ABSTRACT
John Hare proposes a version of “divine command theory.” Like Kant, he worries that if we don’t believe in God, morality becomes unstable. Lest we lose hope and abandon our moral efforts, we can place our trust in the super-sensible author of nature, God, who rewards us by creating the conditions for our happiness. Hare argues (as Kant does) that God can grant us happiness in equal measure to our virtue. Still following Kant, Hare argues that God makes the moral law and gives it to us. Though we are able to identify our moral obligations and honor them for their own sake, a “moral gap” exists between how we ought to live and the way we can live without “outside” assistance from others including God. This “outside” assistance is an effect of divine grace. To the question of why we should be moral, Hare turns to the philosophical theologian, Duns Scotus, who argued that to love God is to obey God – in other words, to love God is to will what God wills for us to will – our obedience.
