Author Question: Explain divine command theory. Use examples, discuss two problems this viewpoint ... (Read 31 times)

LCritchfi · **on:** Jul 14, 2018

Explain divine command theory.

Use examples, discuss two problems this viewpoint raises.

Question 2

What is natural law theory?

How did Martin Luther King Jr. invoke the concept of natural law?

mrphibs · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 14, 2018

Answer to Question 1

- Divine command theory: The view that we act morally when we do what God commands us to do. What is morally right and good (or wrong and evil), is defined simply by God's will; our independent moral sense of right and wrong, good and bad, is irrelevant.
- Answers Plato's question Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? with the second possibility.
- How does one know that the command came from God and not from some other force or as a result of mental illness?
- Why would an omniscient god give a person a command that violated his or her personal ethics or moral upbringing?

Answer to Question 2

- Natural law ethics: The ethical theory based on the view that universal moral values can be discovered in nature by using the faculty of reason.
- Answers Plato's question Do the gods love piety because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? with the first possibility.
- Natural law comes from natural truths, that is, truths rooted in the fundamental nature of what it means to be human, constant across time and across cultures.
- King began his Letter from a Birmingham Jail by invoking the Natural Law argument that when unethical man-made laws conflict with Natural Law, we have a moral responsibility to actively protest these unethical laws for, as St. Augustine contended, an unjust law is no law at all.