Theological Voluntarism: Objections and Replies Keith Burgess-Jackson 7 January 2017

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1 Theological Voluntarism: Objections and Replies Keith Burgess-Jackson 7 January 2017 Theological Voluntarism (TV): 1 For all acts x, x is right iff x conforms 2 to God s will. 3 Commentary: The theory says that conformity to God s will is necessary and sufficient for rightness. To say that conformity to God s will is necessary for rightness is to say that, if a given act does not conform to God s will, then it is not right (i.e., it is wrong). 4 To say that conformity to God s will is sufficient for rightness is to say that, if a given act conforms to God s will, then it is right. One can deny either or both of these claims. If one denies the necessity claim, one is saying that an act can be right without conforming to God s will. 5 If one denies the sufficiency claim, one is saying that an act can conform to God s will without being right. 6 With respect to a particular act, such as Jones lying to his wife about his whereabouts on a given evening, there are three possibilities: (1) God wills that it be performed; (2) God wills that it not be performed; and (3) God is indifferent 7 to its performance. If God wills that it be performed, then performing it is right and not performing it is wrong, 1 Also known as Divine-Command Theory and Divine-Will Theory. 2 According to The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999), conform means comply with; be in accordance with (definition 4). 3 Let the universe of discourse be acts. Let R be the predicate is right. Let C be the predicate conforms to God s will. The theory can be expressed as (x)(rx Cx). 4 Henceforth, let not right mean wrong. Since, logically speaking, every act is either right or not right, every act is either right (permissible) or wrong (impermissible). Since, logically speaking, no act is both right and not right, no act is both right (permissible) and wrong (impermissible). Another way to put this is that the predicates is right and is wrong are jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. 5 Obviously, it s not enough to say this; to refute the theory, one must give an example of an act that (i) is right (intuitively) but (ii) does not conform to God s will. An example that counters, or goes against, a claim is known as a counterexample. A black swan is a counterexample to the claim that all swans are white. 6 Obviously, it s not enough to say this; to refute the theory, one must give an example of an act that (i) conforms to God s will but (ii) is not right (intuitively). 7 According to The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide (1999), indifferent means having no partiality for or against; having no interest in or sympathy for (definition 4). To say that God is indifferent to the performance of a particular act is to say two things: first, that it s not the case that God wills that it be performed; and second, that it s not the case that God wills that it not be performed. God s will, we might say, is neutral or unengaged. 1

2 which is to say that the act is obligatory. If God wills that it not be performed, then not performing it is right and performing it is wrong, which is to say that the act is forbidden. If God is indifferent to its performance, then either performing it or not performing it is right, which is to say that the act is discretionary. Here is a taxonomy: God wills that x be performed (Wgx) 1 For all acts x, God doesn t will that x be performed ( Wgx) God wills that x not be performed (Wg x) God doesn t will that x not be performed ( Wg x) 2 3 Acts in category 1 are obligatory. Acts in category 2 are forbidden. Acts in category 3 are discretionary. The Atheistic Objection: 1. Anything that has an unacceptable implication (or presupposition) 8 is unacceptable. 2. TV has an unacceptable implication (or presupposition), namely, that God exists. 3. TV is unacceptable (from 1 and 2). argument and accepts premise 1, but rejects premise 2. Premise 2 makes two claims: a. TV implies (or presupposes) that God exists; and b. God does not exist. The theological voluntarist accepts 2a but rejects 2b. (This is known as biting the bullet.) 8 The difference between implication and presupposition is this. Anything that has a false implication is false. Anything that has a false presupposition is neither true nor false. The sentence The present king of France is bald has a false presupposition, namely, that there is a present king of France. the sentence is neither true nor false. Compare the old saw: Are you still beating your wife?, which presupposes, perhaps falsely, that the respondent has been beating his wife. 2

3 Commentary: Only someone who does not accept that God exists (i.e., only an atheist or an agnostic) 9 will find this objection persuasive. Anyone who accepts that God exists (i.e., anyone who is a theist) will find the objection unpersuasive. This latter person will say, in effect, Yes, TV implies that God exists; so what? The Terrible-Commands Objection: 1. Anything that has an unacceptable implication is unacceptable. 2. TV has an unacceptable implication, namely, that torture of the innocent (for example) would be right (indeed, obligatory) if God commanded it. 3. TV is unacceptable (from 1 and 2). argument and accepts premise 1. Premise 2 makes two claims: a. TV implies that torture of the innocent (for example) would be right (indeed, obligatory) if God commanded it; and b. torture of the innocent (for example) would not be right (much less obligatory) even if God commanded it. The theological voluntarist accepts 2a but rejects 2b. (This is known as biting the bullet.) At this point, there is a split among theological voluntarists. (i) Some theological voluntarists say that God, being essentially good or loving, cannot (and hence does not) command such acts as torture of the innocent. (This is the reply of Robert Merrihew Adams. The problem with this reply is that God appears to have commanded such acts (and therefore can)! See, e.g., Genesis 22:1-19; Exodus 11:2; Hosea 1:2.) (ii) Other theological voluntarists say that God can (and, from time to time, does) command such acts as torture of the innocent, and that when God does command such acts, they are right. (This is the reply of Thomas Aquinas.) 9 For purposes of this handout, a theist is someone who accepts (believes) that God exists; an atheist is someone who accepts (believes) that God does not exist; and an agnostic is someone who neither accepts (believes) that God exists nor accepts (believes) that God does not exist. I should point out that sometimes the word atheist is used broadly, to include both atheists and agnostics. In that sense, it means non-theist. 3

4 Commentary: A conditional statement (often called, for short, a conditional) has the form If p, then q. The if part (here, p ) is known as the antecedent; the then part (here, q ) is known as the consequent. Both Adams and Aquinas affirm the truth of the conditional If God commands torture of the innocent, then torture of the innocent is right. According to Adams, the conditional is trivially true, because its antecedent ( God commands torture of the innocent ) is necessarily false. According to Aquinas, the conditional is nontrivially true, because its antecedent ( God commands torture of the innocent ) is possibly true (i.e., not necessarily false), and, when it is true, so is its consequent ( torture of the innocent is right ). We might say that Adams and Aquinas bite the bullet in different ways. The Nihilistic Objection: Anything that has an unacceptable implication is unacceptable. 2. TV has an unacceptable implication, namely, that if God doesn t exist, then no act is either right or wrong TV is unacceptable (from 1 and 2). 12 argument and accepts premise 1, but rejects premise 2. Premise 2 makes two claims: 10 Nihilism (from the Latin word nihil, meaning nothing ) is [a] theory promoting the state of believing in nothing, or of having no allegiances and no purposes. Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, 2d ed. rev. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), If God doesn t exist, then no act conforms to God s will, and if no act conforms to God s will, then, according to TV, no act is right. If no act is right, then either (i) all acts are wrong or (ii) no act is either right or wrong. If we reject (on other grounds) the claim that all acts are wrong, then we are driven to the conclusion that no act is either right or wrong, which is nihilism. 12 Richard Swinburne (a theist) puts the Nihilistic Objection as follows: [D]ivine command theory... holds that the only necessary moral truths are of the forms Whatever and only whatever God commands is obligatory, Whatever and only whatever God commends is good, Whatever and only whatever God forbids is wrong, Whatever and only whatever God commends us not to do is bad. Any such theory seems to me implausible since it entails that if there were no God, there would be no moral good and bad. But surely torturing children just for fun is wrong whether or not there is a God. Richard Swinburne, Morality and God, Revue Internationale de Philosophie (2003): , at

5 a. TV implies that if God doesn t exist, then no act is either right or wrong; and b. some act is either right or wrong even if God doesn t exist. The theological voluntarist accepts 2a but rejects 2b. (This is known as biting the bullet.) According to the theological voluntarist, if God doesn t exist, then no act is either right or wrong, for it is God s will, and nothing else, that makes acts right or wrong. 13 Commentary: This objection shows why theological voluntarists (though not only theological voluntarists) are concerned about the decline of religion in the Western world. If right and wrong depend on God s will, as they believe, then atheism and agnosticism lead to nihilism. The Skeptical Objection: 1. Anything that has an unacceptable implication is unacceptable. 2. TV has an unacceptable implication, namely, that God s will is knowable (i.e., capable of being known). 3. TV is unacceptable (from 1 and 2). argument and accepts premise 1. Premise 2 makes two claims: a. TV implies that God s will is knowable (i.e., capable of being known); and b. God s will is not knowable. At this point, there is a split among theological voluntarists. (i) Some theological voluntarists reject 2a. (This is known as grasping the bull by the horn.) They say that TV makes no epistemological claims. It makes only a metaphysical claim about the dependency of rightness on God s will. (ii) Other theological voluntarists reject 2b. (This is known as biting the bullet.) They say that God s will is knowable via 13 This is reminiscent of Ivan Karamazov s claim, in Fyodor Dostoevsky s novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880), that If God does not exist, everything is permitted. (I do not vouch for the accuracy of the translation.) 5

6 scripture, religious tradition, personal revelation, natural law, and conscience. 14 Commentary: This objection shows that there can be more than one reply to a given objection. Theorists are usually resourceful in defending their theories from attack. If you lay siege to my fort, I will repel you in any way I can. The Divisiveness Objection: 1. A normative ethical theory is unacceptable if it is divisive, in the sense of destroying prospects for rational agreement that would otherwise exist TV is a normative ethical theory. 3. TV is unacceptable if it is divisive (from 1 and 2). 4. TV is divisive. 5. TV is unacceptable (from 3 and 4, modus ponens). argument(s) and accepts premises 1 and 2, but rejects premise 4. Premise 4 makes two claims: a. TV destroys prospects for rational agreement; and b. normative ethical theories other than TV hold out the prospect of rational agreement. The theological voluntarist accepts 4a (at least for the sake of argument) but rejects 4b. The history of modern secular ethical theory gives us no reason to expect that agreement on a single comprehensive ethical theory will ever be achieved in a climate of free 14 [T]he wisdom and will of God... is made plain to us in two ways: partly by the natural law which is accessible to unaided reason but has its ultimate source of normativity as being the mind (wisdom) of God as far as our reason can thus share in it; and partly by those provisions of the divine law which were revealed definitively in Jesus Christ. John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory, Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought, ed. Mark Philp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 323 (footnote omitted). 15 Philip L. Quinn, Theological Ethics, in Encyclopedia of Ethics, 2d ed., ed. Lawrence C. Becker and Charlotte B. Becker (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), , at

7 and rational moral inquiry. 16 Commentary: The theological voluntarist says, in effect, that the word divisive is ambiguous. If it means destroys prospects for rational agreement, then TV is (arguably) divisive, but no more so than any of its rivals. If it means destroys prospects for rational agreement that would otherwise exist, then TV is not divisive. 16 Ibid. 7