Divine Command Theory in Religion
Divine command theory features in the ethics of many modern religions, including Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, as well as being a part of numerous older polytheistic religions. In ancient Athens, it was commonly held that moral truth was tied directly to divine commands, and religious piety was almost equivalent to morality. Although Christianity does not entail divine command theory, it is commonly associated with it. It can be a plausible theory to Christians because the traditional conception of God as the creator of the universe supports the idea that he created moral truths. The theory is supported by the Christian view that God is all-powerful because this implies that God creates moral truths, rather than moral truths existing independently of him, which could threaten his omnipotence.
Read more about this topic: Divine Command Theory
Famous quotes containing the words divine, command, theory and/or religion:
“Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless
successions of diseas’d corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor,
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous
crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings
from them at last.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The theory [before the twentieth century] ... was that all the jobs in the world belonged by right to men, and that only men were by nature entitled to wages. If a woman earned money, outside domestic service, it was because some misfortune had deprived her of masculine protection.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practised.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)