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God's Three Attributes and Morality in Aquinas and Divine Command Theory

Date Submitted: 05/30/2004 18:24:48
Category: / Literature
Length: 7 pages (1797 words)
Views: 196309

Divine Command Theory's essential premise is that whatever God commands is good, and whatever he prohibits is evil; nothing else is good or evil. Many objections against this theory occurred over time, including one by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas had an unusual position, since he opposed this theory while adhering to the traditional monotheistic conception of God, i.e. the perfect entity with the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and omni-benevolence. In this paper, I will first …

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…then the issue of "true commands" becomes very perplexing. For instance regarding Jews and Christians, it seems very problematical, if not impossible, to logically reconcile the commands of "turn your cheek" and "eye for an eye". In short, believing in DCT could only be possible in a world of shared beliefs and/or one single Scripture. Since that is not the case, Aquinas' argument seems sounder to me, owing to its fixed concept of goodness.

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