One prominent response, based on the work of Robert Adams, Edward Wierenga, and others, to the Euthyphro objection to the divine command theory is to point out that God is essentially omnibenevolent. The commands of an essentially loving being will not be arbitrary since they are grounded in his nature, nor is it possible for a loving God to issue horrendous commands such as the gratuitous torture of infants. This paper argues that this response is inadequate. The divine command theory (...) attributes to God the power to make an action morally obligatory. Given the reasonable assumption that any omnipotent being has the same powers as God, contemplating the commands of a malevolent deity is enough to cast doubt on the claim that any being, loving or otherwise, has the power to make an action morally obligatory just by commanding it. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that theism is superior to metaphysical naturalism in explaining moral phenomena, especially with regard to the practical aspect of morality. In this article, I will firstly clarify what this practical aspect amounts to and present two challenges against metaphysical naturalism, by John Mackie and Richard Joyce. Then, I will critically engage with two main attempts to argue for the superiority of theism over metaphysical naturalism: One of them is the appeal to the existence of afterlife, and (...) the other is Robert Merrihew Adams’ divine command metaethics. I will argue that both are problematic for different reasons. Relying on the main aspects of Adams’ metaethical framework, I will advance my proposal to maintain the practical aspect of morality which lends theism superiority over metaphysical naturalism, and then follow with certain implications of the proposal for theistic metaethics. (shrink)

The relationship between God and morality has been a topic of philosophical discussion since Socrates engaged Euthyphro in the agora. In recent years, it has received a lot of attention, as theistic philosophers have attempted to show that divine command theory and other theistic meta‐ethical accounts are defensible. Whether metaphysical naturalism is compatible with moral realism is a related (and equally controversial) topic. This essay surveys the main issues in these debates.

In this paper, I argue that theists are extremely well-situated with respect to developing metaethical accounts that qualify as ‘robust’ versions of moral realism. In the first part of the essay, a number of metaethical desiderata are identified. In the second part, theistic strategies for accommodating those desiderata are explained and defended. The upshot is that, contrary to the received philosophical wisdom, there are good theoretical reasons for theistic philosophers to seek to develop metaethical accounts that ground moral facts in (...) facts about God. (shrink)

I argue that, if God exists, moral facts ontologically depend on him. After distinguishing a variety of ways in which moral facts might ontologically depend on God, I focus my attention on the most prominent and most well-developed account of the relationship between God and morality viz., the account developed by Robert Adams in his Finite and Infinite Goods. Adams’ account consists of two parts—an account of deontic moral properties and an account of axiological moral properties. Adams’ account of deontic (...) moral properties is a version of divine command theory according to which the property of being morally right and the property of being morally wrong are identical to the property of being commanded by God and the property of being forbidden by God, respectively. I argue that although Adams’ divine command theory is not vulnerable to many prominent objections that afflict other versions of divine command theory, his view is, nevertheless, both unmotivated and implausible. Next, I explain Adams’ account of axiological properties, which is a particular version of what I call “theistic valuational particularism.” According to Adams’ theistic valuational particularism, the property of being intrinsically good or excellent is identical to the property of faithfully and holistically resembling God. I argue that because Adams’ conception of excellence is so broad, there are some things that have the property of being excellent but fail to resemble God. I argue that the same problem afflicts other, modified versions of theistic valuational particularism, including one that is defended by Scott Hill and another that is championed by Mark Murphy. Nevertheless, I argue that this problem does not afflict what I call “theistic moral valuational particularism,” the view that moral goodness is identical to the property of resembling God in certain, specified ways. Furthermore, I argue that, if God exists, theistic moral valuational particularism is not only well motivated theologically, but it can withstand the two most prominent objections that have been lodged against it, viz., the arbitrariness objection and the divine ascription problem. (shrink)