Ethics/Philosophy of Religion/Social and Political: Divine Command Theory (DCT) and the Passover Story

Hi friends!

Here we return to the Passover Story of Jewish literature, also known as Torah or the Old Testament. The Divine Command Theory is a subjectivist and so, invention, theory, but here we have a most unusual inventor: YHWH or God. The theory is as follows,

1. X is moral is simply the fact that God commands x.

2. X is immoral is simply the fact that God forbids x or x is  inconsistent (contradicts) what God does command.

 

For our Philosophers of Religion, this has serious implications for what it means to say God is Morally Perfect.

For our ethicists this has equally serious implications for anything being right or wrong.

For our Social and Political Philosophers this has powerful implications for Nation states (governments) that are not religiously controlled.

Notice the resemblance to human-based subjectivism. We can rephrase (1) and (2) as,

X is moral (or not) if God believes/forbids and commands x, when God believes/forbids and commands x, and for God's universe.

The structure is the same, with some interesting tweaks. Which brings us to the famous passover story, which is clearly the inspiration for Catholicism and Christianity, if not Islam.

Cheers~

Dr. Lee Basham