What Christianity Really Says

Originally posted by epiphinehas
[b]Not sure what this has to do with anything.

It has to do with the Euthyphro dilemma which you've posed. I'm suggesting that God doesn't declare anything good or bad by fiat, but neither does he appeal to a higher standard than himself. At least within the Christian tradition, God is a trinity of three distinct persons. God bears witness to hims m a virtuous (righteous) person, in which case, no reasons to act morally are needed.[/b]

I'm suggesting that God doesn't declare anything good or bad by fiat, but neither does he appeal to a higher standard than himself.

Th dilemma does not have to do with a "higher standard" (whatever that would mean). It has to do with some external moral standard. Sorry, but I still think your view as you have espoused it is just contradictory. You want to hold all the following: God is inessential to the constitutive nature of morals; the stuff of morals is righteousness; God determines what constitutes righteousness. That's all incoherent as far as I can tell.

Well, within the Christian tradition, the Trinity is acknowledged as being contradictory, with no hope of being logically resolved.

Yikes, good luck with that. I wasn't talking about incoherence within the Trinity. God is, roughly, the mereological sum of three distinct persons. What's incoherent about that? Nothing totally intractable as far as I can tell. What I do think is incoherent, and what I was actually referring to, is your view regarding whether or not God (it makes no difference here whether you bring in Trinity ideas here or not) is essential to the constitutive nature of morals.

The usual way of dealing with the contradiction is by assuming that God's essence defies logic. This is how I deal with the problem.

That doesn't deal with anything in any non-ersatz way. That's just a way of sweeping incoherence under the rug. That does nothing for your position. You cannot be serious when you say that your way to "deal" with a contradiction is to simply throw out the law of non-contradiction, selectively as it suits you. That's only a solution in bizarro-world.

"But why should I act morally?" What kind of answer is possible? Nothing that follows from logic, it seems (e.g., is-ought). All that we have are prudential reasons to act morally. What I suggested earlier is that virtue ethics, especially within the Christian tradition, answers this problem through a transformation of the person's character (sanctification), so that good is done for its own sake as actions flowing from a virtuous (righteous) person, in which case, no reasons to act morally are needed.

I see better what you are saying here now. I don't fully disagree with this. I don't fully agree with it, either. Regardless, in the context of our discussion, this has nothing to do with why I brought up the subject of reasons as it relates to the Euthyphro dilemma. I see that we were talking past each other before. I am talking about reasons that provide explanatory substance. The dilemma I posed asked about whether or not God has reasons for His evaluative judgments or commands, etc, regarding morality. You cannot simply solve this problem by saying that God somehow does away with practical reasons for moral action. That's irrelevant to the dilemma. The dilemma is in regards to reasons that would serve to undergird moral commands: if there are none, the commands are simply arbitrary in which case it seems they cannot carry authority; if there are some, then it is those reasons that explain the moral status of whatever object of the command, not the command per se.

Regardless, it seems that you would "resolve" the dilemma by simply choosing the latter horn. This makes God inessential to the subject of morality. Of course, you still want to hold that God somehow constititutively determines righteousness and that righteousness is the stuff of morals. Hence, why I think you are just being contradictory at the end of the day.