Prior Obligations Objection
12
The Right
Another variant of the moral argument posits that moral duties are plausibly seen as rooted in God.1 Alvin Plantinga is on record saying that this version of the moral argument is the one he considers the best argument for God’s existence, excepting a cumulative case approach.2 This is a metaethical claim about moral ontology, not about moral linguistics or epistemology. It is fundamentally a claim about the objectivity of moral properties, not a claim about the meaning of moral sentences or about the justification or knowledge of moral principles. Part 2 of this book argued for taking such duties seriously and left open the possibility that God may well provide their needed explanation.
Categorical Imperatives
Objections to the effect that we can understand the meaning of statements like “Torture of political prisoners is wrong” without reference to God are quite beside the point. Similarly, when it is said that the statement “God is good” becomes trivial on theistic metaethics, this objection misconstrues the theistic position as a meaning-claim. A statement like “God is good” may be taken as a synthetic statement expressing a proposition that is metaphysically necessary both in the sense that the proposition is true in all possible worlds and in the sense that goodness is an essential property of God. Or again, the theist will agree, and even insist, that we do not need to know or even believe that God exists in order to discern objective moral values or to recognize our moral duties.
In terms of the logical structure of a moral argument, the premise tying together God and moral duties might be expressed in deductive, abductive, or inductive terms. We will discuss that issue later on; here we wish to explore positive reasons to think that moral duties may well importantly depend on God, in one way or another. The previous chapter dealt with moral values, issues of good and bad; here our focus is on moral duties, the matter of whether something is morally right or wrong. Obviously, one is not morally obligated to do something just because it would be good for one to do it. For example, it’s a good thing for one to become a chemist, but that doesn’t imply that it is therefore one’s duty to become a chemist. For it is also good to become a firefighter or a diplomat or a doctor, and one cannot do them all. Moreover, there are occasionally circumstances in which one, tragically, is confronted with nothing but bad choices (think of Sophie’s Choice), but it is not therefore wrong of one to choose one of the options, since one must choose. So there is a conceptual difference between something’s being good (or bad) and something’s being right (or wrong). The former has to do with the matter of moral worth, while the latter concerns the issue of moral obligatoriness.
Some theorists attempt to circumvent the need for moral duties in their ethical system because they think it’s adequate to talk about the need and role for moral virtues. Our lives often go better with moral virtues than without them, it’s true. There’s much about virtue theory we like; cultivating strength of character is among the important results of an ethical life. We don’t, however, see this as in competition or tension with a judicious emphasis on moral duties. Presumably the reasons we should become people of virtue are stronger than merely the advantages and benefits we get from it. The moral law is less contingent and more binding and categorical than that. Virtue ethics doesn’t rid us of the need for moral obligations but rather makes best sense only if moral duties are real.
It’s easy to explain moral obligations if by “obligations” we simply mean feelings of obligation, but the latter are neither necessary nor sufficient for the former. Perhaps someone neglects a particular duty for so long that he has ceased to feel it to be a duty anymore. Conversely, one can have the feeling one ought to do something yet have no obligation to do it at all; consider, for example, Huckleberry Finn’s conviction that he should turn in his friend Jim, the runaway slave. Usually, though, feelings of obligation at least roughly correspond to actual obligations.
Moral obligations are not just rules or mere suggestions; they are not mere options for us, even options supported by good reasons. They are thought to be inescapable. Another word for “duty” or “obligation” is imperative. Immanuel Kant was well known for distinguishing between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Hypothetical imperatives depend for their legitimacy on some goal desired by the subject of the prescription. For example, to lose weight you ought to eat less or differently and/or exercise more. The hypothetical prescription to eat less isn’t universally applicable, obviously enough. A categorical imperative, though, on a Kantian construal, is universally applicable, not dependent at all for its legitimacy on any goal desired by the subject of the prescription. To treat others as ends in themselves and not merely as means, to use Kant’s famous example, is a categorical imperative, something everyone has a moral duty to do. It should be obvious that categorical imperatives are organically connected to our earlier discussions of objective prescriptivity, normativity, and the like.
Moral obligations understood as categorical imperatives require more than inescapability. They need an additional vital ingredient, which Richard Joyce characterizes as authority. He notes that this gives us a normative system enjoying both features, inescapability and authority, one that possesses “practical clout.”3 Such practical clout dictates that the obligatory is what we have to do, what we must do—not in the sense of the causal must but of the moral must. When C. S. Lewis speaks of the moral demand at the beginning of Mere Christianity, he refers to it as a “law” but distinguishes it from the laws governing the operation of the physical world in just this sense.4 We can’t opt out from being governed by gravity. We can, however, choose to ignore the moral law, often to our peril and chagrin, and too often we do.
To say that we have objective moral duties is to say that certain actions are right or wrong for us independently of whether any human being believes them to be so. For example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively wrong is to say that it was wrong even though the Nazis who carried it out thought that it was right, and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them so that it was universally believed that the Holocaust was right.
Matthew Jordan lists the following properties, revealed by an examination of our moral experience, which must characterize any adequate theory of moral duty:
Objectivity: The truth of a moral proposition is independent of the beliefs of any particular human being or human community.
Normativity: Moral considerations, as such, constitute reasons for acting.
Categoricity: Moral reasons are reasons for all human persons, regardless of what goals or desires they may have.
Authority: Moral reasons are especially weighty reasons.
Knowability: In normal circumstances, adult human beings have epistemic access to morally salient considerations.
Unity (Individuality): A human person can have a moral reason to act or to refrain from acting in ways that affect no one other than the agent who performs the act.5
Any theory that fails to have these properties will not be an adequate theory of moral duty.
Divine Command Theory
A divine command theory (DCT) of ethics, such as has been articulated by Robert Adams, Philip Quinn, William Alston, C. Stephen Evans, and others, seems to have these properties.6 One need not be a divine command theorist to feel the force of the moral argument(s) for God’s existence, but we are drawn to DCT as a quite plausible theory. The genius of this theory is that it provides a plausible grounding for objective moral duties. Predicated on a theory of the good, our moral duties are in turn grounded in God’s commands, which must be consistent with God’s nature. On an Anselmian view, God’s nature is without defect, either metaphysical or moral. Obligations arise as a result of imperatives issued by a competent authority. To illustrate, if some random person were to tell us to pull our car over, we would have absolutely no legal obligation to do so. But if a policeman were to issue such a command, we would have a legal obligation to obey. The difference in the two cases lies in the authority of the persons who issued the commands: One is qualified to do so, while the other is not.
Similarly, moral obligations arise as a result of imperatives issued by a competent authority. And in virtue of God’s nature, God is uniquely qualified to issue such commands as expressions of his nature. God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commands that constitute our moral duties or obligations.7 Far from being arbitrary, these commands reflect his moral nature. They are objective, normative, categorical, authoritative, and individual. Moreover, God reveals his moral will to mankind both in conscience and in Scripture so that our duties are to some extent knowable. On this foundation we can affirm the objective rightness of love, generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality while we also condemn as objectively wrong selfishness, hatred, abuse, discrimination, and oppression.
Before moving on, it is important that we remain clear in understanding the issue before us. The question is not, Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? There is no reason to think that atheists and theists alike may not live what we normally characterize as good and decent lives. Similarly, the question is not, Can we formulate a system of ethics without reference to God? If the nontheist grants that human beings do have objective value and duties, then there is no reason to think that he cannot work out a system of ethics with which the theist would also largely agree. Or again, the question is not, Can we recognize the existence of objective moral values and duties without reference to God? The theist will typically maintain that a person need not believe in God in order to recognize, say, that we should love our children.
All of the above misunderstandings of the argument are based on confusing God’s existence with belief in God’s existence. The argument is not that belief in God’s existence generates the objective reality of moral values and duties but rather that God himself is plausibly thought to be the ground for the objective reality of moral values and duties. Nor is the argument that God is necessary as our source of moral knowledge; the next chapter will take up moral epistemology. All too common is the confusion of moral ontology with moral epistemology on the part of certain moral philosophers.8 Moral ontology deals with the reality of moral values; moral epistemology deals with our knowledge of moral truths.
As far as moral epistemology is concerned, we can appeal to all the same mechanisms as do secularists, such as moral intuition and reflection, by means of which humanist thinkers are confident that they accurately discern the good and the right. In fact, the Bible actually teaches that God’s moral law is “written on [the] hearts” of all men, so that even those who do not know God’s law “do by nature things required by the law, . . . their consciences also bearing witness” to them (Rom. 2:14–15). If that is the case, a theist’s moral epistemology need not differ broadly from the humanist’s own moral epistemology. Epistemological objections are thus red herrings that need not detain us. As Kurtz puts it, “The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns this ontological foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, are they purely ephemeral?”9
What are other reasons to think that God functions at the foundation of moral duties? We have explored this question elsewhere, but here we point to two more reasons. C. Stephen Evans suggests two advantages of DCT.10 First, it gives a satisfying explanation of the role played in morality by accountability. Earlier we mentioned the social dimension of moral obligations, and morality is often tied to the issue of being accountable, but to whom? Are we accountable merely to other human beings, as Darwall insists? Evans points out a dilemma if this is so. Are we accountable to actual humans or to some ideal, hypothetical community? The former doesn’t seem right, because humans make demands that conflict with morality. It seems that we should honor only those demands that are morally appropriate. This might lead one to appeal to one’s “moral community” or its representatives, which sounds like a hypothetical, idealized group, not an actual group. But how can actual demands be made by a nonexistent group? (We saw this problem arise earlier for ideal observer theories.) Why care about the judgments made by a nonexistent being? If, however, the demands of morality are those made by God, they are actual claims.
Second, DCT enhances the prospects for forgiveness, an important desideratum given the moral shortcoming of humans. It is obvious that most of us humans have moral failings. We need forgiveness. The benefits of giving and receiving forgiveness have been empirically verified. Sometimes we can receive forgiveness from other humans for the wrongs we have done, but not always. They may be deceased or simply unwilling to forgive. But if all sins are sins against God, then God can forgive all sins. This insight will serve us well when we get to the performative variant of the moral argument in a few chapters.
Some Objections
At this point it’s important to consider some objections to DCT. The objections to be considered are far from an exhaustive list. For more consideration of other objections to DCT, from autonomy to psychopathy to more besides, see the chapter on obligations in Good God and some other sources adduced in the footnotes.11
Euthyphro
Despite the strengths of DCT, it is a common target of critics. Ever since Plato, the claim that moral truths are founded in God has been criticized as problematic. In his dialogue Euthyphro, Plato posed his famous dilemma according to which, it seems, God’s commands are arbitrary or irrelevant to what’s morally true. However, the dilemma allegedly forced on us is a false one, and we may escape the horns of the dilemma by finding a third alternative. We think that an appropriately formulated divine command theory of moral obligations supplies such an alternative: Our moral duties are constituted by the commands of an essentially just and loving God. The morally good/bad is determined by reference to God’s nature; the morally right/wrong is determined by reference to his will. For any action A and moral agent S, we can explicate the notions of moral requirement, prohibition, and permission of A for S as follows:
A is required of S if and only if a just and loving God commands S to do A.
A is forbidden to S if and only if a just and loving God commands S not to do A.
A is permitted for S if and only if a just and loving God does not command S not to do A.
Since our moral duties are grounded in the divine commands, they are not independent of God, nor, plausibly, is God bound by moral duties, since he presumably does not issue commands to himself. Since Kant, it has also been common to think that God does not have moral duties because of his inability to have failed to discharge them if he did. Tom Morris once put it like this: Even though God has no moral obligations, his behavior is “functionally isomorphic” with a being who perfectly discharges whatever duties he has. Of course, the behavior of a maximally loving being is far from explicable in terms of duty fulfillment alone.
If God does not fulfill moral duties, then what content can be given to the claim that he is good? Here Kant’s distinction between following a rule and acting in accordance with a rule has proved helpful. God may act naturally in ways that for us would be rule-following and so constitutive of goodness in the sense of fulfilling our moral duties, so that God can be said similarly to be good in an analogical way. This fact also supplies the key to the arbitrariness objection. For our duties are determined by the commands not merely of a supreme potentate but also of a just and loving God. God is essentially compassionate, fair, kind, impartial, and so forth, and his commandments are reflections of his own character. Note that this analysis does not necessitate cashing out God’s love in only analogical ways.
On this analysis, God’s commands are not arbitrary, and we need not trouble ourselves about counterfactuals with impossible antecedents like “If God were to command child abuse . . .” On the customary semantics, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents have no nonvacuous truth value. Even if we reject the customary semantics and allow that some counterfactuals with impossible antecedents may be nonvacuously true or false, how are we to assess the truth value of a statement with an antecedent like this? It is like wondering whether, if there were a round square, its area would equal the square of one of its sides. And what would it matter how one answered, since what is imagined is logically incoherent? We do not see that the divine command theorist is committed to the nonvacuous truth of the counterfactual in question or that anything of significance hangs on one’s thinking it to be nonvacuously true or false.
God may be said to be good in the sense that he possesses unsurpassable moral virtue—and he does so essentially. God’s axiological perfection should be understood not in terms of duty-fulfillment but in terms of virtue. This conception helps us to understand the sense in which God is to be praised: not in the sense of commendation for fully executing his duties or even for his acts of supererogation but rather in the sense of adoration for his axiological perfection, great grace, and unsurpassable love. Unless we are nihilists, we have to recognize some ultimate standard of value, and God is the least arbitrary stopping point. The Euthyphro objection therefore fails to undermine theistic-based metaethics.12
A Problematic Disjunction
Another common sort of objection is often raised against DCT. Russ Shafer-Landau sees divine command theorists saddled with a dilemma: Either God does not have reasons for his commands or he does. If God does not have reasons, then morality on DCT is entirely a function of divine command, rendering morality whatever he wills it to be, which is to say it is altogether arbitrary. On the other hand, if God were to have reasons for his commands, then those reasons, rather than God’s commands, would be why we have the obligations we do. So morality is either arbitrary or it is not the divine commands that are the real reasons for the obligations.
Does God always have reasons for the commands he issues? As Shafer-Landau puts it, either he does or he does not. First, suppose that he does. This raises a different question: Could God, at least on occasion, have issued a different command, even if he did have reasons for the command he in fact issued? Another way of putting this question is to ask whether any of God’s commands are contingent. If some particular commands were contingent and could have been otherwise, would the result be problematic arbitrariness? If God had told the Israelites, for example, to torture children for fun, that would be good evidence not to look in the direction of the Torah for moral guidance or to God as a moral foundation. But is it always the case that God’s commands could not have been different? There are two questions here: Is it possible that some of God’s commands are contingent in light of the fact that he has reasons for his commands, and would a different command be morally problematic?
To address the first question—might some of God’s commands be contingent in light of the fact that he has reasons for them?—consider an analogy, and here we intend to employ the notion of libertarian agency. Imagine for the moment that human beings possess libertarian freedom such that, when confronted with choices of various sorts, we genuinely have alternative possibilities. Let us choose a garden-variety example of coming along an intersection while out for a drive. Suppose we have two choices: turning left or turning right. Either way might get us to our destination, and what goes into our decision could be any number of factors—the most economical route, a desire to take the more scenic path, traffic considerations, a desire to break up routine, and so forth. Now suppose that the two options are almost identically attractive, such that it becomes a genuinely difficult choice between them. In such a case, whichever way we choose to go, in retrospect we could give reasons for the choice. But on the reasonable hypothesis that we could have genuinely chosen either path, the reasons we might adduce in retrospect did not entail the particular choice.
Might God at least on occasion find himself in a similar situation in which he may well issue a command, and have reasons for his command, but the choice remains a contingent one? On such an account, he may well have issued a different command, and done so for various reasons, but again without those reasons entailing the command in question. Even if human beings do not have libertarian freedom, all that is required to entertain such a hypothesis is that God possesses it. It is intuitive to think, if God is the creator of the universe, that he had the choice either to create or not to create; if that is right, then it is reasonable to suppose he has substantive agency involving alternative possibilities.
So our tentative conclusion is that even if God’s commands are always done for reasons, it is not the case that the commands in question, and the resultant duties, are always entailed by those reasons, contra Shafer-Landau. This could well mean that, with respect to at least some of God’s commands, he retained the prerogative to give a different command instead. Scotus, of course, is well known for arguing this was so regarding the second tablet of the Decalogue. As to which commands might be contingent, that is a matter pertaining to the second question mentioned above—whether the alternative command is morally problematic. Again, when an alternative command is morally problematic—like a command to torture kids for fun—either such a thing is possible or it is not (based on, say, God’s essential character). If it is possible, the resulting variant of voluntarism is susceptible to an intractable arbitrariness problem; this is why rejecting pure voluntarism is eminently rational. If it is not possible for God to issue such a command, however, the version of voluntarism that remains does not fall prey to problematic arbitrariness. That there are such gradations of voluntarism is no part of Shafer-Landau’s discussion. Both Adams and Evans predicate their variants of DCT on built-in constraints to circumvent arbitrariness concerns.
Helpful in this regard is a distinction that Evans emphasizes between a modal status aspect of DCT and what he dubs the “discretionary hypothesis.” Evans thinks the former essential to DCT; the latter not so much. The former emphasizes the distinctive authority that God has to issue commands, an issue to which we will return in a moment. The latter is that even though God’s commands are constrained by what is good, he still has some choice with respect to some of the commands. The denial of the discretionary hypothesis is that God’s commands are fixed by his knowledge of what is good. This does not mean that all of God’s commands are necessary; some could be fixed because what is commanded is necessarily good and no alternative could be good. Scotus gives the command to love God as an example. But Evans emphasizes that some of the commands could be fixed by God’s knowledge of what is good in a particular world, given his choices about what kind of world to make. On this view, once God decides what world to create, he also knows what commands he will give in that world. However, this does not mean all the commands are necessary. Some could be contingent because God could have chosen to create a different world. Suppose God creates a world with only immortal creatures who cannot die, for example. In that world, he would not give the command not to murder, because it would not be possible to murder anyone. So commands can be fixed without being necessary. On Evans’s view, Aquinas holds this kind of divine command view. The natural law is fixed by God’s eternal law and God’s knowledge of the world he has created.13
Let’s turn now to this recurring and central issue of authority.
Prior Obligations Objection
On this central matter of moral authority, DCT does need to offer some account of why we ought to obey God. Sometimes this is called the “prior obligations objection,” advanced by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) and others. Impetus for the objection comes from asking why one has an obligation to obey God’s commands. Presumably it needs to be more than a prudential reason, a matter of covering one’s cosmic rear end to avoid getting flames on it. Nor is it a matter of whether we have good reasons to obey God. If God exists, loves us, and knows what is best for us, then it’s plausible to think that obeying him is a good idea. The real question is whether God has the requisite authority to issue commands that constitute moral obligations. If our duties come from God’s commands, where does the duty come from to obey God’s commands? To say the duty to obey God comes from God’s command seems problematically circular.
Even if God does issue such a command, why are we obliged to obey it? In his book on divine command theory, Evans tries his hand at offering several responses to this question. More recently he has emphasized that the duty to obey God is simply part of DCT and that there is no real objection here. What Evans and other divine command theorists concede, though, is that DCT rests on some account of the good and divine authority. Here there are several possibilities from the history of philosophy, several of which may contain a kernel of truth. Hobbes emphasized God’s ability to enforce the moral law; Locke accentuated God’s creation of the world; others emphasize God’s character; one like Aquinas or Kant would point to how union with God is our highest good.
God understood in an Anselmian way has supreme knowledge, power, and goodness; arguably all of these, especially together, underwrite his moral authority. In view of his nature as a perfect being, what good grounds are there for doubting his authority? There is no bias, no imperfect understanding, no being blindsided, no possibility of misuse of power or of having obtained it wrongly. “If all rational withholdings are blocked, we ought to accept God as an authority. And part of what is involved in that is accepting his commands, unless we have good reason to do otherwise. Again, with a perfect being, there can’t possibly be good reasons to do otherwise. In short, we think the issue of authority is a matter of power, knowledge, and character, all of which add up to moral authority.”14
John Hare formulates a related solution to Cudworth’s objection that can be found in John Duns Scotus’s and Samuel von Pufendorf’s work. Both philosophers argued that the justification of obedience to God terminates in something that does not itself need justification. For Scotus, the principle that God is to be loved is known from its terms. So it does not require any justification from any prior principle. We know that God is to be loved, and thus obeyed, simply because we know that God is the supreme good. Pufendorf, similarly, regarded God’s authority as axiomatic, in the same way mathematics has axioms or first principles that merit belief on their own evidence.15
Again, this is far from an exhaustive list of objections against DCT, but after considering various objections, those mentioned here and elsewhere, we still tend to adhere to the theory as an effective way of demarcating which prospective good actions, among all that may be performed, are specifically dutiful.
1 Philosopher C. Stephen Evans identifies these four features of moral obligations: (1) A judgment about a moral obligation is a kind of verdict on my action. (2) A moral obligation brings reflection to closure. (3) A moral obligation involves accountability or responsibility. (4) A moral obligation holds for persons simply as persons. See C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligations (Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 5.
2 “Afterword: Trent Dougherty and Alvin Plantinga: An Interview on Faith and Reason,” in Two Dozen (Or So) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project, ed. Jerry L. Walls and Trent Dougherty (Oxford University Press, 2018), 447.
3 Richard Joyce, The Evolution of Morality (MIT Press, 2007), 57.
4 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), chap. 1.
5 “Divine Attitudes and the Nature of Morality: A Defense of a Theistic Account of Deontic Properties” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 2009). This is Jordan’s doctoral dissertation on the moral argument.
6 Philip L. Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Clarendon, 1978); Janine Marie Idziak, Divine Command Morality: Historical and Contemporary Readings (Edwin Mellen Press, 1980); Robert Merrihew Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1999); William Alston, “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, ed. William L. Craig (Edinburgh University Press, 2001; Rutgers University Press, 2001), 283–98.
7 At least this is one version of DCT: God’s commands constitute our moral obligations. Besides such a constitutivist view, DCT also comes in causal and prescriptive variants. Our focus will be on the constitutivist version.
8 See the responses by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong in William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist (Oxford University Press, 2004), and by Sinnott-Armstrong and Louise Antony in Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig, Is Goodness Without God Good Enough? (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009). Ironically, the distinction between moral ontology and moral epistemology is clearly drawn by Sinnott-Armstrong himself in his “Moral Skepticism and Justification,” in Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Rimmons (Oxford University Press, 1996), 4–8.
9 Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit (Prometheus, 1988), 65.
10 See Evans’s article in Moral Arguments for God’s Existence, ed. David Baggett and John E. Hare (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
11 See David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2011), chaps. 2, 6, 7, and appendix A. See also Matthew Flannagan, “Robust Ethics and the Autonomy Thesis,” Philosophia Christi 19, no. 2 (2017): 345–62; “The Psychopath Objection to Divine Command Theory: Another Reply to Erik Wielenberg,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13, no. 3 (2021): 157–70; “Why the Horrendous Deeds Objection Is Still a Bad Argument,” Sophia 61, no. 2 (2021): 399–418. See as well C. Stephen Evans, God and Moral Obligations (Oxford University Press, 2012), chap. 4.
12 See Baggett and Walls’s Good God for a list of seven vital distinctions that together help answer a variety of Euthyphro-inspired objections to DCT.
13 Thanks to Steve Evans for personal correspondence on this issue on January 2, 2025. For his latest work on this issue, see C. Stephen Evans, “Divine Command Theory, Voluntarism, and Accountability to God,” in Ist das Gute gut, weil Gott es will? Divine-Command-Theorien und die Grundlegung theologischer Ethik, ed. Hendrik Klinge and Heiko Schulz (Mohr Siebeck, forthcoming in 2025). We are inclined to accept the discretionary hypothesis and see some of God’s commands as neither necessary nor fixed. Giving a tithe of 10 percent is an example. But divine command theorists can disagree on this matter; the modal status thesis is arguably more essential to DCT.
14 Baggett and Walls, Good God, 122–23.
15 John E. Hare, God’s Command (Oxford University Press, 2015), 58.