Divine Command Ethics

Jewish and Christian Perspectives

Michael J. Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134430253
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

The central aim of this book is to attempt to determine the response of the classic texts of Jewish traditions to the famous dilemma posed in Plato's Euthyphro: Does God freely determine morality, or is morality independent of God?

The author argues that the picture that emerges from Jewish texts is significantly more complex and nuanced than most of the contemporary Jewish philosophical literature is prepared to concede. While providing an extensive discussion of the perspective of Jewish tradition on divine command ethics, this book develops a position that is distinct from and critical of other views that have recently been advanced in Jewish scholarship. At the same time, the book provides a substantial analysis of some Christian perspectives on divine command ethics. Relevant biblical, rabbinic and later Jewish texts are discussed, as well as some of the relevant views that have been taken in philosophical literature and in Christian and Jewish thought.

1
DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND THE SHARED MORAL UNIVERSE OF GOD AND HUMANITY
The analytical framework of the project

1.1 Introduction

In a celebrated passage in Plato's Euthyphro, Socrates poses the following question: ‘Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?’¹

The contemporary philosophical literature tends to recast Socrates's query, which it terms ‘the Euthyphro dilemma’, in monotheistic and more modern terminology. The horns of the dilemma are then refashioned in the following kind of way: is it the case that

1. an act is right because God commanded (or wanted or willed or approved) it, or alternatively, is it the case that
2. God commanded (or wanted or willed or approved) this act because it is right?²

According to horn (1), God – or more precisely His command or will, etc. – determines morality; morality depends upon God. On horn (2), by contrast, morality is independent of God; He commands or wills certain things because of moral considerations that are not contingent upon Him.

The central objective of this book is to ask, and to attempt to formulate a response to, a cluster of questions that can initially be expressed as follows: what is the response of the classic texts of Jewish tradition to the Euthyphro dilemma?³ Does (1) or (2) best capture the position of the classic Jewish texts? Is there, in fact, as is usually claimed in the contemporary Jewish literature, one uniform, unambiguous response?

The answer that I will argue for includes, as a fundamental component, the claim that the picture that emerges from Jewish texts is significantly more complex and nuanced than many contemporary Jewish writers are prepared to concede. One very important dimension of this complexity has to do with the wide variety of possible interpretations of (1) and (2). My aim in this chapter is to explore some of the possible meanings of (1) and (2) in order to get a sense of the rather broad range of different ideas that (1) and (2) might convey, and in order to highlight the necessity of refining and sharpening (1) and (2). This refinement is crucial for the project, because when we examine Jewish texts in the coming chapters we need to be equipped with an analytical framework that is sufficiently nuanced to give an adequate and plausible reading of those texts. To read a given text in the light of the question: ‘What is the attitude of this text to (1) (or (2))?’ is unlikely to be very illuminating. We need, rather, to be able to ask what the view of the text is concerning some much more carefully delineated version of (1) or (2). If we come to the texts with analytical instruments that are too blunt, we are likely both to overlook the subtleties of particular texts and, worse, to finish up by misconstruing the attitude of Jewish tradition as a whole towards the issues that concern us.

Although by no means every possible meaning of (1) and (2) is discussed in this chapter, nor even every interpretation that has been suggested in the literature, I shall attempt to consider a wide enough range of possible readings of (1) and (2) to ensure that we finish up with an analytical framework that is sensitive enough to facilitate our examination of texts in the coming chapters.

The kind of view expressed by (1), in which morality is in some sense dependent upon God, usually focuses on divine commands and is therefore frequently called ‘Divine Command Theory’ or ‘Divine Command Morality’. I shall henceforth term it ‘DCT’. (1) as it stands expresses a rough and rather strong form of DCT; there are, however, as already indicated, numerous more precise interpretations, and there are also weaker interpretations. The kind of view expressed by (2) is sometimes referred to by the term ‘autonomy’. I prefer to term it ‘The Shared Moral Universe of God and Humanity’ and shall henceforth refer to this kind of position as ‘SMU’.⁴ Again, (2) expresses SMU only in broad and rather strong terms; there exist both more exact readings and weaker readings.

We are now equipped to reformulate the central question of this book as: What is the position of the classic texts of Jewish tradition on the issue of DCT versus SMU? And we already have a strong inkling that the answer will depend partly upon what versions of DCT and SMU are intended.⁵

I now turn, then, to an analysis of some possible meanings of DCT and SMU. It will be convenient first to consider DCT.

1.2 Some interpretations of DCT

The various forms of DCT considered here share with (1) and with each other the core idea that morality is in some sense dependent upon God. I wish to emphasise three further points in introducing section 1.2. First, not every version of DCT discussed in this section is fully explicated and defended. This is a natural outgrowth of the fact that my focus in this work is on the view concerning DCT and SMU embodied in classical Jewish texts, rather than on presenting a philosophical or theological case for any version of either one of these conceptions. In some instances, therefore, a fairly brief sketch of the version of DCT in question will characterise it in a manner that is adequate for our later textual analysis. Second, I wish to stress that not every form of DCT considered in this section is, properly speaking, what might be termed a ‘full’ version of DCT. As various philosophers have pointed out, even the idea that, for example, God's command is a necessary and sufficient condition of the moral rightness of an act (let alone the notions considered below that His command is only one or another of these) fails adequately to convey the dependence of the act's moral rightness on God's command.⁶ Most ‘full’ versions of DCT involve both conveying this dependence and explaining its nature.⁷ Though some of the versions of DCT discussed in this section are not ‘full’ in this way, I count them as possible readings of DCT for the purposes of this work since they will facilitate our examination of Jewish texts in later chapters. The third introductory point is that since one of the central aims of this chapter as a whole is to develop a sense of the wide variety of possible interpretations of DCT and SMU, I shall sometimes discuss such readings even when they might not reemerge in our subsequent textual analysis. This is particularly true of my discussion of DCT, to which this section is devoted.⁸

1.2.a God's command as a necessary condition of morality

DCT can be understood as the idea that if there had been no divine commands, there would have been no morality. On this view, there is simply no such thing as morality without God's commands: the very existence of moral values and moral obligations depends upon those commands. For the sake of clarity, we might contrast this with the far weaker kind of view, discussed in section 1.4, on which God's commands are necessary for human moral activity.

We can express this stronger interpretation of DCT in the following way:

(3) If action A is right, then God has commanded us to do A. (= If God had not commanded us to do A, then A would not be right).⁹

Another way of expressing (3) is to say that God's command is a necessary condition of morality, or of the moral rightness of an act. A formal expression of this idea is as follows:

(x) (Rx½Cx)

where x = an action, R = ‘morally right’ and C = ‘commanded by God’.

Let us introduce the following piece of terminology for ease of reference later on:

(DCTN) God's command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act.¹⁰

1.2.b Interlude: divine command and divine will

Thus far, I have usually spoken of DCT as claiming just what its name suggests: that morality depends upon God's command. Now that we have begun the process of defining DCT more closely, however, let us pause to consider whether there might be more that can usefully be said here. For a consideration of precisely what it is that DCT might assert the dependence of morality upon is a matter that I believe requires attention in the context of my project, though this issue is frequently overlooked both in philosophical discussions of divine command theory¹¹ and, especially, in the contemporary Jewish literature on this subject.

A number of philosophers claim that not only does God have certain wants or wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He communicates to us through revelation, but that He also has certain other wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He does not explicitly command, does not inform us about through revelation. The means by which we discover these non-revealed divine wishes is the principle of utility. Thus, William Paley writes:

[T]here are two methods of coming at the will of God on any point:

I. By his express declarations, when they are to be had; and which must be sought for in Scripture.

II. By what we can discover of his designs and disposition from his works, or, as we usually call it, the light of nature.

...The method of coming at the will of God concerning any action, by the light of nature, is to enquire into ‘the tendency of the action to promote or diminish the general happiness’.¹²

A similar position is adopted by John Austin¹³ and by Hugo Meynell.¹⁴

The thought that I wish to extract from these philosophers and apply to a Jewish context for the purposes of this project is simply this: not everything that God wishes or wills concerning human moral behaviour is necessarily communicated in a Torah command. From a Jewish perspective (as from some other religious perspectives), it seems plausible that God might have wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He communicates to us in other ways, notwithstanding the centrality of the category of explicit divine command or mitzvah in the Jewish tradition. (I do not wish to claim that it is plausible from a Jewish perspective that the principle of utility is such a means of discerning God's will.) To this thought of Paley and others, I would add that it seems plausible, from a Jewish viewpoint (as from some other religious viewpoints), that God might also have wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He does not communicate to us at all. Thus, the category of God's wishes concerning human moral behaviour may be much wider than, though it includes, those wishes of God concerning such behaviour that are communicated through Torah commands.¹⁵

It is, therefore, useful to distinguish between three different sorts of divine wants or wishes concerning human moral behaviour. These are: 1) wishes that God reveals, commands explicitly, in the Torah; 2) wishes that are not explicitly commanded in the Torah but which God communicates to us in other ways; 3) wishes concerning human moral behaviour which God does not make known to us at all, either by revelation in the Torah or by any other means.¹⁶

For our purposes, however, the important distinction will usually be that between 1), on the one hand, and 2) and 3) on the other. For a divine wish in category 1), I shall use the expression ‘God's revealed Torah command’. For a divine wish in category 2) or 3), I shall employ the term ‘God's unrevealed will’.

Let us return to (DCTN). We can now see that there is an ambiguity latent in (DCTN) that can be teased out. Thus:

(DCTN) God's command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act

might mean

(DCTNR) God's revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act.

Alternatively, however, it might mean

(DCTNW) Either God's revealed Torah command is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act or God's unrevealed will is a necessary condition of the moral rightness of an act.

(DCTNW) shares with (DCTNR) the assumption that God's will is a necessary condition of morality, but, unlike (DCTNR), does not insist on God's will as revealed in the Torah as a necessary condition of morality. It allows the possibilities that 1) God's will as made known to us in some way other than through the Torah is a necessary condition of morality; and that 2) God's will which is unknown to us either through the Torah or by any other means is a necessary condition of morality.

Transferring to a Jewish context the basic idea of Paley and others that God has wishes concerning human moral behaviour that He does not explicitly command us in Revelation thus opens up a new possibility. That possibility is of a set of variants of DCT according to which morality is dependent not on God's will as revealed in explicit Torah commands, but dependent on His will nonetheless – a will which may be communicated to us in ways other than an explicit Torah command or which may not be communicated to us at all.¹⁷

...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS IN DEBATE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• EXPLANATION OF ABBREVIATIONS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: DIVINE COMMAND THEORY AND THE SHARED MORAL UNIVERSE OF GOD AND HUMANITY THE ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK OF THE PROJECT
• 2: ANALYTIC DISCUSSION OF POSITIONS ON DCT AND SMU IN PHILOSOPHY AND CONTEMPORARY JEWISH THOUGHT
• 3: BIBLICAL TEXTS1
• 4: SMU: RABBINIC TEXTS AND CONCEPTS AND POST-TALMUDIC RABBINIC THOUGHT
• 5: DIVINE COMMAND THEORY IN THE TEXTS OF JEWISH TRADITION
• 6: THE AKEDAH GENESIS 22 AND DCT/SMU
• 7: DCT/SMU AND THE COMMANDMENT TO WIPE OUT AMALEK
• CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY