Notes

In elaborating a viable divine command ethics account, it is best to start with an ontological understanding of divine command theory, according to which moral obligations depend on God ontologically (God is thus the ground of moral obligations) and God as a command-giver represents the best explanation of objective moral obligations. This is different from a somewhat less plausible epistemic claim that one cannot believe and have knowledge of moral obligations without the belief in God. Further details of a former view can be spelled out in different ways. One prosperous manner to do it is to further spell it out as the claim that moral obligations are or express divine requirements, as “God’s will for humans insofar as that will has been communicated to them” (Evans, 2013, 25) and thus as commands of a good and loving God. This view is narrow in a sense that it does not presuppose that there cannot be any ethical truths that do not depend on God and also it is primarily focused on aspects of moral obligation. In a somehow similar manner Audi (2011) closely relates divine command theory with the notion of a moral authority of God as part of religious commitment of an individual. In the ontological terms one can thus claim that e.g. the property of obligatoriness of actions can be equivalent to the property of divine commandedness. Divine commandedness can also be understood as divine commandability in the sense that it is not necessarily that every obligatory act is understood as being commanded by God, but merely that it is commandable, i.e. of being eligible to be commanded by omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good and loving God.