Let’s say I believed in some sort of non-denominational, personal God, and you put the question to me. The specific answer I give is irrelevant - I might as well flip a coin. But let’s say I say no. Why is this not a problem for me? Because my God doesn’t have the track record to suggest that he would ask this of anyone (unlike the Christian God). And further, my God does not punish willful disobediance of His Will. Your God does. So the same question put to you is much more problematic. But again, not the fault of the question. That’s the fault of your faith that insists on playing both sides of the board.
Personally, I believe this question is parasitic upon the idea of authority and perhaps even a derivative of the Euthyphro dilemma elucidated by Plato. Basically, it is a question of who or what has ultimate moral authority. Is God subject to the moral law or is the moral law subject to God? This can be rephrased as, “Does God have the right to take a human life?”
This must be answered before considering whether any human, acting on Divine command, is morally compelled to take another human life.
As a matter of fact, if God is the omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent Creator of the universe, the necessary being that brings all else into existence and keeps it in existence, the One in whom all else is and has its being, then the question is simply devoid of meaning.
All meaning, all reality, all that exists comes from God, that would include our very existence and any “morally” credible thoughts we might have. Thoughts which we could only have because we have been created, by God, to be moral beings.
Furthermore, every human being dies. We are all mortal. Apparently, if God is the Creator and determiner of all existence, then humans do die because God has determined that to be the case. We are all under a death sentence. The divine command is that all of us, not just the son at the hands of his father, but each one of us have been sentenced to die by the fact of our mortality. That also means that none of us have the right to take another life because we have not been commanded to do so by God. His standing command is, “Thou shalt not intentionally kill another human being without just cause!”
The “just cause” conditional would include, for example, “in self-defense,” but could also be reasonably expanded to include, “if God by his inscrutable moral judgement commanded it.”
Atheists may not like this state of things and may rail against the very idea of a God who has made us mortal, but the fact that we are mortal means, that if God does exist then we die because of a determination of his. What right does the omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent Creator of all have to take life? Perhaps because all life belongs to him, he is the source of all life, Life itself, it is his to take or to give. If the omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent Creator of all has determined that some being is unfit to merit life, who is there to argue the case?
You wouldn’t be right, if you tried, because your lack of knowledge and goodness would mean any moral judgement you would make in the matter would be inferior to God’s. You could not have morally sufficient reasons to counter the decision of the infinitely superior moral Being, from
whom all Good derives.
The answer would be, then,
if, and this is an infinitely important conditional,
if God commanded you to take any action, you would have absolutely no moral foundation upon which to deny the command.
I know that the atheists in the crowd will cry, “Foul!” here or “Moral monster!” but that response is not following the logic. We are talking about questioning or denying the judgement of an infinitely good, infinitely knowing Creator of all and source of all Life. Any contradictory action you would take, is by definition a morally inferior one, one that you would morally be obliged not to even consider.
Does that mean that just because you
think God is giving you a command to kill someone, you should do so? Absolutely not! This is a hypothetical case based upon a condition that it is, in fact, God (with all the infinite superlatives) making the command, not just you (or anyone) thinking it is so.
We have no right to take another person’s life, but the fact that God gives life, originates life, conceives life and is Life itself, means he can determine who merits or does not merit to have it. It is his to give and his to take, by any means he deems acceptable, including by instrumental means, if he were to command it.
