What Is the Link Between Morality and God?
Dr. Casey Edler writes, “If I understand you, Pat, you’re saying God is necessary for ethics from a natural law point of view in that natural law is based one essences, and God is necessary for essences, specifically as the original creator and ongoing sustainer of them as per a Thomistic metaphysic.”
Correct, plus a commitment to the convertibility thesis between goodness and being (including that good & bad are attributive and not predicative adjectives, following Geach), AND a successful cosmological argument.
In short, we need essentialism for morality; we need God for essentialism.1 Without God, no finite essence (which determines our God) would be, let alone be directed toward its natural perfection. In other words, God gives us both the primal good of existence plus all further goods as we move ultimately into intimate union with Himself.
This is where I said (previously to Casey) that I wasn’t sure if there really was a moral argument for God independent of the cosmological argument: I think John Leslie was onto something when he said all cosmological arguments are, at the end of the day, quests for meaning. (Perhaps the moral argument just is the cosmological argument with an eye on its moral significance? Perhaps, though I am open to – in fact, would be eager to investigate – a moral argument that stands independently of the cosmological argument. The moral argument in the Blackwell Companion strikes me as a plausible candidate.)
Of course, the skeptical retort of “Excuse me, but I know MANY people who are perfectly good without believing in God. Stop trying to smuggle creationism into schools!” misses the point. The theist isn’t saying one cannot know moral principles or behave morally to any extent without belief in God; in fact, the Christian tradition claims the natural law is written on our heart. Rather, the theist is saying the very notion of goodness as such cannot be adequately, ultimately explained apart from a theistic perspective. The issue is more ontological than epistemological.
However, one often wonders if too much is conceded to the skeptic in this regard, given how increasingly debased our cultures becomes alongside its abandonment of Christianity. What’s more, if our ultimate perfection is found in union with God – and, if as natural law and divine revelation tell us, we bear a moral obligation to worship God – then any human being who does not believe in God or worship God is to that extent failing, defective. Hence, while the Portland Atheist may still be able to help their fellow citizen learn Critical Race Theory in the sovereign country of Chaz while intermittently rescuing a cat from a tree, there remains their vice in the “northbound” direction of obligation owed to our ultimate superior. But we can put that issue aside.
At this point, we should probably offer some justification for the convertibility thesis (borrowing from David Alexander):
1) x is a good K implies that x has the features relevant for being a member of K to such-and-such a degree.
2) Hence, being a good K is nothing over and above having the relevant features to such-and-such a degree. w
3) Thus, being a good K just is being a K with features F, G, and H.
4) Hence, being and goodness are identical when considering a good K.
5) For all x, if x exists, then there is some primary kind K such that x is a member of K and x would not exist if x were not a member of K.
6) At the first moment of x’s existence, x has the features relevant for being a member of K.
7) In which case, at stage 1, x is a good K.
8) Hence, x’s existing is good.
9) Hence, being and goodness are identical.
I also think – somewhat obviously – that being a privationist entails the convertibility thesis, so any defense of the privation theory of evil provides an indirect defense of the convertibility thesis. For that, I recommend David Oderberg, and his magisterial Metaphysics of Good and Evil.
Consequence? If the convertibility thesis is true, we have a powerful inference to God being fully good in virtue of God being fully and purely actual (assuming, of course, we have a successful cosmological argument we can link with). Because there are no limits, defects, or privations in God, God is not just subsistent being as such but subsistent goodness as such.2
Of course, God is analogously good, which means one must bear in the mind the warnings of Brian Davies to not foist human moral assumptions upon God because God is not bound up with a particular human essence (incarnation aside). “God is not a moral agent,” as he likes to say. Still, what we have from the prior considerations are, I believe, enough to 1) give us a broad degree of moral expectations with respect to God for example, that God wouldn’t create a world with just one burning kitten for all eternity), and 2) only God is good per se, all else are good by participation. In short, all goodness ultimately comes from God because God — and God alone — *is* goodness as such.
Another consideration is this: From cosmological arguments God is already demonstrated to have at least some value/goodness because God is the ultimate creator of many valuable/good things, like my daughter Maren. Would anybody deny (who is not already a value-nihilist) that having the power to create valuable/good things is itself valuable/good? From there, we can ask what degree of value and goodness God has, at which point, if we have a successful cosmological argument to show that God is not in any way restricted, this would apply just as much to God’s value and goodness. In other words, if 1) God is completely unrestricted and 2) we have reason to infer that God has at least some value and goodness, we can then 3) run that reasoning through to say God must have maximal value/goodness. God is unrestrictedly good. This harmonizes with God being unrestrictedly actual. (The doctrine of divine simplicity, as well, brings all this together in a beautiful way.)
Another upshot is this traditional approach helps avoid “evil-god” challenges. “Why not assume God is perfectly bad instead of perfectly good?” asks godlessheathen79 on Reddit. Response: if the privation account is correct, and goodness and being convertible (evil is ultimately a due good gone missing), the suggestion is nonsense. What’s more, we cannot make sense of badness without first some notion of goodness which badness afflicts or draws away from. Conversely, we can make sense of something unaffectedly good, suffering no ills. Hence, good and evil (badness) are not on the same ontological, or even epistemological, par; badness depends on some prior, more fundamental notion of goodness but not the other way around. This result is important, and what one should expect if the privation account is true. But even if the privationist account is not correct – or requires some contemporary modifications -- whatever axiological framework we adopt must always have good as more fundamental than bad, which is enough to alleviate evil-god challenges in conjunction with cosmological reasoning.
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Essence = answers to the what of a thing; some determinate configuration of being, which constrains the perfections (positive actuality) something can have. For example, the essence of a dog, human, acorn, etc.
Existence = answers to the fact that something is included in reality; that in virtue of which something is made to be a REAL being.
God, contra Euthyphro, does not look beyond Himself to any moral standard; rather, God’s essence just is the moral standard = The Good as such. The classical theist can say Euthyphro is a false dilemma, since they can go between the horns. There is — as I’ll be discussing with Jim in our upcoming series on Plato — an interpretative case to be made this was Plato’s point: that polytheism won’t cut it whereas monotheism will.