Divine command ethics vs. natural law theories

Divine command ethics rests on the assumption that the foundations of morality are divine commands that are usually expressed in the imperative form of speech in a religious text.

Recently, John Hare, a contemporary philosopher and divine command theorist, defended the thesis that ‘what makes something morally obligatory is that God commands it, and what makes something morally wrong is that God commands us not to do it’.¹ In his book God’s Command, he does not confine himself to the discussion of DCT in Christianity. Hare also dedicates a chapter for three medieval Islamic thinkers, namely al-Ash ari, Abd al-Jabbar and al-Maturidi, and a chapter for Judaism. Interestingly, he commends Jews and Muslims for holding divine law closer to the surface and says that Christians can learn from them. On the other hand, three authors — a Muslim, a Jew and a Christian — have co-authored a book² that discusses natural law in the three monotheistic religious traditions: Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

In this chapter DCT is taken to denote that moral values (good and evil) have no meaning apart from divine commands and prohibitions. Divine commands constitute the ontological and the epistemological basis of morality. A clear implication of this theory is that divine commands are arbitrary and not purposeful. They define goodness and thus override any rea­sonable human moral judgement. Contemporary divine command theorists are attempting to construct theories that would avoid these implications, thus their theories are sometimes called ‘modified Divine Command Theories’.

In Christianity DCT is usually contrasted with natural law, which seems to be a concept that emerged from ancient Christian medieval contexts. Concepts taken out of context can generate misunderstanding and confusion unless they are explicated and carefully interpreted in ways that makes sense to new audiences.

The concept of natural law has its roots in ancient Greek philosophy. There is a gen­eral agreement that the Stoics were the first to systematize the concept of natural law. For the Stoics natural law was natural conformability of human nature to the rational order of the universe as a whole.⁴ Cicero, a representative of Stoic philosophy, defines law as being ‘the highest reason, implanted in nature, which commands what ought to be done and for­bids the opposite’.⁵ It seems that Cicero traces natural law to God as the supreme law giver, or more specifically to the mind and reason of God.⁶

The most prominent medieval theologian associated with natural law tradition in Christi­anity is Thomas Aquinas who used Aristotle’s concept of nature in his formulation of natural law. It seems that according to both Aquinas and Aristotle nature and human nature have a purposive existence.⁷ Aquinas developed his own version of natural law that was compatible with Christianity. For Augustine long before Aquinas, John Scotus after Aquinas, William of Ockham and many other Christian theologians, the fall of man that followed his original sin had affected human nature, thus that nature could not provide a pattern for human laws. Absolute submission to divine will was the only rule for human beings. For the Christian theologians who are usually considered the proponents of DCT, it was the divine will rather than divine wisdom and reason that ruled the universe.⁸ Yet, according to Aquinas, the basic principles of natural law are self-evident, universal and with accordance with human primor­dial nature: ‘The concept of natural law influenced the concepts and the development of law, ethics, politics and political thoughts and theories of the state and philosophers throughout the middle ages up to the modern time’.⁹ However, modern interpretations of the theory transferred the ancient doctrine.

In Islam the question that is intimately related to DCT is whether revealed law estab­lishes good and evil or merely indicates it (al-shar muthabbit am mubayyin). If it is the divine commands, usually referred to as law (al-shar), that establishes what is good or evil, then no morality is perceived without revelation. Yet if commands only indicate what is good and what is evil, then good and evil exist independently and thus, in principle, could be known without revelation. The proponents of ethical voluntarism or DCT in Islam are usually considered to be the Ash'arites, whereas the proponents of an alternative of theory, which I will call ‘Common Morality Theory’ (CMT) rather than ‘objective morality’ or ‘Natu­ral Law Theory’ (NLT) are usually considered to be the Mu'tazilites.¹² I prefer to call the ethical theory of the Mu' tazilites CMT rather than NLT, for two reasons. The first is that they emphasized principles that are shared with all human beings like honesty and justice and considered those principles necessarily known by every mature human being, thus they believed in common morality. Second, they established that the ultimate aim of religion and ethics is peoples’ well-being. There is no appeal to nature in a sense that one can find in medieval Christian theology, where the concept of natural law seems to be built upon an understanding of nature derived from Aristotle. So, in CMT it is not nature that acts purposefully, but human beings who have intentions, purposes or aims. Divine Command Theory was consistently maintained by al-Ash'arl and the early Ash'arites,¹³ though there seem to be only few Muslims who consistently adhered to the theory, accepting all its nec­essary implications.

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