This quiz consist of 15 multiple choice questions and covers the material in Chapter 1. Be sure you are in Chapter 1 when you take the quiz.…
The three biblical concepts in Hill that have a direct bearing on ethical decision making and are repeatedly emphasized in the bible are “God is Holy”, “God is Just” and “God loving”. All three are needed for equal measurement and all three contain a vital ethical ingredient “hill compares these to the skeleton, muscles and the skin”. Therefore within every ethical decision that is made requires all characteristics to be taken into account. Holiness, when untethered from justice and love it drifts into hypercritical legalism. If justice loses its anchor in holiness and love it will produce harsh outcomes.…
Within the Christian worldview, there are essential elements that are reflected upon the Christian faith. The Christian worldview put ultimate value and worth on God, as He is the creator of all things. With that, the Christian worldview puts anything before God (DiVincenzo, 2015)). The followers of God were supposed to live their lives according to wisdom under God’s kingly reign (DiVincenzo, 2015). The Christian worldview does come from faith and belief, and there is a requirement of a clear understanding of Christianity (Harvey, 2008). This paper will describe the essentials of the Christian worldview, and how God’s image is highly influenced of the Christian faith.…
Another issue with any divine command morality theory is that we have no confirmation that there even is the essential God, a great deal less which God's commands are the commands of that God. There are many distinctive moral frameworks credited to God. This is so even inside of the umbrella of Christian belief in a higher power; more so when we consider different belief…
The aim of this paper is to reduce Swinburne’s Christian centered theodicy into a pantheistic theodicy via modification of Spinoza’s necessitarianism. To begin, I will accept the imperative conditions of Swinburne’s theodicy up to a certain degree. Consequently, the primary condition Swinburne’s theodicy and my proposal each share is the consequentialist disposition of the Divine. However, the noted degree at which these theodicies will deviate is the condition demanding objective moral judgments. In particular, the deviation occurs where Swinburne asserts “the problem of evil does not arise if one denies either the omnipotence or the perfect goodness of God”. And so that is where the central divide between the two views comes into play. The…
Dimensions of God’s Sovereignty.” Journal of the America Academy of Religion. 44.4 (Dec 1976): 613-628. Oxford University Press. 5 Mar. 2009. .…
It can be well argued that the unrestricted divine command theory is aimed to explain what is right and good depending on God’s commands. To understand the unrestricted divine command theory, one must understand the Theory of Right Conduct, which encompasses the nature of what makes an action right or wrong, and the Theory of Value, which helps explain intrinsic goodness and badness in relation to God’s commands. Intrinsic means a thing has its value in itself or “as it is”. It does not represent value like a dollar bill, but is the value. The Theory of Right Conduct states “An action A is obligatory if and only if (and because) God commands that we A” (Timmons 24). An obligatory action is an action one should morally do and is often referred to as required. “An action A is wrong if…
For recent analysis of the problem of God and divine revelation in the more important textbooks of dogmatics: SCF §§ 3-11; Aulén 30-65; Barth 1/2 §17; Elert §§2-5, 8, 22-25; Brunner 1:117-36; Tillich 1:106-59; Weber 1:199-227; Macquarrie 43-58; Rahner 44-71, 138-321; BJ 1:197-264 (Sponheim); Thielicke 2:1-258; Gilkey 39-107; Hall 1:402-27; 2:43-72; Pannenberg 1:63-257; Migliore 20-43; Jenson 1:42-60; ICT 49-76.…
There are many different religions in the world but they all seem to have at least one thing in common. This unique aspect in similarity is the relationship that can be established with the divine being if we choose to follow or lead in their way of life. Many religions seem to establish the idea that God or gods are here to guide us through our lives as our supreme rulers and enforcers of the law. But, in contrast the presence of a divine spirit is to give man the final decision on the choices he must make to continue in a path of righteousness. The relation of god and man in western religion is denoted by the freedom of choice given to him by God. God gives every man the freedom to choose him or reject him; he permits mankind to be tempted by sin in order to challenge the loyalty they have for their supreme.…
The purpose of which is inaccessible, and the long-awaited reality implies a supernatural order. A mythological situation is imaginatively presented in Gardner’s philosophical novel and returns to the tragic human moral problem when the choice is excluded that the fully conscious accept moral decision. In such circumstances, moral position can occur only in the acceptance or rejection of the dictates of fate or…
People are extremely motivated by self-interest, even as societies have evolved and grown larger. While the more intertwined societies did lead to a greater need for cooperation in order to live as peacefully as possible, the need to follow the rules of that society can still be ignored when self-interests are present. The need to live by a set of moral rules is well explained by connecting God and morality. As God holds a person accountable, following the moral rules is now is that person’s interest. So even while the person may act according to society, the actions are still explained by the incentives and sanctions placed by God with the promise of Heaven and the threat of Hell, respectively. However, the Divine Command Theory falls short by basing morality solely on God’s commands. Morality then seems subject to God’s whims, which makes morality arbitrary. The opposing view counters strongly with the existence of morals within atheists. For if morals are based only on God’s will, then atheists must be godless brutes lacking any semblance to a moral compass. The morality of atheists is clearly evident, yet the argument failed to establish a reason for morals other acknowledging damage done to the…
There are many theories about how the universe, earth, and humans came into existence. Some aim to prove the existence of God, that a large explosion created all life, or even that everything has just always existed. One of these theories works to answer questions about creation and prove the existence of the Christian God; this theory is known as the Teleological argument. To expand my basis of knowledge on this subject I consulted Matthew Esters, who recently wrote about the same topic.…
Advocates that describe letting someone die as being more moral than killing someone often cite the trolley case as support for their argument, and use modus tollens. Where a trolley is coming down the track towards a group of five unsuspecting individuals, and you are in a position to pull a lever. Pulling the lever switches the tracks to just kill one unsuspecting person. Their argument is that if you pull the lever to switch the track to kill the one individual; then, by deciding who dies, you are morally worse than if you had done nothing. You don’t pull the lever, there for you are not morally worse having done nothing. This uses the form of modus tollens; If p then q, ~p, therefore ~q. Implying that letting an individual die is more…
Divine Command Theory is the first option. This theory states, what is right or wrong depends on God’s commands…
In this paper I will first defend “The Argument from Evil” from the Buddhist notion of the concept of “The Argument of Dukkha” or (suffering or unsatisfactoriness). In the Buddhist argument the attributes of an all powerful, all knowing and all benevolent God to humans cannot exist due to the concept of Dukkha. I will explain this in my thesis defense with a correlation from a western and eastern thought. Buddha denied the existence of God by the concept of Dukkha which is similar to “The Argument from Evil”.…