Why is God good?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Supercomputer
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
My question is more concerned about God’s failure to follow the code, whether he wrote it or not.
 
I do not know how to prove it. I guess I will just need to accept it since saying that he is not good would be rejecting my faith.
 
Invoking property rights in your analogy just harkens to slavery.
 
To answer your first question, I refer you to the second and third posts in this thread.
Different moral code you say? Defined by him I suppose? Just a longhand way of saying take his word for it. Yes, I suppose I must take his word for it.
 
Last edited:
Supercomputer said:
If we judge God’s actions using the same ethical code we use to judge men, he is not good. So why do we still consider him good?
Click to expand...
The general meaning of good is whatever is suitable or befitting someone or something and evil is the deprivation of it.

We do not judge God by man’s ethical code, rather mankind is judged by the ethical code of God: that of charity.

Mark 12
30 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Click to expand...
 
The moral code comes from the Church.
It does not make sense for God to have a different moral code.
 
Yes. Him following the code is the prerequisite to him being considered good.
 
Last edited:
Then you misunderstand hell.

God is Love, definitely much more so than any human exercise of love.

So if you think hell is incompatible with God, then you either mistake what hell means or you mistake what God means. Or both.

Hell is self-exclusion from God, who is Love.

We are free agents. To suggest that all humans must end up choosing Love doesn’t make any sense, because we aren’t required to.
 
Last edited:
Saying you do not judge God is he same as saying you just take his word for ít.
 
God’s actions are clear. The ethical code is clear. He can be judged.
 
This doesn’t make any sense, though, because our standard of judging what is good is Goodness itself, which is God.

Goodness is not some distinct attribute of God. Rather, God is the ground of all goodness. So if we think God is not really “good,” then our conception of good is at fault — not God, who by definition cannot be at fault.
 
Supercomputer said:
God’s actions are clear. The ethical code is clear. He can be judged.
Click to expand...
No, there is no person that can understand God so no person can make a proper judgement of God. We always begin with the author of life that gives mankind eternal life and free will. Since a person chooses freely, the result can be with charity or with malice which has a just result. One cannot know God in heaven without a confirmed freely chosen charity.
 
Last edited:
Saying that God is good by definition is just retreating into a definition.
 
An incomplete understanding does not thwart judgement. A judgement can be made as long as the required information is availible.
 
Last edited:
Consider that the classical (Platonic, Aristotelian, and Thomistic) arguments for God’s existence are arguments to the effect that the existence of compounds of act and potency necessarily presupposes the existence of that which is Pure Actuality; that the existence of compounds of essence and existence necessarily presupposes the existence of that which is Being Itself; that the existence of that which is in any way metaphysically composite presupposes that which is absolutely simple; and so forth. Given the doctrine of the convertibility of the transcendentals, on which being is convertible with goodness, that which is Pure Actuality or Being Itself must ipso facto be Goodness Itself. Given the conception of evil as a privation – that is, as a failure to realize some potentiality – that which is Pure Actuality and therefore in no way potential cannot intelligibly be said to be in any way evil. Given the principle of proportionate causality, whatever good is in the world in a limited way must be in its cause in an eminent way, shorn of any of the imperfections that follow upon being a composite of act and potency.
Click to expand...
Since God is Pure Actuality, he cannot intelligibly be said either to have or to lack moral virtues or vices of the sort we exhibit when we succeed or fail to realize our various potentials. And so on. All of this is claimed to be a matter of metaphysical demonstration rather than probabilistic empirical theorizing, and the underlying metaphysical ideas form a complex interlocking network that is (as anyone familiar with Platonism or Aristotelianism realizes) motivated independently of the problem of evil or the question of God’s existence.
Click to expand...
edwardfeser.blogspot.com

Law’s “evil-god challenge”

A couple of months ago, in the combox to a post on another subject , reader Eric asked for my opinion of philosopher Stephen Law’s article “...
edwardfeser.blogspot.com edwardfeser.blogspot.com
 
Last edited:
Supercomputer said:
An incomplete understanding does not thwart judgement. A judgement can be made as long as the required information is availible.
Click to expand...
The judgement made is not certain since there is lack of understanding, therefore not just.
 
In a sense you are correct. That is, it would be insufficient for us to say that Gd is good. This is because Gd immeasurably surpasses what we define as goodness. Rather, He is the very essence of goodness. To say merely that Gd is good diminishes the nature of Gd.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top