One sort of reply to these objections rests on an appeal to the theological doctrines of divine necessary existence and essential perfect goodness. Because
God exists and is perfectly good in every possible world, there is no possible world in which God commands grossly wicked and foully unjust actions
and no possible world in which God fails to forbid them. In short, the divine essence constrains the divine will. So the counterfactual that everything would be permitted if there were no God is trivially true in virtue of a necessarily false antecedent, and the counterfactual that torturing the innocent would be obligatory if God were to command it is also trivially true because, it being impossible for God to command torture of the innocent, its antecedent is impossible. A difficulty with this reply is that it seems to undercut what Thomas Aquinas and Andrew of Neufchateau say about the case of Abraham and Isaac. If God cannot command grossly wicked and foully unjust actions, then it would seem that God not only does not but also cannot command Abraham to slay Isaac.

Another reply to the objections insists that God does in fact forbid murder and torture of the innocent and so they are wrong, but allows that there are possible worlds in which there are no divine commands and everything is permitted, and possible worlds in which, torture and killing of the innocent having been divinely commanded, they are obligatory. This is probably the line that would be taken by extreme Ockhamists who want morality to depend on the absolute power of God and place few limits on divine absolute power, though it is disputed whether it is the view of Ockham himself; and this is the view that Cudworth and others find so objectionable.