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Autonomy and theological ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Merrihew Adams
Robert Merrihew Adams
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, The University of California, Los Angeles
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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
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 191 - 194
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