Yes, if the phrase God is good is to have substantive meaning then it must be the case that there are certain things God would not command: I can give a few examples

I don’t think a good person would command people to torture one another for no reason at all. he would, at least not in a world like ours issue a general permission to kill each other for any reason we see fit. He will not issue a command “you shall always lie” . he will not command men to rape women when ever they feel horny and so on. If a being commanded these sorts of things we could not call him good without radically revising our concept of Goodness to the point where it no longer means what we mean by the word good.

Some, like Robert Adams, and to some extent Linda Zagzebski state that the relationship between a good character trait and God’s character is one of identity; the property of being a good trait and the property of being a divine trait is are identical properties.

This seems like a very strange view. Since the claim is not plausibly analytic, the identity has to be a Kripke-type a posteriori identity (like “water = H2O”). But those necessary a posteriori identities all seem to break apart into a necessary a priori component (water = [rigidly] whatever actually plays the water role) and a contingent a posteriori component (H20 actually plays the water role)? Is there a similar analysis for identity between goodness and being a characteristic of God?

‘Lastly, assuming God is a perfectly good being, is there any action (or inaction) that God would not command of a human?’

Hi Matt,

I had a read through your 3 posts on the Euthyphro dilemma, and was just wanting a few clarifications, if you would. Is it your view that God’s goodness is an analytic fact, that is, a matter of definition that God is good–as ‘the perfectly good being’?

You reject any reliance of God on some ontologically prior principle of goodness. But would you say that God’s goodness is logically prior to any analysis of God’s acts?

Lastly, if God is a perfectly good being, is there any action carried out by any person that could not be ascribed to the will of God?

Good question

First, as phrased you asks why “we” “consider” these traits good. That’s question about a persons reasons for a conclusion and I think the answer depends on who “we” is. I imagine different people will have different reasons for why they endorse these traits some of these reasons will be good others bad.

Second, I think what you mean to ask is a metaphysical question, what makes these traits good. You suggest either these traits are good traits because God posses them or they are good because of some standard of good traits independent of God. Here I think the question makes a false dichotomy. You assume that that the relationship between goodness and God is an asymmetrical, dependence relationship that leaves two mutually-exclusive possibilities; either being right is ontologically prior to God’s commanding or God’s commanding is ontologically prior to what is right.

However, from reading the literature it seems that some important theists deny that the relationship is asymmetric in this way. Some, like Robert Adams, and to some extent Linda Zagzebski state that the relationship between a good character trait and God’s character is one of identity; the property of being a good trait and the property of being a divine trait is are identical properties. This does not expound an asymmetrical relationship but one of identity. Identity relations are symmetrical and the proposed dilemma simply does not apply to a relationship of identity. To ask which of two identical things was ontologically prior to the other is to ask whether something was prior to itself.

Matt