What Scripture says
Scripture grounds goodness in God’s own character, not in arbitrary decrees:
- “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2, ESV). The command reflects who God is.
- “The Lord is good” (Psalm 100:5). “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18).
- “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and “it is impossible for God to lie” (Hebrews 6:18). God can’t act against his own nature.
- God “cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13).
What the evidence says
Philosophy
The dilemma
In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro (around 399 BC), Socrates asks whether something is holy because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is holy. Applied to the God of the Bible:
| Horn | Claim | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Something is good because God commands it | Goodness becomes arbitrary: if God commanded cruelty, cruelty would be good |
| 2 | God commands it because it is good | Goodness is a standard outside God, which God himself must follow |
Skeptics argue that either way, morality doesn’t really depend on God.
The third option
Most Christian philosophers, following Augustine and Aquinas, argue this is a false choice. Goodness is neither an arbitrary command nor an outside standard; it is God’s own nature. God is goodness itself. His commands flow necessarily from his character, which is loving, just and faithful.
- Not arbitrary, because God’s commands express his unchanging nature. God couldn’t command cruelty for its own sake, any more than he could cease to be God.
- Not external, because the standard isn’t above God; it is God.
Robert Adams compares this to how we explain other things: just as water simply is H₂O, goodness simply is likeness to God’s character.
Objections
- “Then the dilemma just moves back a step: is God’s nature good because it is God’s, or because it meets a standard?” Defenders reply that explanations must stop somewhere. For the atheist, moral facts are often treated as basic, brute facts; for the theist, the basic fact is a personal God whose nature is good. That isn’t more arbitrary.
- “What about hard commands in the Old Testament?” That is a different question about specific texts (see 5.4, 5.6), not about the logic of the dilemma.
Context
Why it matters
The dilemma is often used against the moral argument for God (see 1.5), which says objective moral values need a foundation. If the dilemma succeeded, morality wouldn’t need God. Since it is a false choice, the moral argument isn’t defeated by it.
Where they meet
It’s a false choice. Goodness is God’s own nature, and his commands flow from it.
What’s still open
Philosophers continue to debate whether grounding goodness in God’s nature fully answers the challenge.
Bottom line
It’s a false choice. Goodness is God’s own nature; his commands flow from it. This is rated Settled.