God’s Command. By John E. Hare.

Extract

John Hare’s new book, although it appears in the Oxford Studies in Theological Ethics series, should rightly be viewed as a philosophical work, as he claims in the preface. The reason for this is that although the book engages the work of many theologians from three of the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), its arguments do not rest on any appeal to authoritative traditions and texts. Rather, Hare sets out to argue philosophically for the plausibility of what he terms divine command theory, understood as the claim that what makes something morally obligatory or forbidden is that God commands it or forbids it. The argument is carried out in conversation with theology, but is properly philosophical. Hare builds on previous philosophical work by Philip Quinn, Robert Adams, and this reviewer, but he also engages with a wide range of philosophers and theologians. The most important philosophical interlocutors include Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Immanuel Kant, R. M. Hare, Phillipa Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse. The most important Christian theologian engaged (other than Aquinas and Scotus, who are also theologians of course) is Karl Barth.