Introducing the Book God's Command

 Overview:

The book God's Command[1] by John Hare[2], as its title suggests, seeks to defend the theory of "Divine Command": the theory in which what makes something a moral obligation is that God has commanded it; and what makes something morally wrong is that God has prohibited it. The book takes an intra-religious look at the fundamental foundations of ethics and examines the relationship between the two theories of "Divine Command" and "Natural Law" in the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The author also, with a view to evolutionary psychology[3], suggests that the notion of "Divine Command" will help us understand how morality can remain evolutionarily stable. The book primarily engages with concepts from contemporary philosophy, and the author, employing them, argues that if we ask, "Why should we try to be morally good?" the answer "Because God tells us so" will be a meaningful and acceptable response.

This book will be published by Oxford University Press[4] in 368 pages in late December 2015.

Description of Contents:

This book focuses on the Divine Command theory, particularly on the notion that the condition for something to be morally obligatory is that God has commanded it, and the condition for something to be morally wrong is that God has prohibited us from doing it. John Hare, as a distinguished scholar in ethics and philosophy, directs his attention in the book to the Abrahamic religions. He explains that in these religions, two kinds of understanding are intertwined. The first understanding is that God tells us to do certain things and not to do certain things. The second understanding is that we must figure out for ourselves what we should do and what we should not do. But the main problem has arisen in establishing a correct and proper relationship between these two kinds of understanding. The course of Christian thought surrounding such a problem has led to the creation of two different intellectual traditions: Divine Command theory[5], and Natural Law theory[6].

The author of the book successfully defends a chosen reading of the Divine Command theory, yet nonetheless shows that there are significant commonalities between this theory and certain readings of Natural Law theory. He presents the views of some Christian theologians, especially Karl Barth[7], in this regard, and then extends the discussion of Divine Command theory to the religions of Judaism and Islam. The book concludes by examining recent research conducted in the field of evolutionary psychology. In this section, the author suggests that considering moral obligations as originating from divine command helps us understand how moral conscience can be created in a way that is evolutionarily stable.

Chapters of the Book:

The book is organized into nine chapters following a preface. In the first chapter, the author addresses ethics and religion and the relationship between the two. The second chapter is dedicated to introducing the Divine Command theory, and the third chapter focuses on the subject of well-being[8]. The fourth chapter addresses the question of whether ethics can be deduced from human nature. The fifth chapter is dedicated to examining the views of Karl Barth, the Christian theologian, on divine command. The sixth and seventh chapters respectively deal with the Divine Command theory according to some medieval Islamic thinkers, and the Divine Command theory according to some later Jewish thinkers. In the eighth chapter, the discussion of the relationship between Divine Command theory and evolutionary psychology is brought up. The author has separately provided a summary of the book's contents in the ninth chapter. The bibliography concludes the book God's Command.

About the Author:

John Hare received his BA from the University of Oxford and his PhD from Princeton University. He then taught at Lehigh University[9] and also spent some years working as a staff member for the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. After that, he taught at Calvin College[10] and in 2003 moved to Yale University[11], where he taught in the Divinity School, the Philosophy Department, the Religious Studies Department, and the Classics Department [which deals with the study of ancient Greek and Latin literature, philosophy, and history]. He has authored six books to date, including The Moral Gap[12] (Oxford University Press, 1997) and God and Morality[13] (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

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* This text draws upon material from the description of the book God's Command, published on the Oxford University Press website.

[1] God’s Command

[2] John E Hare

[3] Evolutionary Psychology

[4] Oxford University Press

[5] Divine Command Theory

[6] Natural Law Theory

[7] Karl Barth

[8] Eudemonism

[9] Lehigh University

[10] Calvin College

[11] Yale University

[12] The Moral Gap

[13] God and Morality