God and the Moral Law

1936 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
James Bissett Pratt

The subject for our annual conference this year — Ethics and Theology — forces us to face one of the most difficult problems of religious thought, — the relation between God and morality. To this problem several solutions — all quite familiar — have been proposed and it will not be the purpose of my paper to suggest a new one of my own. In fact, as the sequel will show, I am very uncertain whether any completely satisfactory solution to the problem be possible. My aim is the much less ambitious one of placing the matter, with some of its difficulties, before the Society for discussion, in the hope that your collective wisdom may be able to throw more light upon this dark theme than the Society's benighted president for this year — who is no theologian — is able to contribute.One of the simplest and most popular modes of conceiving the relation between God and the laws of morality is to equate righteousness with obedience to the divine will. God is good, we are told, and our goodness is to be defined as conformity to the will of God. One relatively superficial and pragmatic difficulty in accepting this view consists in the obvious fact that it is by no means easy to know with certainty what the will of God may be. Different philosophers, different prophets, different religions give us different and sometimes quite contradictory answers to this question.

Author(s):  
Michael J. Lynch

This chapter discusses another important doctrine relative to John Davenant’s hypothetical universalism: the divine will. Observing that the doctrine of God’s will in early modern scholastic theology, including among Reformed theologians, involved a plethora of scholastic distinctions, the chapter shows that Davenant’s theology of the divine will was heavily influenced by these distinctions, which were themselves ways of making sense of apparent contradictory claims in Scripture. Davenant’s employment of these medieval distinctions, such as between God’s love of simple complacency and his absolute will, are given extended treatment. This chapter also gives attention to the difference between a divine conditional and an absolute will. Finally, tying all these distinctions together, this chapter explains how Davenant employs them to buttress his hypothetical universalism.


Author(s):  
Paul Edwards

Suicide has been condemned as necessarily immoral by most Western religions and also by many philosophers. It is argued that suicide defies the will of God, that it is socially harmful and that it is opposed to ‘nature’. According to Kant, those who commit suicide ‘degrade’ humanity by treating themselves as things rather than as persons; furthermore, since they are the subject of moral acts, they ‘root out’ morality by removing themselves from the scene. In opposition to this tradition the Stoics and the philosophers of the Enlightenment maintained that there is nothing necessarily immoral about suicide. It is sometimes unwise, causing needless suffering, but it is frequently entirely rational and occasionally even heroic. Judging by the reforms in laws against suicide and the reactions to the suicides of prominent persons in recent decades, it appears that the Enlightenment position is becoming very generally accepted.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48
Author(s):  
Warren Swain

Intoxication as a ground to set aside a contract is not something that has proved to be easy for the law to regulate. This is perhaps not very surprising. Intoxication is a temporary condition of varying degrees of magnitude. Its presence does however raise questions of contractual autonomy and individual responsibility. Alcohol consumption is a common social activity and perceptions of intoxication and especially alcoholism have changed over time. Roman law is surprisingly quiet on the subject. In modern times the rules about intoxicated contracting in Scottish and English law is very similar. Rather more interestingly the law in these two jurisdictions has reached the current position in slightly different ways. This history can be traced through English Equity, the works of the Scottish Institutional writers, the rise of the Will Theory, and all leavened with a dose of judicial pragmatism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
João Carlos Brum Torres

O artigo tem por objeto o exame de três registros de gritantes e distintos paradoxos na Doutrina do Direito de Kant. Registros feitos em tempos e contextos históricos diferentes por Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek atribuiu a Kant a mais paradoxal das proposições jamais enunciadas por qualquer autor, a de que a mera ideia de soberania deve obrigar-nos a obedecer como a nosso inquestionável senhor a quem quer que se haja estabelecido como tal, sem que caiba indagar quem lhe deu o direito de comandar-nos. Willaschek aponta a incompatibilidade de duas teses centrais da doutrina kantiana: a do caráter externo dos vínculos jurídicos e a da incondicionalidade obrigacional do direito positivo, pois não é possível entender como é possível termo-nos como obrigados por imperativos jurídicos e, ao mesmo, vermo-nos internamente isentados do dever de obedecê-los. O ponto crítico de Balthazar é alegar que não pode haver na filosofia kantiana uma crítica da razão político e jurídica, simplesmente porque o conceito de imputação, base da normatividade própria dessas esferas, pressupõe uma pluralidade de agentes livres que, justamente, só pode ser uma pressuposição, pois nosso acesso à normatividade prática só pode ter lugar em primeira pessoa. No exame a que o artigo submete essas alegações, o artigo argumenta, em objeção à tese de Balthazar, que o caráter universal e categórico da força que vincula o sujeito quando confrontado com a lei moral em primeira pessoa necessariamente se desvaneceria se, ao mesmo tempo, ele não fosse tomado pela evidência de que a realidade objetiva dos princípios morais é não só instanciável, mas assegurada pela múltipla instanciação. Com relação às dificuldades levantadas por Willaschek e Bouterwek, o artigo argumenta que o princípio exeundum e statu naturali, enquanto norma metapositiva, anterior à divisão do domínio prático entre doutrina do direito e doutrina da virtude, permite ao mesmo tempo compreender a exigência de obediência ao poder constituído e a restrição das obrigações jurídico-políticas exclusivamente ao foro externo.AbstractThe object of the article is to examine three claims about three distinct and allegedly blatant paradoxes in Kant's Doctrine of Right. These three critical points had been made in distinct times and contexts by Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek attributed to Kant the most paradoxical of all paradoxical propositions, the statement that by the mere idea of sovereignty we are obliged to obey as our lord who has imposed himself upon us, without questioning from where he got such right. Willaschek points out the incompatibility of two main theses of Kantian doctrine of right: the claims that the legal bounds are of external character and that they are the source of unconditional obligations, since it seems impossible to understand how it would be possible to be obliged by juridical norms and decisions and at the same time to be exempted of the internal duty of compliance. The radical objection of Professor Balthazar is the claim that in the context of Kantian Philosophy it is impossible to admit a critique of the juridical and political reason because the concept of imputation, ground of the normativity in these domains, requires not only the presupposition of free agents, but a true and secure epistemic access to them, which is, according to him, impossible considering that the moral law and the other practical principles are accessible for us only in the first person. In the course of the appraisal of such claims, the article contest that objection arguing that the universal and categorical force of the normative bound experienced by the subject when confronted with the moral law in the first person would ineluctably vanish if, at the same time, he had not been taken by the evidence that the objective reality of the moral principles is secured by multiple instancing. Regarding the difficulties raised by Willaschek and Bouterwek, the article argues that the principle exeundum e statu naturali, as a norm of meta-positive character, prior to the division of practical domains between the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue, is the cue both to the understanding of the requirement of unquestioning obedience to the constituted power and to the restriction of the validity of this requirement only in foro externo.


Author(s):  
Pilar López de Santa María

Freedom is the focus of the first of the writings included in The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics. The attention that Schopenhauer devotes to the subject does not stop here, however, since freedom appears recurrently in different parts of his system. It is linked to his theory of knowledge, metaphysics, aesthetics, and the denial of the will. This chapter follows that track and examines the presence in different contexts of Schopenhauerian thought of a freedom that is so undeniable as unexplainable. In this way will be shown Schopenhauer’s transition from the freedom of the voluntas to the freedom of noluntas [non-willing] and the state of great liberation that occurs because the will frees itself from itself. It is a transition that begins and ends at the same point: mystery


Horizons ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
D. M. Yeager

AbstractWilliam Golding, in The Spire, invites us to ask how we may know the will of God, and suggests that what we take to be the will of God is often simply the projection onto history of the disguised image of our private and self-absorbed desires. Though contemporary critics tend to interpret the novel as a sympathetic exploration of moral ambiguity rather than as a compelling condemnation of Jocelin's mortifying and death-dealing sin, the novel turns on the contrast between the drive toward dominion and the capacity for assent. The final salvific discovery, given form in Jocelin's mind by the experience of the apple tree and the kingfisher, is the overthrow of the will, its panicked drowning, in terrified apprehension of implacable glory and squandered gifts.


1962 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gertner

In the last centuries before the current era and in the early centuries after its beginning the major intellectual and literary activity in the realms (first) of the Jewish and (later) of the Christian communities was wholly centred in the field of interpretation. The OT, as the mainspring and foundation of all religious thought and teaching in those days and in those spheres, was the subject of this interpretation activity. In both the Jewish and the Christian world the Bible was considered to be not only holy and authoritative, but also, and this is in our context more important, the only and exclusive source of divine religious doctrine and of good ethical behaviour. Also historical events, political or religious, were seen, even foreseen, and evaluated from the aspect of this holy source of divine wisdom and planning.


2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-80
Author(s):  
Edward A. Beckstrom

For centuries a mystery has surrounded the meaning of Jesus' term “The Son of Man” in his ministry, and today it is often called “The Son of Man Problem.” Studying “Son of Man” in all of its biblical references, and apocryphal usages, together with insights from the Dead Sea Scrolls, I propose a solution that the idiom means “Priest” or “High Priest,” but most especially “Heavenly High Priest” and is framed in the third person by Jesus because it is expressed as his destiny given by God—it is the Will of God. “The Son of Man” is distinct from Jesus own will, but is the destiny he follows. It is also the use of this term that caused Caiaphas to cry “blasphemy” at Jesus' Sanhedrin trial, who then sent him to Pilate for crucifixion, yet asserting that Jesus proclaimed himself “King of the Jews.” Caiaphas, knew, I believe, that “Son of Man” was synonymous with “High Priest.”


Author(s):  
William Dyrness ◽  
Christi Wells

Edwards’s aesthetics grounded in the ongoing work of God communicated in creation, not only lies at the centre of his thought but is increasingly recognized as one of his most original contributions to theology. Edwards’s reflection on God’s beauty emerged in the context of his work as a pastor, which allowed him to frame God’s dynamic presence in dramatic and multi-sensory categories. For Edwards Beauty glimpsed in the form of images formed in the mind reflects a consent of being; the visual beauty of symmetry and proportion is meant to move the heart to consent to the will of God reflected in creation—what Edwards calls respectively secondary and primary beauty. All creatures are types and shadows of spiritual realities; beauty and morality are linked, though only the Holy Spirit allows believers to consent to God’s self-disclosure in creation. Edwards’s neo-platonic framework allowed his reflections on the revivals to affirm physical beauty while subordinating its meaning to the spiritual, enhancing its role as revelation but diminishing its value as an end in itself.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Wiktor Wolman

The article is a part of the broad current of the philosophy of responsibility. It analyses and describes the basic elements of human activity in the anthropological and ethical perspective. A particular feature discussed in the article is selflessness, which is analysed in the perspective of the main ethical currents. In personalistic philosophy, responsibility and selflessness result from the will, whereas in deontological philosophy they result from the moral norm adopted by the subject. The concept that describes the nature and fundamental elements of an act is the theory of supererogatory act. According to it, a selfless act is a free, conscious act resulting from the realization of a norm immanent to the subject.


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