Divine Command Theory is a theistic moral theory which states that God is the source of morality for humanity and defines morally right or wrong actions, and that following God’s commands is a moral obligation.
There are several problems that can be identified with Divine Command Theory, with the most prevalent being the Euthyphro problem. This problem, presented by Plato, explores the contradiction created by the question ‘do the gods love holiness because it is holy, or is it holy because they love it?’ (Plato, 2013, 218). This can be rephrased to be more clear for the purposes of a moral theory, giving the question “Does God command this particular action because it is morally right, or is it morally right because God commands it?” (Austin, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). This creates two ‘horns’ of this problem for the Divine Command Theory. On one hand, if an action is right because God commands it, issues arise as whatever God commands becomes morally right. Even actions that would previously have been considered completely morally wrong would become right as soon as God commanded them, and would even be considered obligatory. This is a grave issue as it means that morality becomes arbitrary as there are no fundamental morally right or wrong actions that could not be changed or excused by a command by God.
On the other hand, by reversing the statement to say that God commands an action because it is right, the previous issue can be avoided as this means that God can only command things that are morally right, and can’t change the moral nature of actions at will. This removes the possibility of God commanding morally wrong acts based on God’s desires. However, through this interpretation an important issue is created for theists as God becomes subject to an external moral authority and can only make commands based on these existing moral principles. This is problematic as for theists God should be the supreme authority on everything, including morality, and should be the foundation on what is right or wrong rather than following moral rules. It also raises the question of what this external authority would be, and why it would be possibly more powerful than God.
Robert Adams’ theory was designed as an analysis of what it means to be ‘ethically wrong’ for specifically Jewish and Christian believers (Adams, 2013, 220). As part of this Modified Divine Command theory, he claims that three clauses must be added to the Divine Command Theory to make it morally sound. These clauses are: ‘(1) (for any action X) X is ethically wrong if and only if X is contrary to God’s commands, but also that (2) “X is wrong” normally expresses opposition or certain other negative attitudes toward X. (3) God is loving, and therefore does not and will not command such things as (e.g.) the practice of cruelty for its own sake (Adams, 2013, 220). The first two clauses denote that God is the source of authority on ethical wrongness as any ethically wrong action is wrong because it is contrary to God’s commands, following the model of the first ‘horn’ of the Euthyphro problem. This response to the problem then attempts to challenge the possibility of morality being arbitrary by stating that this Modified Divine Command Theory relies on God’s omnibenevolence, as stated in the third clause. This means that if God can only command morally right things of humanity, the issue with the statement that actions are right because God commands them is rectified as there is no longer a possibility of God changing morality or rendering it arbitrary as some actions are objectively ethically wrong. This is the most important clause for Adams who also states that without a loving God, nothing would be ethically wrong or obligatory or permitted (Adams, 2013, 221) as this God’s form of morality would still be at risk of being arbitrary.
In evaluating Adams’ version of a Modified Divine Command Theory as a response to the Euthyphro problem, it can be said that it is successful in avoiding the possibility of morality becoming arbitrary through God deciding to change the moral nature of actions or commanding previously morally wrong things by specifying the nature of God as ‘loving’. This means that it becomes certain that anything God commands is morally right, and anything contrary to God’s commands is wrong, and the statement ‘an action is right because God commands it’ becomes more viable.
However, Adams himself recognised issues with his Modified Divine Command Theory as it only analysed ethical wrongness in relation to Jewish and Christian beliefs. In his new Divine Command Theory he claims that ethical wrongness is ‘identical with the property of being contrary to the commands of a loving God’ (Adams, 2013, 223). He claims that this Divine Command Theory is not relative to a specific group and can apply to the form of ethical wrongness held almost universally, even in a possible world where God did not exist as it fits with his requirements of an objective meaning of wrongness, such as wrongness being a property actions must have or lack objectively, and being a property that is causal to the action being regarded as wrong.
In Adams’ original Modified Divine Command Theory, it can be said that while the theory allows an avoidance of part of the Euthyphro problem, it still fails to solve the issue completely; It simply manages to allow one of the horns of the problem to be less theoretically problematic. Issues are still present when it is considered where the definition of ‘loving’ that is applied to God comes from, as if God is not the source then the Euthyphro problem still applies. If God has to be considered loving or morally right for the Modified Divine Command Theory to be ethically plausible then how can we define God as morally right?
In conclusion, Adams’ Modified Divine Command Theory may be successful in dealing with the Euthyphro problem by removing the possibility of God commanding ethically wrong actions or morality changing based on God’s will within the existing conception of morality, however it is less successful when applied to those other than Jewish or Christian believers and could provide further questions on the origins of morality.