law theory and my divine command theory differ less than one might expect. Two differences that remain are that, with respect to deductivism, the view that we can deduce our moral obligations from human nature, we agree that human nature is insufficiently specific, but she does not acknowledge the place of revealed divine law in later scholasticism or the role for what Scotus calls ‘dispensations’. With respect to eudaimonism, the view that our choices are for the sake of happiness, I do not agree that life presents itself to us integrated under the conception of a single way of life. Even in Aquinas there is a tension between his eudaimonism and his view that the love of God for God’s own sake is the distinctive mark of charity, and that charity toward the neighbor requires us to promote the neighbor’s good for the neighbor’s sake and not our own.