Dominus Paradoxum

(Sorry, but I don't know where else to post this.) Where is it that aquinas rejects the divine command theory (the theory that x being right or wrong consists wholly in God's willing it to be right or wrong)?

Dominus Paradoxum

*bump*

Toto

You would probably do better in Moral Foundations or Philosophy.

Postcard73

Agreed, so off it goes.

Scott (Postcard73)
BC&H Moderator

Sensei Meela

I'd love to help you, though I'm not sure I can; a quick Google search produced the following:

“Aquinas and Divine Command Theory�
M.V. Dougherty, Marquette University
Nearly all attempts to include Aquinas among the class of divine command theorists have focused on two kinds of texts: those exhibiting Aquinas’s treatment of the apparent immoralities of the patriarchs (e.g., Abraham’s intention to kill Isaac), and those pertaining to Aquinas’s discussion of the Divine will. In the present paper, I lay out a third approach unrelated to these two. I argue that Aquinas’s explicit endorsement of one ethical proposition as self-evident throughout his writings is sufficient justification to include Aquinas among the class of divine command theorists. I examine Aquinas’s persistent contention that the proposition “the commands of God are to be obeyed� is a self-evident or per se nota proposition of ethical reasoning, and trace Aquinas’s appeals to it in the Sentences commentary, De Veritate, and Quodlibet 3. I conclude with a discussion of passages where Aquinas argues that that the experience of moral necessity or obligation requires reference to divine commands.


...though that seems to suggest Aquinas accepts the DCT...

...A 'cached' website has the following to offer:

The most influential of the natural-law theorists was, once again, St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, whose thought is regarded as authoritative within the Catholic tradition, said that the moral life is the life lived “according to reason.� In his great work the Summa Theologica, he wrote:

"Its moral nature is stamped on a human act by its object taken with reference to the principles of moral activity, that is according to the pattern of life as it should be lived according to the reason. If the object as such implies what is in accord with the reasonable order of conduct, then it will be a good kind of action; for instance, to assist somebody in need. If, on the other hand, it implies what is repugnant to reason, then it will be a bad kind of action; for instance, to appropriate to oneself what belongs to another. But it may happen that the object does not immediately involve the reasonable plan of life one way or the other, and then it is an action morally indifferent of its kind; for instance, to go for a walk or to pick up a straw."

Acting reasonably, he emphasizes, is not to be contrasted with acting as a Christian, for they are the same thing: To disparage the dictate of reason is equivalent to condemning the command of God."