Too many words coming into my brain and not enough coming out. So I'm writing a short little primer on my take with the Euthyphro Dilemma.
Enjoy.
:-
The
Euthyphro Dilemma is an ancient conundrum told by Plato concerning
morality and divinity. In essence, Plato’s mentor Socrates asks
Euthyphro whether or not morality (what is pious or good) is caused by
God’s will or does God will goodness because He recognizes that it is moral.
If
one assumes that God wills goodness, the dilemma faced by that person
is that morality becomes the sole purview of God and God, therefore,
decides what is moral by fiat. In this case, if God were to will that
torturing children was the moral standard, we would be required to
torture children in order to be good. This makes morality arbitrary.
The
second “horn” of the dilemma is that morality exists outside of God,
and that God requires humanity to be moral for the sake of morality
itself. In this case morality stands on its own and God is relegated to
the figurative “moral police.” God is also held to a standard that is above Himself. In this case Platonian concept of The Good.
The
Euthyphro Dilemma challenges our notions about God because it is very
easy to over-look the dilemma and not see the contradiction it poses. If
we believe that God is absolute, then we must admit that He either could do
something we deem immoral, or that He would not do something immoral
because there is a higher standard than Himself. But I challenge that
notion as a false dichotomy.
First
of all, because my theological understanding of God is that He is
sovereign, even if He were to will child abuse, as an illustration from
Baggett and Walls suggests, we being finite creatures would never know
that child abuse was wrong, because He made it good. There would be no
dilemma here, because our perception (in this argument) that child abuse
is wrong would never factor into a world where God said it was right.
While I am no Liebniz fan, I can appreciate the ontological
ramifications of “the best possible world” scenario. If God
ontologically (with in His being) made child abuse good, it would be
good. I say all of this with respect to the fact that I believe that God
IS good in His very nature, and would not create such a universe. Ergo
my Leibnizesque rationale.
But, more cogent to the discussion at hand, is what William Lane Craig would
call a matter of character; not of command. Craig writes “God’s
commands are not arbitrary, and so we need not trouble ourselves about
counterfactuals with impossible antecedents like, ‘If God were to
command child abuse…’” (Reasonable Faith, Crossway, 2008, 182) In other
words, there is no dilemma, because there is more than two choices
(horns) upon which we can hang our proverbial hats. Horn one, God is
arbitrary. Horn two, The Good is the highest ideal. Horn three, God is
good. As Craig points out, with more than two horns, the dilemma
disappears.
I
am also fond of John Frame’s treatment of the Euthyphro Dilemma. Frame
points out the circularity of the fact that we might say “God is both
supremely good and the ultimate standard of goodness.” (The Doctrine Of
God, P&R, 2008, 407) In other words, God is good, and we know He is
good because He told us He is good. But I love the fact that Frame does
not shy away from the circular logic here, but embraces it. Frame writes
that “there is always a kind of circularity when dealing with an
ultimate standard.” (pg 407) The same problem existed for Plato in his
Forms. If goodness must be defined by an abstract form, the goodness of
that form must have an abstract to be compared to. And so must that
form. This could go on ad infinitum. Yet Frame surmises the issue for
the Believer when he writes that “We don’t merely know the bare fact
that God is good; we know Him.” (409)
So then, according to Frame, the Euthyphro Dilemma is laid bare for the Believer because of our personal relationship with God.
