[Revised entry by Mark Murphy on May 19, 2025.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
There is a class of metaethical and normative views that commonly goes by the name ‘divine command theory.’ What all members of this class have in common is that they hold that what God wills is relevant to determining the moral status of some set of entities (acts, states of affairs, character traits, etc., or some combination of these). But the name ‘divine command theory’ is a bit misleading: what these views have in common is their appeal to the divine will; while many of these views hold that the relevant act of…

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