Now the non-believer will counter that the theist believes either something is good because God wills it or else God wills something because it is good. They will then claim that the first alternative is unacceptable, since it makes what is good or evil an arbitrary distinction, and the second alternative implies that the good is independent of God. Hence, they will claim moral values cannot depend on God, but instead something outside of God.
Actually this is a false dilemma. God wills something because He is good. God’s nature determines what is good, hence the good is not independent of God, and His nature necessarily expresses itself toward us in the form of His commandments such that they are not arbitrary.
Excellent. I wrote a short paper a couple of months ago arguing the exact same. Actually, here it is...
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THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA
Plato’s
Euthyphro famously provides a challenge to the view that morality and religion (or divine revelation) are inextricably linked. In this paper I outline and comment upon that view and its challenge from the Platonic-Socratic context, upon which I argue that while Socrates' 'dilemma' may appear to be a serious threat to 'God-based' ethics, it and its related dangers may be avoided by the 'hard' theological ethicist with some
clarification of her position. To this end I will focus on two main areas: (I) the Euthyphro dilemma; and (II) God the Lawgiver. Together they provide a corrective measure against a popular secular meta-ethical presumption.
I. The Euthyphro Dilemma
We meet the view proper at 7a with the title character’s definition of 'piety' at the behest of Socrates: "... what is dear to the gods..." ('impiety' being what is “... hated by the gods...” ). Let us translate the object and its definition to a perhaps more relevant monotheistic framework, substituting 'right' for 'piety' (and 'wrong' for 'impiety') and 'what is commanded by God' for 'what is dear to the gods' (and 'what is forbidden by God' for 'what is hated by the gods'). The basic view, then, is that what is right and wrong is what God commands and forbids respectively; if God commands P then it is right to do P, and if God forbids Q then it is wrong to do Q, always and in every case. The celebrated
challenge to this view rears its head at 10a with Socrates' question to the religious authority: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" Let us likewise alter this to 'Does God command what is good because it is good (and forbid what is bad because it is bad), or is what is good good (and bad bad) because God commands (and forbids) it?' This double-horned query is what has come to be known as the 'Euthyphro dilemma', which has concerned thinkers of many ages and has even been utilized by some to 'destroy' God-based ethics. Does it, in fact, do this?
If Euthyphro's definition is correct, then, it seems, one of the two Socratic 'horns' must follow: Either God commands X
because X is right and forbids Y
because Y is wrong,
or X is right
just because God commands X and Y is wrong
just because God forbids Y (the latter being what is called the 'Divine Command Theory'). How should our hard theological ethicist respond? If she chooses the former the problem is immediately clear: Morality is independent of God, a subsistent phenomenon -- something which God
follows just as human beings do and
passes on to us (instead of God
giving the Law), and this is hardly an adequate portrait of the sovereign Lord, or of morality, for the hard theological ethicist. But if she opts for the latter more problems become apparent. First, it implies that what is right and what is wrong is the result of an
arbitrary fiat on God's part; had God happened to command that raping our children is the right thing to do and that loving our children is the wrong thing to do, then these would be right and wrong actions respectively. A second implication, given the 'arbitrariness' of morality, is that calling God 'good', as she is wont to do, makes little sense; there is no 'objective' moral standard (morality here being
subjective) with which to make such a judgment about God. There are other problems with the latter -- for instance, the 'naturalistic fallacy' of G.E. Moore also appears to be at work -- but it is clear that following either horn of the question leads to conclusions which are unacceptable for the hard theological ethicist, which casts serious doubt upon her definition, which, in turn, many think, spells doom for a robust God-based ethics.
II. God the Lawgiver
Is the hard theological ethicist necessarily resigned to answering the Euthyphro dilemma and thus hitting its walls? An integral component of Socrates' challenge is that it is keyed to a
specific kind of divine revelation, which we may call the 'Scriptural'. This is because the basic definition seems to imply that in order to find out whether an action is right or wrong one needs to 'look up' where God has 'spoken' on that matter (entailing, in keeping with our monotheistic framework, reading the Bible), and this is the end of the story. This is one, 'surface-level' way of conceiving of God the Lawgiver in God-based ethics. Another way of looking at divine moral commands, more profound
and the classical/traditional theistic way (from Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to John Calvin and J.I. Packer), is above all concerned with God's
nature and
character -- right and wrong is what is commanded and forbidden by God respectively,
but, lest we forget, what God commands and forbids is the natural result of the divine essence. Applied to the dilemma, God does not
simply command P and forbid Q because P is right and Q is wrong, but,
moreover, P is right and Q is wrong (and God commands P and forbids Q) because the respective rightness and wrongness -- and the moral law generally -- is grounded in
Who or
What God
is. Similarly, P and Q are not right and wrong just because God commands P and forbids Q, but rather, primarily, because the rightness and wrongness correspond to the nature and character of God. In this framework God is absolutely the source and final arbiter of morality -- perfectly in line with the definition 'what is right and wrong is what God commands and forbids respectively' -- but the
clarification of the definition shows the Socratic challenge to be a false one, based on the 'secular' supposition that the hard theological ethicist has no reason for believing such other than that God has apparently said so, or, following from this, that morality is independent of God or that morality is exclusively contingent on the divine command.
There is, of course, the matter of whether the clarified definition is, in fact, true. This may or may not be the case, and opponents of it may come up with some other quagmire for it. (For the record, this 'form' of divine revelation, traditionally, has not been defended by appeal to Scripture, but through philosophical or
natural theological demonstration, arguing for the divine existence and the divine attributes by way of empirical observation -- from creation to Creator, and from Creator to moral corollaries. An ambitious avenue to be sure, but well-travelled.) At issue here is just that, given the clarified definition, the Euthyphro dilemma no longer applies; Socrates' challenge, in a sense, stems from his misunderstanding of what the hard theological ethicist -- in the classical tradition, anyway; and actually, the Divine Command Theory is a fringe/minority position at best, even among conservative evangelical Protestants -- means by her words. She is comfortable with pointing to commands and prohibitions in Scripture to define rightness and wrongness (as a kind of 'shorthand'), for she believes that this is the Word of God, but she moreover believes that there is something larger behind those commands and prohibitions: God, from Whom
all flows according to
Who He is. From this follows neither divine inferiority (to morality) nor moral arbitrariness. The question, in fact, should not even come up.
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