In “God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams” I mentioned Phillip Quinn’s observation that theists can face a particular dilemma,

“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”

Quinn’s point is that a theist might find himself believing all three of the following propositions:

[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;

[2] God commands X;

[3] It is wrong to do X.

Adams and Kant argued that one should resolve dilemmas of this sort by affirming [3] and denying [2].  I argued in Part I Kant and Part II Robert Adams that this conclusion is unjustified. What Adams does show is that one cannot “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook that we bring to our theological thinking.” [Emphasis added] His position, in fact, suggests that in many cases we should accept divine commands at variance with our moral beliefs. Hence, there may well be times when it is rational to reject [3] and embrace [2].

In this last post I will elaborate Quinn’s answer to this question. Quinn’s position can be seen by contrasting two approaches he takes to specific examples of the kind of dilemma he cites.

The first is Quinn’s response to the dilemma posed by “the sins of the patriarchs” this is the term medieval theologians gave to specific dilemmas they thought they saw in the biblical texts, cases “where God commands something that appears to be immoral and indeed to violate a prohibition he himself has laid down.” Three examples were dominant in medieval discussions. These were: (a) the case of Abraham being commanded to kill Isaac; (b) a command in Exodus 11:2 which was interpreted to be a command to plunder the Egyptians; and (c) the command to Hosea to have sexual relations with an adulteress. (Hosea 1:2, 3:1)

Quinn’s response is to appropriate the response suggested by Augustine, Bernard,   Aquinas and, in most detail, by the 14^th century theologian Andreas de Novo Castro:

“[T]here are actions which, ‘known per se by the law of nature and by the dictate of natural reason, are seen to be prohibited, as actions which are homicides, thefts, adulteries, etc., but, with respect to the absolute power of. God, it is possible that actions of this kind not be sins.’”

Andreas’ claim is that certain actions such as theft, adultery and killing the innocent are wrong and that people know by nature that they are wrong. What he contends, however, is that God could have made them permissible if he choose to do so by simply commanding them.  Moreover, Andreas accepts that in the cases of (a), (b) and (c) God did do this and so on these occasions the actions in question were not wrong.

Quinn notes that a divine command theory makes sense of this. According to a divine command theory wrongness is constituted by the property of being contrary to God’s commands. So where God has issued a command to all people to refrain from P, engaging in P would have the property of being wrong. However, if, in a specific situation, God commands a specific person to do P then P is no longer contrary to God’s commands, for that person, and hence, no longer has the property of being wrong, for that person.

Quinn notes that this does not, as critics contend, open the flood-gates allowing everyone to kill or steal or so on because if a specific individual is commanded to kill or steal or commit a sexual indiscretion for a specific occasion then it is only permitted for that particular individual to perform that act on that particular occasion. Hence, this view is compatible with contending that these actions are generally, and in most cases, wrong. Moreover, nothing about this view requires a person to believe that God ever issued such commands to anyone apart from the specific instances mentioned nor does it require a person to accept any and every claim made by any would be killer, thief or sexually promiscuous person that God has commanded them to act as they do.

People who hold this view can, and typically do, think that cases where God does command such things are extremely rare and that any claim that God has commanded such an action today is unlikely. In fact, they may have theological reasons for thinking such commands would not occur outside of the events recorded in salvation history. Adopting this view, one could even accept that such actions are, for practical purposes, absolutely wrong. All this position entails then is that in specific, rare and probably never to be repeated occasions, these actions have been permitted.

Quinn’s second approach is to respond to an objection made to divine command theory by 17^th century Philosopher Ralph Cudworth. Cudworth objected that the divine command theory makes morality arbitrary, according to a divine command theory, anything at all could be deemed ‘right’ as long as God commanded it. Wes Morriston formulises the objection as follows:

(i) The divine command theory entails that whatever God commands is morally obligatory;

(ii) God could command X;

(iii) so if the divine command theory is true, X could be morally obligatory;

(iv) but X could not be morally obligatory;

(v) therefore, the divine command theory is false.

[ X = the action of torturing children purely for fun]

Quinn’s response here is interesting (and I think substantially correct). He notes that this objection assumes (ii) is true, that it is possible that God could command atrocious things like torturing people for fun. This assumption seems very dubious.

We need to remember that we are not talking about right or wrong as being based on the commands of just anyone, we are talking about God, understood as a being with certain attributes. The most notable of these is His being omnipotent, omniscient, loving, good and just.

So, as God is understood by divine command theorists, the claim that it is possible for God to command people to torture others for fun is true only if it is possible for a morally perfect person, who is fully informed of what he is doing, to command such an atrocious thing.  But this is impossible. As Quinn notes, “If God is essentially just, there will be constraints on the antecedent intentions God can form.” A just being cannot command just anything, hence Cudword’s argument fails.

What is immediately apparent is the contrast between these two approaches. In the sins of the patriarchs case, Quinn has responded to the dilemma by denying [2] on the basis of [3]. He argued that the actions in question are not wrong for these individuals in these contexts because God commanded them. However, regarding the example of torturing children for fun, Quinn has denied that [3] is possible on the basis of his moral judgements about [2], torturing children for fun is the kind of action a loving and just being could not command. Quinn notes the apparent inconsistency,

“Given that I say it is impossible for God to command someone to torture an innocent child just for the sake of amusement, it may seem that I must also say that it is impossible for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, impossible for God to command the Israelites to plunder the Egyptians, and impossible for God to command Hosea to have sexual relations with the sinful woman.”

Quinn’s response is that in the case of torturing children for fun, the most plausible response is to answer that God could not command such a thing; “it would be a mistake to generalize to the conclusion that it is an implausible kind of response in every possible case, including all cases of the immoralities of the patriarchs.” This is because in the case of torturing children for fun Quinn’s response was based on the intuitive insight that it is impossible for an omniscient, loving, just and good being to command such a thing.

However, he notes that our intuitions about different cases differ. While it is intuitively obvious that it is impossible for a perfectly good being to command us to torture others merely for fun, it is not obvious that it is impossible for a good being to ever permit stealing – cases exist where a person might need to steal food in order to avoid their child succumbing to starvation and in such cases it is not obvious that stealing is always wrong.  Moreover, in the case of plundering the Egyptians, the Israelites had just been liberated from slavery and were taking property from those who had held them in slavery. Similarly with Hosea, like Quinn, I don’t find it intuitively obvious that there is no possible world or situation where a good person might permit someone to sleep with an adulteress.  So, these cases are not on par with the case of a command to torture children for fun.

Behind Quinn’s analysis is the epistemic principle he attributed to Kant, “whenever two conflicting claims differ in epistemic status, the claim with the lower status is to be rejected.”  Unlike Kant, however, he does not assume that moral claims will always have a higher status than theological ones. In the case of torturing children for fun the claim that such an action is necessarily wrong has a fairly high epistemic status; the idea that it is wrong to torture children for fun is so central to our understanding of  goodness that denying it would make it impossible to coherently claim a good being commanded it. On the other hand, the claim that God has commanded such a thing or even could does not have a high status. Hence it is sensible to contend that God cannot issue such commands.

In other cases, such as the immoralities of the patriarchs, the contention that the action is wrong does not have a high epistemic status. It is not obvious that our beliefs about it being always wrong to sleep with adulteresses or that it is wrong in any circumstances to steal, have anywhere near the strength our belief about torturing children for fun does. That it is never permissible to steal is a moral judgment. One can coherently deny that a perfectly good being would endorse this judgment and there appears to be some scriptural support for the claim God did command theft on a specific occasion. So, provided the exegetical case for this command having occurred is conclusive enough, one can accept that God commanded it.

Quinn’s approach, I think, also incorporates some of the insights of Adams. Adams argued that in order for [1] to be correct God must be understood as good. Quinn’s response to Cudworth illustrates that Cudworth’s objection fails only because God is essentially good. Similarly, Adams argued that in order to meaningfully say God is good, one cannot attribute to God a set of commands so much at variance with our beliefs about morality that one could no longer coherently claim that a good person had commanded them. Quinn’s response acknowledges that in this sort of situation one would have compelling reasons for thinking that God did not issue the commands in question because accepting God did would be incoherent. What Quinn’s approach adds is that there are also many situations in which our theological beliefs can correct and critique our moral beliefs. We might be quite sure on exegetical grounds that God has commanded some action and coherently believe this; if this is the case then unless we have equal or stronger reasons for thinking the action is wrong, it will be rational to accept God’s command. Quinn’s position, therefore, takes seriously the fact that our moral judgments are fallible and an authentic encounter with God’s will is therefore likely to contrast with some of our moral beliefs.

RELATED POSTS:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams

In “God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant” I mentioned Phillip Quinn’s observation that theists can face a particular dilemma,

“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”

Immanuel Kant argued that when faced with such a dilemma the theist should reject the belief that God has commanded the action and accept the moral belief. This was due to his belief that moral beliefs are more certain that theological beliefs. I contested this claim. More recently Robert Adams has defended Kant’s conclusion. Consider the structure of the kind of dilemma Quinn cites,

[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;

[2] God commands X;

[3] It is wrong to do X.

These three claims contradict each other; like Kant, Adams suggests that the rational person should reject [2]. However, his reasons are somewhat different. Adams persuasively reasons that [1] is true only if God is understood as perfectly good, in the sense of being loving, just and so on. If God were evil or morally indifferent then it would be possible for him to command wrongdoing and so [1] would be false.  This means that a person who accepts [1] must presuppose that God is good.

Adams argues that God cannot be meaningfully said to be good if what he commands drastically departs  from what we consider to be right and wrong. Human beings have some grasp of what constitutes goodness and some grasp of what constitutes right and wrong and it is part of our concept of what is good that a good being does not command wrong doing. Moreover, to call a being good is to attribute to it a character trait that is incompatible with certain other actions, attitudes and so on. Raymond Bradley made the point succinctly in his debate with William Lane Craig “Can a Loving God Send People to Hell?“

“If we were to describe someone such as Hitler as perfectly good despite all his evil doings, we’d be playing word games which are intellectually dishonest as they are morally pernicious. … it would be to deprive the word “holy” of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for “evil.”

This supports Adams’ conclusion that one cannot rationally accept [1] as one implicitly assumes that God does not issue commands at variance with our conception of morality. In Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics he concludes,

“Our existing moral beliefs are bound in practise, and I think, ought in principle, to be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands. We simply will not and should not, accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” [Emphasis original]

As with Kant there is a lot of truth to this; however, Adams’ position has certain limits.  As critics of Adams have pointed out his conclusion is limited. In the paragraph above Adams concludes that “our existing moral beliefs” must be a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands. His justification for this is that we “should not, accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” The phrase “too much” suggests that one can accept ascription of a set of commands that is somewhat at odds with the outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.

Two points Adams makes elsewhere in Finite and Infinite Goods suggest that this limitation on his conclusion is necessary. First, while we do have some grasp of what is good and some grasp of what is right and wrong it is evident that our moral judgements are fallible. Adams calls this the “transcendence” of the good. He states,

“All of God’s commands and judgments are right; God is the ethical standard. But our beliefs (even the most cherished) about them must be distinguished from God’s commands and judgments themselves. To fail to make that distinction is idolatry.”

Adams is surely correct here. While God does not command wrongdoing. It is quite likely that a perfectly good omniscient being would command something contrary to what we think is wrong.  Our moral intuitions are fallible, hence it is possible that some of God’s commands would clash with our own moral judgements. In fact to suggest that God would never command something which we consider to be wrong expresses an incredible hubris. It is to dogmatically assume that we are such good judges of morality that God could never disagree with us. It is to put our own moral judgements beyond question. The existence of some commands that strike us as strange or immoral does not count for much.

Second, our concept of goodness and our judgement about particular cases can be and sometimes is subject to revision. We change our opinions about the goodness and rightness of certain things without “playing word games which are intellectually dishonest” or depriving “the word ‘holy’ of its ordinary meaning and make it a synonym for ‘evil.’”  If this were not the case, one could never honestly or rationally change ones mind on an ethical issue. Nor could people coherently disagree with or persuade one another about moral issues. Adams’ notes this when he writes that he accepts “the possibility of a conversion in which one’s whole ethical outlook is revolutionized, and reorganized around a new center” but “we can hardly hold open the possibility of anything too closely approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places”.

These points, however, quite evidently limit Adams’ conclusion. What his argument, in fact, shows is not that “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands” but rather that certain types of our existing beliefs do this, those so central to our concept of goodness that accepting them would be “approaching a revolution in which, so to speak, good and evil would trade places.” In “A Psychological Constraint on Obedience to God’s Commands: The Reasonableness of Obeying the Abhorrently Evil” James Rissler notes,

“In such an instance, obedience requires that one give up everything one previously believed about morality… one has been commanded to relinquish everything one understands about the nature of goodness, one will have no concept of the good with which to identify Gods command, there will be complete breakdown of between everything one currently affirms about goodness and everything one is asked to believe about goodness.”

Rissler gives two examples; the first is where God issues a command to reverse one’s conception of right and wrong or issues a set of commands, each one of which negates every moral imperative one currently accepts. Second, he suggests that a moral belief might be “sufficiently integral to one’s conception of morality” that abandoning it would force such a radical revision as to destroy one’s concept of goodness all together. Imagine a command to kill everyone around you purely for entertainment or a command that said harming, hurting and inflicting suffering on people for no reason at all is permissible. Consider a command to hate God and despise all other human beings. One cannot accept a system of divine commands where every duty we believe in is declared false nor can we accept a system which suggests that the vast majority of our moral beliefs are mistaken. This would come too close to the problematic revolution Adams talks of.

To sum up, in Part I and II, I have looked at the Kantian approach to the kind of dilemma Quinn sketches. Neither Kant or Adams, I think, establish the claim that in “our existing moral beliefs must serve as a constraint on our beliefs about what God commands.” They did, however, lend support for a weaker thesis. Kant’s argument, for example, does suggest that those moral claims about which we are certain, should serve as such a constraint and I mentioned several beliefs which I consider to be fairly certain as examples.

Adams’ argument on the other hand suggests that we cannot coherently “accept a theological ethics that ascribes to God a set of commands that is too much at variance with the ethical outlook we bring to our ethical thinking.” He argues that we cannot coherently or defensibly accept a theological ethics which, in effect, makes good and evil trade places and which so radically transforms our concept of goodness so that good becomes a synonym for what we call evil or calls our concept of goodness so radically into question that it breaks down. Certain beliefs such as it is prima facie wrong to inflict pain and suffering on others or it is prima facie wrong to treat others with contempt” or it is prima facie wrong to lie, steal and kill are so central to our account of goodness that we cannot coherently accept that a perfectly good being has issued commands that negate them.

In my next post I will look at Philip Quinn’s alternative.

RELATED POST:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part I Kant
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part III Philip Quinn

In “Commonsense Atheism and the Canaanite Massacre“ I addressed a question put to me by Luke from Commonsense Atheism,

“If Matt did think these events happened literally as described in the Bible, would he then conclude that God was an evil monster to command them? Or would he, in the end, agree with Bill Craig that genocide is okay as long as God feels like it?”

In my response I pointed out Craig claims that killing non-combatants in war is permissible if a loving and just God commands it (which is an implication of a divine command theory). This conditional is arguably true. Either it is possible for a just and loving omniscient person to command genocide or it is not. If it is then genocide would only be commanded in situations where a just and loving person, aware of all the relevant facts, could endorse it; under these circumstances it is hard to see how genocide could be evil. On the other hand, if it is impossible for a just and loving omniscient person to ever command genocide then the situation Luke mentions is one with an impossible antecedent. On the standard accounts of counter-factual logic, conditionals with impossible antecedents are true. So far from being absurd there are reasons for thinking this conditional is true.

The question Luke asks is really a species of a larger and important question in theological ethics. In Finite and Infinite Goods Robert Adams notes “A convincing defense of a divine command theory of the nature of obligation must address our darkest fear about God’s commands–the fear that God may command something evil.” Philip Quinn makes a similar point,

“[I]t seems possible that a theist should have both good reasons for believing that God has commanded him to perform a certain action and good reasons for believing that it would be morally wrong for him to perform that action. Thus a theist can be confronted with moral dilemmas of a peculiar sort.”

I suspect Luke is really asking how a theist can rationally respond to a dilemma of this sort. While I do not know what Luke’s opinion on this issue is, a common view is that if a theist has good reasons for believing an action is wrong then any claim that God has commanded should be rejected. The locus classicus for this position is Immanuel Kant; in Reason within the Bounds of Religion, Kant stated:

“Abraham should have replied to this supposedly divine voice: “That I ought not kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, are God — of that I am not certain, and never can be, not even is [read: if] this voice rings down to me from (visible) heaven.”

Similarly, in the Conflict on the Faculties he states he states,

“That to take a human being’s life because of his religious faith is wrong is certain, unless (to allow the most extreme possibility) a divine will, made known to the inquisitor in some extraordinary way, has decreed otherwise. But that God has ever manifested this awful will is a matter of historical documentation and never apodictically certain. After all, the revelation reached the inquisitor only through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have come from God himself (like the command issued to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that on this point error has prevailed.”

Kant, here, is discussing the kind of dilemma Quinn refers to. The dilemma can be spelled out as follows, in certain situations a theist might find him or herself with reason to affirm the following three propositions,

[1] Whatever God commands is morally permissible;

[2] God commands X;

[3] It is wrong to do X.

These three claims cannot all be true, so a rational person must reject one of them; the question is which one? Kant’s answer is that when faced with a dilemma of this sort the theist should reject [2].  It is worth elaborating on his position a bit.

First, note that Kant accepts [1] he grants that if we knew that God commanded the killing of a particular human being, it would be permissible to kill that human being. Kant’s objection is that one cannot be rational in believing that God has, in fact, issued such a command. Philip Quinn notes that Kant’s argument involves an appeal to an epistemic principle: whenever two conflicting claims differ in epistemic status, the claim with the lower status is to be rejected.  Kant contends that moral claims such as “it is wrong to kill innocent people” are certain. However, claims that God commands or forbids a certain action are not certain and never can be. From these points it follows that a rational person will accept [3] and reject [2].

Despite its appeal Kant’s argument is flawed for several reasons. Philip Quinn notes two problems. First, “Kant has an extremely optimistic view of our ability to attain epistemic certainty about principles of moral wrongness,” he thinks we can be certain of moral claims. This, however, is dubious. There are some moral claims of which I am fairly certain. I am certain, for example, that it is wrong to inflict as much pain on another as I can merely for my own entertainment. I am fairly certain that killing, assault, theft and lying are prima facie wrong and can only be justified if some overriding moral reason applies. However, many moral claims are highly controversial and are far from certain at all. Consider, for example, the debate over whether the bombing of Hiroshima was justified because it saved a huge number of lives by ending a war early. While I myself do not share this opinion, I would not say I am certain about it. Similarly, consider moral debates about capital punishment or euthanasia or affirmative action. While I believe there are defensible and justified answers to these questions, I doubt we can claim certainty about answers to these questions.

Second, Kant claims that we can never be certain that God has prohibited a certain action. Quinn notes, “It would thus seem to be well within God’s power to communicate to us a sign that confers on the claim that God commands some intolerant behavior, for example, issuing threats to heretics, a fairly high epistemic status.” If God were to do this then we would have certainty that he had commanded the action. So it is not clear that beliefs about what God wills are always less certain than moral beliefs.

I am inclined to push this criticism further. It seems to me that many sceptical worries that are raised about God and his commands apply with equal force to moral beliefs. Consider three common concerns sceptics raise about religion. One is the claim that the existence of God is not necessary to explain any empirical phenomena. The second is the concern that the claim God exists and has commanded a particular action cannot be empirically demonstrated or proven to exist. The third is the widespread pluralism with regard to both the existence of God and his nature. All three of these worries apply to moral beliefs. The existence of moral properties appears unnecessary to explain any empirical phenomena, almost any empirical phenomena can be explained equally well by accepting that moral beliefs are all false but that people think they are true. Attempts to prove that moral beliefs are true from non-moral premises alone are probably more controversial than any argument for the existence of God. And there is widespread pluralism over whether moral properties exist; nihilists and non-cognitivists deny such properties exist and amongst believers in the truth of moral beliefs, there is widespread disagreement over the nature of morality. Intuitionists contend it is a non-natural property, naturalists contend it is a natural property but disagree over what the natural property in question is, supernaturalists contend it is a divine command or a theological property and so on.

In fact, Kant’s own argument provides an example of this point. Kant argues in The Conflict in the Faculties that we can never be certain that God has commanded an action because,

“the revelation reached the inquisitor only through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have come from God himself (like the command issued to Abraham to slaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that on this point error has prevailed.”

But this is equally true of many moral beliefs, a good amount of what people believe with regards to morality comes to them through the intermediary of human beings and their interpretation. Most westerners belief’s in liberal ideals, such as, the equality of women, opposition to slavery and so are mediated through human beings. Moreover, even if we directly intuit moral properties, it is possible that we are mistaken. Human moral intuitions and judgements are fallible and can err. So in many instances I am inclined to think that the sceptical worries people raise to conclude that theological beliefs are uncertain apply also to moral beliefs. To appeal to these concerns, so as to claim that belief about God’s will is less certain than moral beliefs, is to engage in special pleading.

In my next post I will look at Robert Adams’ defence of Kant’s position and then I will look at Philip Quinn’s alternative.

RELATED POSTS:
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part II Robert Adams
God, Morality and Abhorrent Commands: Part III Philip Quinn

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Of course, as anyone who has read the story knows, God intervened before Abraham carried out the command and prevented him from killing Isaac. It is also true that in the Mosaic laws that follow this passage, the Prophets, the Psalms and the historical books, human sacrifice is condemned. Nevertheless, God still, in this instance, commanded Abraham to kill Isaac. For this reason this story looms large in the criticisms of theological morality. The problem can be expounded succinctly; it seems plausible that Christians are committed to an inconsistent triad;

[1] If God commands an action A then A is morally required;
[2] It is wrong to kill innocent human beings;
[3] God commanded Abraham to attempt to kill an innocent human being.

It is worth noting here that the problem in [3] arises only if one takes the patriarchal narrative in Genesis as literally true, if one assumes that these narratives accurately and reliably convey the actual historical events. Some commentators evade the dilemma by denying this; according to one line of interpretation, the story of Gen 22 is a sort of parable instructing Israel, in an age where infant sacrifice was common, that God did not require such sacrifices and instead required that such piety be expressed through the sacrifice of goats.

If this interpretation is correct the problem evaporates. However, I will not pursue this line here because, while I think there are some interesting questions around whether the proto-history of Gen 1-11 should be understood as literal history, I am not convinced that this applies to the patriarchal narratives. Kenneth Kitchen makes a reasonable case that these narratives are historically reliable. Moreover, even if he is mistaken, it seems clear that anyone who raises this objection must assume this (at least for the sake of argument). If not then there would be no basis for asserting [3] and the dilemma would again evaporate. So, in this post I will assume it as a given that the patriarchal narratives are literally true, that what they describe actually occurred.

As I understand the objection, the objector is offering a reductio ad absurdum. He or she starts by assuming, that the patriarchal narratives are literally true and then derives a contradiction from this assumption. The question then is whether, granting this assumption, such a contradiction actually does arise.

Proceeding on this basis, the obvious problem is that [1], [2] and [3] cannot all be true. Kant and Robert Adams have contended Christians should abandon [3] in favour of [2]. While others such as Quinn and Evans have offered defences of the claim that it in certain situations a person (or at least a person in Abraham’s epistemic situation) could rationally deny [2]. While the philosophical questions here are interesting, in this post I will endeavour to solve the dilemma exegetically. I will argue that while [1] is true, a careful examination of the text shows that the events occur in a certain context. I will then argue that when the context is taken into account, [2] is not correct. In essence, while it is true under normal circumstances that killing the innocent is wrong, in certain unusual circumstances it is not wrong. A contextual interpretation of The Torah suggests it affirms that in the case of Abraham unusual circumstances were in play.

The Command in its Context
In Gen 12:1-2 God reveals;

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

Here Abram is told by a God that he will be the father of an entire nation, one that will have its own country. An obvious implication of this is that Abram will have descendants; he will have a son who will live at least as long enough to have children of his own. The text then implicitly teaches that Abram knew on the basis of a reliable source that his son would live to adulthood.

This point is reiterated in several other encounters between God and Abram. In Gen 15 “the word of the LORD” comes to Abram “in a vision.” Abram’s response is, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.” God’s answer was emphatic, “This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.” Abram is told, and hence knows, that his heir will be a son from his own body, a biological descendant.” The text continues; “He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’”

In the New Testament Paul utilises this incident as a paradigm example of salvation by faith. Paul notes that Abram, at this stage a Gentile, is considered righteous because of his response in faith to God’s revelation. What’s important in this context is that again Abram knows that he will, both, have a biological son and that this son will live at least long enough to have children. Obviously, if his son dies early in life, before he is able to have children, then Abram will not have biological descendants yet it is clear that Abram knew that he would. Moreover, the passage continues with God promising, as part of a covenant, that these things will be so; again Abram knows that his son will live into adulthood.

After this incident, Abram makes the mistake of sleeping with Hagar, which results in her giving birth to Ishmael. This leads to various domestic problems including rivalry between Hagar, Ishmael and Abram’s wife Sarah. However, Abram has another encounter with God; in Gen 17:2-14 we read,

I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”

Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

God promises that Abram’s descendants will be numerous, again implying, very clearly, that Abram’s son will live to adulthood. This promise was signified by a covenant marked by circumcision; it was reiterated by God changing his name from Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of many).

The text goes on however to provide us more specifics in verses 15-19,

God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”

Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” And Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!”

Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”

Here it is made crystal clear; the promise will come through the line of a child called Isaac who will be born through his wife. This seems impossible to Abram due to the fact that his wife is barren. God, however, is emphatic, changing his wife’s name from Sarai (my princess) to Sarah (mother of nations). Abram is again reassured that Isaac will be born and will live at least long enough to have children of his own and will enter into a covenant with God himself. This promise is promised to be confirmed by a seemingly impossible event, a barren woman will bear a child.

In chapter 18 the promise is again reiterated. Abraham is visited by three men who appear to represent God himself. The text records in verse 10, “Then the LORD said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.’” Again the point is made in a crystal clear fashion; Sarah will have a child. Again the strong impression from the surrounding text is that this child will live on to adulthood to have children of his own. Abraham is again reassured that Isaac will survive to adulthood.

If the point has not yet been belaboured enough by the narrative, in Gen 21, when Isaac is born, God again makes it clear to Abraham on the day Isaac is weaned. Abraham is told in verse 12, “Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Again Abraham is reassured that Isaac will live for at least long enough to have children of his own.

This then, is the backdrop to the events described in Gen 22. It is worth remembering that this is all one narrative, the division into chapters and verses that occurs in our modern English version were added centuries later. In the original narrative and in the canonically authoritative forms, the division does not occur. Hence by the time we get to Gen 22 both Abraham and the astute reader know that Isaac is not going to die; both the reader and Abraham know that Isaac will live beyond this day to rear children of his own. This is actually pointed out in the text; just before Abraham goes up the mountain to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham states to his servants in verse 5, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham expected Isaac to return alive.

Just to clinch this point, let me note a final line of evidence; the New Testament teaches that this is the correct way to understand the passage. In Hebrews 11:17-19 it states,

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

Earlier in the same chapter, verses 11-12, the reader is reminded of the promise that Isaac would live to have many descendants. This is significant because Christians do not accept any and all interpretations of the Old Testament, Christians accept as authoritative, the Old Testament as interpreted by the New Testament. One can think whatever they like about Christianity, but this is how Christians are supposed to accept and interpret the story. If one attacks a different interpretation of the passage, one is attacking an interpretation Christians (should) reject, and hence, are not attacking anything Christians (should) believe or are committed to believing. In light of this, I think we can establish the following point, that premise [3] is true provided that a certain context or qualification is understood to apply; namely, God commanded Abraham to attempt to kill his son in a context where Abraham knew that his son would not die but live on after the incident.

At this stage, no doubt, some will scoff; they will contend that they do not believe these stories could be literally true. They do not think God appeared to Abraham and told him any of this or that he did know these things. However, this complaint is beside the point, whether a person believes the story or not, this is what the story says. If a person is to argue that the text, taken literally, is immoral or portrays God a certain way then he or she needs to accurately portray what the text says. Not believing what a text says is one thing, however, misrepresenting what it says and using that distortion as the basis of an argument to a conclusion is another.

In the context of this discussion we are asking, if one takes the text to be literally true then what does it teach? Does it teach that God commanded Abraham to kill his son? The answer here, is that God commanded Abraham to kill his son, in a context where Abraham knew his son would not die but live on after the incident. Commanding killing, in this context needs to be shown as immoral for the objection to gain traction.

Is This Immoral?
I have argued that [3] is true only if a certain context is assumed. I will now ask if [2] is correct, the claim that “It is wrong to kill innocent human beings.” Here again, I think the answer is yes provided a certain context is assumed. Many people will find this answer a little shocking; I think some reflection, however, will show that it is not.

Many of the ethical prohibitions that hold in the actual world do so because of certain facts about the world. Hitting someone in the head, for example, is wrong because, in the world we actually live in, doing so causes pain and harms people. However, if the physical structure of the world was different, if hitting someone in the head actually advanced their health and improved their quality of life, then it would be permissible and possibly even commendable, to hit someone in the head. Of course, none of this shows us that in the actual world hitting people in this way is not wrong, this is because in the actual world hitting people in the head usually cause harm. However, it does show that the prohibition relies on certain background assumptions about the effects of hitting. If these assumptions were not true then the prohibition would not hold.

In a critique of deductivist natural law theory, John Hare develops this point showing that slight alterations in the way God set the world up could lead to quite different moral rules applying than in fact do. One example Hare notes, is particularly interesting, “Perhaps (to get more bizarre) God could have willed that we kill each other at the age of 18, at which point God would bring us immediately back to life.” Hare asks us to imagine a world, in which, when people of a certain age are killed they immediately come back to life. He opines, quite plausibly, that if this were to be the case then killing people at this age would not be wrong or at least, not seriously wrong. One of the reasons that killing people is wrong in the world we live in is because people stay dead. If they were only unconscious for a split second and came back to life in full health then arguably killing a person would not be the serious wrong we believe it is.

Once this is realised, I think it is evident that [1], [2] and [3] are consistent. If one assumes, for the sake of argument, that the Patriarchal Narratives are literally true then it follows that [3] is true only if a certain context is assumed. God commanded Abraham to kill his son in the highly unusual context where Abraham knew that his son would not stay dead but would come down the mountain afterwards and live on to adulthood to father children of his own. Proposition [2] is defensible only in a context where people do not know these sorts of things; the rule to not kill the innocent applies to a world where people do not come back to life after they have been killed. Hence, the story of Abraham and Isaac, if taken literally, does not entail that God commanded something immoral or contradictory.

1. See for example, Louise Anthony “Atheism as Perfect Piety” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough: A Debate on Faith, Secularism and Ethics Eds Robert K Garcia and Nathan L King (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 77-79.
2. Kenneth Kitchen On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003) 313-372.
3. Immanuel Kant The Conflict of the Faculties (Ak. VI1, 63) 115; similar statements can be found in Kant’s
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Ak, VI,87, 186f).
4. Robert Adams Finite and Infinite Goods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999) Chapter 12.
5. Philip Quinn Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978); also “Obligation, Divine Commands and Abraham’s Dilemma” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 64(2) 459-466.
6. C Stephen Evans Kierkegaard’s Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
7. Ibid.
8. John E Hare God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands and Human Autonomy (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2001) 68-69.

I attempted to get to the bottom of the problem myself wondering if one of the more technologically challenged members of the household had messed with the settings but got nowhere so I braved out the 60 minute wait to the helpdesk.

I barely managed to get out “since Tuesday night I can connect but I can’t…” and the technician impatiently cut me off with “do you use ZoneAlarm?”

The technician explained that on Tuesday an auto update was issued that meant ZoneAlarm’s firewall was so extremely effective one was not able to send or receive email or access the net at all. The solution was to simply disable ZoneAlarm and keep an eye on their website for a patch or a remedy. He concluded by telling me that their helpdesk had gone nuts as heaps of people use ZoneAlarm and were all hit by the same problem (one wondered why, given the pervasiveness of the problem and the simplicity of the solution, I and everyone else affected, had had to endure the 60+ minute wait of hold music and looped recorded messages about the wait time, surely a “try disabling ZoneAlarm” or similar, put alongside the wait time message would have eased their stress and mine – but what would I know, I am not a technichian).

Anyway, problem solved. We have been happily emailing and surfing again but I write this post because of the email I just received a few minutes ago from ZoneAlarm:

ALERT: IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ZONEALARM CUSTOMERS

Dear Customer,

Installation of Microsoft Update KB951748 may result in loss of Internet connectivity. Click here for more information on how to resolve this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Thank you,

ZoneAlarm

Hang on a minute, anyone in need of information on how to resolve this issue would need to:

1. Be able to receive the email containing the above message; and,
2. Be able to actually access the web in order for the “click here” instruction to be of any use (the page will not display error message is hardly helpful).

Those of us with the fortitude to withstand 60+ minutes of hold music and recorded messages and who subsequently managed to actually receive the above email discover that when you click on the link provided in the email you get a page with the following information, note the bolded bits, (my emphasis):

Severity: High

Workaround to Sudden Loss of Internet Access Problem

Date Published : 8 July 2008

Date Last Revised : 9 July 2008

Overview : Microsoft Update KB951748 is known to cause loss of internet access for ZoneAlarm users on Windows XP/2000. Windows Vista users are not affected.

Impact : Sudden loss of internet access

Platforms Affected : ZoneAlarm Free, ZoneAlarm Pro, ZoneAlarm AntiVirus, ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware, and ZoneAlarm Security Suite

Recommended Actions

- Download and install the latest versions which solve the loss of internet access problem here (English only): [Series of download URLs]

- or follow the directions below.
Option 1: [Series of directions to alter internet settings]
Option 2: [Series of directions to uninstall the update]

So, the email and webpage were aimed at customers who faced the problem that they could not receive email and could not access the internet. They were to receive an email, navigate to a webpage and then either download and install something or follow or a set of instructions…

In other words, if you receive the email and can access the help page there is a good chance you don’t need either.

Note to ZoneAlarm: read Immanual Kant or Richard Hare.

Prescriptive language such as instructions, commands, imperitives, etc. to be rationally followed need to be able to be willed universally i.e. a person must be able to will the thing without contradicting themselves. Sending somebody an instruction to fix the problem of not being able to have access to instructions to fix the problem is not rational, is arguably self-referentially incoherent and worse of all, is just not very helpful.

Madeleine