Asalaamu alaikum,

There is no offence in anything you said; it is right to grapple honestly with this.  So I understand your reservations over these implications of divine command theory.  Let me suggest some things to think about in this regard.

Let's start with the example of Saddam.  People often say that if we take the approach to the Euthyphro problem I mention, asserting that God is omnipotent and the author of the moral law, then God could be viewed as a bully or a tyrant.  Often people will combine this concern with the problem of future contingents and divine foreknowledge, as you have (at least by implication), to suggest that all this would imply God wants people infinitely tortured, and this is not a good view of God.

And this is certainly true when we think of human beings...  Any human being who seemed to be setting up a test some would fail only to be punished severely would seem cruel to us.  It is easy to understand why you would not want to think of God as cruel; hence the worry about divine command theory.

My response is this.  The problem here is that you aren't thinking about God.  You are thinking using analogies from very familiar things, but you should rather look this way:  any being whose judgement you would question concerning salvation isn't God at all.  You're thinking of the Wizard of Oz, or very powerful aliens, that kind of level.  If the Wiz behaved this way we would say, rightly, that he’s a jerk, just toying with Dorothy.  So raise the level; imagine instead a being so vast, so infinite, so absolute, so powerful, the source of all, the creator of every existing thing, the One Cause who makes the causes function as causes -- in short, lift your thought until you are considering a being for whom you would not question the creation of heaven and hell and judgement day and all the rest, a being who is so much that he unifies all those traits revelation asserts but you worry logic forces apart.  Now you’re thinking about God.  Before you were just imagining a powerful entity, behaving like a jerk.

Your own religion has more than enough rational resources to enable this point of view.  I mention only a few things:

(1)  One of God’s beautiful names is al-Mutakabbir.  Applied to a person – indeed, to anyone but God – this Arabic participle mutakabbir means ‘tyrannical’ or ‘arrogant’.  But with the definite article attached it is one of the names of God, because when applied to him, and to him alone, it means ‘The Justly Proud’.

(2) The creation of a just universe entails separating sheep from goats, which entails creating sheep and goats.  Perhaps justice is of so great a character that, were we to fully comprehend it, we would immediately recognize the ‘rationality’ of this arrangement.  Remember too that hellfire is not necessarily eternal for all people according to Islam.

(3) We don’t have any choice about this at all, neither any choice about how the universe is constituted morally, nor about what to believe about God.  In fact, the situation is really much worse than you might suppose at first.  We know the universe works this way because God tells us so; he made heaven and hell and they will not go empty.  Moreover, he made us knowing full well we would sin; he says in Qur’an words that mean roughly: if man did not sin we would have destroyed him and created another creature who did.  And he tells us why:  not simply in order to punish, but in order to forgive those who turn back to him.  But because turning to God and not turning to God are maximally morally different actions, maximally morally significant actions, it must be the case that they have maximally different, significant moral results.  And they do.

Often we avoid these implications because we don’t want to believe we are actually playing for stakes, or we want to have some input into the structure of the game, but we really are, and we really don’t.  And at some level every religious person knows this; the divine command theorist just admits it without flinching.

The Prophet (ﷺ) used to pray:  Allah, I seek refuge with you from the loss of your favor.  Think about this; it is perfect Islam.  It seems illogical, at first:  how can God be a refuge from the loss of his own favor?  If you’ve lost his favor then you’ve lost it; he’s the last one you can ask for it back from.  Except, really, he’s the only one you can ask…   And this, of course, is the whole point.  There is nowhere else to go.

God isn’t a tyrant no matter how he deals with our rejection of his sovereignty because he’s the highest court of appeal, not contingently, but necessarily and absolutely.  The concept of justice reaches no higher, and obtains its very content from God himself.  How many times does God assure us in Qur’an that whomsoever he guides cannot be led astray, and whomever he lets go astray, none can guide him back to the right path?

Christianity also contains sufficient resources to answer this concern, of course.  And Ockham’s approach is correct, if seemingly severe.  For a more ‘filled out’ classical Christian discussion, one might consider Boethius’s Consolatio.

I ask that God great and glorious guide both you and me, and grant us both paradise.
 

Last edited by rondokeele (1/16/2017 9:17 am)

Thank you for the reply:

rondokeele wrote:

You ask about his voluntarism in sense (2), though. It arises in conjunction with his approach to what we call ‘the Euthyphro problem’: is the good good because God wills it, or does he will it because it is good? Ockham will say that the good is good because God wills it. He is a divine command theorist.

Why not weave between the horns of the dilemma and say that God wills something for us because he is good, and his will reflects his nature?

Bill Craig replies to the Euthyphro dilemma this way. (I'm not sure he's published on it, but searching his website yields the following articles.) I think it's probably popular nowadays.

I have some questions about Chatton, but will reserve them for later.

AKG wrote:

Thank you for taking your time to respond Professor:

You are welcome.

AKG wrote:

With all due respect I'm not sure if you have really answered my with regards to the issue of "might makes right" as your answer seems to imply that God cannot be disputed about this simply because He is the most powerful, and holds the answer to our salvation, which to me still seems like an appeal of "might makes right" "or screw the rules I make them",

This is pretty close to my answer.  It's also the answer that the Jews and Christians have in their poem about Job; God says:  I'm God you're not, so shut up.  But not before describing some of what that means:  "Can you hook the Leviathan through the lip?..."

The difference is that I don't think might makes right in general, but that (1) right for us is obedience to God, and (2) I'm not qualified to say what right for God could even mean, nor is any existing being thus qualified.  "God will not be asked; you will be asked."

AKG wrote:

and once again we are back to the issue of an infinite Ubermensch.

Again, aim higher.  I don't think of God as an infinite man with a Napoleon complex.  The phrase 'infinite man' seems contradictory to me anyway.  The answer, again, is to raise your considerations.  Don't worry if unbelievers (or well-meaning believers) taunt you with such odd phrases.

AKG wrote:

In fact your description makes me feel even worse/depressed as now I feel like we are in a terrible/impossible situation where we are thrusted in a situation where we literally have no choice in the matter but to submit to God or face infinite torture which to me kind of makes giving us free will useless as in the end there really is no choice. Knowing this makes me see that if I continue to worship God then it will be ultimately not out of love, but just so He won't send me to Hell, and I have no issue in the matter.

It's an arranged marriage.  Love will come in time.  Don't be sad.  Make your salah, read Qur'an, follow the sunnah.  Worship is not something you do because you feel like it necessarily, or you are motivated to, or anything of the kind.  You do it because God commanded it, and because this your purpose; it is the meaning of your life and my life.  But the universe isn't about you or about me.  It's about our relationship to the originator of the universe, and all else besides.  And the content of that relationship has been laid out with perfect clarity in a reliable, intact revelation, the Qur'an.  There is a kind of sweetness when one surrenders to God, certainly the deepest sweetness I have ever known.

AKG wrote:

God it appears can do whatever He wants, and there is nothing to do about it, giving me a sense of great dread. This seems like something out of Greek Mythology where the gods could do whatever they want to mortals, AND get away with it because they decided their fates in the afterlife, and were more powerful than them. In fact this seems to me just to take the things atheism is criticized for(lack of free will, might makes right), and apply them to Islam. It goes against my moral conscience that morality is something that is a matter of "might makes right" and based arbitrarily

Everything is Islam gives you precisely the opposite view of God; nothing at all like Zeus.  Allah did not fight with his siblings over power, overthrow his father, or any of these absurd lies the Greek mushrikeen tell about God, exhalted is he above all they attribute to him.  If X is based on the command and thought of God then X is not arbitrary at all.  Again, it is telling that your mind is drawn in these worries, not to God almighty, but to Zeus.  And Zeus is an ass.  And God is so far above Zeus that it's not even worth considering.  As to the worry that you don't know what to do, on the contrary, you know exactly what to do, because God sent messenger after messenger, and you follow the last messenger, who told you exactly what to do and who revealed exactly what he was told to reveal.  And the message is simple:  God is, God is One; obey him, be grateful to him, follow the example of the Messenger, etc.  If a person has committed sins then they can ask God to forgive them, and he will.  There is nothing to despair over.

AKG wrote:

I'm not really sure if this is the right way to approach Islam as when the angels ask God why He created Adam, He doesn't answer "don't question me as I'm God", but He shows them why with an example.

Are you thinking of Baqara, aya 30?  وَإِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلَائِكَةِ إِنِّي جَاعِلٌ فِي الْأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً ۖ قَالُوا أَتَجْعَلُ فِيهَا مَن يُفْسِدُ فِيهَا وَيَسْفِكُ الدِّمَاءَ وَنَحْنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَ ۖ
قَالَ إِنِّي أَعْلَمُ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ

God doesn't give them an explanation here, nor does he justify himself.  Just look at that last phrase above (the meaning more or less):  '"God said, 'Indeed I know what you know not.'" Then he has Adam recite the names of things for the angels, and the angels respond exactly correctly to the fact that they cannot: we have no knowledge except what you've given us.

Last edited by rondokeele (1/16/2017 3:40 pm)

Again thanks for your response Professor Keele:

With all due respect, I have to disagree with you regards to this as I think there are ways to ground morality in God without resorting to Divine Command Theory as I admit that I am not convinced by the response you have given as:

I'm not really sure that resolves the problem as much as simply appeals to the irrational. It's basically saying "oh yeah, well what if God was so super super super suuuuuper incomprehensibly amazing that you're compelled to submit to His arbitrary commands through sheer terror, confusion, and awe?"

Professor as with regards to your interpretation of the Surah I would recommend checking out the comments on this article(not the article itself), along with other points on the website in general which focus on reason and Islam rather than arbitrary wills:

https://asharisassemble.com/2015/08/21/isis-and-the-theology-of-rape-and-the-rubbish-responses-by-muslims/

Also with regards to the issue of Divine Command theory do you know how Avicenna, Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Averroes dealt with this issue as I know Avicenna/Averroes stood by intellectualism rather than voluntarism but I have trouble finding readings which elaborate on their works.

Thanks and peace.

I think these post seem really relevant as Dr. Feser really catches my thoughts on the matter as he really makes for me a convincing case why Ockham's interpretation of God, and those like it in Divine Command Theory are not really that good for classical theism.

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2014/11/voluntarism-and-psr.html
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2011/03/razor-boy.html

Last edited by AKG (1/16/2017 4:38 pm)