Abrahams dilemma a levinasian ethical exegesis of the divine command in genesis 22

command morality, and raises a perpetual religious terror embedded within it: toobey divine commands gives rise to violence.. From the outside, we find Abraham facingtwo horns: to obey G

Chapter One Defining Abraham’s “Dilemma”

1 Introduction: Religious Violence and Divine Commands

Religious violence has never ceased to be a thorny experience of world history Inevery corner of the world, wars are waged for reasons of race, nationalism, etc.and also religion Thus, religion and violence often go together At the beginning

of the 21st century, the tragedy of terrorist attacks on September 11 2001, in theland of the United States has reminded members of this global village a fact: Weare living in a world in which religious violence has been a recurring pain tohumanity Some tough questions are inevitably raised to the communities offaiths: Does religion not aim to bring peace and harmony to the human race? Arethe divine commands of God not demanding his believers to love each other and

to renounce the enmity among foes? Then a gnawing question casts a long shadow

to religious belief in our time: Does theistic faith inevitably lead to religiousviolence?

Besides the mentioned pressing questions, it is more stunning to read what Hent

de Vries claims, “No violence without (some) religion; no religion without (some)violence,” in the opening of his recent magnum opusReligion and Violence.1

Canhis claim be justified? Borrowed mainly from Emmanuel Levinas, de Vrieslocates the understanding of religion as “the relation between self and the other

1

Hent de Vries, Religion and Violence (London: The Johns and Hopkins University Press, 2002), p.1.

without constituting a totality.”2In this case, religion is supposedly bringing forththe otherness of others before me or within self, in spite of the possible differencesthat exist among peoples in terms of cultures, languages, races, nations, etc Everyliving soul is valuable, honourable and sublime Having said that, however, deVries evaluates the definition of religion mentioned above in the religiousexperience that Kierkegaard considered as an incident which would have causeone to fear and to tremble What is that incident? Those who are familiar withKierkegaard’s groundbreaking masterpiece, namely Fear and Trembling, would

have no difficulty in identifying the cause of the fear as lying in a God whocommands his servant to sacrifice an innocent life By taking up the account ofAbraham in the Hebrew Bible, chapter 22 of the Book of Genesis, Kierkegaardtriggers the fear in a God who commands his faithful believer to carry out acommand to kill an innocent life that causes traumatic pain in the God-fearingbeliever To obey or not, one is inevitably trembling before this commanding God.The story of Abraham is closely relevant to my endeavour in exploring a possibleinterpretation of the difficulty that Abraham faces, which sheds new light on theissue of religious violence It is helpful to read the story before we delve into thediscussion of the relevant issues:3

1 Some time later God tested Abraham He said to him,

"Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.2Then God said, "Take yourson, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of

2

Ibid Explicitly de Vries appropriates Levinas’s definition of religion as found in Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans Alphonson Lingis (Pittsburg, PA: Duquesque University Press, 1969), p 40 Of course, Levinas would never ascribe the other as the Divine Other For, the other is always the human other in Levinas’s definition.

3

The translation of the Scripture I am using is the New International Version.

Moriah Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of themountains I will tell you about."

3Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey

He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac When hehad cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the placeGod had told him about.4On the third day Abraham looked up andsaw the place in the distance.5 He said to his servants, "Stay herewith the donkey while I and the boy go over there We will worshipand then we will come back to you."

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it onhis son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife As thetwo of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to hisfather Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied "Thefire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for theburnt offering?" 8 Abraham answered, "God himself will providethe lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went

on together

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abrahambuilt an altar there and arranged the wood on it He bound his sonIsaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood 10 Then hereached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.11 But theangel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham!

Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied 12 "Do not lay a hand on theboy," he said "Do not do anything to him Now I know that youfear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, youronly son."

13Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught

by its horns He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as aburnt offering instead of his son 14 So Abraham called that placeThe LORD Will Provide And to this day it is said, "On themountain of the LORD it will be provided."

15The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a secondtime 16 and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, thatbecause you have done this and have not withheld your son, youronly son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants asnumerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore

Your descendants will take possession of the cities of theirenemies,18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will beblessed, because you have obeyed me."19 Then Abraham returned

to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba AndAbraham stayed in Beersheba

In this narrative, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac as aburnt offering At first glance, the biblical narrative heightens the kind of ethicswhich seeks to be based on God’s will or divine commands, namely the divine

command morality, and raises a perpetual religious terror embedded within it: toobey divine commands gives rise to violence It is easily seen in the history ofreligion, especially in that of monotheistic faiths, founded in the tradition of theHebrew Bible, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam that martyrdom for thesake of a commanding God has been the climax or consummation of a devotedlife to God Be it in the name of a “Just War” in the West, or the “Holy War” inthe Middle East, religious peoples see death in battles against their “religious”enemies as a sacrifice to God, for whom they are prepared to die in honour, and inwhom they are sanctified Hence a religion that champions a pious devotion todivine commands inevitably falls into the ethico-political semantics of violence.

In the shadow of a global religious terrorism that has broken out at the turn of anew century, it is thus crucial for members of a multi-faith society to ask: Can thereligious peoples of the Abrahamic faith(s) obeying divine commands on theone hand, and loving others as themselves on the other build a more hospitablecommunity?

In this research I would like to address the issue from a philosophic point of view

In the first chapter, I attempt to define the “dilemma” in the Genesis 22 narrative,

in which the divine command is an indispensable element that causes the crisis inAbraham’s faith in an all-loving God This leads to various attempts in resolvingthe conflict between religion and morality, which will be evaluated more fully inthe second chapter Through a survey and a review of the various ways in whichmajor figures such as Immanuel Kant, Phillip Quinn, Robert M Adams andKierkegaard try to overcome the conflict, it is seen that all their theories seem to

be inadequate in one way or another in overcoming the dilemma, which points to

the need to reinterpret the divine command in Genesis 22 Particularly at this point

I find Levinas’s ethics promising in working out the task In the third chapter Iwill bring forth the Achilles’ heel of the divine command theory – thecommanding God, which serves an interpretative role in the entire endeavour ofreinterpreting the divine command in Genesis 22 Applying Levinas’s critique of

an ontological conceptualization of God that ultimately challenges one to shoulder

an absolute ethical responsibility for the other (or the Other), I set up the backdrop

to introduce a Levinasian ethical exegesis of Genesis 22, in which thecommanding God is inviting the faithful and obedient Abraham to be responsiblefor his neighbour, namely Isaac his only son In the last part of the chapter, I willgive an ethical exegesis of the Genesis 22 to round up the search for an alternateinterpretation of the narrative so as to overcome Abraham’s dilemma

Before getting to the exegesis part, we have to understand the efforts of someleading figures in the discussion of the divine command theory and its relevancy

to Genesis 22

2 The Divine Command Theory and Genesis 22

What is the divine command theory? Classically, the issue of the divine commandtheory is formulated in Socrates’s dialogue with Euthyphro, in which Socratesasked Euthyphro, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it (arethey) pious because they love it?” (Euthyphro, 10a) To say the gods love X so X

is pious is to say that the commands or approvals of the gods are without rationaljustification, in which case piety is dependent on God and deemed to be arbitrary;

traditionally, such conception is termed as the Divine Command Theory(hereafter, DCT) On the other hand, to say X is pious so the gods love X, is to saythat their commands or approvals are rationally justified, and it is to thatjustification, rather than to the action or attitude of the authority (gods or God),that we must look for the meaning of the normative term; such conception isusually termed as the Morality Autonomy Theory (hereafter, MAT).4

For centuries, philosophers, theologians, and moralists have enquired into theplausibility and workability of these two theories Though I am not going to give asimilar weight of attention to the MAT, I am aware of some significantcontributions of the philosophers who hold fast to the MAT It is worth to takenote of the voice of one contemporary theorist of the MAT, Professor KaiNielson, internationally known for his works on the philosophies of ethics andreligion Nielson comments that the statement of faith “God is good” is atautology, which bears no weight in ethical instruction by virtue of “God” notbeing a value or attribute, while “good” is a moral value or moral standard HenceGod has nothing to do with the moral value of the acts one is performing Heconcludes in hisGod and the Grounding of Morality, “God, let us assume, could,

and indeed did, create the world, but he could not – logically could not – createmoral values Existence is one thing; value is another.”5 Nielsen explicitlyaddresses his thesis of “an ethics without God” to religious moralists, urging them

to abandon theirinfantile conviction in a commanding God and be courageous in

4

Cf The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), s.v.

“Euthyphro’s Dilemma,” by Gareth B Matthews.

5

Kai Nielsen, God and the Grounding of Morality (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1991), p 218; also his Ethics Without God (London: Prometheus Books, 1973).

making moral decisions for the welfare of their society as adults.6 Admittedly,Nielson has posed a convincing argument for the MAT, but nonetheless, he hasoverlooked another plausible way to bring both the MAT and DCT into harmonysuch that, on the one, we are obliged to make moral decisions independently ofGod, and on the other, take the ends of the moral consideration to be compatiblewith the divine commands This is exemplified in Kant’s theory of ethics, whichwill be explicated in fuller details in the following chapter.

Most religious believers particularly Jews, Christians and Moslems tend toaccept the DCT, and claim that something is good because God commands it Godcreates good and evil by his commands, or to put it in another way, it is God’scommanding that makes something good; it is God’s forbidding that makessomething evil Theistic moralists such as Immanuel Kant, and some othercontemporary philosophers such as Richard G Swinburne, James Rachels, RobertYoung, Peter Geach, Dewi Z Phillips, Richard M Adams, Phillip Quinn, AviSagi, also join the camp, striving to uphold the DCT in various ways For thesedivine command theorists, religion is not necessarily in conflict with morality,rather, religion reinforces moral strivings and efficacy by virtue of its precisionand clarity in moral teachings, instructions, and most importantly, the archetypalmodels in the tradition and the sacred texts of a religion All in all, thecommanding God is the one who shapes morality for the welfare of individualbelievers and vast humanity Furthermore, some DCT supporters claim thatwithout the commanding God, morality tends to be arbitrary, or naturalistic andegocentric at best God, be it in a realist, critical realist or non-realist idea, has to

6

Kai Nielsen, God and the Grounding of Morality, pp 221-22.

be the pivotal point of reference for moral accountability and ethicalresponsibility Through God our moral concerns and behaviours are not merelymatters for the sake of humanism, but also acts of worship and doxology.

Having said that, the theory is by no means free from problems, especially when

we come to some biblical accounts in which we see numbers of divine commands

in the Bible seemingly violate the belief in an all-loving and faithful God Acharacteristic narrative is Genesis 22 From the outside, we find Abraham facingtwo horns: to obey God's command, which means to sacrifice his son Isaac, or, tokeep his moral duty of not killing any innocent life, which means he has todisobey the divine command The biblical account in Genesis 22 violates thebelief in a loving and faithful God, who, supposedly, ought to prohibit the killing

of innocent lives Of old, this biblical account has been problematic in bothphilosophical and theological circles Nonetheless, the biblical scholar Dr R W

L Moberly comments that the story “has been one of the highpoints in scripturewhere the nature and meaning of the Bible as a whole is illuminated with unusualclarity,”7meaning that, the story “has served as an interpretative key to other parts

of scripture, and has interacted with continuing post-biblical patterns of faith andlife.”8 For the religious communities in the tradition of the Abrahamic faith, thestory gives an everlasting archetypal figure of the one who fears God and obeysGod at all cost.9Yet some persistent questions concerning this story always recur:How could one obey a God who commands to kill an innocent life? Should a

pious soul follow such a divine command? One of the most furious critics ofreligion, Bertrand Russell utterly rejects the God of Job who shows “no hint” of

“divine goodness” but demands Job to worship his “naked power”.10 ObviouslyRussell would have no hesitation to say “no” to such a divine command and such

a commanding God It is likewise for Immanuel Kant, who, though embracing thedivine command theory (as far as it supplies theratio essendi to moral reasoning

and autonomous freedom), nonetheless remains skeptical that such an abhorrentcommand should be a divine command.11 In the following chapter, we will come

to Kant’s response to Genesis 22 and will give his viewpoint a considerable length

of discussion

3 Moral Dilemmas and Logic

Yet some philosophers and theologians would find it difficult to agree with thepossibility of anyone facing moral dilemmas in any situation of moral decision,least of all the father of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, Abraham Hence it is amethodological necessity for us to define “moral dilemma” What is meant by

“moral dilemma”? Classically, in Book I of Plato’s Republic,12 Cephalus defines

“Justice” as speaking the truth and paying one’s debt Socrates quickly refutes thisdefinition by posing the possibility that it could be wrong to pay certain debts, forinstance, returning a borrowed weapon to a friend who is mentally disturbed and

10

Bertrand Russell, "A Free Man's Worship," in The Basic Writtings of Bertrand Russell,

ed R Egner and L Denonn (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961), p 67.

11

Anh Tuan Nuyen gives an excellent summary of Kant’s DCT and MAT which are interchangeable in terms of practical reason and categorical ethics See A T Nuyen, "What Does the Free Man Worship?" Internation Journal for Philosophy of Religion 46 (1999), p 41-2; also

A T Nuyen, "Is Kant a Divine Command Theorist?," History of Philosophical Quaterly 15, 4 (October 1998); and Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Ed Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

12

Plato, The Republic, trans Paul Shorey, in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds E Hamilton and H Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press).

who may do harm to others with a weapon Socrates brings the argument to a newlevel, that on the one hand, to repay debts is undoubtedly a moral duty to anymoral person; yet on the other hand, to protect others is definitely a moral duty toany one too The debtor is facing two moral duties, which are conflicting witheach other The debtor can do either of the duty But the debtor cannot do both ofthe duties The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; either ways, theagent does something wrong This is a “moral dilemma”.

Nevertheless, some contemporary ethicists or philosophers pose objections to thepossibility and validity of moral dilemmas, for two reasons: first, the wholeenterprise of moral theories is to provide reasonable and consistent moralguidance for the welfare of human existence, but dilemma-generating theory fails

to recommend consistent moral guides Second, dilemma-generating theory notonly gives rise to an inconsistent or incompatible action in morality, but alsohinders moral responsibility or moral courage when one is facing difficult moraldecisions If it is true that there is no such thing as a moral dilemma, then there is

no dilemma for Abraham in Genesis 22, or more generally for the DCT In otherwords, our problem is solved if we can somehow dismiss the idea of a moraldilemma But can we?

For opponents of the validity of moral dilemmas, the main task of moral theories

is to provide moral agents with guidance This suggests that it is desirable fortheories to eliminate dilemmas, at least if doing so is possible In other words,opponents of moral dilemmas have generally denied the possibility of genuine

moral dilemmas.13 Two theories, namely deontological ethics andconsequentialism (of course, including its developed theories, ethical egoism andutilitarianism)14 are definitely included in the list of the counter-dilemma stand.Are they capable of resolving Abraham’s dilemma?

For deontological ethics, certain acts must or must not be done, regardless of theconsequences of their performance or non-performance In other words, certainacts are right or wrong in themselves, say, promise-keeping is right in itself andpromise-breaking is wrong in itself; saving life is right in itself and killing iswrong in itself But two immediate problems for deontology are, first, how can weknow which act is right or wrong in itself? Second, how can we be sure of thedistinction between act and omission? Kant would have given the priority to theuniversal maxim of the categorical imperative, in which our moral actions areconstrained by the general guidelines that are consistent, both to our practicalreasoning and divine commands But Kant’s deontology cannot be applied toresolve Abraham’s dilemma Between the divine command to kill and theobligation to protect an innocent life, deontological ethics offers no solution to

77 128-29 Yet scholars like Marcus must also face some plausible examples of moral dilemmas

in the real world Consider the situation of the criminal defence attorney, who is expected to have

an obligation to hold in confidence the disclosures made by a client and to be required to conduct herself with candour before the court (when the latter requires that attorneys inform the court when her client commits perjury) See Monroe Freedman, Lawyer's Ethics in an Adversary System (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975) However, some opponents of moral dilemmas argue for the impossibility of genuine dilemmas See Earl Conee, "Against Moral Dilemmas," The Philosophical Review 91 (1982); also Michael J Zimmerman, The Concept of Moral Obligation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

14

Thiroux classifies ethical egoism, together with utilitarianism, as a developed theory of consequentialism See Jacques Thiroux, Ethics: Theory and Practice (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995, Fifth Edition) Though I am aware of Thiroux’s view might be arguable, but it

is helpful to weight the similar core interest of both theories from the perspective that both are striving to attain greatest benefit and highest happiness from moral decisions.

reconcile both obligations Another attempt to resolve the dilemma, however,suggested by Sir William David Ross, which stresses that all duties are prima facie A prima facie duty, then, is one that all human beings must do in the general

sense before any other considerations enter into picture Then he goes on to dealwith two seemingly conflicting duties by his famous two principles:15(1) Always

do that act that is in accord with the stronger prima facie duty, and (2) do that actthat has the greatest prima facie rightness over prima facie wrongness Yet neitherprinciple can help us to decide which duty or obligation in Genesis 22 is strongerthan the other Moreover, it fails to provide us a clear rule for determining the

“balance” of prima facie rightness over wrongness Granted that deontological

ethics has always associated with DCT, nonetheless deontology cannot overcomethe conflict of the divine command and obligation in Abraham’s dilemma Howabout the second theory, namely consequentialism?

According to the derived theories of consequentialism, namely ethical egoism andutilitarianism, moral actions are decided on the basis of the resulting values andbenefits so that the highest happiness is attainable But the two theories havetotally different directions and implication as well For ethical egoism, humanbeings ought to act in their own self-interest, whereas the utilitarian says thathuman beings ought to act in the interests of all concerned Hence, in the matter ofmoral decision or ethical living, both theories eliminate any possibility of moraldilemmas.16However, there are some difficulties to these theories too For ethicalegoism, it offers no consistent method of resolving conflicts of self-interest To

take Genesis 22 as a test case, Abraham would have to decide which serves hisself-interest best, whether to obey the divine command so to kill his son, or tokeep his moral standard by disobeying the divine command But who can tell bythe consequences of each of the acts whether it will be good or ill to Abraham?Similarly in the case of the utilitarian who makes moral decisions based on thegreatest happiness to the greatest number of people: it is very hard to ascertainwhat would be the good consequences to Abraham and Isaac In short, thedilemma in Genesis 22 remains unresolved in these consequentialist theories.17

In view of the fact that many moralists are trying to downplay the possibility andplausibility of moral dilemmas, is dilemma-generating theory tenable after all?The defenders would argue for the possibility of moral dilemmas on the groundsthat such things are often met with in life and in literature as well In his recentpaper titled “Moral Dilemmas and the Logic of Obligation,” John Holbo presents

a cogent argument to defend the possibility of moral dilemmas.18 BorrowingBrink’s argument, he asserts the possibility of moral dilemmas with the aid of twoprinciples First, the “agglomerative principle”: if one ought to do á, and to do â,one ought to do both

AP O (á )&O(â) O(á&â)Second, the “voluntarist principle”: ought implies can

VP O (á) (á)Holbo goes further to show a contradiction is derivable in light of the twoprinciples:19

of dilemma should wish VP to be weakened—let alone how they could set aboutproving it should be weakened to the most convenient degree of their purposes.”20

In other words, VP does not defend or deny moral dilemmas anyway Yet heillustrates his point by instancing the story of Agamemnon When Agamemnon sat

in the tent, his mind was running from (1) to (8), and he found that he could savehis daughter, or he could lead the Greek army to Troy He ought to do both;therefore there ought to be some way he can do both But there isn’t ObviouslyAgamemnon’s mind was running in a frantic and hopeless circle Unquestionably

he faced a moral dilemma.21Similarly, Abraham is faced with two obligations that

demand his attention and action to do both at the same time Logically, he istrapped in a moral dilemma.

We may conclude, then, that moral dilemmas are real and have a distinctivelogical structure We may conclude that Abraham did face a real dilemma, whichmeans that we do have a problem in reconciling religion with ethics We now turn

to the nature of moral dilemmas in order to better understand Abraham’s dilemma

In the literature on moral dilemmas, it is common to draw distinctions amongvarious types of dilemmas One distinction is between epistemic conflicts and ontological conflicts The former kind involves conflicts between two or more

requirements to the extent that the agent does not know which of the conflictingrequirements should be categorized as priority over others But the latter involvesconflicts between two or more requirements and the agent does not know which isstronger, and neither is overridden Genuine moral dilemmas, if there are any, areontological The second distinction is between self-imposed moral dilemmas and

dilemmas imposed on an agent by the world Conflicts of the former kind arise

due to the agent’s own actions, under circumstances where the agent makes twopromises which he or she knows would conflict each other As a result the agentcreates a situation in which he or she is not able to discharge both of therequirements Contrary to the former, the conflicts of the latter are not caused bythe agent, rather, they are imposed on the agent by the world 22 Anotherdistinction is betweenobligation dilemmas and prohibition dilemmas The former

22

See St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Trans Thomas Gilby (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964-1975); Alan Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Alan Donagan, "Consistency in Rationalist Moral Systems," The Journal of Philosophy 81 (1984): 291-309; Terrance McConnell, "Moral Dilemmas and Consistency in Ethics," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 8 (1978): 269-287.

are situations in which more than one action is obligatory; the latter are situations

in which all actions are forbidden.23

Now let’s turn to the case of Abraham Can we classify the situation of Abraham

as a moral dilemma? Certainly, when it is seen from the point of view thatAbraham has to obey God, so to fulfill his religious commitment to God, and yetthe action he takes to comply with the divine command to kill his innocent son isimmoral in the ethical sense an action that is both obligatory (religiously) andyet forbidden (morally) to Abraham! Furthermore, the dilemma he faced was

imposed by God Of course in many cases the dilemma can be resolved when one

is allowed to take action A first, then B But in Abraham’s case it was impossible

to prioritize between his religious duty and moral obligation Logically one canconclude that the dilemma that Abraham experienced was indeed an ontologicaldilemma

4 Theological Considerations of the DCT and Genesis 22

One can, however, argue that Abraham was not facing a moral dilemma, if onesees the case from a theological perspective, in which the God who is beyond ourmoral reason and moral constraint is the one who commands, and ultimatelyshould be responsible for the consequence The only thing a believer has to do is

to obey the commandments of God without any hesitation and reservation

23

Valentyne argues that although the principle of deontic logic may well render obligation dilemmas impossible, but they do not preclude the possibility of prohibition dilemmas See Peter Valentyne, "Prohibition Dilemmas and Deontic Logic," Logique et Analyse 30 (1987): 113-122; also "Two Types of Moral Dilemmas," Erkenntnis 30 (1989): 301-318.

However, the problem still lies with the nature of the conflict between religion andmorality: are the conflicts genuine or apparent?

In Christian theology, Martin Luther insists that God is free to give moral andimmoral commands What God expects from his believers is that they obey hiscommands wholeheartedly Under this condition, Abraham is absolutely right tosacrifice Isaac since, as Luther adds, God will somehow restore the life of Isaacafter he was sacrificed.24A similar argument also can be found in the theology ofJudaism A contemporary Jewish theologian Yeshayahu Leibowitz embarks on asimilar attempt to accentuate the sacrifice of Isaac as the supreme symbol ofJewish religiosity, in which “all human values were annulled and overridden byfear and love of God.”25 Leibowitz depicts a God who is unfathomable andbeyond rational criteria He sees no way of bridging between religion andmorality God is not an object of knowledge, thus he is not reducible totheological delineation and speculation through logical or practical reasoning.Such an approach secures the DCT in a religious sense, but unavoidably reducesreligious morality to a private sphere, shying away from its public responsibilitytowards the common good of humanity

24

Luther, on the one hand, admitted there is a clear contradiction in Genesis 22, but sought to resolve the contradiction by asserting “…Abraham relies on the promise and attributes to the Divine Majesty this power, that He will restore his dead son to life; for just as he saw that Isaac was born of a worn-out womb and of a sterile mother, so he also believed that he was to be raised after being buried and reduced to ashes, in order that he might have descendants, as the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:19) states: ‘God is able to give life even to the death’” (p 96) ; on the other hand,

he claimed that “this extraordinary example of Abraham should not be dragged along as a precedent to be followed: but we should imitate his obedience and his faith in the resurrection…” then he spiritualized the narrative by saying “in the killing of sin and death which takes place in Abraham and in his son.” (p 124) See Martin Luther, Luther’s Work, Vol 4, Lectures on Genesis Chapters 21-25, ed Jaroslav Pelikan, trans by George V Schick (Saint Louis, Mo : Concordia Publishing House [etc.], 1955-76).

25

Cited by Sagi, from Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Judaism, Human Values, and the Jewish State, ed Eliezer Goldman (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992), p 14.

Another option is to eliminate the conflict on the grounds that the divinecommand is morally justified, as what most Bible believing thinkers claim: eitherGod has a special right to command deeds which, from a human perspective, areimmoral; or God has a substantial reason to command one to kill seeminglyinnocent lives The former proposal is accentuated in modern Jewish thoughts,typically that of Soloveitchik:26

man is the 'property' of the Creator of the universe Man's wholeessence and being, his flesh and his thoughts, and his deeds and hisachievements and his possessions, his wife and his children and hishome, are not really his, but belong to God, who created man This

is the foundation of sacrificial practice, and it is on this idea thatthe story of the binding of Isaac is based On unconditional self-sacrifice of body and of soul the Jewish faith is founded Judaismdoes not reject the idea of human sacrifice If man is the property

of the holy one, blessed be He, when he hears the voice of Godcalling to him, “Take now thy son,” he has no other choice than didAbraham, “And Abraham rose early in the morning and saddles hisass.”

But this has not resolved Abraham’s dilemma The key of the whole issue lies inthe nature of the goodness of God and the seemingly immoral divine commandthat Abraham received How about the latter stance? Since God is the Creator and

26

Joseph B Soloveitchik, On Repentance, Trans Pinchas Peli (New York: Paulis Press, 1984), p 245.

the Mind who reigns every detail of the events that take place in the world, doesthe command he addresses to Abraham not fulfill the overall divine plan?

In a recent paper Joseph Shaw comes up with a solution based on the idea that thedivine commands, qua commands, are the exercise of God's special authority

upon a moral agent, in such a way that “it can be a good thing for God to effect anormative change solely by virtue of issuing a command, without changing thevalue of an option or whether it violates anyone's right.”27 Shaw suggests a fewcategories for the above idea: the perfection and extension of duties, the allocation

of sacrifices, and the resolution of conflict games In the first category (theperfection of duties), a person is commanded by God to fulfill duties surpassinghis previous neutral actions, which “are now either obligatory, if commanded, orsuperegotory, if possible as good actions additional to the fulfillment of thecommand, or wrong if incompatible with the fulfillment of the command.”28In thesecond category (the extension of duties), God subjects what he has commanded

to a more stringent standard, such as the cultic details in Moses’s times The thirdcategory involves the allocation of sacrifices, in which God commands an agent,out of a range of possible agents, to do some task for a great good, such as sendingprophets or missionaries to foreign lands The fourth category involves conflictgames when an agent faces more than one obligation, which results in a conflict ofinterests But God commands a dominant choice for the agent so that he or shecould attain a greater good.29What all the four categories aforementioned have incommon is that, the deontic classifications of actions which Shaw suggests has

somewhat bore too much weight for asserting some pre-set moral motifs are toofar-fetched, because the deontic classifications are incapable of supplyingarbitrary or complicated answers to practical problems Shaw asserts “the typicaland traditional theist claim is that God has, in the past, issued commands, andprobably continues to do so, both to a particular individual and possibly to groupsthrough religious institutions.” He refers to the sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22,arguing that God commanded Abraham to do so with a promise which wassupposedly realized in future God is able to perfect an imperfect duty, withpermission or promise But only the addressee has the authority and ability to co-ordinate all the known and unknown factors in order to realize his plan for theagent.30

Yet the stake of the sacrifice is too high when it comes to the case of Abraham’ssacrifice of his innocent son, not to mention the Holocaust in the Second WorldWar, which cost the lives of six million Jews! In either case, should we take thescenario, as a promise yet-to-be-realized for Abraham even if the religious duty heperforms will definitely end an innocent life? Or, in the case of the Holocaust,those murdered Jews would somehow realize the purpose of their death in thefuture, or even, in the after-life? Moreover, in the September-11 event, should weaccept what the terrorists claimed: by obeying the divine command, theymurdered and sacrificed innocent lives with a promise that both killers and victimssomehow fulfill the divine plan in human history? This shows that Shaw isinsensitive to the dangers of radical evil in the forms of religious, moral orpolitical fanaticism Abraham’s story cannot and should not be understood in a

30

Ibid., pp 320-21.

deterministic way and modeled into a paradigmatic act of a religious sage For thesake of the existence of human society, one has to enhance a personal and self-reflexive conscience by listening to divine commands and following theinstructions volitionally with moral reasoning as well as moral courage.

Theological reflections on the DCT have never ceased to be problematic Thetension of genuine and apparent conflicts remains a problem in many theological

or philosophical minds Take Phillip Quinn’s struggles with the issue as anexample Early in his work, Quinn rejected the idea that religion and moralitymight genuinely conflict He claimed that if God is a perfect moral being, thenwhatever God commands must therefore be morally right Hence, “if Godcommands someone to kill an innocent person, then he ought to kill thatperson.”31 At that time Quinn had argued that the conflict between religion andmorality was utterly inconceivable But all the same, he later changed his viewand admitted that such a conflict was indeed possible, at least in principle.32With

a rare intellectual candor Quinn conceded,33

Many philosophers, myself included, have been tempted to assimilateall such religious demands to oral requirements… But I now thinkthat giving in to this temptation is likely to misrepresent, if not maskcompletely, an important philosophical issue, by portraying allpossible conflicts between moral obligations and religious demands as

33

Philip Quinn, "Moral Obligation, Religious Demand and Practical Conflict," p 196.

internal to the moral realm And so, I shall be exploring the possibilitythat some such conflicts are better depicted as pitting against oneanother claims stemming from the moral realm and claims whosesource is external to the moral realm.

The acute turn in Quinn’s thought has marked the difficulty of the situation of theDCT Similarly, it happens to his contemporary Robert M Adams too For morethan three decades, both scholars are having rigorous debates on the issues of theDCT To rectify the potential problem of the DCT, in light of the embedded moralconflicts between two obligations, Adams suggested a “modified DCT of moralwrongness,” by which he defined the property of divine commands in such a way

as to be consistent with the nature of the commanding God Thus, divinecommands are morally good because they are given by a morally good God There

is no dilemmas or contraries in the DCT But did he successfully modify DCT inlight of Genesis 22, where Abraham was put to the test, to obey the divinecommand or to hold on to the moral standard? The dialogue between Quinn andAdams was brought to fruition in Adams’s latest work, Finite and Infinite Goods.34

His view on the DCT remains unchanged largely, but one is glad to seethat he takes up Abraham’s dilemma as a test case for his DCT We will discussthis in greater detail in the next chapter

5 The Road Ahead

34

Robert M Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Why are the various versions of the DCT mentioned above inadequate to dealwith, and are deemed to fail before the test of Abraham’s dilemma? I think thereare a few elements that are lacking in the DCT Firstly, the DCT does notconceive of an interpretive capacity to expound the narrative of Genesis 22.Secondly, the DCT does not take the nature of the commanding God and itsrelevance to the moral agents (Abraham and Isaac) seriously enough, as we aregoing to see in the delineation of the idea of God and Abraham in Kant,Kierkegaard and, more importantly, in Levinas Thirdly, the DCT has caused thetranscendent dimension of the commanding God disappearing from the existentialcontext of the moral agents, to a point where the weight of the whole story isposited on the “reasonableness” of the divine command and the moral maxim.Lastly, a divine command, as I will show in the following chapters, is alwaysclosely related to the moral agent and his or her relation to others The traditionalDCT lacks the exegetical power to unfold the ethical responsibility of the moralagents towards others in the narrative In the next chapter I will map out thecontour of a strategy to resolve Abraham’s dilemma by overcoming thedifficulties inherent in the DCT More specifically I will examine the variousattempts of Kant, Quinn, Adams, Kierkegaard and finally points to a morepromising way in Levinas’s philosophy of ethics.

One may wonder why Levinas stands out for the divine command theorists, sinceLevinas has never claimed explicitly that he is a divine command theorist I amgoing to show in the following chapters that Levinas’s theory of ethics is differentand unique among theories of ethics, in the sense that the ethics he has in mind isthe ethics before ethics (moral or ethical reflection) which is always termed as

First Philosophy Furthermore, his fulfillment of the “saintliness” (ethicalperfection) is not an “accomplishment”, but a “value”,35 in the sense that “I canalways act in such a way so that I respond to others by giving ethical priority tohis life and to the suffering that he endures.”36 It is interesting to see how Levinasposits the “value” before the “accomplishment” of a moral obligation when heclaims that ethics presupposes “saintliness” To be sure, Levinas’s explication ofsaintliness carries connotation of being that is otherwise than the Heidegerriannotion of being In Heideggerian language, human as a being is named Da-sein

(being there) We are human beings Consequently, qua beings, the law of being is

our law Yet we have to make sure what the “law of being” is Levinas elaboratesthe meaning of the law of being clearly:37

A being is something that is attached to being, to its own being,which is always a persistence of being That is Darwin’s idea Thebeing of animals is a struggle for life A struggle without ethics It

is a question of might Heidegger says at the beginning of Beingand Time that Dasein is a being who is in his being is concernedfor this being itself That’s Dasein’s idea: the living being strugglesfor life The aim of being is being itself

35

Levinas says, “But we cannot not admire saintliness…that is, the person who in his being is more attached to the being of the other than to his own I believe that it is in saintliness that the human begins; not in the accomplishment of saintliness, but in the value It is the first value, and undeniable value.” Cf Tamra Wright, "The Paradox of Morality: An Interview with Emmanuel Levinas," in The Provocation of Levinas, Robert Bernasconi and David Wood (London: Routledge, 1988), p 173.

In other words, the law of being is the drive of a being to survive, to preserveitself, or to exist (At this stage I would certainly like to beg readers’ indulgence,particularly those who are concerned about the way Levinas reads Heidegger’sphilosophy, which is definitely beyond the scope of this chapter to deal with.)Following his definition of the “law of being”, Levinas then brings forth a sharpcontrast: Heidegger’s human being is the beingqua being that succumbs itself to

the law of being, which is exclusively theDa-Sein (being there) that struggles for

its existence and survival Levinas, on the other hand, rejects the idea of humanbeing as being, and emphatically declares “the human breaks with pure being,

which is always a persistence of being.”38 And he goes on, “However, with theappearance of the human—and this is my entire philosophy—there is somethingmore important than my life, and that is the life of the other.”39 In view ofLevinas’s explication of Heideggerian being and its association with the law ofbeing, we can see the rationale behind Levinas’s claims that the fulfillment ofsaintliness is not an accomplishment of moral duty or obligation It is a value, or

an ethics, or an ethical relation that calls upon me to be responsible for the life ofthe other However, can this understanding of saintliness or ethics help to resolveAbraham’s dilemma?

Drawing from this light, Levinas’s ethics as first philosophy is apt to become theinterpretative key to exegete Genesis 22 and it subsequently revises the DCT inthe ethics beyond the categorical imperative of Kant, or the ethical wrongness that

is of Adams, or the fear and trembling that is of Kierkegaard The reinterpretation

of the DCT is not a project to establish the logical consistency and rational

coherence, but an ethical exegesis of the narrative in its own semiotic landscape,through which the underlying ethical relations between the commanding God andAbraham, the father and the son, as well as the son and the ram are unfolded, andthe ethical value of the “saintliness” of Abraham is heightened in the face of Isaachis other The face is an event itself, even if it is in silence Yet the face demandsour absolute responsibility for it For this reason, Levinas refutes the instrumental

or functional conception of a face as a thing that appears before us, which isreadily to be conceptualized and thematized by our subjective consciousness Onthe contrary, a face is beyond the language of being Levinas expressed thispertinently in an interview in response to the question on the phenomenon of theface:40

The face is…not at all a representation, it is not a given knowledge,nor is it a thing which comes to hand It is an irreducible means ofaccess, and it is in ethical terms that it can be spoken of I have saidthat in my analysis of the face it is a demand; a demand, not aquestion The face is a hand in search for recompense, an open hand.That is, it needs something It is going to ask you for something Idon’t know whether one can say that it is complex or simple It is, inany case, a new way of speaking of the face

As clearly stated in Levinas’s phenomenological analysis, a face is not a tool orinstrument that provides an access through which we are able to totalize it into oursubjectivity The face resists to be totalized into the ghetto of the Self or the Same

40

Ibid., p 169.

Thus the face opens up our consciousness to the realm of transcendence, bycalling upon our ethical self to respond to it ethically To put it differently, theface is authority Levinas goes on to spell out the authority of the face:41

When I said that the face is authority, that there is authority in the face,this may undoubtedly seem contradictory: it is a request and it is anauthority You have a question later on, in which you ask me how itcould be that if there is a commandment in the face, one can do theopposite of what the face demands The face is not a force It is anauthority Authority is often without force Your question seems to bebased on the idea that God commands and demands He is extremelypowerful If you try not doing what he tells you, he will punish you.That is a very recent notion On the contrary, the first form, theunforgettable form, in my opinion, is that, in the last analysis, hecannot do anything at all He is not a force but an authority

In Genesis 22, Abraham encounters a face And the face is an authoritywithout assertive or coercive force But nonetheless the face demandsAbraham to be responsible for it For Levinas, the text or language begins inthe face, not with the signs that one gives, rather, with the speaking words.Hence he formulates his thoughts of language, that “language is above allthe face of being addressed…which means the saying much more than thesaid.”42 Levinas suggests an alternate reading of the ethico-religiousdiscourse that helps readers to read Genesis 22 (the said) by hearing the

41

Ibid.

42

Ibid., p 170.

ethical others (the saying) in the narrative My thesis is that Levinas shows

us a way to read Genesis 22 that avoids the need to resolve any dilemma.This is a way of reading that allows us to say that there is a divine commandissued to Abraham, that he is right to obey it, precisely because it is anethical command But the command is NOT to kill, Rather, it is thecommand to be responsible for the other

With these introductory notes in mind, we are moving into the discussion ofvarious attempts to resolve Abraham’s dilemma I will show that theseattempts fail to resolve the difficulties inherent in Genesis 22 Doing so is away of opening up to the path to Levinas, which I will take up toward theend of this dissertation

Chapter Two Various Attempts to Resolve Abraham’s Dilemma

For some philosophers and theologians, to resolve Abraham’s dilemma in Genesis

22 will by and large resolve the inherent difficulties of the DCT, or to put it inother words, to resolve the problem of the DCT is equivalent to resolving thedilemma that Abraham was faced In this chapter I suggest we should situateAbraham’s dilemma in a broader landscape of philosophical and theologicalenquiries, into which the text of Genesis 22 and its underlying implication for theDCT will be evaluated The strategy is to begin the search from Kant’s DCT andhis reading of Genesis 22; and then we will investigate the heated debates betweenPhilip Quinn and Robert M Adams over the issue of the DCT and its exegeticalinference to Genesis 22; lastly we will come to Kierkegaard’s delineation ofAbraham’s dilemma through which we are able to see how he overcomes theconflict of the DCT and moral obligation by suggesting a teleological suspension

of ethics All these approaches weigh up the DCT and the Scriptural text (i.e.Genesis 22) carefully in one way and another, yet they interpret the textdifferently according to their level of commitment to the authenticity of the text.The evaluations will prepare us to appreciate Levinas’s ethics and itshermeneutical power to resolve Abraham’s dilemma

1 Kant: Between the DCT and the MAT

It has been widely accepted that Kant’s ethics is always seen as a milestone in thephilosophy of ethics In the age of Renaissance humanism and Enlightenment

rationalism, one of the most difficult tasks for both theology and philosophy is toremain faithful both to religious faith and to autonomous rationality Kant, withthe burden to overcome the difficulty, employs a radical strategy to formulate atheory of ethics, which on the one hand, holds fast to the traditional idea of divinecommands as instructive guidelines for moral life; but on the other hand,maintains a consistent autonomous reasoning for the advancement of humanismand scientific knowledge It is thus not out of a blind chance that Kant has alwaystaken the DCT and the MAT into his fabrication of ethics How does he strike thebalance of these two seemingly antithetical poles?

Kant’s strategy is to begin with the establishment of the foundation of a moral life

In line with Cartesian foundationalism, Kant gives room to a theological ground

of ethics in his philosophical search, by which he hypothesizes a postulate of God

as the necessary foundation of moral life The rationale behind such an approach

is that Kant sees no guarantee of the exact correspondence between moralperfection and happiness within the mechanism of cause and effect in Cartesiancosmology Unless there is a rational necessity for us to pursue the supreme good,there will be no definite ground for moral life In the search of a ground of morallife, Kant highlights the necessary postulate of God as the foundation of the moralpursuit Thus in his Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter cited as CPR), 43

Kantargues: [CPR: 5/124-5]

Now, the moral law as a law of freedom commands throughdetermining grounds that are to be quite independent of nature and of

43

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: Everyman, 1993), ed Vasilis Politis.

its harmony with our faculty of desire (as incentives); the actingrational being in the world is, however, not also the cause of the worldand of nature itself Consequently, there is not the least ground in themoral law for a necessary connection between the morality and theproportional happiness of a being belonging to the world as part of itand hence dependent on it, who for that reason cannot by his will be acause of this nature and, as far as his happiness is concerned, cannot

by his own powers make it harmonize thoroughly with his practicalprinciples Nevertheless, in the practical task of pure reason, that is, inthe necessary pursuit of the highest good, such a connection ispostulated as necessary: we ought to strive to promote the highest

good (which must therefore be possible) Accordingly, the existence of

a cause of all nature, distinct from nature, which contains the ground

of this connection, namely of the exact correspondence of happinesswith morality, ispostulated.44

In contrast to speculative theology (i.e the traditional five ways to prove theexistence of God), moral theology merely deems the “existence” of God, not as aconclusion of rational speculation, but as a necessary postulate for a moral life.For Kant, speculative theology has failed to warrant our assuming the existence ofthe one and only Being, “which stands at the head of all natural causes, and on

which these are entirely dependent.” [CPR: A813/B841] Conversely, moraltheology is more adequate in doing this job, “ if we take our stand on moral unity

as a necessary law of the universe, and from this point of view consider what isnecessary to give this law adequate efficiency and, for us, obligatory force, wemust come to the conclusion that there is only one supreme being, whichcomprehends all these laws in itself.” He boldly challenges the traditional notion

of God as the First cause of all things by accentuating the moral ends of all things

in a teleological unity as a way to harmonize practical with speculative reason.45Kant, thus, postulates the necessity of the existence of a God who guarantees thevalidity of moral maxims Hence, he summarizes a moral theology to supply thefoundation for a moral life: [CPR: A819/B846]

Moral theology is, therefore, only of immanent use It teaches us tofulfill our destiny here in the world, by placing ourselves inharmony with the general system of ends, and warns us againstfanaticism, nay, the crime of depriving reason of its legislativeauthority in the moral conduct of life, for the purpose of directlyconnecting this authority with the idea of the Supreme Being Forthis would be, not an immanent, but a transcendent use of moraltheology, and, like the transcendent use of mere speculation, wouldinevitably pervert and frustrate the ultimate ends of reason

45

Kant revises the argument for the First Cause by an ethico-teleological unity: “For how, under different wills, should we find complete unity of ends? This must be omnipotent, that all nature and its relation to morality in the world may be subject to it; omniscient, that it may have knowledge of the most secret feelings and their moral worth; omnipresent, that it may be at hand to supply every necessity to which the highest weal of the world may give rise; eternal, that this harmony of nature and liberty may never fail; and so on.” [CPR: A814/B842]

To further establish his moral theology and clarify his idea of God, Kant, in his

concedes that the universal true religious faith is faith in God, based on God “(1)

as the almighty creator of heaven and earth, i.e morally as holy lawgiver; (2) asthe preserver of the human race, as its benevolent ruler and moral guardian; (3) asthe administrator of his own holy laws, i.e as just judge.”[RBR: 6:139] Thehighest goal of moral theology is realized in the Kingdom of ends, where allhuman beings enjoy harmonious and peaceful relationships Hence he claims,

“The true (moral) service of God, which the faithful must render as subjectsbelonging to his kingdom but no less also as its citizens (under laws of freedom),

is itself just as invisible as the kingdom, i.e it is a service of the heart (in spiritand truth), and consist only in the disposition of obedience to all true duties asdivine commands, not in actions determined exclusively for God” [RBR: 6:192]

In conclusion, Kant's idea of kingdom ultimately unfolds in “the idea of acosmopolitan moral community, and it is a good means of enlivening acommunity to the disposition of brotherly love which it represents.”[RBR: 6:200]

At this point, Kant anticipates the possibility of religious or moral fanaticism thatmight ruin social harmony and subsequently destroy an ethical community Heinterprets the biblical command: “Love God above everything, and thy neighbor

as yourself,” in terms of universal maxims, that the moral maxims must not be

taken as our own arbitrary choice to adopt this as our principle He goes on: “Tolove God means, in this sense, to like to do His commandments; to love one'sneighbor means to like to practice all duties toward him.” Yet he finds that to love

46

Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, ed Allen Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

to do our moral duties is by nature contradictory to the disposition of commands,

as expressed in hisCritique of Practical Reason (hereafter CPrR):47

[CPrR:104]

…a command to like to do a thing is in itself contradictory, because

we already know of ourselves what we are bound to do, and iffurther we are conscious of liking to do it, a command would bequite needless; and if we do it not willingly, but only out of respectfor the law, a command that makes this respect the motive of ourmaxim would directly counteract the disposition commanded

If so then, the divine command of loving God and loving one’s neighbors is notconfined to believers only, but to the entire human race Obviously, Kantperceives the divine commands in the biblical records as coinciding with practicalreasoning, and in turn, practical reasoning that produces moral maxims is in linewith the divine commands in the Bible Then, in order to avoid the dangers ofarbitrariness in divine commands, he undertakes a narrow path to strike a balancebetween practical reasoning and divine commands: What God commands must bemorally good and also must conform to the moral laws that are produced byautonomous practical reason.48As such, Kant removes the boundary between theDCT and the MAT However, should we classify Kant as a divine command

it is not attainable by any creature, but yet is the pattern which we should strive to approach, and in

an uninterrupted but infinite progress become like to."[CPrR:104] In the striving for the moral perfection, Kant insists that human beings must resist and prevent religious fanaticism in regard to love of God by defining accurately the moral disposition with regard to our duties towards men.

He reiterates this elsewhere, " The disposition that he ought to have in obeying this is to obey it from duty, not from spontaneous inclination, or from an endeavor taken up from liking and unbidden "[CPrR:106] The subject of moral disposition "is man alone, and with him every moral rational creature, is an end in himself." [CPrR:109]

theorist, or a moral autonomy theorist? Ethicists and philosophers take differentstance upon this issue Nonetheless, when most of the scholars argue from an

“either-or” approach, they inevitably present a one-sided truth of Kantian ethics.For this reason, I find it helpful to refer to the argument presented by Anh TuanNuyen recently

Nuyen argues that Kant is, on the one hand, a divine command theorist, since heopted for the God-as-legislator version of the DCT;49 and on the other hand, amoral autonomy theorist, since he claims that moral laws are a product of humanmoral reason He dismisses the notion that Kant is inconsistent in his moralconceptions, or, the notion that Kant is ambiguous in his discourse on moralityand religion By suggesting a “both-and” way to read Kant's idea of the DCT andthe MAT, Nuyen explains the relationship between freedom and morality, orbetween God and morality, as being mutually dependent That is to say, moralitydepends on freedom for its reason why (ratio essendi); and freedom depends on

morality for its reason what (ratio cognoscendi) Similarly, morality depends on

God as its antecedenter determinans based on the necessity that God makes

morality possible, where God is the ratio essendi of moral laws To say the same

thing differently, without the postulate of God, moral laws would remain totallywithout foundation Thus God is the logical ground of morality.50

49

A T Nuyen, "Is Kant a Divine Command Theorist?" History of Philosophy Quaterly

15, 4 (October 1998), p 445 For Sagi, to see God as the "legislator" of all moral laws and values

is a plausible way of linking morality to religion, or moral values to God, because every law is supposed to be "legislated" by a lawgiver As for the biblical idea of God,qua an all-loving creator

of all entities in creation, God seeks to bring all the creation to its fullness But there is a drawback

in this "loving God" formulation, consider: (1) x is a moral obligation because God commanded it (2) God commanded x because x is an act of love (3) Therefore, x is a moral obligation because x

is an act of love The conclusion of this syllogism inevitably makes God's command redundant See Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman, Religion and Morality (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), p 53.

50

Ibid., p 449.

But does it show that Kant is by all means a DCT supporter who rejects the MAT?Nuyen contends such a view is possible by quoting Kant:51 “If morality finds inthe holiness of its law an object of the greatest respect, then at the level of religion

it presents the ultimate cause, which consummates those laws, as an object ofadoration and thus appear in its majesty” (RBR: 6:7) However, God in turndepends on morality to be perceived in our thought Thus Nuyen claims, “It is inthis sense that we can say that morality is theratio cognoscendi of religion.”52

Assuch we can formulate the relationship between God and morality into twoasymmetrical statements:53

1 God is theratio essendi of morality.

2 Morality is theratio cognoscendi of God.

In other words, “God is theratio essendi of morality and not conversely because

God is self-determining; morality is the ratio cognoscendi of religion but not

conversely because morality is ‘knowable through unassisted reason’.”54 Itfollows that Kant is a DCT in the first statement, in so far as he asserts a strongdependence of morality on religion But nevertheless Kant is a MAT, who denies

we must derive moral obligations from divine commands, and goes further toclaim that moral laws are independently arrived at by practical reason Throughhis exegetical work on Kant's doctrines of God and morality, Nuyen drives hisargument to the conclusion that “There is no contradiction in his [Kant's]movement form morality to religion and back again, no incoherence in his both-

and approach.”55 He utterly echoes what Kant himself said, “antinomy is onlyapparent, since, through a misunderstanding, it regards the self-same practicalidea, taken merely in different references, as two different principles.”56

By rejecting the idea of “antinomy,” Kant offered a solution for the apparentconflict between religious duty and moral obligation Nuyen elaborates theimplication it carries forward, “We can be sure that God would not command evilbecause practical reason tells us so.” Hence Nuyen says, “Thus, we would notrecognize any command to do evil as a moral command coming from God.”57Butwhat about the account of Abraham in Genesis 22? Would Kant consider thecommand that came to Abraham to kill his son a command from God? Kant hasexplicitly delineated inReligion (RBR 6:87):

Even though something is represented as commanded by God,through a direct manifestation of Him, yet, if it flatly contradictsmorality, it cannot, despite all appearances, be of God (forexample, were a father ordered to kill his son who is, so far as heknows, perfectly innocent)

Kant makes a similar remark elsewhere (RBR 6:187):

That to take a human being’s life because of his religious faith iswrong is certain, unless (to allow the most extreme possibility) adivine will, made known to the inquisitor in some extraordinary

way, has decreed otherwise But that God has ever manifested thisawful will is a matter of historical documentation and neverapodictically certain After all, the revelation reached the inquisitoronly through the intermediary of human beings and theirinterpretation, and even if it were to appear to him to have comefrom God himself (like the command issued to Abraham toslaughter his own son like a sheep), yet it is at least possible that onthis point error has prevailed But then the inquisitor would risk thedanger of doing something which would be to the highest degreewrong, and on this score he acts unconscientiously – Now such isthe situation with every historical or phenomenal faith, namely thatthe possibility is always there of coming across an error;

consequently it is unconscientiously to act upon it, granted thispossibility that what it requires or permits is perhaps wrong, i.e atthe risk of violating a human duty in itself certain

Obviously Kant overcomes Abraham’s dilemma by dismissing the narrative onthe grounds that God did not command such an immoral course of action at all Inthis way, Kant sees all the divine commands in the Bible that are contrary topractical reason as mistakes, or the result of misinterpreting the “voice” of God.However, Kant’s solution for Genesis 22 is not widely embraced by most of themainstream Jewish and Christian thinkers, since it has severely undermined thevalidity and certainty of the Scripture.58

58

Sagi, Religion and Morality, p 136.

2 Quinn and Adams: the Goodness of God

Discontent with the dismissing of the genuineness of Genesis 22, somephilosophers offer a remedy by advising against giving full weight to the Kantiantheory Strategically, they hold to the “moderate version” of the DCT, whichimplies deontologically “that whether an act is right or wrong depends on God,while whether it is good or bad does not.”59 As such two premises could beformulated:60

(1) Instead of presuming that God is arbitrary and lacks a fixednature, the new version presupposes that God is good and acts forthe benefit of His creatures and His world

(2) Instead of covering all moral concepts, the new version appliesonly to deontological concepts

We can easily see how this modified version of the DCT could succeed insecuring two ideas of God, which are in line with the deontological principles:First, God is good and all loving; he works with the best interest of His world andcreation in mind Second, such a good God cannot order torture and murder, andthus what he commands are necessarily compatible with His moral perfection; byall means the divine commands will help us to attain a life of happiness In thisway divine commands are deontologically moral in themselves

59

Ibid., p 47.

60

Ibid., pp 47-8.