Goodness Ungrounded
The first comment I saw when logging onto X was:
“Theists claim that God satisfies the definition of a subject. Therefore, grounding morality in such a being is grounding subjective morality. If you deny this, it means you either don’t understand the notion of subjectivity or are special pleading on behalf of God.”
This is all very confused—as you might expect.
First, given their commitment to divine simplicity, classical theists would definitely not claim that God satisfies the definition of a subject. Traditionally, "subject" implies a distinction between something and its properties or actions, which contradicts the classical theistic view of God as wholly incomposite—an essence identical to existence, purely actual, and so forth. While we can describe creatures as "subjects" with attributes, God is not just another being among others; He is the very ground of being itself.
Second, for classical theists, given the convertibility of goodness and being (where goodness is simply an aspect of being), absolute goodness—also known as the Paradigm Good—isn’t grounded in anything else because it is identical to God. Ironically, this is the exact opposite of what the comment suggests: everything else that exists is grounded in goodness since God (The Good itself) is the ultimate metaphysical cause of all things apart from Himself.
Third, to call morality subjective typically means that moral truths are stance-dependent—determined by opinions, wishes, or preferences. If morality grounded in God were subjective in this sense, it would imply extreme voluntarism, where whatever God wills—no matter how arbitrary—becomes "good." However, this is not the classical position. The classical view, especially that of Aquinas, holds that morality is rooted in the essences and ends (telos) of things, which even God cannot alter, as these are necessary truths. For example, it is good for humans to seek knowledge because it perfects us as rational animals. Remaining ignorant could never be good for us, even if—per impossibile—God preferred it.1
For the classical theist, the connection between objective morality and God is based on broader metaphysical principles, such as the previously mentioned convertibility thesis between goodness and being (where goodness is understood as perfection or desirability) and the belief that God is 1) unrestricted being itself and, therefore, unrestricted goodness itself, and 2) the cause of any finite essence’s existence and movement toward its perfection (though not all beings reach perfection). In other words, Aquinas holds that God is ipsum esse subsistens (the very act of being itself), and all finite beings derive their existence from God. This includes their essence and their movement toward perfection, which implies that God is the necessary foundation for stance-independent moral truths, as He is the necessary foundation for the existence of any contingent being. (It’s important to note that this does not imply we must believe in God to have at least some moral knowledge.)
Now, before anyone jumps in: yes, I know these metaphysical commitments are "controversial" (whoopee). The point—whether one accepts them or not—is that they do not imply morality is subjective in the way moral anti-realists typically claim, even if God is understood as the necessary foundation for morality.
Returning to the original comment: If by 'subject' we simply mean a being that serves as the foundation of all human moral truths, then even if someone accepts that God is a subject (which I have provided reason to reject), the statement is not particularly problematic. However, it does have the feature of being almost entirely uninteresting because it doesn’t address the real issue: Are presumed moral truths—such as "genocide is evil and ought never to be carried out"—merely reflections of contingent individual or cultural preferences? Or are they grounded in something deeper, such that even if an individual or society preferred such acts, we could rightly say they are wrong and prefer something they ought not to prefer because it is not, and could never be, truly good for them?
The classical theist position, even with God as the foundation of all moral truths, supports the latter—in fact, it necessitates it. It has the added feature of leaving Goodness ungrounded, as Goodness is identical to God (and I consider grounding to be a specific kind of causal relationship). However, this view cannot be fully understood—let alone defended—without the broader metaphysical framework from which the classical theistic conception of God emerges. This includes real essentialism, natural teleology, the act-potency distinction, and the theory of transcendentals. Unfortunately—and this speaks to a much larger issue—many modern debates focus on merely including or excluding some vaguely defined entity called God (typically thought of as an extremely powerful non-physical being; and, apparently, a subject!) in an otherwise metaphysically vacuous, or worse, mechanistic, reductionistic, nominalist, or relativistic worldview. As a result, people often fail to grasp how radically different the classical position—and its understanding of God—really is. Of course, the God of classical theism, as philosophers have argued, is a necessary condition for these broader philosophical commitments, which form a worldview diametrically opposed to the aforementioned ideas—that is, one that is inherently anti-mechanistic, anti-reductionistic, anti-nominalist, and anti-relativist.
But also, consider this: even if what is good were entirely determined by some deity’s arbitrary whims, that still wouldn’t make morality stance-independent for us. After all, if goodness were based on the deity’s preferences, then to the extent that our preferences don’t align with the deity’s, we could be wrong about what is good. However, that’s not what moral anti-realists typically claim. They usually insist that moral truths are determined by what we—you and I—desire, prefer, or fancy. In other words, moral anti-realism generally rejects the idea that moral truths exist independently of human beliefs, attitudes, or preferences.
Of course, neither option is tenable within the classical theistic conception of God and the world. In classical theism, God is the paradigm of goodness and, like everything else, acts according to His nature. Moreover, as the source and foundation of all essence and existence, God is the ultimate necessary condition for a world of normativity that is in no way contingent upon human whims.