DAY 351
CHALLENGE
“If something is good just because God says it is, then morality is arbitrary. But if there’s an independent standard of morality that even God is bound to, that means there exists something besides God that is eternal and that is able to bind God.”
DEFENSE
God is the ultimate standard of goodness.
A version of this argument was proposed in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro around 400 B.C. In it, Socrates debates whether piety is whatever the gods love or whether the gods love something because it is pious. In philosophy, this has become known as the “Euthyphro dilemma.”
The view that goodness is whatever God (or the gods) command is known as divine command theory. There is some truth to this view, for some moral requirements are based on divine commands. An example was the weekly observance of the Sabbath by the Jewish people. There is nothing in the eternal moral law that requires Saturday in particular, rather than some other day, to be set aside for rest and worship.
However, the Sabbath was based on deeper moral principles. Humans do need to set aside adequate time for rest and worship. The way in which these were to be fulfilled in Israel may have been determined by divine command, but the command was based on a deeper set of principles that God designed into human nature. Today these principles are fulfilled in a different way (CCC 2175–76).
Consequently, the element of truth in divine command theory is limited, and the important question is where the deeper principles come from.
It would be possible to combine an independent standard of goodness with the idea of the Greek gods since they were held to be finite, created beings and thus not the ultimate standard of reference in the world. However, it does not fit with the Judeo-Christian understanding of God.
According to this view, God and the things he has created are all that exist. Consequently, if the ultimate standard of goodness is not created (as in divine command theory), then it must be God. This is the ultimate solution to the Euthyphro dilemma: The standard of goodness is God’s eternal nature, and thus it is neither arbitrary nor independent of God. All particular moral laws are an unfolding of God’s own goodness.