## 1. Metaethical and normative theological voluntarism



To be a theological voluntarist with respect to some moral status is
to hold that entities have that status in virtue of some act of divine
will. But some instances of this view are metaethical theses; some
instances of it are normative theses.



Consider, for example, theological voluntarism about the status of
acts as obligatory or non-obligatory. One might hold that there is a
single supreme obligation, the obligation to obey God. Every
particular type of act that one might perform thus has its moral
status as obligatory or non-obligatory in virtue of God's having
commanded the performance of acts of that type or God's not
having commanded acts of that type. This is a common version of divine
command theory, according to which all of the more workaday
obligations that we are under (not to steal from each other, not to
murder each other, to help each other out when it would not be
inconvenient, etc.) bind us as a result of the exercise of God's
supreme practical authority.



The view just described is a version of *normative* theological
voluntarism. It is a normative view because it asserts that some
normative state of affairs obtains--namely, the normative state
of affairs *its being obligatory to obey God*. And it is a
version of theological voluntarism because it holds that all other
normative states of affairs, at least those involving obligation,
obtain in virtue of God's commanding activity.



Metaethical theological voluntarism, by contrast, does not assert the
obtaining of any normative state of affairs. (For a contrary view, see
Heathwood 2012, p. 7.) It is possible for one to be a metaethical
theological voluntarist and to hold that no normative states of
affairs obtain. Rather, metaethical theological voluntarists aim to
say something interesting and informative about moral concepts,
properties, or states of affairs; and they want to say something
interesting and informative about them by connecting them to acts of
the divine will. Metaethical theological voluntarists might claim that
(e.g.) obligation is a theological concept, or that the property of
being obligatory is a theological property, or that obligations are
caused immediately by the divine will. But note that none of these
views asserts that there are any obligations.


### 1.1 Theological voluntarism and theism



One does not have to be a theist in order to be a theological
voluntarist. One can affirm normative theological voluntarism or
metaethical theological voluntarism while failing to affirm theism;
atheists and agnostics can be theological voluntarists of either
stripe. With respect to normative theological voluntarism: one might
claim that while it is true that any being that merits the title of
'God' merits obedience, we should not believe that there
is such a being. (Compare: if, through some glitch in promotions,
there happened to be no lieutenants in the army at some time, it would
not cease to be true that privates ought to obey lieutenants. One
could believe that that there are no lieutenants while believing that
privates ought to obey their lieutenants.) With respect to metaethical
theological voluntarism: one might claim that, for example, the
concept of obligation is ineliminably theistic, though there is no
God; that God does not exist counts not against metaethical
theological voluntarism but rather against the claim that the concept
of obligation has application. (Compare: one might believe that
'sin' is properly defined as 'offense against
God.' One can clearly affirm this definition while rejecting
God's existence; all that one is committed to thereby is that
there really are no sins.)


### 1.2 Theological voluntarism and moral skepticism



Call a 'moral skeptic' one who disbelieves or withholds
judgment on the claim that any normative state of affairs obtains. One
can affirm metaethical theological voluntarism while being a moral
skeptic; one cannot affirm normative theological voluntarism while
being a moral skeptic. A metaethical theological voluntarist might
claim that no normative state of affairs could be made to obtain
without certain acts of divine will, but because there is no God, or
because there is a God that has not performed the requisite acts of
will, no normative states of affairs obtain. A normative theological
voluntarist cannot, however, be a moral skeptic. Because the normative
theological voluntarist is committed to the obtaining of at least one
normative state of affairs--for example, *its being obligatory
to obey God*--the conjunction of moral skepticism and
normative theological voluntarism is not a coherent combination of
views.



My concern in the rest of this article will be with the metaethical
version of theological voluntarism; any further references to
theological voluntarism are, unless otherwise noted, to the
metaethical version of the position. Theological voluntarism thus
understood is consistent either with the affirmation or with the
denial of theism and moral skepticism. Taking a negative stand on
theism or a positive stand on moral skepticism should not prevent one
from taking seriously theological voluntarism as a philosophical
position. This is an important point, because it is often thought that
theological voluntarism is only for theists, or only for moral
nonskeptics. While it is true that some of the arguments for
theological voluntarism take theism, or the existence of moral
obligations, as premises, not all of them do. 


## 2. Metaethical theological voluntarism



Metaethics is concerned with the formulation of interesting and
informative accounts of normative concepts, properties, and states of
affairs; and a metaethics that is a version of theological voluntarism
will formulate such accounts in terms of some acts of divine will.
This statement of the position is highly abstract, but it cannot be
made less abstract without making difficult choices among rival
formulations of the view.


### 2.1 Considerations in Favor



The considerations to be offered in favor of theological voluntarism
are, at this level, similarly abstract. I will discuss three types of
consideration: *historical*, *theological*, and
*metaethical*.


#### Historical considerations in favor of theological voluntarism



Some of the considerations in favor of metaethical theological
voluntarism are historical. Both theists and nontheists have been
impressed by the extent to which at least some moral concepts
developed in tandem with theological concepts, and it may therefore be
the case that there could be no adequate explication of some moral
concepts without appeal to theological ones. On this view, it is not
merely historical accident that at least some moral concepts had their
origin in contexts of theistic belief and practice; rather, these
concepts have their origin essentially in such contexts, and become
distorted and unintelligible when exported from those contexts (see,
for example, Anscombe 1958).


#### Theological considerations in favor of theological voluntarism



Some of the considerations in favor of theological voluntarism have
their source in matters regarding the divine nature. Several such
arguments are summarized in Idziak 1979 (pp. 8-10). Some appeal
to *omnipotence*: since God is both omnipotent and impeccable,
theological voluntarism must be true: for if God cannot act in a way
that is morally wrong, then God's power would be limited by
other normative states of affairs were theological voluntarism not the
case. Some appeal to God's *freedom*: since God is free
and impeccable, theological voluntarism must be true: for if moral
requirements existed prior to God's willing them, requirements
that an impeccable God could not violate, God's liberty would be
compromised. Some appeal to God's status as supremely
*lovable* and *deserving of allegiance*: if theism is
true, then the world of value must be a theocentric one, and so any
moral view that does not place God at its center is bound to be
inadequate. Even if individually insufficient as justifications for
adopting theological voluntarism, collectively they may suggest some
desiderata for a moral view: that God must be at the center of a moral
theory, and, in particular, that the realm of the moral must be
dependent on God's free choices. It seems that any moral theory
that met these desiderata would count as a version of theological
voluntarism.


#### Metaethical considerations in favor of theological voluntarism



A third set of considerations in favor of theological voluntarism has
its source in metaethics proper, in the attempt to provide adequate
philosophical accounts of the various formal features exhibited by
moral concepts, properties, and states of affairs. One might claim,
that is, that theological voluntarism makes the best sense of the
formal features of morality that both theists and nontheists
acknowledge.



Consider first the *normativity* of morals. Both theists and
nontheists have been impressed by the weirdness of normativity, with
its very otherness, and have thought that whatever we say about
normativity, it will have to be a story not about natural properties
but nonnatural ones (cf. Moore 1903, section 13). John Mackie, an
atheist, and George Mavrodes, a theist, have both drawn from this the
same moral: if there is a God, then the normativity of morality can be
understood in theistic terms; otherwise, the normativity of morality
is unintelligible (Mavrodes 1986; Mackie 1977, p. 48). As Robert Adams
has suggested, given the serious difficulties present in understanding
moral properties as natural properties, it is worthwhile taking
seriously the hypothesis that morality is not just a nonnatural matter
but a supernatural one (Adams 1973, p. 105). For the standard
objections against understanding normativity as a nonnatural property
concern our inability to say anything further about that nonnatural
property itself and about our ability to grasp that property (see,
e.g., M. Smith 1994, pp. 21-25). But if morality is to be
understood in terms of God's commands, we can give an
informative account of what these unusual properties are; and if it is
understood in terms of God's commands, then we can give an
informative account of how God, being the creator and sustainer of us
rational beings, can ensure that we can have an adequate epistemic
grasp of the moral domain (Adams 1979a, pp. 137-138).



Consider next the *impartiality* of morals. The domain of the
moral, unlike the domain of value generally, is governed by the
requirements of impartiality. To use Sidgwick's phrase, the
point of view of morality is not one's personal point of view
but rather "the point of view ... of the Universe"
(Sidgwick 1907, p. 382). But, to remark on the perfectly obvious, the
Universe does not have a point of view. Various writers have employed
fictions to try to provide some sense to this idea: Adam Smith's
impartial and benevolent spectator, Firth's ideal observer, and
Rawls' contractors who see the world *sub specie
aeternitatis* come to mind most immediately (Smith 1759, Pt III,
Ch 8; Firth 1958; and Rawls 1971, p. 587). But theological voluntarism
can provide a straightforward understanding of the impartiality of
morals by appealing to the claim that the demands of morality arise
from the demands of someone who in fact has an impartial and supremely
deep love for all of the beings that are morality's proper
objects.



Consider next the *overridingness* of morals. The domain of the
moral, it is commonly thought, consists in a range of values that can
demand absolute allegiance, in the sense that it is never reasonable
to act contrary to what those values finally require. One deep
difficulty with this view, formulated in a number of ways but perhaps
most memorably by Sidgwick (1907, pp. 497-509), is that it is
hard to see how moral value automatically trumps other kinds of value
(e.g. prudential value) when they conflict. But if the domain of the
moral is to be understood in terms of the will of a being who can make
it possible that, or even ensure that, the balance of reasons is
always in favor of acting in accordance with the moral demand, then
the overridingness of morals becomes far easier to explain (Layman
2006; Evans 2013, pp. 29-30).



Consider next the *content* of morals. There is a strong case
to be made that moral judgments cannot have just any content: they
must be concerned, somehow, with what exhibits respect for certain
beings, or with what promotes their interests (cf. Foot 1958, pp.
510-512; M. Smith 1994, p. 40; Cuneo & Shafer-Landau 2014,
pp. 404-407). Theological voluntarism has a ready explanation
for the content of morals being what it is: it is that moral demands
arise from a being that loves that being's creation.



So there are some general reasons to think theological voluntarism
promising. The reasons are stronger yet when one is proceeding from
theistic starting points. (This is not trivial, since a number of
theistic philosophers reject theological voluntarism.) But these
reasons, while suggestive, are rather generic: they point to the
promise possessed by theological voluntarism, though they do not fix
for us on a particular formulation of the view. The general schema for
a particular theological voluntarist position is 'evaluative
status *M* stands in dependence relation *D* to divine
act *A*' (cf. Quinn 1999, p. 53, which I follow here
except to substitute the more general 'evaluative' for
Quinn's more specific 'moral'). So there are at
least three choices that have to be made. We need to say something
about
 what sorts of evaluative statuses
 depend on God's will. We need to say something about what are
the
 relevant acts of divine will.
 And we need to say something about what the
 dependence relation
 is supposed to be. (These are not independent questions, of
course.)


### 2.2 Which evaluative statuses?



A metaethical view can be more or less comprehensive, aiming to cover
more or fewer evaluative statuses. A metaethical view might claim to
provide an account of all evaluative notions, or of all normative
notions, or of all moral notions, or or some set of moral notions.
(Roughly, and taking the notion of an evaluative property as
fundamental: for a notion to be normative is for it to be a certain
sort of evaluative notion, one that is essentially action-guiding; for
a notion to be moral is for it to be a certain sort of normative
notion, one that exhibits impartiality.) No one claims that
theological voluntarism provides an account of all evaluative notions.
The real contenders are the latter three.



There are good reasons to reject the claim that all normative notions
are to be understood in relation to God's will. The main reason
is that, as we will see below, it is important that there be items
with normative statuses independent of God's will in order to
explain how God's will, even if free, is not arbitrary. And it
is not as if the view that some normative statuses are not to be
explained in terms of God's will must be repugnant to a
theocentric metaethics: for, after all, one might understand such
statuses in theological, even if not voluntaristic, terms. Adams, for
example, understands some notions of goodness in terms of likeness to
God, an understanding that is unquestionably theocentric though not
voluntaristic (Adams 1999, pp. 28-38; also Murphy 2011, pp.
148-160).



Most of the current debate over the evaluative statuses to be
explained by theological voluntarism, then, concerns whether the
entire set or only some proper subset of moral statuses is to be
understood in both theological and voluntaristic terms. Quinn's
1978 work offers a theological voluntarist view on which all moral
statuses are to be understood in terms of God's will. But Adams
rejects this view, and Quinn, following Adams and Alston (1990),
eventually rejected it as well. These writers hold that only moral
properties in the "obligation family," properties like
those of *being obligatory*, *being permissible*,
*being required*, and *being right* (where *being
right* involves a constraint on conduct, rather than being merely
fitting), are to be understood in theological voluntarist terms. Call
their view the *restricted* moral view; call the view that all
moral statuses are to be understood in voluntarist terms the
*unrestricted* moral view.



The restricted moral view has been defended with more and less
impressive arguments. (See Murphy 2012.) The less impressive arguments
are those that appeal to the idea that there must be moral properties
that are not explained in terms of God's will in order to deal
with some of the classic objections to theological voluntarism. To
preserve the notion that God is good, one might say, we need to
restrict the aspirations of theological voluntarism to those of
explaining a proper subset of moral notions, leaving the remainder for
an account of God's goodness; or, to make intelligible the
commands that God chooses to give, we need to set aside some group of
moral notions to be explained in other than theological voluntarist
terms and that can therefore enter into our account of the
intelligibility of God's choices to give certain commands rather
than others. But these considerations are not, after all, entirely
persuasive. For one might well explain the notion that God is good and
account for the intelligibility of divine commands by appeal to
normative notions that are nonmoral. (See Section 3
 below
 for further discussion of these arguments.)



More plausible are arguments that suggest that there is something in
particular about obligation that makes it fit for a theological
voluntarist explanation, some feature that is not shared with notions
like moral virtue and moral good. Adams suggests, with some
plausibility, that the notion of obligation is ineliminably social,
that it must involve a relationship between persons, a relationship in
which a demand is made (Adams 1987b, p. 264; also Adams 1999, pp.
245-246; for a nontheistic view defending a similar position,
see Darwall 2006). This feature of obligation makes it different from
notions of goodness and virtue, which do not seem to have this
essentially social element. That obligation is special in this way
does not, of course, show that notions of moral virtue and moral
goodness do not also need to be treated in a theological voluntarist
way. It could be that even if obligation most obviously requires this
treatment, the points made earlier about the promise of theological
voluntarism also extend to other moral notions, even if in a less
pressing way. (See
 Section 3.3
 for further discussion, and evaluation, of this point.)



There are no obviously decisive reasons for the theological
voluntarist to adhere to either the restricted or the unrestricted
moral view. (For a set of arguments that the restricted theological
voluntarists have failed to avoid objections to theological
voluntarism while leaving the positive arguments for the view intact,
see Murphy 2012.) But theological voluntarists have wanted to say at
least that the properties in the obligation family are to be accounted
for in terms of this view. In the remainder of this article, it will
be assumed that theological voluntarism is about properties in the
obligation family, though we will occasionally consider how the view
could be extended to other moral properties as well. 


### 2.3 Which act of divine will?



Assume, then, that theological voluntarism is an account of
obligation-type properties. A second issue concerning the proper
formulation of the view concerns the relevant act of divine will. Is
the requisite act of divine will to be understood as an act of
commanding, or instead as some mental act like choosing, intending,
preferring, or wishing? And if one holds that the act of the divine
will is a mental act, should the mental act to which the theological
voluntarist appeals in order to account for obligation be one whose
object is the action that is made obligatory, or one whose object is
the state of affairs that the action is obligatory? We have, to
simplify matters, three options:


* (1)

That it is obligatory for *A* to ph depends on God's
commanding *A* to ph.
* (2)

That it is obligatory for *A* to ph depends on God's
willing that *A* ph.
* (3)

That it is obligatory for *A* to ph depends on God's
willing that it be obligatory for *A* to ph.



One might think that the central issue here would be to decide between
the speech-act view (1) and the mental acts views (2) and (3); it
might be thought to be less important, an issue of intramural interest
only, to decide between (2) and (3). But this is not right. The
important debate is between (1) and (2). For (3) is, understood in one
way, no competitor with either (1) or (2); and understood differently,
it has little argumentative support.


#### The dispute between (1) and (2)



There is an ongoing debate whether (1) or (2) is the better
formulation of theological voluntarism about obligation. There are
initially plausible points on both sides of the issue. In favor of
(1), one might appeal to the centrality of the image of God as
commander in the Abrahamic faiths. In favor of (2), one might appeal to
the centrality to theistic belief and practice of the idea that doing
God's will is the standard for the moral life.



With only these initial points, there can be no resolution, and so
defenders of these two formulations of theological voluntarism have
sought other argumentative routes. One might try to reduce (2) to
absurdity. One who is rational does not intend what one knows will not
happen; and, on the orthodox conception of God, God is both rational
and omniscient. This entails that God will never intend something that
will not happen. If obligation arises from divine intentions, though,
then no obligations will ever be violated. Since this is absurd, one
should prefer (1) over (2). But defenders of (2) have a plausible
response. First, defenders of (1) are in no better a position than
defenders of (2). For it is a sincerity condition on the giving of
commands that the commander intend that the commanded perform the
action; and so if this objection reduces (2) to absurdity, the only
way that the defender of (1) can avoid having his or her position
reduced to absurdity is by holding that God is not necessarily
sincere. Second, the notion of intention admits of various readings,
and there is a reading of intention suitable for theological
voluntarism that does not have the untoward result that no created
rational beings could ever act contrary to a divine intention. It is
standard to distinguish between God's *antecedent* and
God's *consequent* will: God's consequent will is
God's will absolutely considered, as bearing on all actual
circumstances; God's antecedent will is God's will
considered with respect to some proper subset of actual circumstances.
(To use an example of Aquinas's, one drawn from the discussion
in which the distinction between antecedent and consequent will is
made [*Summa Theologiae*, Ia, Q. 19, A. 6]: while in one way
God wills that all persons be saved, in another way God does not will
that all be saved; indeed, God wills that some persons be damned. What
makes this coherent is that the sense of willing in which God wills
that all be saved is antecedent: prior to a consideration of all of
the particulars of persons' situations, God wills their
salvation; but in light of all of the particulars of persons'
situations--including the circumstance that some persons have
willingly rejected friendship with God--God wills their
damnation.) So while there is a sense in which it is true that all
that God intends must come to pass, this sense is that of consequent
intending rather than antecedent intending. On (2), then, one can say
that the theological voluntarist holds that obligation depends on
certain of God's *antecedent* intentions. (See also
Murphy 1998, pp. 17-21.)



We might ask, in order to bring the differences between these views
better out into the light, what our considered opinion is in cases in
which a divine antecedent intention that *A* ph and a divine
command that *A* ph pull apart. It is far from clear that it
is a real option for God to command that *A* ph while not
intending that *A* ph. Though this possibility is endorsed
by Wierenga 1983 (p. 390) and is at least entertained in Murphy 1998
(p. 9), for God to issue such a command would be for God to command
insincerely--something that many would be loath to allow. (See
also Adams 1999, p. 260 and Murphy 2002, 2.5). But the other option
appears unproblematic enough. God might intend for humans to act a
certain way while not commanding them to do so. In such a scenario,
one might ask, is obligation engendered? If yes, then it seems to
count in favor of the divine will view (2); if no, then it seems to
count in favor of the divine command view (1).



Adams claims that obligations are not engendered in such cases;
actually made demands are necessary. He offers three reasons for
preferring the command conception in these cases. The first is that
holding that obligation is a matter of divine command rather than
divine will makes possible a distinction between the obligatory and
the supererogatory: we can say that while God's commands somehow
makes certain acts obligatory, if God does will that we perform some
act but does not command it, performing that act is supererogatory.
The second is an appeal to the idea that theological voluntarism is a
social conception of obligation: obligation arises in the context of
the social relationship between God and created rational beings. (Not
all versions of theological voluntarism affirm this; see the
discussion of (3) below.) But, Adams says, in social relationships
obligations arise only when demands are actually made. And the third
reason is that there is something unsavory about obligations allegedly
resulting from an act of divine will that is not expressed as a
command: "Games in which one party incurs guilt for failing to
guess the unexpressed wishes of the other party are not nice games.
They are no nicer if God is thought of as a party to them"
(Adams 1999, p. 261).



But the defender of the divine will view (2) has some responses
available. The defender of this view can say, with respect to the
first point, that a divine will view can capture the difference
between the obligatory and the supererogatory not by appeal to the
difference between acts of divine will that are expressed as commands
and those that are not but rather as a difference between distinct
types of act of divine will: the difference, say, between what God
intends that we do and what God merely prefers that we do (cf. Quinn
1999, p. 56). Or, in the alternative, the distinction can be made
within the divine will: one might characterize as obligatory those
actions that God wills that one perform, and as supererogatory those
actions that God wills that one perform *if one is willing to do
so*, so that if one performs the action, one is doing what God
wills, but if one does not, one is not doing what God wills that one
not do. With respect to the second and third points, the defender of
the divine will view can directly challenge Adams' view that
obligations generated within social relationships must always be
expressed as demands. Spouses, for example, often take themselves to
be obligated by what their spouses intend with respect to their
behavior; indeed, it would be unseemly to hold oneself to be bound by
one's spouse's will only if the spouse has actually made a
demand on one. ("How can you blame me for not helping you empty
the dishwasher? You didn't tell me to!" does not often go
over well.) One often wants another to perform some action without
being told to; many actions have their value only through being
performed without being prompted by a command. But, on (1), no act of
the form 'ph*-ing*, though God has not told me to
ph' could ever be obligatory.



Here is a thought experiment that may help to decide the dispute
between these two camps. For it to be possible for one to give another
a command to ph, there must be a linguistic practice available to
the addressee in terms of which the speaker can formulate a command.
This is not just for the sake of having the means to communicate a
command: rather, commands are essentially linguistic items, and cannot
be defined except in such terms. Imagine, though, that a certain
created rational being, Mary, inhabits a linguistic community in which
there is no practice of commanding. One can successfully make
assertions to Mary, and among these assertions can be assertions about
one's own psychological states, but one cannot successfully
command Mary to do anything. Here is the question: so long as
Mary's linguistic resources are confined to those afforded by
this practice, can God impose obligations on her? The defender of (1)
will have to say No: for Mary cannot be commanded to do anything. The
defender of (2) will have to say Yes: God could have an antecedent
intention that Mary perform some action and (to sidestep worries about
being under an obligation that one cannot know about) could inform
Mary that God has that intention with respect to her conduct.



The debate between defenders of (1) and defenders of (2) is ongoing,
and at present far from conclusive. (For some recent interventions
into this debate, see Mann 2005b, Miller 2009a, and Jordan 2012.)


#### Option (3)



The other formulation of theological voluntarism that we noted is that
in which the act of divine will is that of willing that the state of
affairs that it is obligatory for *A* to ph obtain. Unlike
the formulations (1) and (2), which admit of various sorts of
dependence relationship between the act of divine will and the
obligation, (3) is limited to something like a causal picture. (It
obviously could not be that *its being obligatory for A to
ph* is identical to *God's willing that it be
obligatory for A to ph*, on pain of a vicious regress.) The
idea expressed here is that ultimately all obligations are present
because of efficacious acts of the divine will, in particular, acts of
willing that those obligations be in force.



This account is compatible with (1) and (2), because it could be that
the way that God makes it the case that an act is obligatory is
necessarily through the giving of commands (as in (1)) or through
antecedently intending (as in (2)) the performance of that action. So
it is not really, in its most general form, a *competitor* to
(1) and (2). It could be made a competitor by adding claims about the
way that the divine will brings it about that these obligations
obtain. A defender of (3) might add that on his or her view the divine
intention that *A* be obligated to ph is the immediate,
total, and exclusive cause of its being obligatory for *A* to
ph (cf. Quinn 1999, p. 55). If so, then a divine command that
*A* ph or a divine antecedent intention that *A*
ph could not be partial or mediate causes of its being obligatory
for *A* to ph. But note that even thus strengthened (3) is
compatible with (1) or (2) understood as an identity claim: if the
claim is that obligations just are divine commands or divine
intentions, then the compatibility with (1) and (2) is
reestablished.



Even if it turns out that (3) is not an obvious competitor with (1)
and (2), it is still worth asking whether it is true. Though Quinn
eventually rejected (3), at one point he argued for it by appeal to
*divine sovereignty*: because every state of affairs that obtains
that does not involve God's existing depends on God's
will, a fortiori every normative state of affairs that does not
involve God's existing depends on God's will. (Quinn
thought that *its being obligatory to obey God* is a state of
affairs that involves God's existing [Quinn 1990, pp.
298-299], but for a reason to reject that claim see Murphy 1998,
pp. 12-13.) It does not seem, though, that this argument would
support (3) in the strengthened version that holds that the dependence
must be immediate, total, and exclusive. After all, very few folks
want to say that every state of affairs that is brought about by
God's will is brought about by God's will exclusively,
totally, and immediately. While it is plausibly part of theism that
every state of affairs that obtains, apart from those that involve
God, is somehow dependent on God's will, this does not show that
deontic states of affairs are more interestingly connected to the
divine will than states of affairs involving mathematics, or physics,
or accounting (Murphy 1998, pp. 14-16).



We may put (3) to the side, then. While some formulations of it may
very well be true, those formulations for which there is argumentative
support do not establish much in the way of interesting metaethical
conclusions. The debate concerning whether (1) and (2) is the more
adequate formulation of theological voluntarism is ongoing, and we
should thus proceed in a way that is as far as possible neutral
between the two (though admittedly unwieldy) by saying that
*A*s moral obligations to ph depend on God's
commands/intentions that *A* ph. (By
'intentions' I will mean antecedent intentions.) Allowing
for both of these possibilities, what can be said about the
relationship of dependence holding between divine commands/intentions
and moral obligations?


### 2.4 What sort of dependence?



The third issue that must be dealt with in providing a formulation of
theological voluntarism is that of the specification of the dependence
relationship that holds between divine commands/intentions that A
ph and the moral obligation of *A* to ph. There have been
several options considered whose nature and merits are worth
discussing here. On an *analysis* view, it is part of the
meaning of 'it is morally obligatory for *A* to
ph' that God commands/intends that *A* ph. On a
*reduction* view, the state of affairs *its being obligatory
for A to* ph is the state of affairs *God's
commanding/intending that A* ph. On a *supervenience*
view, *its being obligatory for A* to ph supervenes on
*God's commanding/intending that A* ph. On a causal
view, necessarily, *its being obligatory for A* to ph is
caused by *God's commanding/intending that A* ph, and
necessarily, *God's commanding/intending that A* ph
causes it to be obligatory for *A* to ph.


#### Causation



The causal view is defended by Quinn (1979, 1990, 1999), and in a
particularly strong form: on Quinn's view, the causal connection
between *God's antecedently intending that A* ph and
*its being obligatory for A to* ph exhibits totality,
exclusivity, activity, immediacy, and necessity.



There are at least three serious difficulties for the causation
formulation. The first we may call the 'Humean worry'.
Once we allow that *its being morally obligatory to* ph is
distinct from *God's commanding/intending*
ph*-ing*, there is the question of what reason we would have
for thinking that *its being morally obligatory to* ph
necessarily obtains if *God's commanding/intending*
ph*-ing* obtains. And whatever answer the defender of this
view offers, it must be consistent with the causation formulation of
theological voluntarism. But it is unclear what would do the trick.
One way to try to make this necessary connection is by holding that
there is a prior moral obligation to obey God; and so, whenever God
gives a command/has an intention that one perform some action, it
follows that one is morally obligated to perform the action
commanded/intended. But we cannot take this route, because if the
causation formulation is correct, then *all* moral obligations
are caused entirely by God's commanding/intending activity;
there cannot be, then, this *prior* moral obligation to obey
God that would serve as part of the *explanans* for the
necessary connection between divine commands/intentions and moral
obligations.



The causal view that is a version of (2) (that is, that *its being
obligatory for A* to ph depends causally on *God's
willing that A ph*) should be distinguished carefully from the
causal view that is a version of (3) (that is, that *its being
obligatory for *A* to ph* depends causally on
*God's willing that it be obligatory for *A* to
ph*). The causal formulation of (3) has at least some
plausibility as a result of God's sovereignty and
omnipotence--though it is in the end unclear why we should move
from the claim that God is the ultimate source of all being to the
claim that, for all deontic states of affairs, God's willing
that that deontic state of affairs obtain is the *immediate*,
*total*, and *exclusive* cause of its obtaining. Most of
us would not, after all, find intuitively compelling a move from the
claim that God is ultimate source of all being to the claim that, for
all *physical* states of affairs, God's willing that that
physical state of affairs obtain is the immediate, total, and
exclusive cause of its obtaining. (That view is
'occasionalism', and occasionalism is a distinctly
minority view even among theists; see Murphy 2011 (pp. 140-142)
for a comparison between theological voluntarism and occasionalism.)
The causal view as an instance of (2), though, seems to have even less
in the way of argumentative support. Why would one think that
God's intending that *A* ph is an immediate, total,
and exclusive cause of a deontic state of affairs' obtaining? In
the absence of some evidence for such a connection, it is hard to see
why one would be attracted to this formulation of theological
voluntarism.



The second worry about the causal formulation I will call the
'lack of precedent worry'. Moral properties and states of
affairs supervene on nonmoral properties and states of affairs. The
intuitive idea is that there can be no differences in moral status
without some difference in nonmoral status. The causal formulation
satisfies the supervenience constraint--the differences in
nonmoral status concern God's commands/intentions--but it
does so in a way that is unprecedented and mysterious. When we look at
the specific ways in which changes in nonmoral facts can make a
difference to the moral facts that hold, there is a pretty limited
number of intelligible relationships that can hold between these
nonmoral facts and the moral facts that supervene on them. A nonmoral
fact can be part of what constitutes a reason to perform an action.
(That you promised to ph can be cited in explaining why you have a
reason to ph your promising to ph constitutes, at least in part,
the reason that you have to ph.) It can be part of an enabling
condition for that reason. (The existence of a social practice of
promising can be cited in explaining why you have a reason to ph;
the existence of that practice might explain why your promise has the
reason-giving force that it has.) It can be cited as a
defeater-defeater for a reason. (While the fact the promisee told you
that you need not fulfill your promise to ph typically releases you
from your promise to ph, the fact that you threatened to beat up
the promisee if he or she did not tell you that you need not fulfill
your promise invalidates that release, and can be cited in explaining
why you have a reason to ph.) But while theological voluntarism
holds that a fact--the fact that God commands/intends that one
ph--explains why one has a reason (in this case, an
obligation) to ph, the causal view holds that this fact falls into
none of the familiar explanatory categories: it is not constitutive of
the reason, it is not an enabling condition for the reason, it is not
a defeater-defeater for the reason. The way that the fact is supposed
to explain the reason is *merely causal*: it just brings the
reason about, exclusively, totally, immediately. This is an entirely
unfamiliar phenomenon: nowhere else do we encounter a merely causal
connection between a nonmoral fact and a moral one. (The appeal to the
very strangeness of divine causation itself is not sufficient to
answer the objection. For there is an extra strangeness here: that the
relationship between nonmoral and moral facts is in every case with
which we are familiar a rational relationship, whereas on the causal
formulation of theological voluntarism the relationship is merely
causal. Creation *ex nihilo* does not constitute carte blanche
to multiply strangenesses. Interestingly, though, Wielenberg 2018 (p.
18), which rejects the project of theistic ethics, appeals to just
this sort of causation to explain the supervenience of the moral on
the non-moral.)



The third worry is the 'no authority worry'. Theological
voluntarism can be defended on the basis of considerations proper to
metaethics--that, for example, theological voluntarism provides
the best explanation for the impartiality of morals, or for its
overridingness, or for its normativity, or for its content. But
theological voluntarists have tended to argue that theological
voluntarism has something specific to offer to theists. One of these
benefits on offer is that theological voluntarism fits well with the
centrality of the virtue of obedience in theistic thought and practice
(Quinn 1992, p. 510; Adams 1973, pp. 99-103). God is a being who
is *to be obeyed*, is someone who is a *practical
authority* over us.



For one to be a practical authority over another is, at least, for one
to have some sort of control over others' reasons for action.
Whatever else practical authority is, it is the ability to make a
difference with respect to someone's reasons to act. The control
involved in practical authority is, however, of a specific sort: it is
*constitutive* control. When a party is an authority over
another, his or her dictates constitute, at least in part, reasons for
action for that other. (One piece of evidence for this is that when we
take *A* to be an authority over us, we will cite
'*A* told us to' as a reason for action.) But if
God's commands to ph have merely causal power to bring about
obligations to ph, then the resultant state of affairs that is the
reason for action is *its being obligatory to ph*--a
state of affairs that need not be in any way constituted by
God's issuing any commands. No version of theological
voluntarism that is built simply around God's causal role in
actualizing moral obligations implies that God is a practical
authority. (See Murphy 2002, 4.3.)


#### Supervenience



The supervenience account is defended by Hare (2001). Suppose that we
continue to interpret supervenience intuitively as the
no-difference-in-moral-properties-without-some-difference-in-nonmoral-properties
thesis. We can see very quickly that the theological voluntarist has
to say something more about the sort of supervenience he or she has in
mind in order to present what is genuinely a theological voluntarist
account of moral obligation. For suppose that one puts forward a view
on which both of the following claims are true: the moral law does not
depend on, nor is it identical with, God's commands; but God
necessarily commands us to follow the moral law. While it is obvious
is that this not a version of theological voluntarism at
all--moral obligation in no way depends on divine
command--it satisfies the intuitive description of what is
involved in the supervenience of the moral on the nonmoral: for there
could be, on this view, no differences in moral status without some
difference in divine commands. So if one is to put forward a
supervenience formulation of theological voluntarism, then one will
have to either be a little bit more doctrinaire about the
supervenience relationship, so that it will exclude the nonvoluntarist
view just described, or one will have to say more than that moral
obligations supervene on divine commands. For our purposes here, they
come to the same thing: that there is something more to the
supervenience formulation of theological voluntarism than the claim
that there are no differences in agents' moral obligations
without some differences in the divine commands that have been imposed
on that agent.



What is called for here is, pretty obviously, just some particular
relationship of ontological dependence. It will not be that of
causation, for reasons we have already examined. But neither does the
defender of the supervenience view want it to be the extreme
dependence of moral obligations on divine commands affirmed by the
reduction formulation, on which moral obligations *just are*
divine commands. To avoid collapse into the reduction formulation, it
has to hold that moral obligations are distinct from divine commands.
It can make this distinction in one of two ways. It could say that
moral obligation is wholly distinct from divine command--that is,
that the state of affairs *its being morally obligatory* to
ph is not constituted even in part by *God's
commanding* ph*-ing*. Or it could say that moral
obligation is only partially constituted by divine command--that
is, that the state of affairs *its being obligatory to ph*,
while not identical with *God's commanding*
ph*-ing*, includes the state of affairs *God's
commanding* ph*-ing* (and some other state of affairs
besides). Let us consider each of these possibilities in turn.



Suppose first that the defender of the supervenience view affirms that
moral obligation is wholly distinct from divine command. If so, then
all of the arguments that were raised against the causation
formulation can be leveled against the supervenience view. The no
authority issue will arise. Because the states of affairs *its
being obligatory to* ph and *God's commanding*
ph*-ing* will be distinct, the supervenience account lacks
the resources to underwrite divine authority. For God is authoritative
only if God's commands are themselves reasons for action, but if
the states of affairs *its being obligatory to* ph and
*God's commanding* ph*-ing* are distinct, then
God's commands will not be themselves reasons for action on the
adequately strengthened supervenience view. And if these commands are
not themselves reasons for action, then God does not constitutively
actualize reasons for action by His commands; and if God does not
constitutively actualize reasons for action by His commands, then God
is not authoritative. The lack of precedent issue will arise. For the
adequately strengthened supervenience view cannot view obligations as
constituted by divine commands, and no theological voluntarist worthy
of the name will see God's commands as merely enablers or
defeater-defeaters for obligations; and so the relationship between
divine commands and moral obligations is bound to be unprecedented and
mysterious. And the Humean issue will arise. For the causation view
is, after all, just the adequately strengthened supervenience view
plus the claim that the dependence relationship involved in a
particular sort of causal dependence. So, understood as affirming a
dependence relationship between wholly distinct moral obligations and
divine commands, the supervenience view has all of the problems of the
causation view.



So the only hope for the supervenience formulation is to hold that
God's commands are proper parts of moral obligations: for if
those commands are identical with moral obligations, then the
supervenience view collapses into the reduction view, and if moral
obligations are wholly distinct from divine commands, then the
supervenience view fails for the reasons that the causation view
fails. There are, however, serious difficulties for this partial
constitution version: in particular, if one is committed to saying
that *God's commanding* ph*-ing* partly
constitutes *its being morally obligatory to* ph, it is hard
to see what state of affairs the theological voluntarist would be
tempted to say is also necessary for moral obligation to be fully
constituted. Obviously this other state of affairs cannot be one that
involves moral obligation, on pain of circularity. (So, the
theological voluntarist cannot say that *its being morally
obligatory to* ph just is the complex state of affairs
consisting both of *God's commanding* ph*-ing*
and *its being morally obligatory to do what God commands*.)
Further, in order to remain faithful to the basic idea of the
supervenience version, we would have to say that any state of affairs
that is held to constitute *its being morally obligatory to*
ph along with *God's commanding* ph*-ing*
must be a state of affairs that is certain to obtain if
*God's commanding* ph*-ing* obtains. Otherwise,
it might be the case that *its being morally obligatory to*
ph does not supervene on *God's commanding*
ph*-ing*, for there would be two possible worlds, in both of
which *God's commanding* ph*-ing* obtains, but
in only one of which does *its being morally obligatory to*
ph obtain. This runs contrary to even the basic idea of the
supervenience view, on which there are no differences in moral
obligations without a difference in divine commands. 



These limitations make it hard to imagine what a motivated version of
this form of the supervenience view would look like. We have to
imagine a view of the following form. It is nonnegotiable that the
state of affairs *its being morally obligatory to* ph is
partially constituted by *God's commanding*
ph*-ing*. It is nonnegotiable that there is, apart from
*God's commanding* ph*-ing*, at least one state
of affairs S that partially constituted *its being morally
obligatory to* ph. It is nonnegotiable that S either obtains
necessarily or at the very least necessarily obtains if
*God's commanding* ph*-ing* obtains (otherwise
moral obligation would not supervene on divine command). And it is
nonnegotiable that S not involve moral obligation. The only remotely
plausible candidates for S that come to mind are normative states of
affairs that fall short of the obligatory, for example,
ph*-ing's being good* (or *virtuous*, or
*praiseworthy*). One might say, for example, that *its being
morally obligatory to* ph is constituted jointly by
*God's commanding* ph*-ing* and
ph*-ing's being virtuous*. But it is unclear what
motivation one would have for affirming such a position. It cannot be
for the sake of making sure that God cannot impose a moral obligation
to do something that is not virtuous: for, ex hypothesi, we know
already that ph*-ing's being virtuous* obtains
whenever *God's commanding* ph*-ing* obtains,
for otherwise *its being morally obligatory to* ph would not
supervene on *God's commanding* ph*-ing*.



The difficulty that faces the defender of the supervenience view can
be framed as a dilemma. If the defender of that view holds that the
state of affairs *its being morally obligatory to* ph is
wholly distinct from *God's commanding*
ph*-ing*, then he or she is refuted by the considerations
that refute the causation view. If, on the other hand, the defender of
the supervenience view holds that the state of affairs *its being
morally obligatory to* ph is partially but not wholly
constituted by *God's commanding* ph*-ing*,
then there is pressure to explain why he or she does not simply affirm
the reduction view, on which *its being morally obligatory to*
ph just is *God's commanding* ph*-ing*.
Unless the defender of the supervenience view identifies the state of
affairs that, in addition to *God's commanding*
ph*-ing*, makes for a moral obligation to ph, then his or
her unwillingness to adopt the reduction view will look unmotivated
and arbitrary.


#### Analysis



According to the analysis view, defended in Adams 1973, the concept of
the morally obligatory is to be analyzed as that of being commanded by
a loving God. Adams did not put this view forward as an account of the
meaning of 'obligation' generally, but only of its meaning
as employed in Judeo-Christian moral discourse. As evidence for this
analysis, Adams appealed to the freedom with which users of that
discourse moved between claims of the form '*x* is
obligatory' and '*x* is God's will' or
'*x* is God's command.'



There are a couple of central difficulties for this position. The
first is that it seems to imply that those inside and those outside
the Judeo-Christian practice of moral discourse have never disagreed
when one has affirmed a claim of the form ' ph-ing is
obligatory' and the other denied a claim of that form. For they
do not, on Adams' account, mean the same thing when they use
these terms. In atheistic moral discourse, a masterful user of the
language can say 'it is not true that God has commanded
ph-ing, but ph-ing is nonetheless obligatory'; in
Judeo-Christian moral discourse, on Adams' view, one shows
oneself to be either unintelligible or not a masterful user of moral
language if one were to speak thus. Adams was aware of this
difficulty, and attempted to mitigate it: he argued that the agreement
over which items the term 'obligatory' applied to, and the
appropriate attitudinal and volitional responses to those things
correctly described as 'obligatory,' made possible
substantive moral discourse (Adams 1973, pp. 116-120). But all
this seems to do is to explain how a simulacrum of genuine moral
discourse is preserved; it does not show that what we get is the real
thing.



The second difficulty is that of dealing with those within the
Judeo-Christian tradition of moral discourse who employed or continue
to employ moral language in a way that is out of step with
Adams' analysis. Now, it is not sufficient to refute a suggested
analysis of some term that users of that term have questioned or even
rejected that analysis. But if we take the task of analyzing terms to
be that of making explicit and systematizing the platitudes employing
that term affirmed by masterful users of that term (Smith 1994, pp.
29-32), and we note that many thoughtful Jews and Christians who
otherwise appear to be masterful users of the language of moral
obligation have rejected, either explicitly or implicitly, the notion
that an act is obligatory if and only if it has been commanded by God,
then we would have some reason to doubt whether the analysis
formulation of theological voluntarism is defensible.


#### Reduction



Adams' maneuver in the face of these difficulties was to move
from the analysis to the reduction version of theological voluntarism.
He decided that the meaning of the term 'morally
obligatory' was common to theists and nontheists. There is a
common concept of the morally obligatory, a common concept that makes
possible substantive agreement and disagreement between theists and
nontheists. This common concept is neutral between theism and
nontheism. But, following the now standard Kripke-Putnam line, Adams
affirms that there are necessary a posteriori truths, among which are
included property identifications. He argued that the property
*being wrong* is identical to the property *being contrary
to the commands of (a loving) God* because the property *being
contrary to the commands of (a loving) God* best fills the role
assigned by the concept of wrongness (Adams 1979a, pp. 133-142;
see also Adams 1999, pp. 252-258). By conceptual analysis alone
we can know only that wrongness is a property of actions (and perhaps
intentions and attitudes); that people are generally opposed to what
they regard as wrong; that wrongness is a reason, perhaps a conclusive
reason, for opposing an act; and that there are certain acts (e.g.
torture for fun) that are wrong. But given traditional theistic
beliefs, the best candidate property to fill the role set by the
concept of wrongness is that of being contrary to (a loving)
God's commands. For that property is an objective property of
actions. Further, given Christian views about the content of
God's commands, this identification fits well with widespread
pre-theoretical intuitions about wrongness; and given Christian views
about human receptivity to divine communication and God's
willingness to communicate both naturally and supernaturally,
God's commands have a causal role in our acquisition of moral
knowledge (Adams 1979, p. 139; see also Adams 1999, pp. 257).



The reduction formulation avoids the most troublesome implications of
the analysis formulation, for it allows that there is a common concept
of obligation, so that those within the Judeo-Christian tradition and
those outside it can engage in moral debate and can have substantive
agreements and disagreements with each other, and so that those within
the Judeo-Christian tradition can raise substantive questions about
the relationship between God and obligation without ipso facto
excluding themselves from the class of masterful users of the moral
concepts of that community. The reduction formulation allows that the
concept of obligation may be nontheistic while the property that best
fills the role assigned to it by that concept is a theistic one.


#### Analysis vs. reduction



Nevertheless, it remains an open question whether the reduction view
is superior to the analysis view. One might argue that Adams'
analogy to 'H2O is water' is inappropriate, as
the identification with water with H2O is clearly a
posteriori, whereas the identification of the morally obligatory with
the commanded by God is a priori. For if Adams is right in his
characterization of the concept of obligation, it is not as if those
who do not have the ability to infer from 'this is morally
obligatory' to 'this is commanded by a loving God'
(and vice versa) are just missing out on an interesting extra fact,
the way that those without rudimentary chemistry are missing out on an
interesting extra fact if they do not know that water is
H2O. The term 'water' can play its role in our
practical lives perfectly well without our knowing that it is
H2O. The term 'morally obligatory' cannot play
its role in our practical lives without our knowing that the morally
obligatory is the commanded by God. No unintelligibility creeps into
the life of agents that do not grasp that water is H2O;
unintelligibility creeps into the life of agents that do not grasp
that the morally obligatory is what is commanded by God.



Why might one think that the masterful use of 'morally
obligatory' requires recognition that the morally obligatory is
what is commanded by God? If Adams is right, it is part of the meaning
of obligation that obligations are social in character (Adams 1999, p.
233) and involve actually made demands by one party in the social
relationship on another (Adams 1999, pp. 245-246). It is the
fact that a demand is actually made that gives sense to the notion
that one has to perform an action, rather than merely that it would be
good, even the best, to do it (Adams 1999, p. 246). But if it is part
of the meaning of 'morally obligatory' that one is part of
a certain social relationship in which demands are actually made, then
it is no longer just an interesting further fact that the property
that best answers to the concept 'morally obligatory' is
the property *being commanded by God*. Rather, one who denies
that there is a God or that God actually makes demands on human beings
must fail to use the term 'morally obligatory'
masterfully. For think of the other marks of the moral, especially
those of impartiality and overridingness. For one to think of an act
as obligatory is for one to think of it as being actually imposed on
one as a demand; for every obligation, on Adams' view, there is
someone who imposes that obligation by commanding. It is clear a
priori that the only being that could impose the sort of obligation
that could plausibly be classified as moral would be God. How, then,
could one be a masterful user of 'moral obligation'
without grasping that moral obligations are demands imposed by
God?



This analysis view would not, unlike Adams' earlier formulation,
require the subdivision of linguistic communities. One could say that
the meaning of 'morally obligatory' includes 'being
commanded by God,' for both theists *and* nontheists.
Those who do not grasp that it is of the essence of obligations to be
divinely commanded--whether theists or nontheists--fail to
be masterful users of the language of moral obligation. To embrace
this view is to return to the position of Anscombe 1958, according to
which we should hold that the concept of obligation is inherently
theological. On this view, we should not allow that Judeo-Christian
moral practice has a different concept of obligation. Rather, the
theological understanding of obligation is the authentic one, and
nontheological concepts of obligation are unintelligible truncations.



## 3. Perennial difficulties for metaethical theological voluntarism



Apart from the difficulties that must be handled by particular
formulations of theological voluntarism, there are a number of
objections that have been levelled against theological voluntarist
views as such. A wide variety of these objections are helpfully
discussed in Quinn 1999 (pp. 65-71) and Evans 2013 (pp.
88-117). Here I will consider only two objections, but they are
the two that are characteristically taken to be the most powerful
perennial objections to theological voluntarism: first, that
theological voluntarism is incompatible with any substantive sense in
which God is good; second, that theological voluntarism entails the
arbitrariness of morality. While these objections have been answered
plausibly in recent formulations of theological voluntarism, the way
that these objections have been answered leave theological
voluntarists open to a different objection: that theological
voluntarism is not adequately motivated as a philosophical position,
even for theists. I conclude with a brief discussion of this
worry.


### 3.1 Theological voluntarism and God's goodness



God is, by definition, good. This is both a fixed point concerning
God's nature and a plausibility-making feature of theological
voluntarism. If one were to deny that God is good (understood *de
dicto*--that is, 'if there is a being that qualifies as
God, then that being is good'), one would call one's own
competence in use of the term 'God' into question. And
even if it were allowed that one can employ the term 'God'
masterfully while denying that God is good, if one were to deny that
God is good, then one would undercut one's capacity to defend
theological voluntarism. For theological voluntarism is plausible only
if God is an exalted being; but a being that is not good is not an
exalted being.



That God is good is a fixed point for theistic discourse in general
and for theological voluntarism in particular provides the basis for a
common objection to theological voluntarism: that theological
voluntarism makes it impossible to say that, in any substantive sense,
God is good. The most straightforward formulation of the objection is
as follows. For God to be good is for God to be morally good. But if
moral goodness is to be understood in theological voluntarist terms,
then God's goodness consists only in God's measuring up to
a standard that God has set for Godself. While this is perhaps an
admirable resoluteness--it is, other things being equal, a good
thing to live up to your own standards--it is hardly the sort of
thing that provokes in us the admiration that God's goodness is
supposed to provoke.



Now, one might dispute the claim that if God's goodness consists
simply in God's living up to a standard that God has set for
Himself, then that goodness is far less admirable than we would have
supposed. (See, for a nice discussion of this issue, Clark 1982, esp.
pp. 341-343.) Suppose, though, that we grant this part of the
argument. How powerful is the objection from God's goodness
against theological voluntarism?



As we noted earlier, theological voluntarism comes in a variety of
strengths. One dimension along which a theological voluntarist view
might be assessed as stronger or weaker is in terms of the range of
normative properties that it attempts to account for in theological
voluntarist terms. The strength of the objection from God's
goodness is directly proportional to the size of the range of
normative properties that one wishes to explain in theological
voluntarist terms (see also Alston 1990). If one wishes only to
account for a proper subset of moral notions, such as obligation, with
one's theological voluntarism, then the objection from
God's goodness is very weak; if one wishes to provide a sweeping
account of normativity in theological voluntarist terms, then the
objection is much stronger.



Suppose, for example, that one defends a version of theological
voluntarism that accounts only for obligation. If moral obligation
only is dependent on acts of the divine will, one can appeal to moral
notions other than deontic ones in order to provide a substantive
sense in which God is good. Granting to some extent the force of the
objection, we can say, on this view, that God's moral goodness
cannot consist in God's adhering to what is morally obligatory.
But there are other ways to assess God morally other than in terms of
the morally obligatory. Adams, for example, holds that God should be
understood as benevolent and as just, and indeed concedes that his
theological voluntarist account of obligation as the divinely
commanded is implausible unless God is thus understood (Adams 1999,
pp. 253-255). The ascription to God of these moral virtues is
entirely consistent with his theological voluntarism, for his
theological voluntarism is not meant to provide any account of the
moral virtues. One can hold that God's moral goodness involves
supereminent possession of the virtues, at least insofar as those
virtues do not presuppose weakness and vulnerability. God is good
because God is supremely just, loyal, faithful, benevolent, and so
forth. It seems that ascribing to God supereminent possession of these
virtues would be enough to account for God's supreme moral
goodness: it is, after all, in such terms that God is praised in the
Psalms.



It has been argued that this appeal to God's justice is
illegitimate within a theological voluntarist account, because what is
just is a matter of moral requirement, and so to suppose that
God's acting justly is metaphysically prior to God's
imposing all moral requirements by way of commanding is incoherent
(Hooker 2001, p. 334). But the theological voluntarist may deny that
acting justly is morally required prior to God's commanding it,
any more than acting courageously, temperately, or prudently are
morally required prior to God's commanding us to act
courageously, temperately, or prudently. Just as one can coherently
acknowledge the excellence of temperance while wondering whether one
is *morally obligated* to act temperately, one can coherently
acknowledge the excellence of justice while wondering whether one is
morally obligated to act justly. It thus seems an available strategy
for the theological voluntarist who holds a restricted view of the
range of moral properties explained by God's commands/intentions
to appeal to justice in accounting for God's goodness. 



Matters become more difficult for theological voluntarist views that
aim to provide accounts of all moral notions in terms of God's
will. If one held to such an ambitious version of theological
voluntarism--if one were to hold, say, that a state of affairs is
morally good because it is a state of affairs that God wishes to
obtain for its own sake, and that a character trait is a moral virtue
because it is a property that God wants one to have for its own sake,
and that an action is morally obligatory because it is antecedently
intended by God, and so forth--then obviously the gambit employed
by the less ambitious theological voluntarist is unavailable. The more
ambitious theological voluntarist should hold, instead, that
God's goodness is not to be understood in moral terms.
God's being good might be understood in terms of God's
being *good to us*, where us includes all created rational
beings, or all created sentient beings, or whatever class of created
beings to which one thinks that God has a special relationship. What
it is for God to be good to us would be for God to be loving--to
will each of our goods, and to do so in a way that plays no favorites.
This understanding of 'loving' does not run afoul of
theological voluntarism construed as an account of all moral goods,
because 'our goods' is to be interpreted in terms of
prudential goodness, what makes each of us well-off (but see Chandler
1985).



Suppose, though, that one were to go all the way, holding that
theological voluntarism is the correct account of all normative
notions: on this extremely ambitious view, anything that is
intrinsically action-guiding depends on God's will. I think that
the 'God is good to us' understanding of God's
goodness is ruled out on this approach: for the notion of 'good
to us' is a normative notion. Perhaps one could hold, on this
view, that 'God is good' affirms of God some sort of
metaphysical goodness, fullness of being. This surely makes God
exalted, but it is not clear whether the will of such a being is
plausibly understood as the source of all normative statuses. It is
also less than clear that 'God is good,' on this reading,
is the claim that God possesses a particular perfection, rather than
is merely a reminder that God has a variety of perfections.



To sum up, then: for each of the various formulations of theological
voluntarism, there seems to be some way of answering the charge that
the view undercuts the notion that God is good. But the strain needed
to answer the charge becomes greater the wider the range of normative
properties that the formulation of theological voluntarism aims to
explain.


### 3.2 Theological voluntarism and arbitrariness



It is also an extraordinarily popular charge against theological
voluntarism that it entails, objectionably, that morality is
arbitrary. There is, however, more than one objection here, and the
different objections need to be distinguished and answered
individually. One claim is that theological voluntarism implies that
God's commands/intentions, on which moral statuses depend, must
be arbitrary. A distinct claim is that theological voluntarism implies
that the content of morality is itself arbitrary, that it is of the
essence of morality to exhibit a certain rational structure, and that
theological voluntarism precludes its having that structure. I will
consider each of these objections in turn.



One arbitrariness objection against theological voluntarism is that if
theological voluntarism is true, then God's commands/intentions
must be arbitrary; and it cannot be that morality could wholly depend
on something arbitrary; and so theological voluntarism must be false.
In favor of the claim that if theological voluntarism were true, then
morality would be arbitrary: morality would be arbitrary, on
theological voluntarism, if God lacks reasons for the
commands/intentions that God gives/has; but because theological
voluntarism holds that reasons depend on God's
commands/intentions, it is clear that there could ultimately be no
reason for God's commanding/intending one thing rather than
another. In favor of the claim that morality could not wholly depend
on something arbitrary: when we say that some moral state of affairs
obtains, we take it that there is a reason for that moral state of
affairs obtaining rather than another. Moral states of affairs do not
just happen to obtain.



Just as in the case of the objection from God's goodness, the
strength of this version of the objection from arbitrariness depends
on the formulation of theological voluntarism that is being attacked.
The arbitrariness objection becomes more difficult to answer the
stronger the relationship between God's intentions/commands and
moral properties is held to be; and it becomes more difficult to
answer the more normative properties one attempts to account for by
appeal to God's intentions/commands.



The arbitrariness objection has less force if one holds that, say,
only moral obligations are to be accounted for by theological
voluntarism. The claim made by the objector is that morality is
arbitrary on theological voluntarism, because God has no reason for
having one set of commands/intentions rather than another. But this is
so only if one appeals to the very strong form of theological
voluntarism on which all normative states of affairs depend on
God's will. If one holds that only moral obligations are
determined by God's will, then God might have moral reasons for
selecting one set of commands/intentions rather than another: that,
for example, one set of commands/intentions is more benevolent, or
just, or loyal, than another. If one holds that all moral properties
are determined by God's will, then God might have nonmoral
reasons for selecting one set of commands/intentions rather than
another: that one set of commands/intentions is more loving than
another. The fewer normative properties that a version of theological
voluntarism attempts to account for, the less susceptible it is to the
claim that theological voluntarism implies the arbitrariness of
God's commands/intentions. (For further discussion of the role
that restriction of theological voluntarism to a proper subset of
normative statuses has had in answering these perennial objections,
see Murphy 2012.)



Now, one might respond on behalf of this version of the arbitrariness
objection that even if it is true that there can be reasons for God to
choose the commands/intentions that God chooses, it is unlikely that
these reasons would wholly determine God's choice of
commands/intentions, and so there would be some latitude for
arbitrariness in God's choices/intentions. But of itself this is
not much of a worry. The initial claim pressed against theological
voluntarism was that it made all of God's commands/intentions
ultimately arbitrary, and morality could not depend on something so
thoroughly arbitrary. But the chastened claim--that there is some
arbitrariness in God's commands--is far less troubling on
its own. We are already familiar with morality depending to some
extent on arbitrary facts about the world: if one thinks about the
particular requirements that he or she is under, one will note
straightaway the extent to which these requirements have resulted from
contingent and indeed fluky facts about oneself, one's
relationships, and one's circumstances. It does not seem that
allowing that God has some choices to make concerning what to
command/intend with respect to the conduct of created rational beings
that are undetermined by reasons must introduce an intolerable
arbitrariness into the total set of divine commands/intentions. (See
also Carson 2012.)



Allowing for such pockets of divine discretion does not provide
backing for this version of the objection from arbitrariness, but
rather offers a premise for the other version of the objection from
arbitrariness. This other version of the objection from arbitrariness
holds that moral states of affairs exhibit a certain rational
structure that they would not have if theological voluntarism were
true. Here is the idea, roughly formulated. Suppose that some moral
state of affairs obtains--that it is the case that murder is
wrong, or that lying is objectionable, or that courage is a virtue, or
that Sharon's snubbing me in that way was unforgivable. The idea
is that for any such moral state of affairs, the following is true:
either we can provide a *justification* for the obtaining of
that moral state of affairs, or that moral state of affairs is
*necessary*. A justification of an obtaining moral state of
affairs *A* is some obtaining moral state of affairs *B*
(where *A* is not identical with *B*), which in
conjunction with the other non-moral facts entails that *A*
obtains. So, for example: it may be the justification for
*murder's being prima facie wrong* that murder is an
intentional harm (non-moral fact) and intentionally harming is prima
facie wrong (obtaining moral state of affairs). Now, presumably not
all moral states of affairs can be justified: eventually there will be
basic moral states of affairs, for which no justification can be
given. But it would be very unsatisfactory to say that these basic
moral states of affairs just happen to obtain. So any basic moral
states of affairs must obtain necessarily. Perhaps *unrelieved
suffering's being bad* is a state of affairs of this sort,
or perhaps *rational beings' being worthy of
respect*.



The claim that the structure of morality is not arbitrary is, put
positively, the claim that every obtaining moral state of affairs
either has a justification or is necessary. And, thus, what those who
claim that theological voluntarism entails that morality is
objectionably arbitrary mean is that if theological voluntarism is
true, then there are some moral states of affairs that both lack a
justification and are not necessary. The view that God's
commands/intentions are not wholly determined by reasons offer our
basis for holding that there are some moral states of affairs that
both lack a justification and are not necessary. For consider some act
of ph-ing that is not subsumed under any other issued divine
command and which is such that God lacks decisive reasons to command
or not to command its performance. In the possible world in which God
issues a command to ph, there is a moral state of
affairs--*its being obligatory to* ph--which lacks
a justification (for the action is subsumed under no other divine
command) and is not necessary (for God might have failed to command
the action).



One might respond to this sort of worry by proposing that what God
commands/intends with respect to human action, God commands/intends
necessarily. But this seems either to understate the divine freedom or
to overstate the determination of God's commands by reasons
(Murphy 2002, pp. 83-85). More plausible is the denial of the
claim that morality must exhibit the particular structure presupposed
in the objection. While I think that in general the subsumption model
of justification is innocuous enough--even particularists can
affirm it, if they affirm even the most minimal doctrine of moral
supervenience--its appeal to necessary moral states of affairs as
the only proper starting point is dubious. It is not clear why the
starting points for justification have to be necessary moral states of
affairs, for two reasons.



First, if these moral states of affairs are basic, then of course
their moral status must not be explained by appeal to other moral
states of affairs, but that does not mean they must be necessary; they
might be contingent, and have their moral status explained in some way
other than an appeal to another moral state of affairs. It could be,
for example, that the explanation of them appeals to a contingent
nonmoral state of affairs plus some necessary state of affairs
concerning a connection between that contingent nonmoral state of
affairs and the moral state of affairs. Theological voluntarism would
be an instance of this latter model. (For a discussion of a similar
objection raised against theological voluntarism by Ralph Cudworth
(1731), and a similar response on behalf of theological voluntarism,
see Schroeder 2005.) 



Second, the appeal to necessary moral states of affairs as the
stopping point for explanation seems to assume that necessary moral
states of affairs somehow are not in need of explanation. But the very
fact that some state of affairs obtains necessarily does not entail
that its obtaining does not require explanation, and there is no
reason why moral states of affairs would be special on this score. So
one might think that not only is it possible for justifications to
bottom out in contingent moral states of affairs, there is no reason
to think that such justifications are as such any less adequate than
justifications that bottom out in necessary moral states of affairs.
(See Murphy 2011, pp. 47-49.)


### 3.3 Is theological voluntarism adequately motivated?



Both with respect to the objection from God's goodness and with
respect to the objection from arbitrariness, the now-standard
theological voluntarist response is not to bite the bullet but rather
to restrict the range of normative properties of which theological
voluntarism is supposed to provide an account. So Adams, Quinn, and
Alston all recommend theological voluntarism only as a theory about
properties like *being morally obligatory*, and not about any
other normative properties. The worry is that allowing that there is
adequate motivation to refuse to understand these other normative
properties in theological voluntarist terms might commit one to
holding that there is adequate motivation to refuse to understand
obligation-type properties in theological voluntarist terms. Look, one
might say: if you are willing to hold that all moral properties other
than those in the obligation family are to be understood in
non-theological voluntarist terms, what is to stop us from holding
that obligation is to be understood in non-theological voluntarist
terms as well? If we are willing to give up theological voluntarism in
some moral domains, why not in all of them?



The most well-developed account of why we should treat obligation as
special is Adams', on which obligation is apt for theological
voluntarist treatment because of its intrinsic link to demands made
within social relationships (Adams 1987b, and Adams 1999, pp.
231-258; see also Evans 2014, p. 27). But it is also unclear
whether this is persuasive. We may grant that obligations result from
demands, but only if we emphasize (as Adams does) that it is demands
from *authorities* that result in obligations. But what makes
someone an authority is that by his or her dictates he or she can give
reasons for action of a certain kind. There is some dispute over what
kind of reasons they must be, but for our purposes we can just follow
Joseph Raz, who holds that genuine authorities give "protected
reasons" by their dictates, where a protected reason to ph is
a reason to ph and a reason to disregard some reasons against
ph-ing. If one is an authority over another with respect to
ph-ing, then one's dictate that the other ph is a
protected reason for the other to ph (Raz 1979, p. 18).



But now here is the question. We agree that obligations arise from
authoritative dictates. And we agree that for a dictate to be
authoritative is for it to constitute a certain sort of reason, let us
say a protected one. But why, then, would we identify obligations with
protected reasons that result from demands, rather than (as Raz does)
with protected reasons themselves, whatever their source? If, after
all, there were other ways of producing protected reasons other than
through the giving of commands, what would be the point of saying
'oh, but though there is a protected reason to ph, it
isn't really *obligatory* to ph.' Surely if
there were any point to this remark it would be purely verbal, and of
no philosophical / normative interest.



It turns out, then, that whether Adams' move is enough to
motivate theological voluntarism about obligation is dependent on
whether there are in fact any protected reasons (or reasons of
whatever structure that one thinks that authoritative dictates must
give) that are not dependent on demands being made. If there are such
reasons--which natural law theorists, for example, would
hold--then Adams' gambit will not work, and the theological
voluntarist will have to look elsewhere for motivation to understand
obligation in those terms.



Now, one might say that by appealing to the idea that obligations
arise from demands made within social relationships as the basis for
the theological voluntarist's account of moral obligation, we
are misconstruing the key claim that they make about the social nature
of obligation. The social nature of obligation, voluntarists might
retort, first and foremost concerns the fact that when one is under an
obligation, there is someone else who is entitled to hold one
accountable for failures to adhere to the content of that obligation
(Adams 1999, p. 233; Evans 2013, p 14). In the case of the moral law,
the party who has standing to hold us accountable is God.



Even if one accepts this claim about the nature of obligation --
it has some plausibility, as there is some basis for holding that not
everything that one has protected reason to do counts as obligatory
-- and the claim that only God has adequate standing to hold us
accountable for adhering to morality, it is still not at all clear how
to provide a satisfactory rationale for a theological voluntarist view
of moral obligation. For theological voluntarism with respect to moral
obligations holds that the existence of moral obligations depends on
God's bringing them about via God's command or some other
act of divine will; but there is no obvious argument for the view that
God's being essential to holding us accountable for following
the norms of morality entails God's commanding or willing those
moral norms into existence. Even if we grant, then, to the theological
voluntarists their desired premises regarding the social character of
obligation and God's ideal status as someone to hold us
accountable for adhering to the norms of morality, theological
voluntarists still have a worrisome gap to overcome in offering
positive reasons to affirm that view.