Too Hot to Handle: The Good, the Bad and the Godly

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Plato is among the most influential figures in philosophical thought. He is an absolute giant, and it would difficult to overestimate the extent to which his writing has shaped the Western mindset.

That being understood, unless you have studied theology or philosophy, you may find it hard to understand how a 2,400-year-old dialogue has any relevance at all to the question of whether God exists. And yet one question posed by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro is still bandied about online regularly.

The Horns of a Theological Dilemma

Tom: Last week, Immanuel Can, you and I had a lengthy conversation about it. The scope of the post I was writing at the time was way too narrow to accommodate even a fraction of what we discussed, so I thought maybe we could revisit the subject here.

For readers who have yet to encounter it, IC, what exactly is the “Euthyphro dilemma”, and in what sort of context is one likely to encounter it?

Immanuel Can: It’s a problem Socrates raises in one of his conversations. Essentially, he asks whether “the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods”. But you won’t generally find it repeated in quite so antique a way today. Usually, today, it is paraphrased as something like, “Is something good (or bad) because God says it is, or is it good (or bad) already?”

This gets turned into a kind of argumentative trap set for the Christian. If he says, “Whatever God says is good is thereafter good,” then the skeptic says, “Aha! So you’re saying that if God called murder good, it would be good to murder everybody.”

Tom: That’s exactly the way I’ve seen it framed.

Confused and Thrown Off

IC: But that doesn’t seem right, so the Christian maybe flips and says, “No, no ... it’s got to be the other way around: murder is plain wrong. God would never do that.” Then the skeptic says, “If murder’s already wrong, then God saying so isn’t important; in fact, God himself is subject to something greater than him — the concept ‘good’, which is greater than God.”

And the Christian feels confused and thrown off.

Then the skeptic says, “Now you see that the whole concept of God makes no sense. If he can call anything at all ‘good’, then he’s not particularly ‘good’ in any meaningful sense: he could do evil. On the other hand, if God doesn’t make the difference to what’s good and bad, then our concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are bigger and more important than God — they judge him. So either God isn’t good at all, or God isn’t God at all. Which do you want?”

[Stunned pause.]

The skeptic closes: “See? Your theism’s just plain irrational! Gotcha.”

Tom: In the case of Euthyphro, I’ve actually seen Christians online take the bait and argue “Yes, if God said cannibalism is a good thing, then that would be just fine. He’s God, and he gets to dictate the terms.” That last bit is certainly true enough, but the God you’re left with is not a God who’s likely to appeal to your skeptic friend … or to you, frankly.

Dealing with “Gotcha” Questions

My experience is that with every “gotcha” question about God, the Christian faith or life generally, the danger to the faith of the unsuspecting comes in accepting the way the issue is originally framed, whether it’s the choice of words used, or the acceptance of the idea that you have to choose one of two options that appear to be the only possibilities. Unless the skeptic is actually right — which is almost never the case — the way to keep the trap from closing on you is to pause the moment the speaker lays out his “dilemma” and reflect on whether the question is actually a fair one, rather than leaping in enthusiastically on one side or another.

IC: Right! The trap is in the way the question is posed, and any answer is a danger, because the question itself contains the lie. In this case, the lie is that “good” is one thing, and “God’s will” is a different thing: actually, they’re the same thing. The question makes no more sense than to ask, “Are you a husband, or are you a male?” The right answer is actually “Both”.

Tom: How useful is it to argue abstractions like this with people? I’ve always tended to avoid answering hypothetical questions as much as possible on principle. They’re really only useful rhetorically, because you can’t prove anything definitively with them.

IC: Good question. I think, like every other form of witnessing, it’s a case of “He who has ears, let him hear.” A person who pulls out the Euthyphro dilemma may not have any sincere interest in listening at all. On the other hand, he may be someone who’s heard a flimsy thing like this, and it’s set him back on his journey to faith, in which case it’s good to help him out. Or we could be talking to a sincere Christian who’s been stumbled by being hit with, and not understanding, this challenge, so we could help him out too. It might still be worth working through.

Tom: Fair enough.

Pantheons and Schizophrenic Gods

IC: Anyway, the point is that Socrates could only pose the question in the first place because he took as certain that “God’s will” and “good” were not identical concepts. Why was he so sure they were different? Because he was a polytheist. If a person actually reads the Euthyphro dialogue, you find this very explicitly. Socrates says to Euthyphro, “I certainly did not ask you to tell me what action is both pious and impious: but now it would seem that what is loved by the gods is also hated by them. And therefore, Euthyphro, in thus chastising your father you may very likely be doing what is agreeable to Zeus but disagreeable to Cronos or Uranus, and what is acceptable to Hephaestus but unacceptable to Here, and there may be other gods who have similar differences of opinion.”

So even Socrates knew that his question depended on (a) there being multiple gods, not one, and (b) that they were supposed to have disagreements about good and evil so strong that what some deemed good others actually hated. “The gods’ wills” and “goodness” were then quite obviously not the same thing.

Tom: Right. We’re in a very different situation when we begin to discuss the God of the Bible.

IC: Absolutely. For the Christian, “goodness” is a word that describes the character — and hence, also the will — of God. And there is no alternative “good” to that.

The "Omnipotent" God

Now, here we have to clear up a massive, common misconception. It’s the word “omnipotence”, which is sometimes ascribed to God. If it means, “Able to do anything at all”, then we would have a problem: for “anything” would include silly things, contradictory things, bad things, and even downright evil things. But you see, that kind of “omnipotence” is not taught by the Bible — and not just because the Bible doesn’t use that word, but because it denies that God can do just anything.

I’m sure, Tom, that you know some of the things the Bible says God cannot do.

Tom: Sure. He can’t be contained, he can’t lie, he can’t be tempted with evil, he can’t forget his promises, he cannot deny himself … in short, he can’t act outside the bounds of his own revealed character, because to do so would be inconsistent. It would be self-denial.

The Truly Strong Man

IC: Right. And that’s how we should understand the word “omnipotent” (if we choose to use it at all): not as “can do anything”, but as “can do all that his nature requires”. Think of it this way: Is the strong person the man who does everything anybody else tells him to do, or the guy who’s so strong nobody ever gets to tell him what to do, so he only does what fits with what he intends? Which man is really “strong”?

In just this way, God is so strong, so “omnipotent” that he never does anything not harmonious with his own character and will. And that is what is meant by “good”.

To bring this full circle, then: Socrates’ question is a perfectly sensible one to ask a polytheist. It makes no sense at all — in fact, it’s a nonsense question — when posed to a monotheist or Christian. The fault is in the mistaken assumption of the question-poser.

Tom: And the key to not getting caught in this sort of semantic quicksand is understanding the trap in the question, which requires mulling it over. Solomon said, “If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” What did he mean by that? Everyone who gives an answer has heard something, or he wouldn’t be answering. What he’s saying there is that it is foolish to offer an opinion before you fully comprehend the issue you are purporting to address.

Look at the book of Job. Three friends gave Job answers that were simply too quick. Elihu patiently waited 31 chapters to offer his opinion, all the time just listening. His response was closer to the truth than anything the other three had to offer.

IC: Yes. And once again, as I’ve said in an earlier post, watch out for assumptions. Don’t take for granted that when a skeptic frames a question for you, his question is one that always makes sense, or one that is fair. He may well simply be a victim of weak reasoning. Be careful not to join him in that.