Divine Commands, Dilemmas, and the Limits of Moral Responsibility

This article considers different kinds of moral perplexity in relation to the “moral dilemmas question,” focusing in particular on divine command metaethics. While I argue that there is no one definitive answer to questions about dilemmas from such a perspective, I also seek to show that whatever theory one adopts has specific benefits and costs for thinking about God's relation to morality, and also impacts how one addresses certain subproblems within the theorization of putative dilemmas. I make this diagnostic argument by assessing a debate between two Christian ethicists, Philip Quinn and Edmund Santurri, and I review and contrast these Christian accounts with Omar Farahat's recent retrieval of classical Ash‘arī divine command ethics. The article concludes by considering a specific connection between anti-dilemmas theories and limits on moral responsibility that resituate the problem posed by moral remainders to a less moralistic consideration of the problem of evil.