The Problem with Euthyphro's Dilemma

Socrates famously asked Euthyphro, "is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" Both alternatives seem to present problems. Ever since, this famous dilemma has been used in philosophical and religious discussion as a criticism for the claim that God is the source of morality. Here we present one possible response.

Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus.

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai.

My books:

[cunjoz]

Ok but if we identify God's nature with good then:
1. we vacate the term "good" of independent meaning and it just becomes a stand-in for saying "godly"
2. consequently, there again arises a question why is godliness desirable, or why one ought to do things that are godly

and/or

we create a new dillemma
1. God's nature is said to be good in virtue of God having it
2. God's nature is said to be good in virtue of some other standard
and we've effectively pushed the problem from God's will to God's nature and we've solved nothing, and that's why Euthyphro's dillemma is still mostly expressed in its original form.

[Matthew-rlzf]

Your explanation doesn't change the problem. You say that morality is God's character and not his choice. But in that case, we have to ask the same question: Are virtues like justice, mercy, love, etc. good because they are part of God's character? Or are they part of God's character because they are good?
If the former is true (which is what you are saying) then God's goodness becomes meaningless. If the virtues we regard as good are only good because they are part of God's character, then by what measure can we see that God's character is good? We can't say that God is good because he posses a certain set of qualities, because these are only good because God has these qualities. To put it another way, if God's very character was one of hatred, deceitfulness and vanity, we would be obliged to ascribe these qualities as good.
The "third" horn of the Euthyphro dilemma renders the statement "God is good" utterly meaningless.

[Laotzu.Goldbug]

Bluntly speaking this is not a solution to anything at all. It is just linguistic sleight-of-hand, a changing of the wording of a term when syntactically the dilemma is exactly as it was before.

In the original form the question was between whether something is good because God chooses it or if God chooses it because it is good. When you assert that is a question of nature rather than choice, and that the good is good because it is part of God's nature, that is it is Godly, the question just becomes why is what is Godly good/desirable.

Or most simply "why/how does God choose/indicate the good" >> "why/how does God _be_ the good" which of course is the same exact dilemma, just with one more unnecessary level of recursion.

[aether]

Asking "what if morality extends from God's character" seems to be an oddly anthropomorphized idea. But I would in turn ask, could God's character be any different? If the answer is yes, then you're confronted with arbitrariness once again. If the answer is no, then what dictates God's character?

[rodolfo]

It remains arbitrary to say that "god is good".

Why wouldn't we think "god is evil"?

[VeridicusX]

"Is God's character good based on some standard, or is it good because He/His prophets says so?"

[pedroamaralcouto]

SisyphusRedeemed published the video "Euthyphro's Trilemma" 13 years ago:

"Does God have control of his nature?
Or does He not have control of his nature?"

[ThatisnotHair]

So God is goodness. Then what is goodness? It is god? This is circular reasoning. It solves nothing and ends up in same problem. It doesn't answer why is it good. What it is doesn't matter

[jayjonah]

This is redefining "god" to fit whatever characteristics you need your all encompassing deity to have depending on the situation. It's like when kids are pretending to have super powers and there's always the one kid whose imagination powers negates the other kids imagination powers

[fungibu]

I feel like the most common theistic rebuttal of Socrates' argument is that there is a third option. But logically mostly still arrive at the second option. At 3:47 he made the choice of the second argument. This question is a general polar question. So whatever theistic answer you give you will always arrive at one of the two results.

[achristianperspective]

I appreciate seeing something a bit shorter from you once in a while. Keep it up!

[MrMattSax]

Why is god’s character what it is? Is god’s character what it is because that is what is good, thus goodness is outside of god? Or is god’s character what determines what is good, thus making the concept of “good” irrelevant because anything that is within God’s character just becomes good? In this case saying “god is good” is the same as saying “god is god”. The problem still exists and the Bible is no help: is genocide objectively bad? Then why does god command it? Is slavery objectively wrong? Then why does god never declare it so and in fact assume that it will always be a feature of human society?

[balanceseeker]

@Truth Unites, I saw that you liked comments that approved of this video from just a few months ago. However, you never responded to the number one comment on your video, a critique of your attempt at refutation of the dilemma, posted around the time of the video. Did I miss something in the comments or your videos where you handle this critique?

And just to reformulate the objection by borrowing from professor of philosophy, any attempt at splitting the horns of Euthyphro by appealing to some X devolves into the same basic structure: Does God control X or does X control God? If God controls X, then X is arbitrary, and thus all of morality is arbitrary. If X controls God, then X is the standard of morality, not God. There is a reason that of the minority of philosophers who subscribe to Divine Command Theory, many just bite the bullet and say something like, "Yep, good is what God says is good. God knows best, and thus, it was moral for God to order the executions in the Old Testament."

[stevehawke]

Good point about the Euthyphro dilemma. Regarding divine simplicity, though, I'm still trying to wrap my head around divine simplicity. It seems almost no one objects to divine simplicity if all that's meant is that God has no parts. However, many people who argue for divine simplicity argue or presume in their arguments that there's more to divine simplicity than merely God has no parts. For example, have you encountered the criticisms of divine simplicity (ranging from milder criticisms to stronger criticisms) from John Frame, William Lane Craig, and R. T. Mullins, each of whom comes at divine simplicity from very different theological traditions? Their criticisms of divine simplicity are available through their respective websites or simply by Googling. If so, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts, Dr. Ortlund? Thanks in advance!

[skooma]

This doesn't address the problem, it only relocates it. Now we have to ask the question: is God's nature good because it belongs to God, or does God have the nature he does because it's good. Option one leads to the arbitraryness problem whereas option two implies a standard of good and bad independent of God.

[RubenBinyet]

Great to hear that again in a very short format. Thanks!

[synaestheziac]

If God is simple then how can you distinguish between God’s will and God’s character?

[mikebrown]

You are saying that "Good" is internal to God because that is God's character. That is still the same as saying "something is pious because it is loved by the gods". In your example, God is basically saying "I am like this so this is good and you follow my character because it's good because it's my character"

Also, you mentioned it's not dependent on God's will or his choice, which means "goodness" is greater than God, for God has no power over it.

[imaginative]

You are just kicking the can down the road until you run into Euthyphro's dilemma again.

If good is not because of God's will or choice, and it's due to his "character", that means there is something about God which he can't control, thus he's not omnipotent, because he was not "good" because of his will or choice, as you've just said.

[efont]

Still think it's a dilemma after watching this video. Also, your explainers of why asking, what caused god, is more of the same special pleading arguments. Thanks for trying though.