Question

What advantages does the Natural Law Theory have in comparison with the Divine Command Theory? Explain using examples.

Answer 1

(Answer) Natural law is a theory where it is believed that morality and moral judgment comes from human nature. This means that a person with a good human nature would automatically know that murder is wrong.

Divine command theory is the belief that morality comes from what God commands a person to do. The first advantage that natural law has over divine command is that natural law is more universal and the divine command is subjective. For instance, eating meat isn't wrong is Christianity but eating meat and causing harm to animals is immoral in Hinduism. Here the divine commands differ based on religion.

Secondly, philosophers have argued whether a command is moral because God commands it or does God command it because it is moral. Here, the argument is whether the moral is good in itself or is it good because it is a command of God. For instance, is murder wrong because it is immoral or is it wrong because God says “thou shalt not kill.”

These problems do not arise with natural law as it is not framed by the rules of different Gods and its source is clearly from human nature and not from the moral.