The central aim of my book is to address what I call the problem of divinely prescribed evil: how can God’s prescriptions, as reflected in Scripture, appear evil when judged by our own moral sense? There are different ways to think about the problem. One way is by drawing a parallel with the classical problem of evil.

We observe events in the world that strike us as unequivocally evil. Many instances of natural evil, such as the burning and suffering of an innocent fawn, seem unnecessary and evil. The classical problem of evil poses the question: how can a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent permit such things to happen? While some philosophers have attempted to construct theodicies to rationalize these evils, the most promising theistic approach, in my view, is to appeal to morally relevant facts that remain hidden from us. We do not have access to all morally relevant facts, and what we know may not be representative of the full set of such facts. This is the core of skeptical theism: the view that we are in no position to judge God’s actions, since He may have reasons for permitting evil that lie well beyond our cognitive access.

Skeptical theism may help remove our moral objections to God’s actions, but it weakens our trust in our own moral sense. And that kind of doubt doesn’t sit still - it spreads. It seeps into all of morality, leaving us unable to know moral truths that guide us through daily life. One place it takes hold is Scripture. Many believers see Scripture as the word of God. If skeptical theism tells us we can’t judge God’s actions, then surely we can’t judge His words either. This doubt changes how believers read Scripture. That might be fine, except that most Scriptures, old as they are, contain passages that clash with modern moral sensibilities. So skeptical theism ends up implying that, when Scripture and our moral sense conflict, Scripture must always prevail - and our moral sense isn’t just mistaken, it doesn’t even count.

I called this view in the book the Scripture-first view. Scripture precedes our moral sense - it does not compete with it but shapes it. I argued that much of the Islamic tradition has embraced this stance. Notable figures in Islamic history, in one way or another, defended it. At their core, their arguments rest on the idea that particular moral judgments are contingent and unknowable when considered against the broader structure of divine order.

The ethics-first view, by contrast, holds that our moral sense is generally reliable - at least when guided by careful observation and reflection - and so it takes precedence over Scripture when the two conflict. The immediate problem with this view is its tension with skeptical theism, a position many theists find appealing as a response to the classical problem of evil. Part of my aim in the book is to show how skeptical theism can be confined to God’s actions alone. That is, we can understand morality in a way that in the realm of human action, it grants us moral knowledge, while in the realm of divine action, it preserves the humility of skeptical theism. The question is how to keep skeptical theism in God’s corner without letting it spill into ours. In the book, I offered two ways to do this. I will now sketch these in relation to the case of Abraham’s sacrifice, which Robert Audi takes up in his article. This will help me respond to some of his concerns.

In his excellent article, Audi graciously offers his gloss on the book, presenting its project in a way that is both accessible and thorough. I agree with much of what he says. But when it comes to the case of Abraham’s sacrifice, a point of disagreement emerges. To see where we differ, it helps to distinguish three claims:

Audi and I both accept (1). He raises concerns about (2) and appears to reject (3). I, on the other hand, have defended (2) and argued that, under certain plausible conceptions of ethics, (3) can also hold true. I have defended the Moses principle to support (1).

Audi does not object to the Moses principle. The Moses principle implies that Abraham rationally ought not to kill his son, since there is a grave risk that, in obeying, he would commit a serious wrongdoing by violating an important moral object - his son - while he does not know what is at stake in rejecting the dictum of morality if God’s command is correct and he disobeys. Instead of saying that Abraham rationally ought to disobey, Audi prefers to use the language of “excuse.” He suggests it’s better to say that Abraham would be excused for disobeying, understanding excuse as “a moral rejection of blameworthiness”, Abraham might have been mistaken, but he would still be excused. I have no quarrel with framing the issue this way. This is, in fact, my first ethics-first response to the problem of divinely prescribed evil: we may not always be in a position to know what is right or wrong when Scripture conflicts with our moral sense, but we rationally ought to rely on that sense - or, at least, it would be morally excusable if we did.

Let’s turn to (2). Audi’s concern seems to be this: even if the moral ought is the subjective ought, God’s command provides accessible evidence for Abraham, which can affect his subjective ought.

In the book, I responded to this objection in two ways, though they may not have been entirely clear. Before explaining them, it’s important to note that Audi and I both, in this discussion, view the moral force of God’s command in testimonial terms - informing Abraham that the sacrifice is morally justifiable in light of facts that might be hidden from him. In the book’s final chapter, I discuss how we should understand the case of Abraham’s sacrifice if the force of God’s command is not testimonial (i.e., it rests on no other moral facts but God’s will), but I will set that possibility aside here.

The first response to Audi’s concern is this: while God’s command does provide evidence for Abraham that he subjectively ought to kill his son, this evidence is undermined by the contrary reason generated by the Moses principle. According to the Moses principle, rationally speaking, Abraham has a strong reason to avoid grave moral risks when the consequences of an alternative are unknown. This reason would outweigh the evidence from God’s command when we remain in the dark about God’s reasoning. If Audi does not accept this, then the concern he raises for (2) would also apply to the view he himself endorses - the executability of Abraham. Audi himself writes: “And might we think that disobedience to religious authorities when it is rational to disagree with them - provided we meet the intellectual standards that we must master in order to be conscientious theists and reasonable moral agents - is, if not morally permissible, then at least excusable if mistaken?” Whatever reason Audi thinks justifies such excusal - and the Moses principle offers a compelling one - would also support (2). So, I find Audi’s endorsement of (1) and caution about (2) puzzling. I think they stand or fall together.

Let’s get to my second response to Audi’s worry about (2), which also helps address his rejection of (3). In Chapter 5, I defend the following principle:

The Accessibility Constraint denies that mere evidence of there being a moral reason to φ necessarily generates a subjective obligation to φ. God’s speech may provide Abraham with evidence that there is some moral reason to kill his son. But under the Accessibility Constraint, since that reason is not, even in principle, accessible to Abraham through reflection or inquiry, evidence of its existence cannot alter his subjective obligation. Subjective obligations are shaped only by accessible reasons. And while Audi is right that God’s speech is an accessible piece of evidence, Abraham may discount it - because it points to a reason that remains, in principle, beyond his epistemic reach.

Therefore, if we accept either the Moses principle or the Accessibility Constraint (or both), the subjectivist can maintain that Abraham’s killing his son would be morally wrong.

Regarding (3), Audi writes: “Ross’s view implies that Abraham could not know that killing Isaac was overall wrong,” and he seems sympathetic to that conclusion. I grant that some objectivist views in ethics - utilitarianism, for instance - would support Audi’s reading. However, in the book, I argue that there are also plausible objectivist theories that accept the Accessibility Constraint - the view that reasons which are, in principle, inaccessible cannot factor into the determination of moral obligation. Any such theory would hold that Abraham’s killing his son was morally objectively wrong. A Kantian view - which holds that morality is determined by how we respond to our maxims - would be one example. I also argue that Scanlonian contractualism has good reason to endorse the Accessibility Constraint. I won’t reproduce those arguments here. But if they succeed, then it is far from clear that objective morality must reject (3).

Not only does Audi suggest that we should not dwell on whether Abraham’s killing of his son is objectively wrong or merely morally excusable, he also proposes that, to sidestep metaphysical concerns about God’s fundamentality, it’s better to replace the term ethics-first with ethics-essential in our approach to Scripture. I think he is right: neither of these distinctions should distract us from the deeper point - that our independent moral sense plays a vital role in our religious lives and in how we engage with Scripture. As Audi aptly notes, “Is not scriptural literalism far more the problem Saemi is combating than the difficulty of deciding between a subjectivist theory of right and wrong and an objectivist theory of right and wrong combined with an epistemic account of excusability?” He is right. The core idea of the book is that the believer’s moral sense is what she has been given, and - as the Qur’an reminds us “God never burdens a soul beyond what He has given it” (65:7) - the conscientious believer cannot afford to ignore it in her moral life, regardless of whether we describe her way of life as morally excusable or as objectively morally correct. These, incidentally, correspond to the very two ethics-first solutions I proposed in the book.

Suppose our moral judgments that conflict with Scriptural injunctions are reliable. If so, how can God’s injunctions be morally mistaken if God is both benevolent and omniscient? (Legal Interpretation), according to which God’s injunctions are legal directives rather than necessarily moral ones - offers an answer to this question. The other three papers in the symposium engage with (Legal Interpretation) in various ways.

Imran Aijaz’s paper offers a rigorous and perceptive engagement with my work, primarily through his careful reading of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan. Whatever its critical implications for my position, his analysis of the text - as well as his broader reflections on Islamic fundamentalism - contribute meaningfully to current discussions on the condition of Islam and will be of interest to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of its contemporary challenges. He raises two principal objections to my second Ethics-first solution. Since the second objection is also addressed in Akhlaghi’s paper, I will return to it later in my response to him. In this section, I focus exclusively on the first objection he presents.

In the book, the story of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan serves as an illustration of how religious laws might justifiably diverge from moral ones. Absāl’s island represents a nonideal society in which, due to the moral corruption of its inhabitants, it may be rational for a prophet to enact laws that fall short of moral ideals. Aijaz offers an interpretation of the narrative - attributing it to me - according to which Absāl’s island symbolizes the Muslim community during the Prophet’s time. On this reading, Hayy’s island represents an ideal, utopian moral community, and Aijaz suggests that, on my view, “the Muslim community today has left Absāl’s island and is on a journey towards Ḥayy’s island, if it is not already there”. On Aijaz’s reading of my. view, the Muslim community’s movement toward a more morally ideal place - understood as a metaphor for the significant broadening of our moral consciousness since the 7th century - provides a justification for why morally objectionable Scriptural injunctions should not be implemented today.

However, Aijaz challenges this interpretation by observing that “most of the Muslim community (Ummah) has lived and continues to live on Absāl’s island. One may go further and argue that most of humanity has lived and continues to live on Absāl’s island.” He contends that “although slavery has been abolished, we still see wage slavery, corporate greed, and economic disparity around the world.” Given that humanity continues - by virtue of the human condition - to dwell on Absāl’s island, Aijaz warns that “Saemi’s Legal Interpretation solution may be conscripted by some Muslim authorities and those interested in defending them to justify a present-day implementation of all the Scriptural injunctions in traditional Islam, including the morally objectionable ones Saemi discusses.” He notes that this is, in fact, the very kind of justification used by Islamic fundamentalist figures like Qutb to argue for the contemporary application of Sharīʿah law.

My understanding of Hayy’s island may diverge slightly from the interpretation Aijaz attributes to me. It is not that we are progressing toward Hayy’s island simply because time has passed. Rather, Hayy’s island symbolizes the condition in which moral judgments are formed through careful reflection and adequate empirical inquiry. Anyone who employs their own reason thoughtfully and rigorously to reach moral conclusions is, in effect, on their way to Hayy’s island - if not already there - regardless of whether they live today or in 7th-century Arabia. Hayy’s island is a metaphor for the use of independent reason. The problem of divinely prescribed evil is not only a contemporary problem; it arises for anyone, in any era, whose exercise of independent reason leads to moral judgments that conflict with their best interpretation of Scripture.

Qutb’s reasoning rests on two major premises: first, that independent reason cannot lead us to moral truths; and second, that the laws prescribed by the Prophet in 7th-century Arabia provide the best guide for addressing contemporary problems. I believe both premises are mistaken. As for the first premise of Qutb’s argument, I have argued extensively in Chapters 4 and 5 that there is reason for optimism about our ability to attain moral knowledge - or at least moral justification - when reason is exercised carefully and supported by adequate empirical inquiry. If those arguments are successful, then Qutb’s pessimism about our access to moral knowledge is unfounded.

Aijaz expresses the concern that contemporary society remains rife with moral failings - from new forms of slavery and misogyny to the horrors of modern wars. As he puts it, “perhaps, in modernity, humanity has merely shifted its moral failings into new forms.” I think Aijaz is at least partly right. Indeed, one of my own examples of the rationality of immoral laws - the Geneva Conventions example - rests on the recognition that contemporary humans cannot always be expected to abide by moral laws.

However, the problem of divinely prescribed evil, and the solutions I offer (including the Legal Interpretation), are directed toward conscientious believers who find themselves in the difficult position of a conflict between their moral conscience - shaped through careful reasoning - and the apparent injunctions of Scripture. My aim is to provide such individuals with rational grounds for the hope that their moral judgments are trustworthy: that they can rely on their own moral reasoning, and that a benevolent God may have had good reasons to legislate laws that diverge from those judgments. This helps them to ease the disturbing question of how a benevolent God could command injunctions that are morally unintelligible.

Aijaz might grant that some individuals today are capable of forming reliable moral judgments - after all, he acknowledges that Absāl and Hayy, described as “thoughtful men, fond of contemplation,” can attain moral knowledge that may diverge from Scriptural injunctions. But he remains concerned about the rest of society, “most of the Muslim community and humanity in general.” Couldn’t someone like Qutb argue that most people still get it wrong and therefore require the guidance of Sharī’a law? I agree with Aijaz that much of our society behaves in ways that are, by and large, immoral. Yet I think this is consistent with the view that our overall moral consciousness has nonetheless expanded.

If I am right that reliable moral judgments require both careful a priori reasoning and adequate empirical investigation, then our intellectual progress - both in logic and mathematics (which require a priori reasoning) and in science (which depends on empirical inquiry) - supports the conclusion that we are now better equipped to make sound moral judgments. We have become more capable reasoners with greater empirical understanding - resources essential to moral discernment.

Aijaz is right to highlight the persistence of new forms of evil: wage slavery, corporate greed, misogyny, and the brutalities of modern war. But at the same time, there is now a broader recognition that such practices - whether carried out by individuals or embedded in social structures - are indeed morally wrong. We are no longer morally blind to the evils of wage slavery, misogyny, or war crimes. The problem is not ignorance, but the entrenchment of self-interest, greed, and unjust institutions and structures that make it profoundly difficult - if not impossible - to eradicate those evils.

Aijaz expresses concern that a large segment of the Muslim population finds morally controversial Scriptural passages to be morally plausible. He cites the Pew Research Center’s 2013 report, which shows significant support in several Muslimmajority countries for punishments such as whipping and amputating the hands of thieves, stoning adulterers, and executing apostates. If Aijaz is right about the prevalence of such moral sensibilities - sensibilities that I take to be significantly different from modern moral intuitions - then the problem of divinely prescribed evil may not arise for those communities, just as it did not arise for many early Muslims. My book, however, is addressed to Muslims for whom this problem does arise - those whose moral sensibilities have been shaped, at least in part, by modern ethical reflection.

Still, I speculate that many Muslims do find at least some of these Scriptural injunctions morally troubling. Their public support for such punishments may not stem from genuine moral intuitions (backed by independent reasoning) but rather from a belief - promoted by thinkers like Qutb - that redemption, in the face of global injustice and moral grievance, lies in the reimplementation of Sharī’a law. As I note in the final paragraph of the book: “Even conservative theists, if they are conscientious, can see that there is something very objectionable about mistreating their spouses; after all, they should have our modern moral sensibilities, too. Of course, the conservatives might argue that people of faith should ignore those intuitions and stick to Scripture’s literal meaning. However, the arguments of this book, if successful, show that there are plausible ways to resist this conservative argument.

Regardless of whether my speculation holds, Qutb’s second premise (described above) should be regarded as deeply suspect when considered through the lens of the social planning conception of law. On this view, laws, by nature, are plans designed to address specific social problems. If so, Sharī’a laws - as laws - should be seen as plans formulated to solve the social problems of 7th-century Arabia. But why should we assume that these same plans, even if divinely designed, are suited to the vastly different challenges of the 21st century? Hadisi in his excellent review of my book, writes:

While this Scripture-first response to Legal Interpretation is coherent, it comes at the cost of rejecting modern moral judgments - such as the prohibition of slavery. Moreover, contemporary society differs dramatically from that of the Prophet’s time in structure, scale, and complexity. What reason do we have to think that a solution tailored to one set of problems can adequately address a fundamentally different set of problems? What grounds are there for believing that any social problem admits of solutions entirely independent of the specific features of the societies in which they arise? Believing that the same social planning can adequately address fundamentally different social problems demands an enormous leap of faith - one that, in my view, amounts to bad faith and lacks any sound basis. So, regardless of my optimism about the expansion of our moral consciousness, contrary to what Aijaz suggests, I do not believe that my project - which presupposes a planning conception of law - can be coopted by Islamic fundamentalists insisting on the continued implementation of Sharī’a law.

In his insightful and incisive paper, Akhlaghi raises a series of formidable objections to the view of (Legal Interpretation) I have defended - objections that, in my view, expose vulnerabilities in that account. I do not pretend to have a fully adequate response to all of the challenges he raises. What follows is a preliminary attempt to engage with some of them, in the hope that his criticisms might serve as a constructive impetus for refining and perhaps even rethinking the view.

Lara Buchak presents an intriguing development of (Legal Interpretation) in her paper. She identifies the shortcomings of my view and offers a formal model to strengthen and render it more plausible.

She insightfully notes that for my account to succeed, four conditions must simultaneously hold: (Past Vice) - which roughly states that, in the absence of Scripture, deeply inegalitarian norms would be adopted; (Legislation Effectiveness) and (Legislation Ineffectiveness) - which assert that Scripture is effective in legislating moderately inegalitarian norms but ineffective in legislating egalitarian ones; and, crucially, (Present Virtue) - which holds that in the modern era, egalitarian norms can be adopted without reliance on Scripture.

I offered two main examples to support (Legal Interpretation): the Geneva Conventions and Hayy’s Island. As Buchak’s paper makes clear, while the conditions of (Past Vice), (Legislation Effectiveness), and (Legislation Ineffectiveness) - mutatis mutandis - may plausibly hold in these cases, (Present Virtue), mutatis mutandis, does not. Why should we assume that future generations will evolve to adopt the correct norms of just war theory? And why think that the inhabitants of Absāl’s Island would come to embrace the correct moral norms as the island’s history unfolds? If my defense of (Legal Interpretation) depends on the simultaneous satisfaction of all four conditions, and my two examples fail to demonstrate how they can jointly hold, then my account remains incomplete. Fortunately, Buchak offers an alternative model of (Legal Interpretation) in which all four conditions can be satisfied together.

Buchak proposes a model of moral development in which Scripture plays a crucial role in bringing about that development. She argues that moral conventions emerge through the resolution of coordination problems - problems where our choices depend not only on the relative payoffs of possible outcomes, but also on our expectations about others’ actions, and our expectations about their expectations.

To illustrate her view, Buchak focuses on the issue of domestic violence discussed in the Qur’anic verse 4:34. She models the Prophet’s legislation as a shift away from a deeply inegalitarian coordination equilibrium in which the 7th-century Arab community found itself prior to revelation. She suggests that the Prophet’s intervention helped move the community from the initial inegalitarian equilibrium to a moderately inegalitarian one in a coordination problem faced by men - one shaped by their divergent preferences about how to treat their wives and their desire to conform to prevailing social conventions, understood as a network of expectations and higher-order expectations. The new equilibrium enabled them to reassess the expected value of their actions, opening the way to discovering the moral and personal significance of love and equality within the family, thereby laying the groundwork for a future transition to the egalitarian equilibrium characteristic of the modern era.

I find Buchak’s account entirely plausible. In a footnote, she briefly notes the possibility of modeling the issue as a coordination problem involving both men and women, though she does not develop this idea further. Building on her suggestion, I propose - within the framework of Buchak’s model - a way of interpreting the Prophet’s injunction as a shift in coordination equilibria within a coordination problem between men and women, one grounded in the historical and social context of the Prophet’s time. Due to limitations of space, I will presuppose, without elaboration, the assumptions underlying Buchak’s model of social conventions. The model I offer should be understood as a variation on Buchak’s original framework.

I begin by sketching the historical and social context surrounding the Prophet’s injunction in Qur’anic verse 4:34. For the purposes of my model, complete historical accuracy is not required; it is sufficient that the account is broadly accurate in its main contours.

Radical change was intolerable to men: Mernissi (1991) reports that men in the Prophet’s time expressed significant resistance to radical changes in the treatment of women, preferring to maintain pre-Islamic customs. They thought that Prophet “tampered with matters in which Islam should not intervene - their relations with women. According to many of the Companions, Islam ought to change everything except their privileges with regard to women” (Mernissi, 1991, p. 120) “Umar [a very prominent Companion and future caliph] could not imagine an Islam that overturned the traditional - that is, pre-Islamic - relations between men and women… to envisage that the Arab women could claim a different status on earth seemed an intolerable change to him” (Mernissi, 1991, p. 130).

Women demanded change, but men could only accept limited reform: Mernissi (1991) recounts an episode in which a woman, beaten by her husband, approached the Prophet to seek justice. The Prophet, appalled by the violence, intended to rule in her favor. However, this moment coincided with the revelation of verse 4:34. Mernissi mentions a hadith cited in Tafsir al-Tabari, in which the Prophet summons the man, recites the verse, and remarks: “I wanted one thing, and God wanted another.” She also references Ibn Saʿd - writing four generations before al-Tabari - who affirms the Prophet’s opposition to the beating of women. “The Prophet had always persisted in his opposition to the beating of women. And men came to the Prophet to complain about women. Then he gave them permission [to beat], while saying: “I cannot bear seeing a quick-tempered man beat his wife in a fit of anger.””

We can represent the situation using Buchak’s game-theoretic matrix, where both men and women hold preferences over three types of actions: inegalitarian, moderately inegalitarian, and egalitarian. Men’s preferences reflect how they wish to act, while women’s reflect how they wish to be treated. The magnitude of the numbers represents the expected costs (personal or moral) associated with each action, reflecting the following facts:

A matrix, with the following payoffs, can represent the situation:

In this matrix, there are only two coordination equilibria - outcomes in which neither party can improve their situation by unilaterally changing their preferences. One equilibrium occurs when men’s actions are inegalitarian and women accept it; the other occurs when men’s actions are moderately inegalitarian and women find that acceptable.

Notice that the cell in which men’s actions are egalitarian and women are happy with it does not represent an equilibrium, since men could do better by changing their behavior. In addition to Buchak’s explanation of (Legislation Ineffectiveness) - which appeals to the outlandishness or unbelievability of radical change - this model offers an alternative explanation: even if the Prophet succeeded in initially getting people to accept egalitarian norms through legislation, men would likely revert to inegalitarianism to secure a better payoff (if there is no agreement on moderate inegalitarianism, its payoff might be even lower than the matrix suggests). In response, women would then adjust their expectations, shifting to inegalitarianism to reduce family conflict and improve their own payoffs. Therefore, not only would the Prophet fail in his efforts, but his position as a leader would also be jeopardized by the risk of widespread rejection.

The Prophet’s legislation can initiate a shift from the inegalitarian equilibrium to a moderately inegalitarian one, thereby establishing a new social convention. Once this convention is in place, the rest of the story unfolds much like the one Buchak tells: moral progress occurs through exploration. As men increasingly perform the moderately inegalitarian action, they gather evidence about its actual value. Over time, they may come to see a connection between the value of moderate and egalitarian actions. Eventually, the payoff matrix is updated, and as the cost of breaking the convention in favor of egalitarianism diminishes, the community abandons the moderate equilibrium in favor of a newly formed egalitarian equilibrium with higher payoffs. In this way, (Present Virtue) is established.

At the end of her paper, Buchak raises some worries about (Legal Interpretation). I believe that I have addressed most of her concerns in my other responses in this paper. For example, she asks why we should assume that the nature of men is fixed. As I said earlier, we don’t know what God is dealing with - nor whether creating humans differently, given the goods He aims to realize through creation, falls within the range of His possibilities. In any case, as Buchak herself acknowledges, this is just the classical problem of evil, and whatever response the theist has to that problem will likely carry over to this context as well.

Like Akhlaghi, Buchak raises a concern about the finality of the Prophet’s message. In addition to the skeptical response I offered to Akhlaghi’s version of this worry, I would like to suggest a further response - one that resonates with the spirit of Buchak’s own suggestion. She proposes that “the idea might be that each individual’s moral journey must necessarily follow the historical journey described,” and considers that “Scripture [may be] a kind of scaffolding in our individual lives as well as socially.” Mohammad Iqbal Lahuri (d. 1938), a visionary thinker in the Islamic modernist tradition, has a conception of the Prophet’s finality that resonates with the view I defend in the book. Iqbal understands the Prophet as one who “stands between the ancient and the modern world” (Iqbal, 2013, p. 100). In his view:

On this conception of finality, once humanity reaches a stage where moral learning becomes possible, further revelation is no longer necessary. In fact, according to Iqbal, for moral actions to possess genuine value, they must arise from the individual’s own will. As he puts it, “goodness is not a matter of compulsion; it is the self’s free surrender to the moral ideal and arises out of a willing cooperation of free egos” (Iqbal, 2013, p. 68). He goes even further, suggesting - echoing the words of a Muslim Sufi - that “no understanding of the Holy Book is possible until it is actually revealed to the believer just as it was revealed to the Prophet.” (Iqbal, 2013, p. 143).

But this leads to Buchak’s final concern: that the view I defend “makes it difficult to receive guidance from Scripture if all it tells us is the optimal way to resolve social problems in light of the feasibility constraints produced by past societies”. Yet this need not be all that Scripture offers. In the book, I explored several ways in which Scripture continues to serve a moral function in the lives of believers. In my response to Akhlaghi, I argue that revelation plays a distinctive moral and epistemic role by generating two kinds of reasons: underdetermination-solving reasons and relationship-based reasons. I won’t repeat the full account here, but to summarize: underdetermination-solving reasons arise in cases in which human deliberation alone cannot settle what ought to be done. Take Friday prayer, for example. Instituting such a practice not only requires solving various coordination problems but also identifying a holy day - a task that cannot be settled through human reasoning alone. God’s designation of Friday provides a divine resolution, translating a spiritual need into an empirical practice. Similarly, relationship-based reasons are created when God, by revealing his will, specifies ways we can express the value we place on our relationship with Him. For example, God asks us to take care of his creatures. This gives us a new relationship-based reason for benevolence and may make certain actions morally-religiously required which would have not been morally required, had it not been for God’s demand.

In sum, Scripture has historically played a crucial role in our moral development. It helped bring us to a point where societal progress no longer depends on the supernatural. Yet it continues to play a vital role in our spiritual journey - shaping our inner lives and our relationship with God. From a broadly religious perspective, where the spiritual life is seen as a moral necessity, Scripture remains an integral part of our moral journey even today.