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Autonomy and theological ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Merrihew Adams
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, The University of California, Los Angeles

Extract

Some theists believe that the moral rightness and wrongness of actions consists in agreement and disagreement, respectively, with God's commands. And even theists who do not hold this meta-ethical view do generally believe that all right action is commanded by God and should be done in obedience to him.1 I wish to respond here to one of the commonest objections to this belief - the objection that it is incompatible with a proper regard for the virtue of autonomy.2

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1979

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References

page 191 note 1 I am indebted to Philip L. Quinn's emphasis on this point. An earlier version of this paper formed part of a presentation at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, at which he was my co-symposiast. For a different approach to these issues, see his interesting article on Religious Obedience and Moral Autonomy’ in Religious Studies, XI (1975), 265–81.Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 I believe this constitutes the most important objection to divine command meta-ethics that I have not discussed in ‘A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness’, in Outka, Gene and Reeder, John P. Jr, eds., Religion and Morality (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 318–47.Google Scholar

page 191 note 3 Graaff, Graeme de, ‘God and Morality’, in Ramsey, Ian T., ed., Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy (London: SCM Press, 1966), p. 34.Google Scholar

page 192 note 1 Leviticus 19:18 and Romans 12:18.

page 194 note 1 Tillich, Paul, The Protestant Era, abridged edition, trans. Adams, J. L. (University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 56f.Google Scholar