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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
On Patterson Brown's analysis of the logic of Judeo-Christian morality, God's will is the criterion of what is right. The believer simply commits himself to or chooses God's will to the exclusion of all other criteria. Brown does not say that to obey God is a moral duty which always overrides other moral considerations. Nor does he say that God ‘transcends’ human morality either in the sense that he is the perfect exemplar of human standards or that the standard he exhibits and requires meets but also exceeds human standards. Nor does he say that God's will is to be obeyed over against morality per se. Rather, his view is that for the believer God's will is the standard of all moral judgments. For the believer, if and only if God commands something is it right. God ‘transcends’ human morality in the sense that his will need not accord with human standards.
page 235 note 1 ‘Religious Morality’, Mind, Vol. 72(April 1963), pp. 235–44Google Scholar; ‘God and the Good’, Religious Studies, Vol. 2.2 (April 1967), pp. 269–76Google Scholar; ‘Religious Morality: A Reply to Flew and Campbell’, Mind, Vol. 77 (October 1968), pp. 577–80. ‘A Reply’ makes essentially the same points as those stated in ‘God and the Good’.Google Scholar
page 235 note 2 Frankena, W. K. notes that one possible meaning of ‘Love is the fulfilment of the law’ is that love fulfils the law ‘at a higher level and in a different mode’. ‘Love and Principle in Christian Ethics’, in Faith and Philosophy, ed. Plantinga, Alvin (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1964), p. 221Google Scholar
page 235 note 3 Cf. Flew, A., ‘The “Religious Morality” of Mr Patterson Brown’, Mind, October 1965.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 235 note 4 John, C. Milhaven: ‘Moral Absolutes and Thomas Aquinas’, Absolutes in Moral Theology, ed. Curran, Charles T. (Washington: Corpus Books, 1968), pp. 154–85.Google Scholar
page 236 note 1 On such a view we would have made our own judgment, in reference to some experience, that the being we acknowledge is in fact a beneficent and just being. See Nielsen, Kai ‘Some Remarks on the Independence of Morality from Religion’, in Christian Ethics and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Ramsey, Ian (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 140–51.Google Scholar
page 236 note 2 ‘God and the Good’, p. 274.Google Scholar
page 237 note 1 ‘God and the Good’, p. 274.Google Scholar
page 237 note 2 Indeed, Augustine says that while being willing to offer up his son, Abraham never believed ‘that God delighted in human sacrifices’. He was confident that ‘his son, of (sic) being offered up, would rise again’ to be the founder of the nations God had promised. City of God, XVI (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), p. 32.Google Scholar
page 237 note 3 ‘God and the Good’, p. 275.Google Scholar
page 238 note 1 ‘God and the Good’, p. 275.Google Scholar
page 238 note 2 Campbell, K., ‘Patterson Brown on God and Evil’, Mind, Vol. 74 (October 1965), pp. 582–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 239 note 1 ‘God and the Good’, pp. 270–1.Google Scholar
page 239 note 2 Mind, ‘A Reply’, p. 577.Google Scholar
page 239 note 3 ‘God and the Good’, p. 273.Google Scholar
page 239 note 4 Ibid., p. 274.
page 239 note 5 ‘Patterson Brown’, p. 583.Google Scholar
page 239 note 6 Contemporary Moral Philosophy (New York: St Martin's Press, 1967), Chapters V-VII.Google Scholar
page 240 note 1 Kai Nielsen examines the difficulty in finding a basis other than commitment for a common notion of what is just, but states nevertheless that ‘The concept of justice is analytically tied to the concept of morality’. ‘Scepticism and Human Rights’, The Monist, Vol. 52 (October 1968), p. 575.Google Scholar
page 240 note 2 See Hare's, R. M. review of Warnock's book in Mind, Vol. 77 (07 1968), pp. 436–40. In ‘Scepticism’ Nielsen questions whether there is any rational basis for a norm of equal justice, but in an addendum notes that the common experience of pain may suffice.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 241 note 1 Frankena, W. K. discusses these issues in his essay, ‘Recent Conceptions of Morality’, in Morality and the Language of Conduct, ed. Castaneda, H. M. and Naknikian, G. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), pp. 12–13Google Scholar. His essay is an excellent discussion of attempts to define morality in terms of formal and/or material components. Also see his ‘The Concept of Morality’, The journal of Philosophy, Vol. 63 (10 11 1966), pp. 688–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and an essay by the same title in The University of Colorado Series in Philosophy, No. 3 (01 1967), pp. 1–22.Google Scholar
page 242 note 1 I do not wish to imply, of course, that these philosophers would endorse my own formulation of what I take to be their common train of thought.
