Obedience to God out of gratitude

Some philosophers want to ground our duty to obey God’s commands in the need to show gratitude to God for all the goods God has done for us. I think there is something to that, but I want to point out a complication.

When someone has done something good for us, that generates moral reasons to do something good for them. But that is different from generating moral reasons to obey their commands. After all, being obeyed need not be good for the person issuing the commands. Imagine that you are on a ship along with someone who has already done many good things for you and your family. The ship is sinking. There is one last space left in a lifeboat. You start to push your benefactor into that space. Your benefactor interrupts: “Don’t! Get into it yourself!” In this case, it would be bad for your benefactor for you to obey their commmand, and obedience to this command would not, I think, be a right expression of gratitude. You might have other moral reasons to obey the command, such as that if someone is offering to make the ultimate sacrifice, you should not deprive them of that choice. But gratitude for past benefits is not a reason to obey your benefactor when your benefactor would not in fact benefit from your obedience.

So the mere fact that you are commanded something by your benefactor does not generate a gratitude-based reason for obedience. It is only when your benefactor would benefit from your obedience that such a reason is generated.

Now things get a little complicated in the case of God. It seems we cannot benefit God, as God has perfect beatitude. But as we learn from Aquinas’ discussion of love for God, it’s more complicated than that. There are internal and external benefits and harms a person might receive. Internal benefits and harms affect the person’s intrinsic properties in a positive way—think here of pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, etc. But there are external benefits and harms: when people speak badly about you behind your back, the loss of reputation is an external harm, even if you never find out about it and it never affects any intrinsic property of yours. Similarly, because friends are other selves, if x loves y, then benefits and harms to y are benefits and harms to x, albeit perhaps only external ones. Thus, we can benefit God by benefiting those that God loves, namely everyone.

So, when God commands us—as in fact he does—to love our neighbor, then our obedience to that command does benefit God, albeit externally. So it seems we do have a gratitude-based moral reason to do what God says. But notice that as far as the argument goes right now, that is not a reason to love our neighbor out of obedience to God. The reason to love our neighbor out of gratitude to God would remain even if God did not command us to love our neighbor.

But this isn’t the whole story. For, first, when we show gratitude to a benefactor by bestowing some internal or external benefits on them, gratitude seems to call on us to have a preference for bestowing those benefits that the benefactor asks us to bestow. Thus, the fact that some benefit to the benefactor is requested by the benefactor adds to the gratitude-based reasons for bestowing that benefit. And, second, it seems plausible that having one’s commands be obeyed is itself an external benefit—it is a way of being honored.

Thus, that God has commanded us to love our neighbor intensifies our reasons based on gratitude to God to love our neighbor. And even if God were to command something seemingly arbitrary and not in itself beneficial, like abstinence from pork, we externally benefit God insofar as we obey him. But in the latter case something stronger is needed than that: for the obedience to be a form of gratitude, it needs to be the case that on balance we benefit God through the obedience. That being obeyed is good as far as it goes does not show that being obeyed is on balance good. It is good as far as it goes for our benefactor to be obeyed when they say to go into the lifeboat, but it might actually on balance be better for them to be pushed into the lifeboat.

Thus there is a limit to how far this justification of divine authority goes. If we obey God out of gratitude, our reason for obedience cannot simply consist in the facts that God has commanded us and that God has bestowed great benefits on us. Our reason would also need to include the fact that on balance it bestows a benefit—an external one, to be sure—on God if we obey.

Is it the case that whenever God commands something, it always bestows a benefit on balance on God that we obey him? That initially sounds like a reasonable thesis, but we can easily imagine cases where it is not so. Consider cases where my disobedience to God would prevent massive disobedience by others. For instance, a malefactor offers me a strong temptation to disobey God, and tells me that if I refuse the temptation, then a thousand other people will be offered the same temptation, but if I give in, I will be the only one. Looking at how strong the temptation is, I conclude that if it’s offered to a thousand people, about 500 of them will succumb to it. Thus, if I obey God, there will be much less obedience of God in the world. Hence, my obedience to God actually leads to God being less honored and receiving less external benefit. But nonetheless I need to obey. Hence, the duty of obedience is not grounded in gratitude.

In summary: Normally, gratitude does give us moral reason to obey God. But if I am right, then the moral reason to obey God that comes from gratitude needs to include the assumption that it is good for God to be obeyed. And we can imagine cases where that assumption is false and yet obedience is still required.

Divine command theory and atheism

Suppose that the captain impersonates an admiral and yells: “Turn hard to starboard!” The sailors ought to turn hard to starboard and the captain had the authority to command them this. But nonetheless the captain has failed to issue a valid order. For in order to issue a valid order, the captain needs to make herself heard as the captain. The sailors’ obligation to turn to starboard is not a command-obligation but rather is an obligation of conscience to do what one believes, correctly or not, to be the commands of legitimate authority. A sailor who refused to turn would be acting badly, but would not be disobeying an order: she wouldn’t be disobeying the captain’s order, since the captain did not order anything qua captain, or the admiral’s order, since the admiral didn’t order anything.

The same thing would be true, though perhaps less clearly, if the admiral impersonated the captain and told the crew to turn to starboard. The admiral had the authority to issue the order (or so I assume), but to do that she would have to have made herself heard as the admiral.

Similarly, if the captain is a telepath and induces in the helmsman a strong moral belief that he should turn the ship to starboard, no order has been issued to the helmsman. If the helmsman refuses to turn, he is disobeying conscience but he is not disobeying the captain.

Now, consider the command version of the divine command theory: God’s commands (rather than will) define moral obligation. Now we have a prima facie problem with atheists. The atheist believes in an obligation to refrain from stealing, but is not aware of it as a divine command. Therefore, it seems that no command has been validly issued to the atheist: the case seems relevantly like that of the telepath captain. Thus it follows that on the command version of the divine command theory, the atheist has no obligations.

This was a bit too quick, however. For a promulgation condition on commands that requires actual cognitive uptake is too strong. If the captain is yelling orders as captain but the helmsman has deliberately plugged her ears so as not to hear the orders, the helmsman’s failure to hear does not impugn the validity of the orders.

But suppose instead that the helmsman is hard of hearing due to a recent explosion, and the captain whispers the order while knowing the helmsman won’t hear it. In this case, the order is invalid. It seems, roughly, that if the captain could easily make the command heard as her command but does not do so, and the failure to hear it as her command is not something the other party is antecedently at fault for, then the command is invalid.

Now, it seems that there are atheists who are not at fault for their atheism, and whose failure to hear divine commands as divine commands is not something they are at fault for. But God could easily (everything is easy to an omnipotent being) make them hear them as such. So, on the command version of divine command theory, these atheists have never been validly commanded, and hence have no obligations—which is clearly false.

Maybe I will get some pushback on the claim that there are atheists who are not at fault for atheism. Let’s consider, then, the case of Alice, a life-long atheist who is at fault for her atheism and who was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. Then, at some point t₁ of time, Alice did the first thing that made her be at fault for her atheism and/or her failure to be aware of divine commands as divine commands. Perhaps an argument for theism was being offered to her by Bob, but she refused to listen to Bob out of racism.

Now to be at fault, you have to culpably do something wrong. And, according to divine command theory, the wrong is always a violation of a (valid) divine command. So, at t₁, Alice’s action was the violation of a valid divine command. But at t₁, Alice wasn’t aware of the command as one from God, since we’ve assumed that Alice was never aware of any divine command as a divine command. And Alice’s failure to be aware of the command as one from God was not due to any antecedent fault of hers, since we have assumed that t₁ is the time of Alice’s first action that made her be at fault with respect to this failure.

Thus, it seems that the divine command theorist who takes the command part of the theory seriously has to say that those who are now atheists are atheists because they disobeyed a command from God which they were aware of as a command from God. This is deeply implausible. It is way more implausible than the already not very plausible response to the hiddenness argument that says that all atheists are morally guilty for their atheism.

But perhaps we want to distinguish epistemic from moral fault, and say that a command can still be valid if it fails to be heard due to an epistemic fault that the commander could have easily overcome, even when that epistemic fault does not correspond to a moral one. I do not think this is plausible. Being unable to parse complex sentences might be an epistemic fault. But if I issue a complex command to someone I know to be incapable of parsing such complex sentences, when I could easily have used a simpler sentence with the same content, I do not validly command.

Peter's denial and the ethics of lying

On views on which lying is sometimes permissible, lying to save one’s life from unjust persecution is a paradigm case of permissible lying. But Peter’s lies about his connection to Jesus—his famous three-fold denial of Jesus—fall precisely under that head. So if it is sometimes permissible to lie, it is hard to see how Peter acted wrongly.

Of course, even if lying is sometimes permissible, the purpose behind the lie can be wrong. Was that the case for Peter? I doubt it. Peter’s purpose was not to be suspected of being one of Jesus’s followers. Suppose that he chose a different means to that end, say by dressing in a non-Galilean way and affecting a non-Galilean accent. There would be nothing at all morally wrong with that—that’s presumably the sort of thing missionaries in repressive countries do all the time, without anybody (other than the repressive regime!) thinking it’s wrong.

Perhaps the difference in purpose is the one between (a) Peter not being thought to be one of Jesus’s followers and (b) Peter being thought to not be one of Jesus’s followers. Maybe if Peter affected non-Galilean dress, he would merely be intending (a), whereas his lies were done with the intention of (b). And maybe there is in general something wrong with intending to be thought not to be connected with Christ. Note first, however, that the defender of the permissibility of lying cannot say that the problem is with the intention to deceive. For paradigm cases of lies thought to be permissible are precisely ones where there is an intention to deceive (Nazi at the door cases, say). Second, apart from general worries about the permissibility of intentionally causing false belief, it does not seem plausible to think that it is always wrong to intend to be thought unconnected with Christ. Third, Peter need not have had intended (b): he might simply have intended (a) or he might have intended something in between—that the people he talked to would on balance have evidence that he is not connected to Christ. It does not seem that these subtle distinctions are in play in the Gospels, given that the texts do not tell us which thing Peter intended.

Maybe, though, one can argue that Matthew 10:33 (“If anyone denies me before human beings, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven”) constitutes a special divine command, a sui generis prohibition on lying about one’s connection to Christ. That’s probably the best move for the defender of the permissibility of lying to make. I think there are some problems with this move.

First, we should limit the invocation of special divine commands that go over and beyond the natural law. We should do so both on the grounds of Ockham’s razor as well as on theological grounds. It seems that the crucial difference between the life of the Christian and Old Testament law is that the latter includes many divine commands that go over and beyond the natural law.

In fact, I like the hypothesis there are very few—and perhaps no—divine commands applicable to all Christians beyond the natural law. One might think that, say, the command to be baptized is such. But I am inclined to think not. There are consequences of baptism—grace and the forgiveness of sins. And there are consequences of refusal to be baptized—lack of the grace and the forgiveness of sins. The virtue of prudence requires of us to be baptized, but there need not be any separate divine command. There is, of course, the authority of the Church: we are to obey the elders. However, that is an instance of the authority a community has over its members for the common good of the community. (This community is a special supernatural one, of course.)

Second, the context of Matthew 10:33 is the persecution that the Church will endure. Thus if a new command is being promulgated, it seems likely to be directed at future times when the Church needs to be spreading the Gospel (hence the verse before, about acknowledging Christ before human beings). But Peter’s denial is not a part of that time. The Church has yet to be founded: the death and resurrection of Christ have not yet happened and the Holy Spirit has yet to be sent.

Of course, those of us who think all lying is wrong still have a puzzle. A lie in order to escape unjust persecution even if wrong seems to be a very minor wrong. But the Gospels do not present Peter’s denial as a minor wrong. So there is still the puzzle of where the gravity of Peter’s sin comes from. But here the task seems not to be so difficulty. It is reasonable to think of certain kinds of settings as greatly multiplying the gravity of an offense. To steal something worth less than a day’s wages is a venial sin according to reputable moral theologians. But to steal from a church a cheap mass-produced icon that is worth less than a day’s wages turns the theft into a sacrilege, a much more serious offense. The gravity is explained by the fact that it is a sacrilege, but the wrongness is explained by the fact that it is a theft—if the pastor gave one the icon, one could permissibly take it away and it would have been neither theft nor sacrilege. Similarly, pickpocketing in church is a more serious offense. Thus, I think we can say that Peter’s denial was wrong simply because it was a lie. But it was as wrong as it was because it was a lie about Peter’s affiliation with Jesus.

Role obligations and divine commands

This post pulls out one strand from my argument here and makes it into an independent argument, under the inspiration of Chris Tweedt.

Valid commands are always to be understood in the context of a role, and give rise to a role-obligation in respect of the recipient's role. Thus, a military command gives rise to a military duty, a legal command gives rise to a legal duty, and so on. Divine commands also give rise to a role duty. Let's call this a creaturely duty. A military duty is the duty of the soldier qua soldier. A legal duty is the duty of a subject qua subject (one might prefer "citizen", but that's not right; I am not a citizen of the United States, but I am bound by its laws when living in the United States). A creaturely duty is the duty of a creature (or, better, rational creature) qua creature.

Now, here is a puzzle. Divine command theorists (of the sort that interest me here) tell us to understand moral duty in terms of divine commands. But what divine commands give rise to are creaturely duty. So why not, instead, define moral duty as creaturely duty—as the duty proper to our role as creatures of God—rather than as the content of divine commands? While all divine commands give rise to creaturely duties, it is not particularly plausible that divine commands necessarily exhaust creaturely duties. Imagine a world where God issues no commands, but Jones thinks that God (or: a loving God, if one prefers the Adams version) has commanded him to abstain from beef. Surely Jones has some kind of a duty to abstain from beef, and plausibly it is a creaturely duty. But there is little reason to think that among the creaturely duties only those that arise from divine commands are moral duties. It seems that what gives normative oomph to divine commands is that they generate creaturely duties. But if there could be other kinds of creaturely duties, these would then have the same normative oomph. And even if there could not be any creaturely duties other than duties of obedience to divine commands, it still seems that what does the explanatory normative work is not the command, but the creaturely duty that it gives rise to.

I think analyzing morality in terms of creaturely duty is superior to analyzing morality in terms of divine commands.

For instance, consider the worry that there are some actions that are so bad that they would be wrong even if they were not prohibited by God. There is at least some room for the response that these actions are, nonetheless, violations of a creaturely duty—maybe it is a part of the creaturely role that one not be nasty to those who are equally creatures.

Or consider the idea that God is morally required to keep his promises. While we don't literally want to say that God has a creaturely duty to keep his promises, that's just a matter of words. Let R be the creature-creator role. Then we can say that God has an R-duty to keep his promises (for us, R-duty is creaturely duty; for God, R-duty is creator duty).

I do not endorse the idea of analyzing morality in terms of creaturely duty, because I think all role duties are moral duties (though this controversial claim could be overcome).