Aron Ra on Divine command theory

Aron Ra's treatment of divine command theory is characteristically direct. He invokes the Euthyphro dilemma — is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? — and argues that either horn is fatal to the theory. If morality is independent of God, divine command theory is false. If morality is whatever God commands, then morality is arbitrary and God could make genocide virtuous by decree.

Ra draws extensively on the biblical record to illustrate the consequences of divine command morality. The God of the Old Testament commands the slaughter of the Amalekites, the execution of homosexuals, the stoning of disobedient children, and the taking of virgin girls as war spoils. If these commands came from God, and divine command theory is true, then these actions were morally good — a conclusion that Ra argues is self-evidently monstrous.

He positions divine command theory not as a moral framework but as an authoritarian one — a system in which right and wrong are determined by power rather than reason, and in which the only virtue is obedience. This, Ra argues, is not morality at all. It is submission dressed up as ethics.