Divine command theory
The view that an act's rightness or wrongness is grounded in a necessarily-good God's nature or command, rather than in a standard independent of God.
Divine command theory grounds moral rightness and wrongness in a necessarily-good God's own nature or command, rather than in some independent standard God merely reports on. On a careful (rather than crude) version, God does not arbitrarily decree what counts as good; God's own necessary nature simply is the standard, and commands express rather than constitute it.
Its main advantage is closing the is-ought gap many secular accounts struggle with: goodness is grounded in a necessarily-existing, personal being who can actually issue binding obligations, rather than in an impersonal fact nobody in particular is obligated to. The classical objection is the Euthyphro dilemma — is a thing good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is already good? — which a "grounded in God's necessary nature" answer has to make good on, not merely assert by naming the position.
Sources
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Divine Command Theory"
- Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods (1999), on grounding command in God's necessary nature rather than arbitrary will