Put simply, the modern version of the
Euthyphro Dilemma is usually presented something like this:
Are morally good acts good by virtue
of their own nature, or are morally good acts good because God says
they are good?
The first horn of the 'dilemma' implies
that the good is external to, and thus independent of, God. The
second horn implies God's commands would, therefore, be arbitrary.
There are multiple problems with this.
We'll list a few.
1. The Euthyphro Dilemma assumes a very low
view of God. It assumes a non-specific God who hands down to a
disconnected creation laws which He is either subject to by virtue of
their already existing outside of Himself, or to which He is loosely
related through His arbitrarily revealing them to the creation.
It is important to point out that God's
commands, or divine laws, flow from His very nature, which is
essentially good. Being
the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, God is beholden to no-one
and nothing outside of
Himself. As
necessary Being, we
can say, No God, no good!
2. The God of Christianity is Triune.
The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit relate to one another
necessarily and eternally.
This interrelationship
provides the very foundation of morality. The
Persons of the Trinity are
not beholden to any external law, nor
are they subject to the
arbitrary commands of one or
the other. Rather, they are in co-relation out of perfect and uniform
love for one another. God's
commands, or
laws,
are
a reflection
of His very character and
nature, not the result of whimsical
arbitrariness or
impulsiveness, nor are
they the result of laws
external to God to which He is beholden.
Once
we take this
into account, along with
some of the essential attributes of
God, like the supremacy of
God, the sovereignty of
God, the immutability,
or unchanging
nature of God, the self-sufficiency of God,
and the goodness of
God, we begin to
understand that God's
character and nature is the very
standard of all that is good,
and the objections
posed by the Euthyphro Dilemma
vanish. God loves morally good acts because He is good,
and therefore His commands reflect His
essential goodness. God is entirely self-sufficient, and is in need of nothing outside of Himself.
3. In
some sense it is true that God loves morally good acts because they
are morally good,
and in another sense it is true that morally good acts are that
which God commands. But this
is a mere
tautology.
A necessary truth. It
does not entail
that there is a
standard outside of God, nor that God's standard is arbitrary, and
to argue such is to offer
an incomplete analysis.
We have an innate awareness of
God's divine commands, or laws. (Romans 2:15), thus moral obligations are divine laws. There is a necessary relationship between
God's moral law and our moral obligations. Duty-related
properties depend on God's commands,
but evaluative properties, such as goodness, do not.
It is true that an
action is morally obligatory since God has commanded it, but the
goodness of an action does not depend on God's
commanding it; the goodness itself flows from God's essentially
good nature.
The proponent of
the Euthyphro Dilemma usually fails to take into account this distinction.
Now, a standard objection will look like this (or some variation
thereof):
'So
God
could have commanded that rape is good?'
No. God's very character and nature would prevent Him from doing so.
See the non-arbitrariness of God's commands above.
1.
To repeat, this
simply
ignores the rational and
valid explanation given by
the Christian, and is a
rather transparent
attempt to save the dilemma. God's
very character and nature would prevent Him from declaring
rape a morally good act. (see
above.)
2.
The objection shows that
the objector is aware that rape is
in fact not
a
morally good
act.
The
contrast is clear. The
objector attempts to communicate that God 'could'
have
commanded something bad
to
be good,
hence the objector, in the very objection, demonstrates that they
have an
innate knowledge
of what is good and bad. The
objection demonstrates they are acutely aware of the absurdity of
declaring rape to be a morally good act. And
if they are
aware of this, how much more God?
Soli
Deo Gloria
