The testimony of the spirit and moral knowledge

This chapter explores the multiple roles the Spirit plays in giving humans moral knowledge—more precisely, how the Spirit makes possible an understanding of God’s requirements for his human creatures. The author works with a “divine command theory” of moral obligations, according to which our moral duties are grounded in God’s will, insofar as that will has been communicated. He recounts several significant theological and philosophical advantages of this perspective. This divine command theory is no rival to natural law accounts of the good or to virtue ethics. Rather, the three approaches are complementary aspects of a Christian ethic.