Divine Command Theory and Theistic Activism

If the divine will is not subject to any principle, and God controls all truths including moral truths, morality will be arbitrary at the deepest level. It will not be possible to offer any explanation of why God has willed certain actions rather than their contraries. Throughout the history of philosophical debate there have been many attempts to support the dependence of moral truths on God's command (or divine command theory) and at the same time to avoid this charge of arbitrariness. In the West, one such an attempt has been made by Thomas V. Morris and Christopher Menzel ( 1986 , hereafter M&M), who refer to their position as theistic activism. In this paper I will discuss their view and argue that: 1) their position does not satisfy the requirements of divine freedom, and that 2) to regard moral truths as necessary and unalterable is not adequate.     

A Jewish Modified Divine Command Theory

We claim that divine command metaethicists have not thought through the nature of the expression of divine love with sufficient rigor. We argue, against prior divine command theories, that the radical difference between God and the natural world means that grounding divine command in divine love can only ground a formal claim of the divine on the human; recipients of revelation must construct particular commands out of this formal claim. While some metaethicists might respond to us by claiming that this account leads to an inability to judge between better and worse constructions of the commanded life, we propose that an analysis of the human response to divine love—theological eros—can be the basis for an articulation of a philosophical theology (in our case, negative theology) that can guide the religious believer toward generating particular principles for ethical action that are grounded in an account of divine action. By linking divine command to imitatio Dei, the believer can have confidence that her imitative acts of God are not inaccurate constructions of the commanded life.     

Islam,the Divine Command Theory,and Religious Fundamentalism

ABSTRACT

In 1980, George F. Hourani and, more recently in 2010, Mariam al-Attar argued that Islam is not compatible with divine command theory. They rehearsed some standard objections (namely the objectivity of morality, divine goodness, moral knowledge) targeted against meta-ethical divine command theory taking the Qur’an into consideration, and argued that it should be discarded from an Islamic point of view. In addition, they criticized divine command theory since it involves obedience to God and, therefore, does not allow moral reasoning but rather is the source of religious fundamentalism and violence. Although these objections are powerful when applied to the early Ash?arite version of divine command theory, they are not powerful against recent formulations of it presented by Christian philosophers. For example, a divine command theory like that of Robert Merrihew Adams is well suited to respond to these objections. Thus, divine command theory, in its recent formulations, is a genuine option for Muslims and should be given due consideration.     

Divine Action and Quantum Theory

Recent articles by Nicholas Saunders, Carl Helrich, and Jeffrey Koperski raise important questions about attempts to make use of quantum mechanics in giving an account of particular divine action in the world. In response, I make two principal points. First, some of the most pointed theological criticisms lose their force if we attend with sufficient care to the limited aims of proposals about divine action at points of quantum indetermination. Second, given the current state of knowledge, it remains an open option to make theological use of an indeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Any such proposal, however, will be an exploratory hypothesis offered in the face of deep uncertainties regarding the measurement problem and the presence in natural systems of amplifiers for quantum effects.     

蘸墨绘孔——墨子与康有为的“孔子创教改制”说

尽管学界已累积丰富的康有为研究,但多数研究是关于他的历史意义,属于历史领域的讨论。近年来,哲学领域开始有较多关于康有为思想的讨论,但焦点大体放在康有为的儒学主张及其政治关怀。鲜少有作品关注康有为采取何种论证策略来支持其儒学主张,以及他的论证是否在某种程度上有效或具备系统性。本文认为,康有为在论证上采取诸子学转向的策略,运用先秦诸子尤其是墨子来支持他儒学理论。这一论证策略回避了丐题与循环论证的问题,还因其解释力而具有某种意义上的论证效力。     

别尔嘉耶夫的神观念与创造论

传统神义论近代以来不断受到恶与苦难现实的严峻挑战,不少神学家和思想家开始对传统的神观念和创造论进行重新反思,别尔嘉耶夫作为俄国宗教哲学的杰出代表也对之作了积极的探索。他对传统神学全知全能、水恒不变的神观念进行了严厉的批判,指出这是人类理性客体化的结果,而将神视为精神与个性,并且特别强调神的爱与怜悯、痛苦与受难,强调神与人的相互依存,强调神对人的呼唤,神与人的相遇与交会。在对“从无创有”创造论的诠释中,他提出了“非被创造自由”的概念解释恶与苦难的来源,以避免传统神义论的尴尬。别尔嘉耶夫的神观念与创造论与过程神学和莫尔特曼等人的神学有相通之处,部分思想汇入了现代神学发展的巨流。     

The Divine Child

The divine child of this article is not a concrete person, but rather a part of one’s inner self, a part that is with us from birth, but often unknown to us until some later critical moment in life brings it into our awareness, often as an image in a vivid dream or fantasy. This figure can reveal, and bring with it, an amazing energy, and make felt desires never before known to us, which are now pressing for our awareness—and along with this awareness, a need to live an expanded, more conscious life.     

The Divine Fractal: 1st Order Extensional Theology

Philosophia - In this paper, I present what I call the symmetry conception of God within 1st order, extensional, non-well-founded set theory. The symmetry conception comes in two versions....     

Evolutionary Theologies and Divine Action1

Abstract

Two challenges loom large for efforts to develop a theology of evolution. The first is the problem of purpose: can evolutionary processes, in which chance plays so prominent a role, be understood as the context of God's purposive action? The second is the problem of the pervasiveness of suffering and death in evolution. To the extent that we succeed in responding to the first difficulty by giving an account of how God's purposes are enacted in the history of life, we deepen the conundrum about God's relation to natural evils. In particular, if we embrace evolution as God's clever way of making life make itself, we will find it difficult to sustain the classical theological claim that death is a disruptive interloper in God's good creation.