George Pell on Divine command theory
Pell rejected pure divine command theory in favour of the Catholic natural law tradition, where God's commands align with an objective moral order.
George Pell's position on divine command theory reflects the mainstream Catholic intellectual tradition, which is more Thomistic than voluntarist. He did not hold that actions are good simply because God commands them — the Euthyphro problem — but rather that God's commands reflect and express an objective moral order rooted in the divine nature. God commands what is good because God is good, and the moral law is an expression of God's rational nature, not an arbitrary decree.
This means Pell was comfortable affirming that certain moral truths are accessible to human reason apart from revelation — the natural law tradition holds that the basic principles of morality can be known by anyone willing to think clearly. But he insisted that divine revelation clarifies, completes, and confirms what reason discovers, particularly on questions where human judgment is prone to error.
In practice, Pell applied this framework to bioethical debates, arguing that the Church's positions on issues like abortion, euthanasia, and marriage are not arbitrary religious rules but reflections of the moral structure of reality — accessible in principle to any rational person, but illuminated by faith.
“The moral law is not an arbitrary imposition. It is written into the nature of things, and the Church's role is to read it faithfully.”