Is Divine Law Indispensable to Moral Obligation? A Reply to Elizabeth Anscombe

Bibliographic Data

ID16901468
AuthorsJeffery Jay Lowder (Bellevue College, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue11
Pages1331
Publication date2025-10-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel16111331
OpenAlexW4415420921
LanguageEN
References cited47

This paper assesses Elizabeth Anscombe’s influential argument in her 1958 essay “Modern Moral Philosophy,” which holds that secular moral obligation is metaphysically incoherent without a divine law framework. This paper reconstructs her argument—dubbed the “divine indispensability argument”—in standard form and then presents eight targeted objections that fall under three general types—challenges to its intelligibility, internal and external inconsistency, and substantive improbabilities—demonstrating that each strand refutes her thesis. Finally, it shows that her proposed remedy inherits the very defects she attributes to secular ethics and concludes that moral obligation remains fully coherent within nontheistic frameworks

Free will · Metaphysics · Moral obligation · Natural law · Obligation · Legal principles and applications · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil