A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness

38 A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness Robert Merrihew Adams i It is widely held that all those theories are indefensible which attempt to explain in terms of the will or commands of God what it is for an act to be ethically right or wrong. In this paper I shall state such a theory , which I believe to be defensible; and I shall try to defend it against what seem to me to be the most important and interesting objections to it . I call my theory a modified divine command theory because in it I renounce certain claims that are commonly made in divine command analyses of ethical terms. ( I should add that it is my theory only in that I shall state it , and that I believe it is defensible - not that I am sure it is correct . ) I present it as a theory of ethical wrongness partly for convenience. It could also be presented as a theory of the nature of ethical obligatoriness or of ethical permittedness. Indeed , I will have occasion to make some remarks about the concept of ethical permittedness. But as we shall see ( in Section IV ) I am not prepared to claim that the theory can be extended to all ethical terms; and it is therefore important that it not be presented as a theory about ethical terms in general . It will be helpful to begin with the statement of a simple, « « modified divine command theory of ethical wrongness. This is the theory that ethical Robert Merrihew Adams , “ A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness, ” from G . Outka and J. R. Reeder ( eds.), Religion and Morality (Garden City: Anchor Press , 1975 ), pp. 318- 47 . <5H> wrongness consists in being contrary to God ’s commands, or that the word “ wrong” in ethical contexts means “contrary to God ’s commands. ” It implies that the following two statement forms are logically equivalent . ( 1) ( 2) It is wrong ( for A ) to do X . It is contrary to God ’s commands ( for A ) to do X . Of course that is not all that the theory implies. It also implies that ( 2 ) is conceptually prior to ( 1 ), so that the meaning of ( 1 ) is to be explained in terms of ( 2), and not the other way round . It might prove fairly difficult to state or explain in what that con ceptual priority consists, but I shall not go into that here. I do not wish ultimately to defend the theory in its unmodified form , and I think I have stated it fully enough for my present purposes. I have stated it as a theory about the meaning of the word “ wrong” in ethical contexts. The most obvious objection to the theory is that the word “ wrong” is used in ethical contexts by many people who cannot mean by it what the theory says they must mean , since they do not believe that there exists a God . This objection seems to me sufficient to refute the theory if it is presented as an analysis of what everybody means by “ wrong” in ethical contexts. The theory cannot reasonably be offered except as a theory about what the word “ wrong” means as used by some but not all people in ethical contexts . Let us say that the theory offers an analysis of the meaning of “ wrong” in Judeo-Christian religious ethical discourse. This restriction of scope will apply to my modified divine command theory This restriction obviously gives rise to a possible objection . Isn’t it more plausible to suppose that Judeo Christian believers use “ wrong” with i he same meaning as other people do? This problem will be discussed in Section VI. In Section II, I will discuss what seems to me the most important objection to the unmodified divine command theory, and suggest how the theory can be modified to meet it. Section III will be devoted to a brief but fairly comprehensive account of the use of “ wrong” in Judeo-Christian ethical discourse, from the point of view of the modified divine command theory. The theory will be further elaborated in dealing with objections in Sections IV to VI. In a seventh and final section, I will note some problems arising from unresolved issues in the general theory of analysis and meaning, and briefly discuss their bearing on the modified divine command theory . loo. - II The following seems to me to be the gravest objection to the divine command theory of ethical wrongness, in the form in which I have stated it. Suppose God should command me to make it my chief end in life to inflict suffering on other human beings, for no other reason than that He commanded it . ( For convenience I shall abbreviate this hypothesis to “Suppose God should command cruelty for its own sake.”) Will it seriously be claimed that in that case it would be wrong for me not to practice cruelty for its own sake ? I see three possible answers to this question . (1) It might be claimed that it is logically impossible for God to command cruelty for its own sake. In that case, of course, we need not worry about whether it would be wrong to disobey if He did command it. It is senseless to agonize about what one should do in a logically impossible situation . This solution to the problem seems unlikely to be available to the divine command theorist, however . For why would he hold that it is logically impossible for God to command cruelty for its own sake ? Some theologians ( for instance, Thomas Aquinas ) have believed (a ) that what is right and wrong is independent of God’s will, and (b ) that God always does right by the necessity of His nature. Such theologians, if they believe that it would be wrong for God to command cruelty for its own sake, have reason to believe that it is logically impossible for Him to do so. But the divine command theorist, who does not agree that what is right and wrong is independent of God’s will, does not seem to have such a reason to deny that it is logically possible for God to command cruelty for its own sake. ( 2 ) Let us assume that it is logically possible for God to command cruelty for its own sake. In that case the divine command theory seems to imply that it would be wrong not to practice cruelty for its own sake. There have been at least a few adherents of divine command ethics who have been prepared to accept this consequence. William Ockham held that those acts which we call “ theft,” “adultery,” and “ hatred of God ” would be meritorious if God had commanded them.1 He would surely have said the same about what I have been calling the practice of “cruelty for its own sake.” This position is one which I suspect most of us are likely to find somewhat shocking, even repulsive. We should therefore be particularly careful not to misunderstand it. We need not imagine that Ockham disciplined himself to be ready to practice cruelty for its own sake if God should command it. It was doubtless an article of faith for him that God is unalterably opposed to any such practice. The mere logical possibility that theft, adultery, and cruelty might have been commanded by God (and therefore meritorious ) doubtless did not represent in Ockham’s view any real possibility . (3) Nonetheless, the view that if God commanded cruelty for its own sake it would be wrong not to practice it seems unacceptable to me; and I think many, perhaps most, other Jewish and Christian believers would find it unacceptable too. I must make clear the sense in which I find it unsatisfactory . It is not that I find an internal inconsistency in it. And I would not deny that it may reflect, accurately enough, the way in which some believers use the word “ wrong.” I might as well frankly avow that I am looking for a divine command theory which at least might possibly be a correct account of how / use the word “ wrong.” I do not use the word “ wrong ” in such a way that I would say that it would be wrong not to practice cruelty if God commanded it, and I am sure that many other believers agree with me on this point . But now have I not rejected the divine command theory ? I have assumed that it would be logically possible for God to command cruelty for its own sake. And I have rejected the view that if God commanded cruelty for its own sake, it would be wrong not to obey. It seems to follow that I am ( 4M) Robert Merrihew Adams committed to the view that in certain logically possible circumstances it would not be wrong to disobey God . This position seems to be inconsistent with the theory that “ wrong” means “contrary to God ’s commands.” I want to argue, however, that it is still open to me to accept a modified form of the divine command theory of ethical wrongness. According to the modified divine command theory , when I say, “ It is wrong to do X, ” ( at least part of ) what I mean is that it is contrary to God’s commands to do X . “ It is wrong to do X ” implies “It is contrary to God’s commands to do X . ” But “It is contrary to God’s commands to do X ” implies “ It is wrong to do X ” only if certain conditions are assumed namely , only if it is assumed that God has the character which I believe Him to have, of loving His human creatures. If God were really to command us to make cruelty our goal , then He would not have that character of loving us, and I would not say it would be wrong to disobey Him . But do I say that it would be wrong to obey Him in such a case ? This is the point at which I am in danger of abandoning the divine command theory completely . I do abandon it completely if I say both of the following things. (A ) ( B) It would be wrong to obey God if He commanded cruelty for its own sake. In ( A ), “ wrong” is used in what is for me its normal ethical sense. If I assert both ( A ) and ( B), it is clear that I cannot consistently maintain that “ wrong” in its normal ethical sense for me means or implies “contrary to God’s commands. ” But from the fact that I deny that it would be wrong to disobey God if He commanded cruelty for its own sake, it does not follow that I must accept ( A ) and ( B). Of course someone might claim that obedience and disobedience would both he ethically permitted in such a case; hut that is not the view that I am suggesting. If I adopt the modified divine command theory as an analysis of my present concept of ethical wrongness ( and if I adopt a similar analysis of my concept of ethical permittedness ), I will not hold either that it would be wrong to disobey , or that it would he ethically permitted to disobey, or that it would be wrong to obey, or that it would be ethically permitted to obey , if God commanded cruelty for its own sake. For I will say that my concept of ethical wrongness ( and my concept of ethical permittedness ) would (464) “ break down ” if I really believed that God commanded cruelty for its own sake. Or to put the matter somewhat more prosaically , I will say that my concepts of ethical wrongness and permittedness could not serve the functions they now serve, because using those concepts I could not call any action ethically wrong or ethically permitted , if I believed that God ’s will was so unloving. This position can be explained or developed in either of two ways, each of which has its advantages. I could say that by “ X is ethically wrong” I mean “ X is contrary to the commands of a loving God ” ( i .c., “There is a loving God and X is contrary to His commands” ) and by “ X is ethically permitted ” I mean “ X is in accord with the commands of a loving God ” ( i .c., “There is a loving God and X is not contrary to His commands” ). On this analysis we can reason as follows. If there is only one God and He commands cruelty for its own sake, then presumably there is not a loving God . If there is not a loving God then neither “ X is ethically wrong” nor “ X is ethically permitted ” is true of any X . Using my present concepts of ethical wrongness and permittedness, therefore, I could not ( consistently ) call any action ethically wrong or permitted if I believed that God commanded cruelty for its own sake. This way of developing the modified divine command theory is the simpler and neater of the two, and that might reasonably lead one to choose it for the construction of a theological ethical theory. On the other hand , I think it is also simpler and neater than ordinary religious ethical discourse, in which ( for example ) it may be felt that the statement that a certain act is wrong is a lxnil the will or commands of God in a way in which it is not about His love. In this essay I shall prefer a second , rather similar, but somewhat untidicr, understanding of the modified divine command theory, because I think it may lead us into some insights about the complexities of actual religious ethical discourse. According to this second version of the theory, the statement that something is ethically wrong ( or permitted ) says something about the will or commands of God , but not about His love. Every such statement, however, presupposes that certain conditions for the applicability of the believer’s concepts of ethical right and wrong arc satisfied . Among these conditions is that God does not com mand cruelty for its own sake - or , more generally , that God loves His human creatures. It need not be assumed that God ’s love is the only such condition . The modified divine command theorist can say that the possibility of God commanding cruelty for its own sake is not provided for in the JudeoChristian religious ethical system as he understands it. The possibility is not provided for, in the sense that the concepts of right and wrong have not been developed in such a way that actions could be correctly said to be right or wrong if God were believed to command cruelty for its own sake. The modified divine command theorist agrees that it is logically possible2 that God should command cruelty for its own sake; but he holds that it is unthinkable that God should do so. To have faith in God is not just to believe that He exists, but also to trust in His love for mankind. The believer’s concepts of ethical wrongness and permittedness are developed within the framework of his (or the religious community’s ) religious life, and therefore within the framework of the assumption that God loves us. The concept of the will or commands of God has a certain function in the believer’s life, and the use of the words “ right ” ( in the sense of “ethically permitted ”) and “ wrong” is tied to that function of that concept. But one of the reasons why the concept of the will of God can function as it does is that the love which God is believed to have toward men arouses in the believer certain attitudes of love toward God and devotion to His will. If the believer thinks about the unthinkable but logically possible situation in which God commands cruelty for its own sake, he finds that in relation to that kind of command of God he cannot take up the same attitude, and that the concept of the will or commands of God could not then have the same function in his life. For this reason he will not say that it would be wrong to disobey God , or right to obey Him, in that situation . At the same time he will not say that it would be wrong to obey God in that situation, because he is accustomed to use the word “ wrong” to say that something is contrary to the will of God, and it does not seem to him to be the right word to use to express his own personal revulsion toward an act against which there would be no divine authority. Similarly, he will not say that it would be “ right,” in the sense of “ethically permitted ,” to disobey God’s command of cruelty; for that does not seem to him to be the right way to express his own personal attitude toward an act which would not be in accord with a divine authority . In this way the believer’s concepts of ethical rightness and wrongness would break down in the situation in which he believed that God commanded cruelty for its own sake - that is, they would not function as they now do, because he would not be prepared to use them to say that any action was right or wrong. Ill It is clear that according to this modified divine command theory, the meaning of the word “ wrong” in Judeo-Christian ethical discourse must be understood in terms of a complex of relations which believers’ use of the word has, not only to their beliefs about God’s commands, but also to their attitudes toward certain types of action . I think it will help us to understand the theory better if we can give a brief but fairly comprehensive description of the most important features of the JudeoChristian ethical use of “ wrong,” from the point of view of the modified divine command theory. That is what I shall try to do in this section. (1) “Wrong” and “contrary to God’s commands” at least contextually imply each other in Judeo-Christian ethical discourse. “It is wrong to do X” will be assented to by the sincere Jewish or Christian believer if and only if he assents to “ It is contrary to God’s commands to do X.” This is a fact sufficiently well known that the known believer who says the one commits himself publicly to the other. Indeed “ wrong” and such expressions as “against the will of God ” seem to be used interchangeably in religious ethical discourse. If a believer asks his pastor, “ Do you think it’s always against the will of God to use contraceptives? ” and the pastor replies, “ I don’t see anything wrong with the use of contraceptives in many cases,” the pastor has answered the same question the inquirer asked . (2 ) In ethical contexts, the statement that a certain action is wrong normally expresses certain volitional and emotional attitudes toward that action. In particular it normally expresses an intention, or at least an inclination, not to perform the action, and / or dispositions to feel guilty if one has performed it, to discourage others from performing it, and to react with anger, sorrow, or diminished respect toward others if they have performed it. I think this is true of Judeo-Christian ethical discourse as well as of other ethical discourse. The interchangeability of “ wrong” and “against the will of God ” applies in full force here. It seems to make no difference to the expressive function of an ethical statement in a Judeo-Christian context which of these expressions is used. So far as g) (4 Robert Merrihew Adams I can see, the feelings and dispositions normally expressed by “It is wrong to commit suicide” in a Judeo-Christian context are exactly the same as those normally expressed by “It is against God’s will to commit suicide,” or by “Suicide is a violation of the commandments of God.” I am speaking of attitudes normally expressed by statements that it is wrong to do a certain thing, or that it would be against God’s will or commands to do that thing. I am not claiming that such attitudes are always expressed by statements of those sorts. Neither am I now suggesting any analysis of the meaning of the statements in terms of the attitudes they normally express. The relation between the meaning of the statements and the attitudes expressed is a matter about which I shall have somewhat more to say, later in this section and in Section VI. At this point I am simply observing that in fact statements of the forms “It is wrong to do X,” “It is against God’s will to do X,” “X is a violation of the commandments of God,” normally do express certain attitudes, and that in Judeo Christian ethical discourse they all typically express the same attitudes. Of course these attitudes can be specified only within certain very wide limits of normality. The experience of guilt, for instance, or the feelings that one has about conduct of others of which one disapproves, vary greatly from one individual to another, and in the same individual from one occasion to another. ( 3) In a Judeo-Christian context, moreover, the attitudes expressed by a statement that something is wrong are normally quite strongly affected and colored by specifically religious feelings and interests. They are apt to be motivated in various degrees by, and mixed in various proportions with, love, devotion, and loyalty toward God, and/ or fear of God . Ethical wrongdoing is seen and experienced as sin , as rupture of personal or communal rela tionship with God. The normal feelings and experi ence of guilt for Judeo-Christian believers surely cannot be separated from beliefs, and ritual and devotional practices, having to do with God’s judgment and forgiveness. In all sin there is offense against a person (God ), even when there is no offense against any other human person - for instance, if I have a vice which harms me but does not importantly harm any other human being. Therefore in the Judeo-Christian tradition reactions which are appropriate when one has offended another person are felt to be appropriate reactions to any ethical fault, regardless of - - (466 ) whether another human being has been offended . I think this affects rather importantly the emotional connections of the word “wrong” in JudeoChristian discourse. (4) When a Judeo Christian believer is trying to decide, in an ethical way, whether it would be wrong for him to do a certain thing, he typically thinks of himself as trying to determine whether it would be against God’s will for him to do it. His deliberations may turn on the interpretation of certain religiously authoritative texts. They may be partly carried out in the form of prayer. It is quite possible, however, that his deliberations will take forms more familiar to the nonbeliever. Possibly his theology will encourage him to give some weight to his own intuitions and feelings about the matter, and those of other people. Such encouragement might be provided, for instance, by a doctrine of the leading of the Holy Spirit. Probably the believer will accept certain very general ethical principles as expressing commandments of God, and most of these may be principles which many nonbelievers would also accept ( for instance, that it is always, or with very few exceptions, wrong to kill another human being). The believer’s deliberation might consist entirely of reasoning from such general principles. But he would still regard it as an attempt to discover God’s will on the matter. (5) Typically, the Judeo Christian believer is a nonnaturalist objectivist about ethical wrongness. When he says that something is (ethically) wrong, he means to be stating what he believes to be a fact of a certain sort - what I shall call a “ nonnatural objective fact.” Such a fact is objective in the sense that whether it obtains or not does not depend on whether any human being thinks it does. It is harder to give a satisfactory explanation of what I mean by “nonnatural ” here. Let us say that a nonnatural fact is one which does not consist simply in any fact or complex of facts which can be stated entirely in the languages of physics, chemistry, biology, and human psychology. That way of putting it obviously raises questions which it leaves unanswered, but I hope it may be clear enough for present purposes. That ethical facts are objective and nonnatural has been believed by many people, including some famous philosophers - for instance, Plato and G. E. Moore. The term “nonnaturalism” is sometimes used rather narrowly, to refer to a position held by Moore, and positions closely resembling it. Clearly, I am using “nonnaturalist” in a broader sense here. Given that the facts of wrongness asserted in Judeo-Christian ethics are nonnatural in the sense - - explained above, and that they accordingly do not consist entirely in facts of physics, chemistry, biology, and human psychology, the question arises, in what they do consist. According to the divine command theory ( even the modified divine command theory ), in so far as they are nonnatural and objective, they consist in facts about the will or commands of God . I think this is really the central point in a divine command theory of ethical wrongness. This is the point at which the divine command theory is distinguished from alternative theological theories of ethical wrongness, such as the theory that facts of ethical rightness and wrongness are objective, nonnatural facts about ideas or essences subsisting eternally in God ’s understanding, not subject to His will but guiding it. The divine command account of the nonnatural fact-stating function of Judeo-Christian ethical discourse has at least one advantage over its competitors. It is clear , I think , that in stating that X is wrong a believer normally commits himself to the view that X is contrary to the will or commands of God . And the fact ( if it is a fact ) that X is contrary to the will or commands of God is surely a nonnatural objective fact . But it is not nearly so clear that in saying that X is wrong, the believer normally commits himself to belief in any other nonnatural objective fact . (The preceding sentence presupposes the rejection of the Moorean view that the fact that X is wrong3 is an objective nonnatural fact which cannot and should not be analyzed in terms of other facts, natural or nonnatural . ) ( 6) The modified divine command theorist cannot consistently claim that “ wrong” and “contrary to God’s commands” have exactly the same meaning for him . For he admits that there is a logically possible situation which he would describe by saying, “God commands cruelty for its own sake,” but not by saying, “ It would be wrong not to practice cruelty for its own sake. ” If there were not at least some little difference between the meanings with which he actually, normally uses the expressions “ wrong” and “contrary to God’s commands,” there would be no reason for them to differ in their applicability or inapplicability to the far-out unthinkable case. We may now be in a position to improve somewhat our understanding of what the modified divine command theorist can suppose that difference in meaning to be, and of why he supposes that the bdliever is unwilling to say that disobedience to a divine command of cruelty for its own sake would be wrong. We have seen that the expressions “ It is wrong” and “ It is contrary to God’s commands” or “ It is against the will of God ” have virtually the same uses in religious ethical discourse, and the same functions in the religious ethical life. No doubt they differ slightly in the situations in which they are most likely to be used and the emotional overtones they are most apt to carry . But in all situations experienced or expected by the believer as a believer they at least contextually imply each other, and normally express the same or extremely similar emotional and volitional attitudes. There is also a difference in meaning, however , a difference which is normally of no practical importance. All three of the following are aspects of the normal use of “it is wrong” in the life and conversation of believers, (a ) It is used to state what are believed to be facts about the will or commands of God . ( b) It is used in formulating decisions and arguments about what to do ( i.e., not just in deciding what one ought to do, but in deciding what to do ) , ( c) It expresses certain emotional and volitional attitudes toward the action under discussion . “It is wrong” is commonly used to do all three of those things at once. The same is true of “It is contrary to God ’s commands” and “ It is against the will of God . ” They are commonly used by believers to do the same three things, and to do them at once. But because of their grammatical form and their formal relationships with other straightforwardly descriptive expressions about God , they are taken to be, first and last, descriptive expressions about God and His relation to whatever actions are under discussion . They can therefore be used to state what are supposed to be facts about God , even when one’s emotional and decision-making attitude toward those supposed facts is quite contrary to the attitudes normally expressed by the words “against the will of God .” In the case of “ It is wrong,” however , it is not clear that one of its functions, or one of the aspects of its normal use, is to be preferred in case of conflict with the others. I am not willing to say, “ It would be wrong not to do X,” when both my own attitude and the attitude of most other people toward the doing of X under the indicated circumstances is one of unqualified revulsion . On the other hand , neither am I willing to say, “ It would be wrong to do X,” when I would merely be expressing my own personal revulsion ( and perhaps that of other people as well ) but nothing that I could regard as clothed in the majesty of a divine authority . The believer’s concept of ethical wrongness <©> Robert Merrihew Adams therefore breaks down if one tries to apply it to the unthinkable case in which God commands cruelty for its own sake. None of this seems to me inconsistent with the claim that part of what the believer normally means in saying “ X is wrong” is that X is contrary to God’s will or commands. IV The modified divine command theory clearly conceives of believers as valuing some things independently of their relation to God ’s commands. If the believer will not say that it would be wrong not to practice cruelty for its own sake if God commanded it , that is because he values kindness, and has a revulsion for cruelty, in a way that is at least to some extent independent of his belief that God commands kindness and forbids cruelty . This point may be made the basis of both philosophical and theological objections to the modified divine command theory, but I think the objections can be answered . The philosophical objection is, roughly, that if there are some things I value independently of their relation to God’s commands, then my value concepts cannot rightly be analyzed in terms of God’s commands. According to the modified divine command theory, the acceptability of divine command ethics depends in part on the believer’s independent positive valuation of the sorts of things that God is believed to command . But then, the philosophical critic objects, the believer must have a prior, nontheological conception of ethical right and wrong, in terms of which he judges God’s commandments to be acceptable - and to admit that the believer has a prior, nontheological conception of ethical right and wrong is to abandon the divine command theory . The weakness of this philosophical objection is that it fails to note the distinctions that can be drawn among various value concepts. From the fact that the believer values some things independ ently of his beliefs about God’s commands, the objector concludes, illegitimately, that the believer must have a conception of ethical right and wrong that is independent of his beliefs about God’s commands. This inference is illegitimate because there can be valuations which do not imply or presuppose a judgment of ethical right or wrong. For instance, I may simply like something, or want something, or feel a revulsion at something. (468) What the modified divine command theorist will hold , then, is that the believer values some things independently of their relation to God’s commands, but that these valuations are not judgments of ethical right and wrong and do not of themselves imply judgments of ethical right and wrong. He will maintain, on the other hand , that such independent valuations are involved in, or even necessary for, judgments of ethical light and wrong which also involve beliefs about God’s will or commands . The adherent of a divine command ethics will normally be able to give reasons for his adherence . Such reasons might include: “Because I am grateful to God for His love”; “Because I find it the most satisfying form of ethical life”; “Because there’s got to be an objective moral law if life isn’t to fall to pieces, and I can’t understand what it would be if not the will of God .”4 As we have already noted , the modified divine command theorist also has reasons why he would not accept a divine com mand ethics in certain logically possible situations which he believes not to be actual . All of these reasons seem to me to involve valuations that are independent of divine command ethics. The person who has such reasons wants certain things happiness, certain satisfactions - for himself and others; he hates cruelty and loves kindness; he has perhaps a certain unique and “ numinous” awe of God. And these are not attitudes which he has simply because of his beliefs about God’s commands. They are not attitudes, however, which presuppose judgments of moral right and wrong. It is sometimes objected to divine command theories of moral obligation, or of ethical rightness and wrongness, that one must have some reason for obeying God’s commands or for adopting a divine command ethics, and that therefore a nontheological concept of moral obligation or of ethical rightness and wrongness must be presupposed , in order that one may judge that one ought to obey God’s commands.6 This objection is groundless. For one can certainly have reasons for doing something which do not involve believing one morally ought to do it or believing it would be ethically wrong not to do it . I grant that in giving reasons for his attitudes toward God’s commands the believer will probably use or presuppose concepts which , in the context , it is reasonable to count as nontheological value concepts ( e.g., concepts of satisfactoriness and repulsiveness). Perhaps some of them might count as moral concepts. But all that the defender of a divine command theory of ethical wrongness has to maintain is that the concept of ethical wrongness 1 - - which occurs in the ethical thought and discourse of believers is not one of the concepts which are used or presupposed in this way. Divine command theorists, including the modified divine command theorist, need not maintain that all value concepts, or even all moral concepts, must be understood in terms of God’s commands. In fact some well-known philosophers have held forms of divine command theory which quite explicitly presuppose some nontheological value concepts. Locke, for instance, says in his Essay , Good and evil . . . are nothing but pleasure or pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Morally good and evil, then, is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law, whereby good or evil is drawn on us from the will and power of the law-maker. ( Essay , II.xxviii.5)7 Locke goes on to distinguish three laws, or types of law, by reference to which actions are commonly judged as to moral good and evil: “(1) The divine law. ( 2) The civil law. (3) The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it ” ( Essay , II.xxviii.7). Of these three, Locke says that the third is “the common measure of virtue and vice" ( Essay , Il.xxviii. l 1 ). In Locke’s opinion the terms “virtue” and “ vice” are particularly closely attached to the praise and blame of society. But the terms “duty” and “sin ” are connected with the commandments of God . About the divine law Locke says, This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude , and by comparing them to this law, it is that men judge of the most considerable moral good or evil of their actions: that is, whether, as duties or sins , they are like to procure them happiness or misery from the hands of the ALMIGHTY. ( Essay , II.xxviii.8) - The structure of Locke’s analysis is clear enough. By “good ” and “evil” we mean ( nontheologically enough) pleasurable and painful. By “morally good ” and “morally evil” we mean that the actions so described agree or disagree with some law under which the agent stands to be rewarded or punished. By “duty” and “sin,” which denote the most important sort of moral good and evil, we mean ( theologically now) actions which are apt to cause the agent good or evil (in the nontheological sense) because they agree or disagree with the law of God. I take it that the divine command theory advocated by Peter Geach,8 and hinted at by Miss Anscombe,9 is similar in structure, though not in all details, to Locke’s. The modified divine command theory that I have in mind does not rely as heavily as Locke’s theory does on God’s power to reward and punish, nor do I wish to assume Locke’s analysis of “good ” and “evil.” The point I want to make by discussing Locke here is just that there are many different value concepts and it is clearly possible to give one or more of them a theological analysis while giving others a nontheological analysis. And I do assume that the modified divine command theorist will give a nontheological analysis of some value concepts although he gives a theological analysis of the concept of ethical wrongness. For instance, he may give a nontheological analysis, perhaps a natur alistic one or a noncognitivist one, of the meaning of “satisfactory” and “ repulsive,” as he uses them in some contexts. He may even regard as moral concepts some value concepts of which he gives a nontheological analysis. For it is not essential to a divine command theory of ethical wrongness to maintain that all valuing, or all value concepts, or even all moral concepts, depend on beliefs about God’s commands. What is essential to such a theory is to maintain that when a believer says something is (ethically ) wrong , at least part of what he means is that the action in question is contrary to God’s will or commands. Another way of putting the matter is this. What depends on beliefs about God and His will is: not all of the religious person’s value concepts, nor in general his ability to value things, but only his ability to appraise actions (and possible actions) in terms of their relation to a superhuman, nonnaturally objective, law. Indeed, it is obvious that JudeoChristian ethics presupposes concepts that have at least ethical overtones and that are not essentially theological but have their background in human social relations and political institutions - such as the concepts of promise, kindness, law, and command . What the specifically theological doctrines introduce into Judeo-Christian ethics, according to the divine command theory, is the belief in a law that is superior to all human laws. This version of the divine command theory may seem theologically objectionable to some believers. One of the reasons, surely, why divine command theories of ethics have appealed to some theologians is that such theories seem especially congruous with the religious demand that God be the object of our highest allegiance. If our supreme commitment in life is to doing what is right just because it is right, - Robert Merrihew Adams and if what is right is right just because God wills or commands it, then surely our highest allegiance is to God . But the modified divine command theory seems not to have this advantage. For the modified divine command theorist is forced to admit, as we have seen, that he has reasons for his adherence to a divine command ethics, and that his having these reasons implies that there are some things which he values independently of his beliefs about God’s commands. It is therefore not correct to say of him that he is committed to doing the will of God just because it is the will of God ; he is committed to doing it partly because of other things which he values independently. Indeed it appears that there are certain logically possible situations in which his present attitudes would not commit him to obey God’s commands ( for instance, if God commanded cruelty for its own sake). This may even suggest that he values some things, not just independ ently of God’s commands, but more than God’s - commands. We have here a real problem in religious ethical motivation . The Judeo-Christian believer is supposed to make God the supreme focus of his loyalties; that is clear. One possible interpretation of this fact is the following. Obedience to whatever God may command is (or at least ought to be) the one thing that the believer values for its own sake and more than anything and everything else. Anything else that he values, he values (or ought to) only to a lesser degree and as a means to obedience to God. This conception of religious ethical motiva tion is obviously favorable to an unmodified divine command theory of ethical wrongness. But I think it is not a realistic conception . Loyalty to God , for instance, is very often explained , by believers themselves, as motivated by gratitude for benefits conferred. And I think it is clear in most cases that the gratitude presupposes that the benefits are valued , at least to some extent, inde pendently of loyalty to God . Similarly, I do not think that most devout Judeo-Christian believers would say that it would be wrong to disobey God if He commanded cruelty for its own sake. And if I am right about that I think it shows that their positive valuation of (emotional/ volitional pro-attitude toward ) doing whatever God may command is not clearly greater than their independent negative valuation of cruelty. In analyzing ethical motivation in general, as well as Judeo-Christian ethical motivation in particular, it is probably a mistake to suppose that there is (or can be expected to be) only one thing that is valued - - ( 470 ) supremely and for its own sake, with nothing else being valued independently of it. The motivation for a person’s ethical orientation in life is normally much more complex than that, and involves a plurality of emotional and volitional attitudes of different sorts which are at least partly independent of each other. At any rate, I think the modified divine command theorist is bound to say that that is true of his ethical motivation . In what sense, then, can the modified divine command theorist maintain that God is the supreme focus of his loyalties? I suggest the following interpretation of the single-hearted loyalty to God which is demanded in Judeo-Christian religion. In this interpretation the crucial idea is not that some one thing is valued for its own sake and more than anything else, and nothing else valued independently of it. It is freely admitted that the religious person will have a plurality of motives for his ethical position, and that these will be at least partly independent of each other. It is admitted further that a desire to obey the commands of God ( whatever they may be) may not be the strongest of these motives. What will be claimed is that certain beliefs about God enable the believer to integrate or focus his motives in a loyalty to God and His commands. Some of these beliefs are about what God commands or wills (contingently - that is, although He could logically have commanded or willed something else instead ). Some of the motives in question might be called egoistic; they include desires for satisfactions for oneself - which God is believed to have given or to be going to give. Other motives may be desires for satisfaction for other people; these may be called altruistic. Still other motives might not be desires for anyone’s satisfaction, but might be valuations of certain kinds of action for their own sakes; these might be called idealistic. I do not think my argument depends heavily on this particular classification, but it seems plausible that all of these types, and perhaps others as well, might be distinguished among the motives for a religious person’s ethical position . Obviously such motives might pull one in different directions, conflicting with one another. But in Judeo-Christian ethics beliefs about what God does in fact will (although He could have willed otherwise) are supposed to enable one to fuse these motives, so to speak , into one’s devotion to God and His will, so that they all pull together. Doubtless the believer will still have some motives which conflict with his loyalty to God . But the religious ideal is that these should all be merely momentary desires and impulses, and kept under control. They ought not to be allowed to influence voluntary action. The deeper, more stable, and controlling desires, intentions, and psychic energies are supposed to be fused in devotion to God. As I interpret it, however, it need not be inconsistent with the Judeo-Christian ethical and religious ideal that this fusion of motives, this integration of moral energies, depends on belief in certain propositions which are taken to be contingent truths about God . Lest it be thought that I am proposing unpre cedented theological positions, or simply altering Judeo-Christian religious beliefs to suit my theories, I will call to my aid on this point a theologian known for his insistence on the sovereignty of God . Karl Barth seems to me to hold a divine command theory of ethics. But when he raises the question of why we should obey God , he rejects with scorn the suggestion that God’s power provides the basis for His claim on us. “By deciding for God [man] has definitely decided not to be obedient to power as power.»10 God’s claim on us is based rather on His grace. “God calls us and orders us and claims us by being gracious to us in Jesus Christ , » n I do not mean to suggest that Barth would agree with everything I have said about motivation, or that he offers a lucid account of a divine command theory. But he does agree with the position I have proposed on this point, that the believer’s loyalty is not to be construed as a loyalty to God as allpowerful, nor to God whatever He might conceivably have willed. It is a loyalty to God as having a certain attitude toward us, a certain will for us, which God was free not to have, but to which, in Barth’s view, He has committed Himself irrevocably in Jesus Christ. The believer’s devotion is not to merely possible commands of God as such, but to God’s actual (and gracious) will. - V The ascription of moral qualities to God is commonly thought to cause problems for divine command theories of ethics. It is doubted that God , as an agent, can properly be called “good ” in the moral sense if He is not subject to a moral law that is not of His own making. For if He is morally good , mustn’t He do what is right because it is right? And how can He do that, if what’s right is right because He wills it ? Or it may be charged that divine command theories trivialize the claim that God is good . If “X is (morally ) good ” means roughly “X does what God wills,” then “God is ( morally ) good ” means only that God does what He wills - which is surely much less than people are normally taken to mean when they say that God is ( morally ) good. In this section I will suggest an answer to these objections. Surely no analysis of Judeo-Christian ethical discourse can be regarded as adequate which does not provide for a sense in which the believer can seriously assert that God is good. Indeed an adequate analysis should provide a plausible account of what believers do in fact mean when they say, “God is good .” I believe that a divine command theory of ethical (rightness and ) wrongness can include such an account. I will try to indicate its chief features. (1) In saying “God is good ” one is normally expressing a favorable emotional attitude toward God. I shall not try to determine whether or not this is part of the meaning of “God is good ”; but it is normally, perhaps almost always, at least one of the things one is doing if one says that God is good . If we were to try to be more precise about the type of favorable emotional attitude normally expressed by “God is good ,” I suspect we would find that the attitude expressed is most commonly one of gratitude. (2) This leads to a second point, which is that when God is called “good ” it is very often meant that He is good to us, or good to the speaker. “Good ” is sometimes virtually a synonym for “kind .” And for the modified divine command theorist it is not a trivial truth that God is kind. In saying that God is good in the sense of “kind,” one presupposes, of course, that there are some things which the beneficiaries of God’s goodness value. We need not discuss here whether the beneficiaries must value them independently of their beliefs about God’s will. For the modified divine command theorist does admit that there are some things which believers value independently of their beliefs about God’s commands. Nothing that the modified divine command theorist says about the meaning of ( “ right ” and ) “wrong” implies that it is a trivial truth that God bestows on His creatures things that they value. (3) I would not suggest that the descriptive force of “good ” as applied to God is exhausted by the notion of kindness. “God is good ” must be taken in many contexts as ascribing to God , rather generally, qualities of character which the believing speaker regards as virtues in human beings. Among such qualities might be faithfulness, ethical consistency, a forgiving disposition, and, in general, various aspects of love, as well as kindness. Not that <@) Robert Merrihew Adams there is some definite list of qualities, the ascription of which to God is clearly implied by the claim that God is good . But saying that God is good normally commits one to the position that God has some important set of qualities which one regards as virtues in human beings. ( 4) It will not be thought that God has all the qualities which are virtues in human beings. Some such qualities are logically inapplicable to a being such as God is supposed to be. For example, aside from certain complications arising from the doctrine of the incarnation, it would be logically inappropriate to speak of God as controlling His sexual desires. ( He doesn’t have any .) And given some widely held conceptions of God and His relation to the world , it would hardly make sense to speak of Him as courageous. For if He is impassible and has predetermined absolutely everything that happens He has no risks to face and cannot endure ( because He cannot suffer ) pain or displeasure. 12 Believers in God’s goodness also typically think He lacks some human virtues which would not be logically inapplicable to a being like Him . A virtuous man, for instance, does not intentionally cause the death of other human beings, except under exceptional circumstances. But God has intentionally brought it about that all men die. There are agonizing forms of the problem of evil; but I think that for most Judeo-Christian believers (especially those who believe in life after death ) , this is not one of them . They believe that God ’s making men mortal and His commanding them not to kill each other, fit together in a larger pattern of harmonious purposes. How then can one distinguish between human virtues which God must have if He is good and human virtues which God may lack and still be good ? This is an interesting and important question, but I will not attempt here to formulate a precise or adequate criterion for making the distinction . I fear it would require a lengthy digression from the issues with which we are principally concerned . ( 5 ) If we accept a divine command theory of ethical rightness and wrongness, I think we shall have to say that dutifulness is a human virtue which , like sexual chastity, is logically inapplicable to God . God cannot either do or fail to do His duty, since He does not have a duty - at least not in the most important sense in which human beings have a duty . For He is not subject to a moral law not of His own making. Dutifulness is one virtuous disposition which men can have that God cannot have. But there are other virtuous dispositions which God . (472 ) can have as well as men . Love, for instance. It hardly makes sense to say that God does what He docs because it is right . But it does not follow that God cannot have any reason for doing what He docs. It does not even follow that He cannot have reasons of a type on which it would be morally virtuous for a man to act. For example, He might do something because He knew it would make His creatures happier. ( 6) The modified divine command theorist must deny that in calling God “ good ” one presupposes a standard of moral rightness and wrongness superior to the will of God , by reference to which it is determined whether God ’s character is virtuous or not . And I think he can consistently deny that . He can say that morally virtuous and vicious qualities of character are those which agree and conflict , respectively, with God ’s commands, and that it is their agreement or disagreement w ith God’s commands that makes them virtuous or vicious. But the believer normally thinks he has at least a general idea of what qualities of character are in fact virtuous and vicious (approved and disapproved by God ). Having such an idea, he can apply the word “good ” descriptively to God , meaning that ( with some exceptions, as I have noted ) God has the qualities which the believer regards as virtues, such as faithfulness and kindness. I will sum up by contrasting what the believer can mean when he says, “Moses is good , ” with w hat he can mean when he says, “ God is good ,” according to the modified divine command theory . When the believer says, “ Moses is good ,” ( a ) he normally is expressing a favorable emotional attitude toward Moses normally , though perhaps not always. ( Sometimes a person’s moral goodness displeases us. ) ( b ) He normally implies that Moses possesses a large proportion of those qualities of character which are recognized in the religiousethical community as virtues, and few if any of those which are regarded as vices ( c ) He normally implies that the qualities of Moses’ character on the basis of w hich he describes Moses as good arc qualities approved bv God . When the believer says, “God is good ,” ( a ) he normally is expressing a favorable emotional attitude toward God - and I think exceptions on this point w'ould be rarer than in the case of statements that a man is good ( b ) He normally is ascribing to God certain qualities of character. He may mean primarily that God is kind or benevolent, that He is good to human beings or certain ones of them . Or he may mean that God possesses ( with some , , exceptions) those qualities of character which are regarded as virtues in the religious-ethical community. (c) Whereas in saying, “Moses is good,” the believer was stating or implying that the qualities of character which he was ascribing to Moses conform to a standard of ethical rightness which is independent of the will of Moses, he is not stating or implying that the qualities of character which he ascribes to God conform to a standard of ethical rightness which is independent of the will of God . VI As I noted at the outset, the divine command theory of ethical wrongness, even in its modified form, has the consequence that believers and nonbelievers use the word “ wrong” with different meanings in ethical contexts, since it will hardly be thought that nonbelievers mean by “ wrong” what the theory says believers mean by it. This consequence gives rise to an objection. For the phenomena of com mon moral discourse between believers and nonbelievers suggest that they mean the same thing by “ wrong” in ethical contexts. In the present section I shall try to explain how the modified divine com mand theorist can account for the facts of common ethical discourse. I will first indicate what I think the troublesome facts are. Judeo-Christian believers enter into eth ical discussions with people whose religious or antireligious beliefs they do not know. It seems to be possible to conduct quite a lot of ethical discourse, with apparent understanding, without knowing one’s partner’s views on religious issues. Believers also discuss ethical questions with persons who are known to them to be nonbelievers. They agree with such persons, disagree with them, and try to persuade them, about what acts are morally wrong. (Or at least it is normally said, by the participants and others, that they agree and disagree about such issues.) Believers ascribe, to people who are known not to believe in God , beliefs that certain acts are morally wrong. Yet surely believers do not suppose that nonbelievers, in calling acts wrong, mean that they are contrary to the will or command ments of God . Under these circumstances how can the believer really mean “contrary to the will or commandments of God ” when he says “ wrong”? If he agrees and disagrees with nonbelievers about what is wrong, if he ascribes to them beliefs that certain acts are wrong, must he not be using “ wrong” in a nontheological sense ? - - - - What I shall argue is that in some ordinary ( and I fear imprecise) sense of “mean,” what believers and nonbelievers mean by “ wrong” in ethical contexts may well be partly the same and partly different. There are agreements between believers and nonbelievers which make common moral discourse between them possible. But these agreements do not show that the two groups mean exactly the same thing by “ wrong.” They do not show that “contrary to God’s will or commands” is not part of what believers mean by “ wrong.” Let us consider first the agreements which make possible common moral discourse between believers and nonbelievers. ( 1 ) One important agreement, which is so obvious as to be easily overlooked , is that they use many of the same ethical terms - “ wrong,” “ right,” “ought,” “duty,” and others. And they may utter many of the same ethical sentences, such as “Racial discrimination is morally wrong.” In determining what people believe we rely very heavily on what they say ( when they seem to be speaking sincerely ) - and that means in large part, on the words that they use and the sentences they utter. If I know that somebody says, with apparent sincerity, “Racial discrimination is morally wrong,” I will normally ascribe to him the belief that racial discrimination is morally wrong, even if I also know that he does not mean exactly the same thing as I do by “ racial discrimination ” or “ morally wrong.” Of course if I know he means something completely different, I would not ascribe the belief to him without explicit qualification. I would not claim that believers and nonbelievers use all the same ethical terms. “Sin,” “law of God ,” and “Christian,” for instance, occur as ethical terms in the discourse of many believers, but would be much less likely to occur in the same way in nonbelievers’ discourse. (2 ) The shared ethical terms have the same basic grammatical status for believers as for nonbelievers, and at least many of the same logical connections with other expressions. Everyone agrees, for instance, in treating “wrong” as an adjective and “Racial discrimination is morally wrong” as a declarative sentence. “( All) racial discrimination is morally wrong” would be treated by all parties as expressing an A-type ( universal affirmative) proposition, from which consequences can be drawn by syllogistic reasoning or the predicate calculus. All agree that if X is morally wrong, then it isn’t morally right and refraining from X is morally obligatory. Such grammatical and (473) Robert Merrihew Adams formal agreements arc important to common moral discourse. ( 3) There is a great deal of agreement , among believers and nonbelievers, as to what types of action they call “ wrong” in an ethical sense and I think that that agreement is one of the things that make common moral discourse possible. 1 It is certainly not complete agreement. Obviously there is a lot of ethical disagreement in the world . Much of it cuts right across religious lines, but not all of it docs. There are things which are typically called “ wrong ” by members of some religious groups, and not by others. Nonetheless there arc types of action which everyone or almost everyone would call morally wrong - such as torturing someone to death because he accidentally broke a small window in your house. Moreover any two people ( including any one believer and one nonbeliever ) arc likely to find some actions they both call wrong that not everyone does. I imagine that most ethical discussion takes place among people whose area of agreement in what they call wrong is relatively large. There is probably much less agreement about the most basic issues in moral theory than there is about many ethical issues of less generality . There is much more unanimity in what people (sincerely ) say in answer to such questions as “ Was what Hitler did to the Jews w rong? ” or “ Is it normally wrong to disobey the laws of one’s country ? ” than in what they (sincerely ) say in answer to such questions as “ Is it always right to do the act which will have the best results? ” or “ Is pleasure the only thing that is good for its own sake ? ” The issue between adherents and nonadherents of divine command ethics is typical of basic issues in ethical and mctaethical theory in this respect . ( 4 ) The emotional and volitional attitudes normally expressed by the statement that something is “ wrong” are similar in believers and nonbelievers. They are not exactly the same; the attitudes typically expressed by the believer’s statement that something is “ wrong” are importantly related to his religious practice and beliefs about God , and this doubtless makes them different in some way s from the attitudes expressed by nonbelievers uttering the same sentence. But the attitudes arc certainly similar, and that is important for the possibility of common moral discourse. ( 5 ) Perhaps even more important is the related fact that the social functions of a statement that something is ( morally ) “ wrong” are similar for be- . ( 474) lievers and nonbelievers . To say that something someone else is known to have done is “ wrong” is commonly to attack him . If you say that something you are known to have done is “ wrong,” you aban don certain types of defense. To say that a public policy is “ wrong” is normally to register oneself as opposed to it, and is sometimes a signal that one is w illing to be supportive of common action to change it. These social functions of moral discourse arc extremely important. It is perhaps not surprising that we are inclined to say that two people agree with each other w'hen they both utter the same sentence and thereby indicate their readiness to take the same side in a conflict . Let us sum up these observations about the con ditions which make common moral discourse between believers and nonbelievers possible . ( 1 ) They use many of the same ethical terms, such as “ wrong. ” ( 2 ) They treat those terms as having the same basic grammatical and logical status, and many of the same logical connections with other expressions. ( 3) They agree to a large extent about what types of action are to be called “ wrong. ” To call an action “ wrong” is, among other things, to classify it with certain other actions, and there is considerable agreement between believers and nonbelievers as to what actions those are. ( 4 ) The emotional and volitional attitudes which believers and non believers normally express in saying that something is “ wrong” are similar, and ( S ) saying that something is “ wrong” has much the same social functions for believers and nonbelievers. So far as 1 can see, none of this is inconsistent w ith the modified divine command theory of ethical wrongness. According to that theory there are several things which arc true of the believer’s use of “ wrong” which cannot plausibly be supposed to be true of the nonbeliever’s. In say ing, “ X is w rong,” the believer commits himself (subjectively, at least , and publicly if he is know n to be a believer ) to the claim that X is contrary to God’s will or commandments. The believer will not say that any thing would be wrong, under any possible circumstances, if it were not contrary to God ’s will or commandments. In many contexts he uses the term “ wrong” interchangeably with “against the will of God ” or “ against the commandments of God .” The heart of the modified divine command theory, I have suggested , is the claim that when the believer says, “ X is w rong, ” one thing he means to be doing is stating a nonnatural objective fact about X, and the nonnatural objective fact he means to A Modified Divine Command Theory be stating is that X is contrary to the will or commandments of God . This claim may be true even though the uses of “ wrong” by believers and nonbelievers are similar in all five of the ways pointed out above. Suppose these contentions of the modified divine command theory are correct. ( I think they are very plausible as claims about the ethical discourse of at least some religious believers. ) In that case believers and nonbelievers surely do not mean exactly the same thing by “X is wrong” in ethical contexts. But neither is it plausible to suppose that they mean entirely different things, given the phenomena of common moral discourse. We must suppose, then , that their meaning is partly the same and partly different. “Contrary to God’s will or commands” must be taken as expressing only part of the meaning with which the believer uses “ wrong.” Some of the similarities between believers’ and nonbelievers’ use of “ wrong” must also be taken as expressing parts of the meaning with which the believer uses “ wrong.” This view of the matter agrees with the account of the modified divine command theory in Section III above, where I pointed out that the modified divine command theorist cannot mean exactly the same thing by “ wrong” that he means by “contrary to God’s commands. ” We have here a situation which commonly arises when some people hold , and others do not hold , a given theory about the nature of something which everyone talks about. The chemist, who believes that water is a compound of hydrogen and oxygen , and the man who knows nothing of chemistry, surely do not use the word “ water ” in entirely different senses; but neither is it very plausible to suppose that they use it with exactly the same meaning. I am inclined to say that in some fairly ordinary sense of “ mean,” a phenomenalist, and a philosopher who holds some conflicting theory about what it is for a physical object to exist, do not mean exactly the same thing by “There is a bottle of milk in the refrigerator.” But they certainly do not mean entirely different things, and they can agree that there is a bottle of milk in the refrigerator. VII These remarks bring us face to face with some important issues in the general theory of analysis and meaning. What are the criteria for determining whether two utterers of the same expression mean exactly the same thing by it, or something partly different, or something entirely different ? What is the relation between philosophical analyses, and philosophical theories about the natures of things, on the one hand, and the meanings of terms in ordinary discourse on the other hand ? I have permitted myself the liberty of speaking as if these issues did not exist. But their existence is notorious, and I certainly cannot resolve them in this essay. Indeed, I do not have resolutions to offer. In view of these uncertainties in the theory of meaning, it is worth noting that much of what the modified divine command theorist wants to say can be said without making claims about the meaning of ethical terms. He wants to say, for instance, that believers’ claims that certain acts are wrong normally express certain attitudes toward those acts, whether or not that is part of their meaning; that an act is wrong if and only if it is contrary to God’s will or commands (assuming God loves us); that nonetheless, if God commanded cruelty for its own sake, neither obedience nor disobedience would be ethically wrong or ethically permitted; that if an act is contrary to God’s will or commands that is a nonnatural objective fact about it; and that that is the only nonnatural objective fact which obtains if and only if the act is wrong. These are among the most important claims of the modified divine command theory perhaps they include the very most important . But in the form in which I have just stated them, they are not claims about the meaning of ethical terms. I do not mean to reject the claims about the meanings of terms in religious ethical discourse which I have included in the modified divine command theory . In the absence of general solutions to general problems in the theory of meaning, we may perhaps say what seems to us intuitively plausible in particular cases. That is presumably what the modified divine command theorist is doing when he claims that “contrary to the will or commands of God ” is part of the meaning of “(ethically ) wrong” for many Judeo-Christian believers. And I think it is fair to say that if we have found unresolved problems about meaning in the modified divine command theory, they are problems much more about what we mean in general by “ meaning” than about what Judeo-Christian believers mean by “ wrong. » 14 <4DD Robert Merrihew Adams Notes 1 Guillelmus de Occam, Super 4 libros sententiarum , bk. II, qu. 19, O, in vol. IV of his Opera plurima (Lyon, 1494 6; reimpression en facsimile, Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg Press, 1962). I am not claiming that Ockham held a divine command theory of exactly the same sort that I have been discussing. 2 Perhaps he will even think it is causally possible, but I do not regard any view on that issue as an integral part of the theory . The question whether it is causally possible for God to act “out of character” is a difficult one which we need not go into here. 3 Moore took goodness and badness as primitive, rather than rightness and wrongness; but that need not concern us here. 4 The mention of moral law in the last of these reasons may presuppose the ability to mention concepts of moral right and wrong, which may or may not be theological and which may or may not be concepts one uses oneself to make judgments of right and wrong. So far as I can see, it does not presuppose the use of such concepts to make judgments of right and wrong, or one’s adoption of them for such use, which is the crucial point here. 5 The independence ascribed to these attitudes is not a genetic independence . It may be that the person would not have come to have some of them had it not been for his religious beliefs. The point is that he has come to hold them in such a way that his holding them does not now depend entirely on his beliefs about God’s commands. 6 I take A. C. Ewing to be offering an objection of this type on p. 112 of his book Ethics (London: English Univs. Press, 1953). — 7 I quote from John Yolton’s edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2 vols. ( London and New York: Everyman’s Library, 1967). 8 In God and the Soul (London: Routledge, 1969), ch. 9. 9 G. E. M . Anscombe, “ Modern Moral Philosophy,” Philosophy, XXXIII (1958), pp. 1-19. 10 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics , vol. II, pt. 2, trans. G. W. Bromiley and others ( Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark , 1957), p. 553. 11 Ibid., p. 560. 12 The argument here is similar to one which is used for another purpose by Ninian Smart in “Omnipotence, Evil, and Superman,” Philosophy , XXXVI (1961), reprinted in Nelson Pike, ed ., God and Evil (Engle wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp . 103-12. I do not mean to endorse the doctrines of divine impassibility and theological determinism. 13 Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 2 nd edn . (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), pt . I, sec. 242: “If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound ) in judgments.” In contemporary society I think it may well be the case that because there is not agreement in ethical definitions, common ethical discourse requires a measure of agreement in ethical judgments. (I do not mean to comment here more broadly on the truth or falsity of Wittgenstein’s statement as a statement about the conditions of linguistic communication in general.) 14 I am indebted to many who have read , or heard , and discussed versions of this essay, and particularly to Richard Brandt , William Frankena, John Reeder, and Stephen Stich , for helpful criticisms. -