Divine voluntarism (Divine command theory) is a series of theories that claim that God is prior to moral obligation and that moral obligation is determined by God's will. Divine voluntarism has to be formulated in a way that it does not have undesirable implications, e.g., that moral obligation is arbitrary and that God's goodness is trivial. Also, while it avoids these undesirable implications, divine voluntarism must not imply that God is, in some way, restricted by moral obligation which exists independently of Him. Divine voluntarism can admit God's sovereignty over moral obligation and avoid making moral obligation arbitrary or God's goodness trivial by admitting various aspects of God's will. Moral obligation is relevant to both God's will for human moral obligation and God's will for human moral good. After all, God's will for human moral obligation is God's willing that His own will for human moral good constitute moral obligation for humans.

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy ushered in a renewed interest in an ethical theory known as the Divine Command Theory of ethics (DC). Consequent to the work of G.E. Moore, philosophers have been involved in metaethics, or how we may ground ethical terms such as “good” and “right”. The traditional DC response is to argue that God is the source of good, and best serves that role in that He is an “ideal observer” of all states of affairs. The question is how is God’s will relevant to determining the moral status of actions? At this point one may distinguish between what God wills and what God in fact commands. However, the contemporary debate is to determine whether it is God’s commands or God’s will that is primary in determining moral obligation. The most vivid portrait of this distinction is found in the binding of Isaac. There we note that God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but it is not at all clear that God wills the actual death of Isaac. Thus, in this work I will present and defend a coherent DC view of ethics, whereby our moral obligations are derived from the commands of God. In chapter II I will provide a brief history of philosophers who have endorsed DC. In chapter III I will argue that the best ground for objective moral values is best defined by DC. Chapter IV will be devoted to my particular argument for DC. I will take up the task of defending the traditional command view of DC. Chapters V and VI will be devoted to developing plausible responses to major objections to DC. In chapter V I will attempt a resolution of the famous Euthyphro dilemma, and in chapter VI I will argue that endorsing a DC view of ethics in no way negates the autonomy of the moral agent.

Twentieth-century analytic philosophy ushered in a renewed interest in an ethical theory known as the Divine Command Theory of ethics (DC). Consequent to the work of G.E. Moore, philosophers have been involved in metaethics, or how we may ground ethical terms such as “good” and “right”. The traditional DC response is to argue that God is the source of good, and best serves that role in that He is an “ideal observer” of all states of affairs. The question is how is God’s will relevant to determining the moral status of actions? At this point one may distinguish between what God wills and what God in fact commands. However, the contemporary debate is to determine whether it is God’s commands or God’s will that is primary in determining moral obligation. The most vivid portrait of this distinction is found in the binding of Isaac. There we note that God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but it is not at all clear that God wills the actual death of Isaac. Thus, in this work I will present and defend a coherent DC view of ethics, whereby our moral obligations are derived from the commands of God. In chapter II I will provide a brief history of philosophers who have endorsed DC. In chapter III I will argue that the best ground for objective moral values is best defined by DC. Chapter IV will be devoted to my particular argument for DC. I will take up the task of defending the traditional command view of DC. Chapters V and VI will be devoted to developing plausible responses to major objections to DC. In chapter V I will attempt a resolution of the famous Euthyphro dilemma, and in chapter VI I will argue that endorsing a DC view of ethics in no way negates the autonomy of the moral agent.

No description available.

No description available.

Christian faith turns on the claim that God revealed Himself in Jesus of Nazareth and that he is the Lord and Saviour for all humanity. This exclusive claim raises many questions in a pluralistic and multi-cultural world. In particular it seems to be both excluding and therefore to presuppose various kinds of violence towards others. This research endeavors to address such questions by seeing what can be learned from the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. Barth is a good test case because of his famous Christological concentration. He is often taken as a paradigm ‘exclusivist’. Situating Barth in his historical and intellectual context I shall argue that Barth formulates a Christologically inclusive humanism that addresses the supposed tolerance of Liberal theology, the actual violence of anti Semitism, secularizing understandings of community and the imperial mentality of Western Christendom towards non-Christian religions. By adapting a scripturally informed rationality which is cultivated in the Christian community, Barth expounds (1) a Christologically based tolerance towards non-Christian others (Chapter one); (2) a covenantal understanding of Jewish-Christian solidarity (Chapter two); (3) an ethic of the neighbours which grounds solidarity with poor, marginalized and oppressed communities (Chapter three); (4) a Christological anthropology which respects the irreducible otherness of others (Chapter four); (5) a politics of community which celebrates the community of near and distant neighbours (Chapter five); and, based on the above understandings, (6) a self-critical theology of religion for grounding interfaith encounter (Chapter six). By way of conclusion, I argue that Barth’s theology should not be understood on postmodern lines but that it accentuates the universal in the particular. For this reason, I claim that Barth’s theology, though Christologically based, is capable of contributing to a global responsibility for building a society of love and justice. As a Chinese scholar, I also argue that Barth can contribute to a burgeoning Chinese theological tradition, advancing a Christologically based humanism in a multi-religious and cultural society.

There was a long-standing consensus that Ockham was a Divine Command Theorist - one who holds that all of morality is ultimately grounded in God's commands. But contrary to this long-standing consensus, three arguments have recently surfaced that Ockham is not a divine command theorist. The thesis of this dissertation is that, contrary to these three arguments, Ockham is a divine command theorist. The first half of the dissertation is an analysis of the three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for virtuous action, whereas the second half is a response to the three contemporary arguments that Ockham isn't a divine command theorist. In a way, the first half of the dissertation gives a prima facie case that Ockham is a divine command theorist; the second half concludes so ultima facie.

No description available.

No description available.

Recent literature seems to have opened up space for naturalistic theistic metaethics in a contemporary context, as proponents of divine command theories have tended to be restricted to either supernatural or theistic non-natural theories within existing taxonomies of normative theory. While perhaps encouraging for theists, would theism add anything substantive to theories of ethical naturalism? In this paper, I examine this question. I argue that theistic naturalism appears to incur certain objections as well as provide a plausible and explanatory constraint on content for theories of ethical naturalism. As a result, a corresponding challenge to non-theistic variants is raised. / Master of Arts / Realists, roughly summarized, are those metaethicists who believe that some moral propositions have truth values, that some (or at least one) of those propositions turn out to be true, and that if rational agents disagree on the truth value of a particular moral proposition, only one of them has the possibility of being correct. Broadly construed, moral realists tend to fall under one of two “tents”, preferring either naturalism (for which moral properties turn out to be wholly natural in constitution) or non-naturalism (which posits that at least some moral properties have, even if only partly, non-natural constituents as part of their make-up. Theists, who base their theories of morality on some facet of the nature or essence (or commands) of God, have tended to either be relegated in philosophical debate to a characterization of “supernaturalism” or to some seldom visited corner of the non-natural “tent” of moral realism. The former tends to limit theistic engagement in contemporary metaethical dialogue such that it can seem (at times) as if theists and non-theists are talking about two different subjects entirely. On the other hand, a non-naturalistic theory of theistic moral realism saddles the view with some fairly difficult metaphysical and epistemological baggage in the form of powerful objections levied against non-naturalistic theories in general. This paper explores another option for theism in light of very recent work by Gideon Rosen, namely his article examining the metaphysical implications of varieties of moral realism, particularly naturalistic ones. This article has already garnered a general characterization (within metaethical research, writ large) as being a “taxonomy” of naturalistic (and non-naturalistic, for that matter) theories. Specifically for my purposes here, Rosen suggests that divine command theory (and theistic metaethics in general) should be understood as being naturalistic in formulation. This would seem to be advantageous to theists, in that their metaethical theories might avoid either the bounded characterization of supernaturalism or the difficult challenges of non-naturalism. However, the theist, should she avail herself of naturalism in this regard, will need to tread carefully. Given that Rosen has couched his 'taxonomy' in terms of metaphysical grounding, I examine some resultant challenges for naturalistic theistic metaethics, concluding they can be overcome, as well as a related objection to non-theistic naturalism that arise as a result of the same grounding discussion coupled with the resources theists can leverage in a naturalistic context.