The view that human law can be analyzed in terms of commands was subjected to devastating criticism by H.L.A. Hart in his 1961 The Concept of Law. Two objections that Hart levels against the command theory of law also make serious trouble for divine command theory. Divine command theorists would do well to jettison command as the central concept of their moral theory, and, following Hart’s lead, instead appeal to the concept of a rule. Such a successor view—divine legislation theory—has the attractions of divine command theory without the unacceptable limitations of command theories that Hart identifies.

One task of moral theory is to answer the question, “Why be moral?” This paper describes a particular theistic theory’s account of moral motivation, which I call the Divine Friendship Theory. I illustrate its plausibility and promise by showing how well the theory does along two dimensions along which an answer to the why-be-moral question can fare better or worse, namely, being psychologically realistic and supporting recognizably moral actions and attitudes. of the answer to the why-be-moral question. Given that the Divine Friendship Theory does well on each dimension, it deserves serious consideration.

Does evolutionary history with all its apparent contingency, wastefulness, animal suffering and innumerable extinctions make the problem of natural evil worse? In this article, I argue that it does not. I respond to two main ways in which the evolutionary problem of evil might make things worse: (1) by increasing the scale of suffering to include billions of additional creatures over hundreds of millions of years, and (2) due to the apparent cruelty of evolution by natural selection as a method of creation. I argue that both problems fail to make a difference when considered in depth. Instead, the problem of natural evil is based mostly on factors that do not depend on evolutionary biology, such as the existence of animal mortality and suffering, as well as chance and contingency in the world.

This paper regiments and responds to an objection to skeptical theism. The conclusion of the objection is that it is not reasonable for skeptical theists to prevent evil, even when it would be easy for them to do so. I call this objection a “Dominance-Reasoning Objection” because it can be regimented utilizing dominance reasoning familiar from decision theory. Nonetheless, I argue, the objection ultimately fails because it neglects a distinction between justifying goods that are necessary for the existence of a good and those that are necessary for God’s permission of the good.

In this paper, I challenge the recent consensus that global versions of theological voluntarism—on which all moral facts are explained by God’s action— fail, because only local versions—on which only a proper subset of moral facts are so explained—can successfully avoid the objection that theological voluntarism entails that God’s actions are arbitrary. I argue that global theological voluntarism can equally well avoid such arbitrariness. This does not mean that global theological voluntarism should be accepted, but that the primary advantage philosophers have taken local views to have over global views is, in fact, no advantage at all.