Wrongness is being contrary to the commands of a loving God

Adams's modified divine command theory

Robert Merrihew Adams 1937 · 2024Wrongness is being contrary to the commands of a loving God: the best account of morality goes through God.

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What it claims

If God exists, being wrong is being contrary to the commands of a loving God, which are not arbitrary.

Why

Believers and non-believers share one concept of wrongness, and if God exists, what fills it best is what a loving God forbids.

The same idea through history

Plato399 BCPlato, Euthyphro: is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is loved? Every divine command theory must answer this.Guillaume d'Ockham1320Ockham: God could command anything not contradictory, and what he commands becomes good. This is the raw form of the theory that Adams's version corrects.

Robert Merrihew Adams1973"A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness" (1973): wrongness is being contrary to the commands of a loving God; the thesis was reworked in 1979 as an identity of properties, then in Finite and Infinite Goods (1999), where the good is likeness to God.

In short

"Wrongness is being contrary to the commands of a loving God" is an argument by Robert Merrihew Adams ("A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness", 1973; Finite and Infinite Goods, 1999, 1973) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: god's will). Its claim: If God exists, being wrong is being contrary to the commands of a loving God, which are not arbitrary. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the conclusion does follow from its 4 premises. AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness", 1973; Finite and Infinite Goods, 1999

Valid

If morality depends on God's orders, could God order horror and make it right? Robert Adams answers by modifying the theory. It does not say that everything is good or bad according to a divine order: only that moral wrongness, what is forbidden, consists in being contrary to the commands of a loving God. A loving God would not command cruelty for its own sake. And the good itself is not defined by orders: it is likeness to God. Believers and non-believers therefore share the same idea of wrongness. The question is what, in the world, plays that role: for Adams, if God exists, it is his commands.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without the idea that God exists, the computer finds a world where the premises hold but no one commands anything: the conclusion becomes empty, which shows that the argument holds only for a theist.

Valid as it stands, once the condition is set: if the loving God exists. The premises are conditional, deliberately: Adams does not say the theory is true without God. The argument's strength rests on P3 (that a property which best fills a role is that property), which his critics contest (see Murphy's objection).

Analogy. Before chemistry, people spoke of water without knowing it is H2O, but they knew what it does: it flows, it quenches thirst. Adams says: we speak of wrongness without knowing what it is, but we know its role. If God exists, what plays that role is what he forbids. His critics answer that water can be understood without chemistry, whereas "forbidden" is not understood without God.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Plato 399 BC · attacks premise 4

In the Euthyphro, Socrates asks: is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? If something is wrong because God commands it, then his commands have no reason, and morality is arbitrary.

a defender replies

see the argument

Robert Adams defender of the argument · 1999

For Adams, only obligation depends on God's will; goodness itself is likeness to God. So God can have moral reasons for choosing some commands rather than others: that they are more benevolent, just, or loyal (following Mark Murphy's account).

Mark Murphy 2002

Murphy states a rejoinder: even if there can be reasons for God to choose his commands, it is unlikely that they would wholly determine his choice, so some latitude for arbitrariness would remain.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Murphy himself finds this latitude of arbitrariness of little worry, since morality already depends on contingent facts about ourselves and our relationships. The core disagreement remains: is a foundation that leaves a part to will enough for a morality that is not arbitrary?

Mark Murphy 2002 · attacks premise 1

In the 1973 version, the concept of the morally obligatory is analysed as "commanded by a loving God". This seems to imply that those inside and those outside the Judeo-Christian moral discourse never disagree when one says an act is obligatory and the other denies it.

a defender replies

Robert Adams defender of the argument · 1979

Adams moves from analysis to an identity of properties: the concept of obligation is common to believers and non-believers, and the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God is, if God exists, the one that best fills the role of that concept. Believers and non-believers can therefore debate and disagree.

Mark Murphy 2002

Murphy notes that the analogy with "H2O is water" is open to question: that identity is learned afterwards, whereas that of the obligatory with what God commands would be known in advance. One can ignore that water is H2O without ceasing to understand the word "water", but not ignore the link with God without ceasing to understand "obligatory".

Where the debate stands (our summary)The 1979 version avoids the first difficulty but remains debated: is the identity between wrongness and what God forbids a discovery (like H2O) or a hidden definition? Murphy presents the point as still open.

Immanuel Kant 1785 · attacks the conclusion

For Kant, grounding morality on the concept of an independent perfection, the will of God, as the determining cause of our will, is one of the wrong paths reason tries. The moral law must come from the agent's own will, otherwise it is heteronomous.

no reply

Adams did reply, but that text is not yet in our corpus.

The debate goes on (our summary) Adams wrote on autonomy and theological ethics, but this answer is not in the sources read here. Defenders of divine commands answer that an agent can freely accept a demand from a person he loves and respects. A Kantian answers that the obligation then comes from an outside authority, however freely it is accepted.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: can an obligation come from a will other than one's own and remain moral (Adams, who sees it as a social relation between persons), or must it be given to oneself (Kant)?