God, Obligation and Euthyphro
Does God have obligations to us? No, He doesn’t. But doesn’t that imply that He could do anything to us? No, it doesn’t. But how can that be? To understand how, consider first another, related false dilemma: the famous Euthyphro problem.
The Euthyphro dilemma unfolds as follows: God commands us to do what is good. But is something good simply because God commands it, or does He command it because it is inherently good? If we consider the first option, it appears we may be accepting the possibility that God could render it good for us to torture babies merely for pleasure, solely through His command. If we adopt the second option, it suggests we are acknowledging a standard of goodness that exists independently of God, which He consults when issuing His commands. Neither option seems acceptable from the perspective of theism. The first renders morality arbitrary, making the assertion that God is good entirely trivial. The second contradicts the fundamental theistic belief that God is the ultimate cause of all things and, specifically, the source of all goodness. Therefore, we face a dilemma, don't we?
Actually, we don’t because the dilemma is a false one – certainly from the Thomistic perspective, for reasons I explain in Aquinas. Like all the other supposedly significant objections to theism, this one relies on caricature and a failure to make crucial distinctions. First, we must distinguish between the content of moral obligations and what gives them their obligatory force. Divine command pertains to the latter issue but not the former. Second, it is erroneous to assume that linking morality to divine commands renders it arbitrary, a product of capricious divine fiat. This might be true if we view divine commands through the lens of Ockham’s voluntarism and nominalism, but it is not the case if we accept, following Aquinas, that will follows upon intellect, meaning that God always acts in accordance with reason. Third, this does not imply that what determines the content of morality and God’s rationale for commanding as He does is independent of Him.
The actual situation, then, is this: what is good or bad for us is determined by the ends set for us by our nature. Given the essentialist metaphysics to which Aquinas is committed, this means that there are certain things that are absolutely good or bad for us, which even God could not change (since God’s power does not extend to doing what is self-contradictory). Now, God, given the perfection of His intellect, can in principle only ever command in accordance with reason; thus, God could never command us to do what is bad for us. Hence, the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is ruled out: God can never command us to torture babies for fun because torturing babies for fun is the sort of thing that, given our nature, can never in principle be good for us. However, the essences that determine the ends of things – our ends, and for that matter the end of reason too as inherently directed toward the true and the good – do not exist independently of God. Rather, given the Scholastic realist understanding of universals, they pre-exist in the divine intellect as the ideas or archetypes by which God creates. Hence, the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is also ruled out.
Also, remember that, in the “evil-god challenge,” the metaphysics underlying the arguments for classical theism leads to the conclusion that God is not merely a good thing among others but rather Goodness Itself. Given divine simplicity, this means that what we consider the distinctive goodness of a human being, the distinctive goodness of a tree, the distinctive goodness of a fish, and so on – each associated with a unique essence – all exist in an undifferentiated way within the Goodness that is God. As I expressed in an earlier post, “in creation, that which is unlimited and perfect in God comes to exist in a limited and imperfect way in the natural order... The divine ideas according to which God creates should, therefore, be understood as the divine intellect’s grasp of the various ways in which the divine essence might be imitated in a limited and imperfect fashion by created things.”
Divine simplicity also entails, of course, that God’s will is God’s goodness, which is His immutable and necessary existence. This means that what is objectively good and what God wills for us as morally obligatory are truly the same thing considered under different descriptions and that neither could have been anything other than they are. There can be no question then, either of God having arbitrarily commanded something different for us (such as torturing babies for fun, or whatever) or of a standard of goodness existing apart from Him. Once again, the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one; the third option it fails to consider is that what is morally obligatory is what God commands in accordance with a non-arbitrary and unchanging standard of goodness that is not independent of Him.
Now, let us return to the question of whether God has obligations to us. To be obliged is to be subject to a law, where, as Aquinas says, “a law is imposed on others by way of a rule and measure” (ST I-II.90.4). Moreover, “the law must regard principally the relationship to happiness,” that is to say, the realization of what is good for those under it (ST I-II.90.2). However, God has no superior who might impose any law or obligation on Him; there is no good He needs to realize since He is already Goodness Itself and therefore already possesses supreme Beatitude. Accordingly, there is no rule or measure outside Him against which His actions might be evaluated. He is not under the moral law precisely because He is the moral law. “[A]ll that is in things created by God, whether contingent or necessary, is subject to the eternal law: However, things pertaining to the Divine Nature or Essence are not subject to the eternal law but are the eternal law itself” (ST I-II.93.4, emphasis added).
To understand what this means is to comprehend that God can only will what is good for us. As noted above, God wills only in accordance with reason, and it would be perverse and irrational to will the creation of something without also willing what is, by its nature, good for that thing. If “nature does nothing in vain” (Aristotle, De Anima III.9 432b21), then neither does God, the Author of nature. He allows evil, but only because He can bring good out of it (ST I.2.3). Thus, Aquinas states, “as ‘it belongs to the best to produce the best,’ it is not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should produce things without granting them their perfection. A thing's ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore, it belongs to Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to guide them to their end.” (ST I.103.1)
In this way, God loves us perfectly because to love is to will another’s good, and God cannot fail to will what is good for us. Since moral goodness concerns the will, it follows that God is morally good- and perfectly so. However, His moral goodness is not like ours, as it does not involve fulfilling obligations, acquiring virtues, or similar concepts. Contrary to what some theistic personalists seem to believe, this does not make His moral goodness in any way inferior to ours; it makes it infinitely superior.
The Euthyphro dilemma unfolds as follows: God commands us to do what is good. But is something good simply because God commands it, or does He command it because it is inherently good? If we consider the first option, it appears we may be accepting the possibility that God could render it good for us to torture babies merely for pleasure, solely through His command. If we adopt the second option, it suggests we are acknowledging a standard of goodness that exists independently of God, which He consults when issuing His commands. Neither option seems acceptable from the perspective of theism. The first renders morality arbitrary, making the assertion that God is good entirely trivial. The second contradicts the fundamental theistic belief that God is the ultimate cause of all things and, specifically, the source of all goodness. Therefore, we face a dilemma, don't we?
Actually, we don’t because the dilemma is a false one – certainly from the Thomistic perspective, for reasons I explain in Aquinas. Like all the other supposedly significant objections to theism, this one relies on caricature and a failure to make crucial distinctions. First, we must distinguish between the content of moral obligations and what gives them their obligatory force. Divine command pertains to the latter issue but not the former. Second, it is erroneous to assume that linking morality to divine commands renders it arbitrary, a product of capricious divine fiat. This might be true if we view divine commands through the lens of Ockham’s voluntarism and nominalism, but it is not the case if we accept, following Aquinas, that will follows upon intellect, meaning that God always acts in accordance with reason. Third, this does not imply that what determines the content of morality and God’s rationale for commanding as He does is independent of Him.
The actual situation, then, is this: what is good or bad for us is determined by the ends set for us by our nature. Given the essentialist metaphysics to which Aquinas is committed, this means that there are certain things that are absolutely good or bad for us, which even God could not change (since God’s power does not extend to doing what is self-contradictory). Now, God, given the perfection of His intellect, can in principle only ever command in accordance with reason; thus, God could never command us to do what is bad for us. Hence, the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is ruled out: God can never command us to torture babies for fun because torturing babies for fun is the sort of thing that, given our nature, can never in principle be good for us. However, the essences that determine the ends of things – our ends, and for that matter the end of reason too as inherently directed toward the true and the good – do not exist independently of God. Rather, given the Scholastic realist understanding of universals, they pre-exist in the divine intellect as the ideas or archetypes by which God creates. Hence, the second horn of the Euthyphro dilemma is also ruled out.
Also, remember that, in the “evil-god challenge,” the metaphysics underlying the arguments for classical theism leads to the conclusion that God is not merely a good thing among others but rather Goodness Itself. Given divine simplicity, this means that what we consider the distinctive goodness of a human being, the distinctive goodness of a tree, the distinctive goodness of a fish, and so on – each associated with a unique essence – all exist in an undifferentiated way within the Goodness that is God. As I expressed in an earlier post, “in creation, that which is unlimited and perfect in God comes to exist in a limited and imperfect way in the natural order... The divine ideas according to which God creates should, therefore, be understood as the divine intellect’s grasp of the various ways in which the divine essence might be imitated in a limited and imperfect fashion by created things.”
Divine simplicity also entails, of course, that God’s will is God’s goodness, which is His immutable and necessary existence. This means that what is objectively good and what God wills for us as morally obligatory are truly the same thing considered under different descriptions and that neither could have been anything other than they are. There can be no question then, either of God having arbitrarily commanded something different for us (such as torturing babies for fun, or whatever) or of a standard of goodness existing apart from Him. Once again, the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one; the third option it fails to consider is that what is morally obligatory is what God commands in accordance with a non-arbitrary and unchanging standard of goodness that is not independent of Him.
Now, let us return to the question of whether God has obligations to us. To be obliged is to be subject to a law, where, as Aquinas says, “a law is imposed on others by way of a rule and measure” (ST I-II.90.4). Moreover, “the law must regard principally the relationship to happiness,” that is to say, the realization of what is good for those under it (ST I-II.90.2). However, God has no superior who might impose any law or obligation on Him; there is no good He needs to realize since He is already Goodness Itself and therefore already possesses supreme Beatitude. Accordingly, there is no rule or measure outside Him against which His actions might be evaluated. He is not under the moral law precisely because He is the moral law. “[A]ll that is in things created by God, whether contingent or necessary, is subject to the eternal law: However, things pertaining to the Divine Nature or Essence are not subject to the eternal law but are the eternal law itself” (ST I-II.93.4, emphasis added).
To understand what this means is to comprehend that God can only will what is good for us. As noted above, God wills only in accordance with reason, and it would be perverse and irrational to will the creation of something without also willing what is, by its nature, good for that thing. If “nature does nothing in vain” (Aristotle, De Anima III.9 432b21), then neither does God, the Author of nature. He allows evil, but only because He can bring good out of it (ST I.2.3). Thus, Aquinas states, “as ‘it belongs to the best to produce the best,’ it is not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should produce things without granting them their perfection. A thing's ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore, it belongs to Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to guide them to their end.” (ST I.103.1)
In this way, God loves us perfectly because to love is to will another’s good, and God cannot fail to will what is good for us. Since moral goodness concerns the will, it follows that God is morally good- and perfectly so. However, His moral goodness is not like ours, as it does not involve fulfilling obligations, acquiring virtues, or similar concepts. Contrary to what some theistic personalists seem to believe, this does not make His moral goodness in any way inferior to ours; it makes it infinitely superior.
Posted in Philosophy Questions
Recent
Archive
2025