Is the God of the Bible Good?

[JapaneseKappa]

Obviously there is no consensus on any definition of goodness among people who believe there is no reason why we exist because for them goodness is an illusion. Garbage in garbage out…

I don’t believe there is a non-tautological definition of goodness that is agreed upon among Christians, or even Catholics. Perhaps you could prove me wrong and tell me what it is.

 

[inocente]

I don’t believe there is a non-tautological definition of goodness that is agreed upon among Christians, or even Catholics. Perhaps you could prove me wrong and tell me what it is.

There’s a definition of righteousness in Romans 2:13-15. Verse 14 takes a bit of parsing, but 15 is clear enough - working out what is goodness is a wrestle between emotion (“written on their hearts”) and rationality (“their consciences also bearing witness”).

So, according to Paul, we can tell someone what we think should be written on her heart and what she should witness until we’re blue in the face, but ultimately goodness must be her personal decision or she can’t be righteous.

 

[inocente]

Since this appears to be a central issue in debates on theology/philosophy I thought I’d start a thread and begin discussion. So is the God of the Bible good? What are everyone’s thoughts?

Some parts of the bible are more inspired than others. Take 1 Sam 15, where God supposedly orders total ethnic cleansing (“put to death men and women, children and infants, …”) and then gets vexed when his orders aren’t followed to the letter.

Or Num 31, where Moses orders “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” .

I think such passages show that we cannot read the bible as if it was written for us today in modern English. We need to consider what the authors’ original audiences made of the individual books, and sometimes Bronze Age tribal morality and notions turn out to be very different to ours. But often we can recognize them as having much the same hopes and fears as us.

 

[GaryTaylor]

I don’t believe there is a non-tautological definition of goodness

Now myself I always viewed this as the issue with secular society. Good is rooted in nothing more than the imagination of man and varies across the world. I can’t see how one can arrive at preconceived good or evil for that matter, and then apply it to Gods justice? Seems rather awkward, its like saying God did such and such, and in my theory of whatever good is, I don’t think God is good? We would presuppose what good is to God by a secular standard non existent in consistency nor rooted to anything.

I think in comparison also of OT/NT in mans progressive morality if such a thing exists we neglect the morality-good of Jesus Christ in the equation of which I see nothing but good? Perhaps man was confused about good in the OT. In other words not God.

I guess too it depends on inerrant/infallible/fallible also, always another interesting conversation. Not always logical but interesting.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

There’s a definition of righteousness in Romans 2:13-15. Verse 14 takes a bit of parsing, but 15 is clear enough - working out what is goodness is a wrestle between emotion (“written on their hearts”) and rationality (“their consciences also bearing witness”).

I agree with the part of the definition you quoted, but the first part is talking about human morality, not “goodness” as a broader concept (e.g. the sort of concept which would allow us to identify the things that would be “great making” properties.) It might be argued that the broader goodness is reflected in the laws, but I think such an assertion would be somewhat presumptuous (e.g. it would assume that God’s greater goodness doesn’t have as part of it’s definition “making up arbitrary laws.”)

 

[Achilles6129]

This question comes down to what the definition of “good” itself is. This is a feat that I don’t think any moral philosopher truly agrees on.

Right. But I think the point I’m making is that some people claim that there are things in the Bible that aren’t good no matter what the context. I’m not saying I agree with them, because I don’t. I’m just saying that’s what they claim.

As far as the definition of goodness, we wouldn’t really know. That’s why we should trust God, since obviously he’s more intelligent than anyone else.

but, I have trouble saying that some of the actions God took in the bible should be called ‘good.’ God striking Job to settle a bet with Satan seems pretty not-good to me. Sending demons into pigs and driving the pigs off a cliff seems pretty not-good to me. Withering a fig tree (because it had no figs, even though it wasn’t fig season) seems pretty not-good to me.

So you’re saying that none of these things can possibly be justified - no matter what the context is?

 

[Achilles6129]

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If we choose the first one, that God’s definition is important, then I would say that it is up to theists to provide a precise and non-circular explanation of what that definition is. That is to say, if you define goodness as “whatever God is” you end up with a tautological question. Asking “Is God good?” becomes equivalent to asking “Is God God?” People might be satisfied by saying that it is tautological, but remember that tautological statements don’t tell us anything useful. In other words, if we say that God is “good according to God” we haven’t learned anything about whether or not the second definition (i.e. our own human definition) would find God good.

Saying that God is the definition of goodness is perfectly fine because we can then go into the commands and actions of God and define that as good. There are plenty of commands/actions of God in Scripture so it’s not a tautology at all. For example, in Leviticus 21:9 God commands that if a harlot is a daughter of a priest she’s to be burnt alive. That would obviously have to be the very definition of goodness, at least during the Old Covenant in the land of Israel. We can do this with any statement/action of God’s in Scripture.

But we can also do it outside of Scripture as well. For example, God either created me directly or he allowed me to exist. Whichever of these actions we choose, it has to be good. We could also say that God allowed the Holocaust to happen, so God allowing the Holocaust to happen has to be good. There are many definitions of goodness here that make a tautology completely unnecessary.

However, if we reject the tautological definition of goodness, I’ve seen that the rest of the discussion generally covers the following ideas:

1. The old testament stories are a-historical and therefore don’t count. God isn’t evil because he never actually did the things in the old testament stories (or the old testament authors were mistaken about what God wanted.)

That would destroy the Bible, obviously.

1. God had some overarching plan for humanity, and the importance of the plan was greater than the importance of the people he killed. In other words, God did the things in the Old Testament, but his ends justified his means.

God couldn’t accomplish this overarching plan without doing these things?

1. God knew something about each scenario (that we can’t know) that justified what he did. The people killed by God deserved it.

This is the best one, right here. God knows the true nature of good/evil while we do not.

I’ve found “defenders of the faith” are often fairly hypocritical when it comes to issues of the old testament. The question I ask, to make sure that you are not one of the hypocritical people, is “Would you be willing to sacrifice one of your children to the LORD, if he commanded it of you?”

My answer is yes. As a matter of fact, he commands that you execute your child for cursing you in the OT. He also commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and we’re all said to be Abraham’s spiritual children in the NT.

You might think this is some attempt at “justifying my lack of belief,” but I think it is a central issue in this discussion. If you really believe what you are arguing here (i.e. that God is inherently and perfectly good) there can be no hesitation in the answer to this question. Why would you defy the orders a perfectly “good” being?

I completely agree with you.

I can honestly say that I would not be willing to kill my own child because a god told me to.

What about the real Creator of the universe, instead of “a god”?

 

[Achilles6129]

The answer is so simple that it might be embarrassing. If a human would behave like God is supposed to have behaved in the Bible, the last word we would associate with God is “good”.

I’m not sure I would agree with that at all, but regardless, it’s irrelevant. Humans aren’t God and can’t possibly have all the knowledge at their disposal that God does. Humans can’t purge sins or undo actions. Humans can’t create a hydrogen atom out of nothing. There’s really no comparison.

 

[Achilles6129]

I think a better question would be whether the God of the Bible is actually what we think of as God. People have been trying to reconcile the God of Philosophy with the anthropomorphized God of the Bible at least since Philo in the first century.

Excellent question. Are you trying to suggest that religion has redefined God?

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Saying that God is the definition of goodness is perfectly fine because we can then go into the commands and actions of God and define that as good.

You’re right, I was subtly conflating two things. The problems with “what God does is good” are known as far back as Socrates in the Euthyphro dilemma. In order to escape this dilemma, I’ve seen people say that God IS goodness. That was the statement I was claiming to be tautological. If you’d like to take the “whatever God does or commands is good,” we can go through the Euthyphro discussion.

There are many definitions of goodness here that make a tautology completely unnecessary.

Indeed, but in this thread people have been awfully timid in putting one out there, while simultaneously deriding non-religious definitions of goodness. Until I see a good religious definition, I’m going to assume this thread is full of naked emperors who are making fun of the peasants for clothing themselves in “garbage.”

That would destroy the Bible, obviously. God couldn’t accomplish this overarching plan without doing these things?

Yep, those are the easy objections to make. The tricky part is often getting people to realize that their initial position reduces to one of those points.

This is the best one, right here. God knows the true nature of good/evil while we do not.

And the obvious corollary is that we therefore do not know if God is good or evil.

What about the real Creator of the universe, instead of “a god”?

No. If he wanted me to do something like that, he should have given me neither a conscience nor the ability to think for myself.

 

[mikekle]

Or Num 31, where Moses orders “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man” .

I think such passages show that we cannot read the bible as if it was written for us today in modern English. We need to consider what the authors’ original audiences made of the individual books, and sometimes Bronze Age tribal morality and notions turn out to be very different to ours. But often we can recognize them as having much the same hopes and fears as us.

So, you are saying just because some of the things in the bible are out-dated and do not mesh well with modern society, people should just disregard them and instead follow what is ‘popular’, or what most consider to be ‘right’ in modern times?

 

[inocente]

So, you are saying just because some of the things in the bible are out-dated and do not mesh well with modern society, people should just disregard them and instead follow what is ‘popular’, or what most consider to be ‘right’ in modern times?

Don’t know how you got to that.

It’s standard good practice to consider the author’s intention, the historical context and the literary context rather than just imposing our own meaning on the text.

 

[inocente]

I agree with the part of the definition you quoted, but the first part is talking about human morality, not “goodness” as a broader concept (e.g. the sort of concept which would allow us to identify the things that would be “great making” properties.) It might be argued that the broader goodness is reflected in the laws, but I think such an assertion would be somewhat presumptuous (e.g. it would assume that God’s greater goodness doesn’t have as part of it’s definition “making up arbitrary laws.”)

You say laws plural, but the verses say there’s only one law. And, when Gentiles “do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves”. This seems to indicate that goodness (or in the language of ethics, what is a moral good), is determined by each Gentile individually as a moral agent. Otherwise Paul has no reason why God would give Gentiles a conscience, no reason for “their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them”.

I’m saying Christianity will not give you a neat legalistic answer, since we are each responsible for our own salvation, and so must each take individual responsibility for deciding what is good.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I’m saying Christianity will not give you a neat legalistic answer, since we are each responsible for our own salvation, and so must each take individual responsibility for deciding what is good.

Which is fine, but it also means that we each have an individual responsibility for deciding whether or not God is good.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t believe there is a non-tautological definition of goodness that is agreed upon among Christians, or even Catholics. Perhaps you could prove me wrong and tell me what it is.

Ironically it is an atheist, Thomas Nagel, who has pointed out that life is valuable because it is a source of opportunities. That is why it is evil to destroy life unnecessarily. If life isn’t good nor is reasoning because it presupposes life…

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Obviously there is no consensus on any definition of goodness among people who believe there is no reason why we exist because for them goodness is an illusion. Garbage in garbage out…

Ironically it is an atheist, Thomas Nagel, who has pointed out that life is valuable because it is a source of opportunities. That is why it is evil to destroy life unnecessarily. If life isn’t good nor is reasoning because it presupposes life…

Until I see a good religious definition, I’m going to assume this thread is full of naked emperors who are making fun of the peasants for clothing themselves in “garbage.”

You’ve provided a start, but it seems weird to me that you would invoke an a-religious basis for morality given your earlier position.

You seem to be saying that the correct way of doing morality is:
Faith in God => God provides value to our lives => Human life is valuable => It is evil to destroy life.

Why not skip the first step? We could just have faith in the value of human life directly:
Faith in the value of human life => Human life is valuable => It is evil to destroy life

The second way has fewer places for error. I.e. there is no chance that we are mistaken about the existence, nature, or intentions of God.

 

[inocente]

Which is fine, but it also means that we each have an individual responsibility for deciding whether or not God is good.

Correct, the buck stops here.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You seem to be saying that the correct way of doing morality is:
Faith in God => God provides value to our lives => Human life is valuable => It is evil to destroy life.

Why not skip the first step? We could just have faith in the value of human life directly:

If you skip the first step, there is no mandate to take the second step.

You might conclude life has no value, and this is what atheistic existentialism was grappling with during the dark days of Sartre and Camus.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Which is fine, but it also means that we each have an individual responsibility for deciding whether or not God is good.

We also have an “individual responsibility” for deciding whether God exists.

And if we decide God does not exist, and he does exist, God has an “individual responsibility” for deciding whether we are good for rejecting him.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

If you skip the first step, there is no mandate to take the second step.

You might conclude life has no value, and this is what atheistic existentialism was grappling with during the dark days of Sartre and Camus.

But there is no mandate to take any of those steps in the first place. You’re saying that the first line of reasoning is better… because the rest of the steps are mandatory? But it was the first line of reasoning that led to things like the slaughter of Amalek. Gott Mit Uns.