1

A recent question asked about God's omni-benevolence, free will and God's ability to do evil. My counter to that was to look at Divine Command Theory which defines moral good as God's will, the questioner did ask further questions that made me wonder about this though.

Would all conclusions of moral good that stem from the bible agree with DCT or is there a definition which sees moral good as something God also adheres to, external to themselves?

Improve this question
5
  • If God 'adheres' to some greater power or better power or higher power than He, Himself, then he is not 'God' at all. That (supposed) power is 'God' and must be worshipped by all - even 'God' himself. The question turns upon itself and seeks to remove the Deity and seeks to substitute a thing in God's place. Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 0:13
  • @NigelJ That is an interesting interpretation, you're quite quick to dismiss God in that situation. It doesn't counter creation at all, nowhere in genesis does it state God created morality. So "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is not worthy of worship alone? Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 6:58
  • Your question seeks something 'external' to which God 'adheres'. The Gospel declares the 'righteousness of God' . . . an attribute of Deity. (Not 'external' to Deity.) Commented Jun 15, 2023 at 11:13
  • "/an attribute of Deity. (Not 'external' to Deity.)/" These are not exclusive, and you seem to be confusing what /defines/ an attribute with some given /exemplification/ of the same. Of course the latter is internal to an object which has the attribute, but this doesn't mean the first is; in fact, it's unclear what it would even /mean/ for it not to be external. E.g., "I am tall" is true if I has the quality "tall." But that doesn't mean that I somehow /define/ what tallness means. Commented Apr 1, 2025 at 0:48
  • Indeed, if something intrinsic to me defined "tallness," then I could have been born an Oz-ian 2' Munchkin, and would still be "tall," because "tall" then no longer has any meaning beyond "whatever I am." But surely that's not what it means. Commented Apr 1, 2025 at 0:49

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

You're referring to the Euthyphro's dilemma which asks whether goodness is above or below God; did he discover or invent goodness? If it is above him, then we should remove the middle man and he is unnecessary. If it's below him then goodness is arbitrary of whatever he commands.

The Christian answer is that there's a third option as well, that goodness is grounded in God's character, it's internal to God. Goodness = God. It is an essential attribute to God, hence goodness naturally flows from God. He has always been essentially good and perfect.

We may still perceive the position as God's perfection and infallible character to be due to his wilful perfection, rather than some logical necessity; that's not to say that God discovered morality and learned to conform to it. His being is maximally good and the foundation of goodness. Morality Therefore comes out if his own standard rather than external standard to him, 1 Peter 1:16.

Many contemporary philosophers of religion suppose that there are true propositions which exist as platonic abstracta independently of God, including propositions constituting a moral order, to which God must conform in order to be good (wiki).

Improve this answer
2
  • This conflates several points. X being /essential/ to A neither means nor implies that X "flows from" A, whatever that means. Nor does X being /grounded/ in A mean that X is /internal/ to A; indeed, it is essential to distinguish between an instantiation of X being internal to A and the very meaning/definition of X being internal to A (again: whatever that means). So without distinguishing these points, this is not a "third answer," but simply an obscuration and verbal conflation of features of the two standard anwers. Commented Apr 1, 2025 at 0:54
  • None of this implies "platonic abstracta," of course, but simply ordinary distinctions between concepts and their instantiations. (N.b.: Michael16, you seem very prone to making unjustified slanders, both of your opponents and of many intellectual bystanders not even closely related to the original Q and your A; I'm not surprised that one of your responses, to which you protested on a meta-question, got deleted. You might want to stay more focused in your replies if you want to people to take you seriously.) Commented Apr 1, 2025 at 0:56

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.