Moderate Theistic Metaethics and Its Implications for the Problem of Evil

In contemporary philosophy of religion and metaethics, Divine Command Theory (DCT) posits that moral obligations depend on God’s commands. This theory has garnered significant scholarly attention. However, existing versions of DCT often rely on problematic metaethical assumptions, particularly that God cannot command himself and that all moral obligations depend on divine commands. This dissertation critiques these prevailing extant versions of DCT and proposes a better alternative: Moderate Divine Command Theory (MDCT). According to MDCT, only some (not all) moral obligations depend on divine commands. This dissertation shows that MDCT can salvage important theistic commitments while retaining the virtues of extant DCT and eschewing contentious assumptions: overall, it is a more defensible and nuanced account. Furthermore, this dissertation establishes that MDCT better withstands common objections to extant DCT. Lastly, this dissertation shows that accepting MDCT—particularly, opening the possibility of God’s self-commanding—allows us to provide a novel solution to the logical problem of evil.