Euthyphro Dilemma and Christian Theology

This is seen as a dilemma, in that one and only one of these two alternatives can be correct.

While this is true within the confines of Greek theology, I suggest that once we step outside those confines, we should entertain the other two logical possibilities: neither of the above statements being true, as well as both being true.

The first of these additional alternatives, while trivially acceptable to an atheist, simply denies the Divine Command theory, and thus cannot be discussed within the framework of the theory.

The status of the second alternative, that of both (a) and (b) being true, is less clear. It seems to me that from the point of view of a believer in the Christian God (just God in further discussion), it represents the actual state of affairs.

Considered in a wider theological framework, the postulated dilemma hinges on the assumption that statement (b) above would imply the action in question being "necessarily right", i.e. right in all possible worlds. This is a tricky ground and great care should be taken with the exact meaning of "possible worlds", but even if we leave this subtlety aside for the moment, the assumption of (b) implying "necessary rightness" needs further justification.

Note that God is both the transcendent creator and the immanent God of his creation. In this his status is very different from that of Greek gods, who are simply usurpers in a pre-existing creation. Furthermore, as has been discussed by theologians over centuries, within the confines of his creation, God is bound by the logic of that creation.¹

Hence a believer in God need not find it difficult to assume that the distinction between good and evil is built into the very foundations of God's creation. I.e. that in the act of creation God defined what was good, and that within the created world, he necessarily commands as good that which is built into the creation's foundations. This possibility appears to be no more controversial than that of an architect designing a bridge with a particular load-bearing capacity, and once the bridge is built, acting as a consultant in the matter of unavoidable load-bearing limits of the bridge.

However, in case it strikes the reader that this explanation simply dodges the issue of the good of an action being "necessarily good", let us consider whether the demand for it to be "necessarily good" makes a difference to the argument.

An action is necessarily good if it is good in all "possible worlds", but the term "possible worlds" should not be confused with the term "conceivable worlds". Blurring the distinction between the two can lead to much philosophical fun (be it intentional or not ²), but a belief in God implies some considerable constraints.

God is the sole source of all creation. The act of creation necessarily encompasses all that exists, existed and will ever exist, including this universe and its entire history, as well as any other universes that may or may not exist, including Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Purgatory and any other putative "planes of existence". The act of creation also creates time and is thus an act outside time. Therefore, it encompasses all actually existing worlds.

Being by definition "summum bonum", God could not have possibly created a world ruled by evil. Such a world may be conceivable in human imagination, but this does not make it actually possible. To assume otherwise, would be tantamount to admitting the possibility that the distinction between good and evil is not fundamental to God, in which case incompatible ethical values may arbitrarily apply not just to different worlds, but to different continents (e.g. Aztec and Christian religions faithfully expressing the will of the same creator), different countries or indeed individual human beings.

Hence that which is good, is necessarily good in all existing worlds. This leaves us with the question of it also being so in all possible, but not actually existing, worlds.³ In other words, the question is whether God could have (but did not) create a "multiverse" based on ethical values incompatible with those built into the "multiverse" he actually created. It is hard to see how a believer in God could entertain this possibility, since it would flatly contradict the "summum bonum" nature of the transcendent God.

It would therefore appear that in the context of Christian theology, both statements of the Euthyphro Dilemma could and should be considered simultaneously true.

1 One should not oversimplify this issue, too often exemplified by self-contradictory constructions, such as, e.g., four-sided triangles. Since the definition of a triangle is context-dependent, there is no difficulty in exhibiting such a "paradoxical" figure by simply stepping outside of its usual context. Such demonstrations should not be dismissed as mere trickery – they point to fundamental issues in these matters, ultimately rooted in the dichotomy of the Platonic and the Aristotelian conceptions of the world.

2 E.g. philosophers often wrongly assume that the Many Worlds Hypothesis would imply the existence of all conceivable worlds, which simply is not the case. Even such an astute thinker as Daniel Dennett makes a related error in considering the notion of "nearby" possible worlds, in "Freedom Evolves", by explicitly assuming that the Big Bang event could be rearranged to result in any arbitrary minimal change to a particular set of events.

3 Remember, "existing worlds" are not restricted to our singular universe, but encompass everything in God's creation, including, e.g. the infinitely many worlds of the Many Worlds Hypothesis, should that hypothesis turn out to be true.

Back to the list of polemical topics	Mike Arnautov, Sunday, 13-Apr-2008 05:32:15 MDT
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