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T HE ONLY WAY IS E T HICS

IS X GOOD BECAUSE GOD COMMANDS IT?

Now if it is accepted that ‘X IS GOOD BECAUSE GOD COMMANDS IT’ it seems to make morality arbitrary since God at any time could command you to be cruel. However, Alston points out that this dilemma talks about God as if he were a mere human being and in doing so makes it impossible to conceive of God as morally good.

you to judge whether or not God’s commands are good or bad. This in turn suggests that there is a moral law independent of God (which you have used to judge His commands) and that God is consequently not in charge of everything i.e. He is not sovereign.

DON’T TREAT GOD LIKE A HUMAN BEING

Others have pointed out that the The Euthyphro Dilemma is based on not making important distinctions between human beings and God and that it is inappropriate to talk of God as if he were just another human being in the universe whose behaviour can be understood, assessed and judged in the same sort of way. The argument is that God (who is Spirit) is radically different from human beings and that His behaviour must be assessed differently.

For example, human beings experience a distinction between what is the case (how we are as human beings) and what ought to be the case (how we ought to be as human beings) and this in turn leads (if you are a theist) to an experience of obligation to obey moral commands in order to bridge the gap.

Now with God there is no such distinction between what is the case (what He/She is as God) and what ought to be the case (what He/She ought to be as God) and that’s because God is perfectly good. And so God (unlike human beings) doesn’t experience any sort of obligation to obey commands in order to bridge a gap.

WILLIAM ALSTONWilliam Alston (Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorist. In Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy.1990) argues that maintaining this distinction between human beings and God allows theists to respond strongly to the first of Euthyphro’s dilemmas:

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T HE ONLY WAY IS E T HICS

BECAUSE IT IS GOOD’ the implication seems to be that there is an eternal Moral Law that is in charge of God and which subsequently means that God is not sovereign.

However, if it is now accepted that morality is grounded in the benevolent nature of God (as opposed to his commands) then God is not subject to an external moral law. Instead He/She is the law and His/Her sovereignty is consequently maintained.

THOMAS AQUINASA further response to the ‘arbitrary’ problem highlighted by The Euthyphro Dilemma is to focus on the way God has constructed human nature and then to argue that God’s commands must be consistent with the way this nature functions.

Thomas Aquinas argued that God has created objective moral laws within Human Nature, which like the physical, chemical, and biochemical laws of Nature in general, operate independently of God’s Will and our own reason. It is these laws, which tell us with authority how we ought to behave and how God intended us to flourish as human beings. The argument is that God would not then ‘arbitrarily’ issue commands that contradict these moral laws embedded in our nature.

For example, Aquinas argues that God has placed within us an “inclination’ to do good rather than

That’s because this first dilemma implies that the standard of morality is only set by God’s commands, which means that ‘God is reduced to becoming moral (like us) by obeying His/Her own commands’.

This is nonsensical and is a trivialization of what theists mean when they say that God is good i.e. God does not achieve goodness by a moral obligation to obey commands because there is no distinction between what He/She is and what He/She ought to be i.e. God’s Will is identical to His goodness.

Alston therefore argues that Theists can escape from the first dilemma by refusing to accept that goodness is simply based on the commands of God. If this were the case then (as explained above) it would make goodness arbitrary (God could command you to be cruel) and God’s own goodness would be impossible to conceive because God would have to achieve his own goodness by obeying His/Her own commands.

Instead, Alston argues that goodness is rooted not in commands but in the unchanging goodness of God’s nature. This means of course that morality ceases to be arbitrary, since God’s nature is always good and would consequently never make commands that were not consistent with His goodness.

“…a necessary condition of the truth that ‘S ought to do A’ is at least the metaphysical possibility that ‘S does not do A’. On this view, moral obligations attach to all human beings………And no moral obligations attach to God, assuming, as we are here, that God is essentially perfect good. Thus divine commands can be constituitive of moral obligations for those beings who have them without it being the case that God’s goodness consists in His obeying His own commands, or indeed, consists in any relation whatsoever of God to His commands” (Some Suggestions for Divine Command Theorist. In Christian Theism and the Problems of Philosophy. P. 315).

Alston also argues, that rooting goodness in the nature of God instead of his commands also allows theists to give a strong response to the second dilemma:

DOES GOD COMMAND X BECAUSE IT IS GOOD.

Now if it is accepted that ‘GOD COMMANDS X