5.4 Strengths and Weaknesses of Divine Command Theory Ethics

Here are some of the main strengths and weaknesses attributed to Divine Command theory as an ethical approach:

Strengths:

Divine Command Theory provides an objective grounding for morality in the eternal and supreme authority of God’s will and character.

It explains the experienced obligatory nature of morality – people feel it is religiously binding.

It can serve as common ground for moral agreement and unity within a religious community.

It connects morality to revered texts and revelation as sources of God’s commands.

It offers a supreme cosmic incentive structure of divine rewards/punishments motivating moral behavior.

Weaknesses:

This theory runs the risk of accepting morally abhorrent actions just because commanded by God, of holding that God has no moral standard and offers only arbitrary moral rules.

In a global culture, disagreements on the nature of God and the interpretation of alleged commands can undermine moral certainty.

It imperils moral reasoning and self-understanding by over-reliance on external divine rules.

It is unable to deal with counterfactuals – is something moral because God commands it or does God command it because it is moral?  Does the divine command make something good (which implies God could arbitrarily call anything, even horrible things, good) or does God depend upon a standard of goodness when making his commands (which would imply that God’s involvement in morality is only as an intermediary between us and knowledge of the good)?

So while frequently invoked historically due to advantages aligning morality with divine cosmic will, difficulties arise in encapsulating stable moral knowledge from a command model with such arbitrariness.