John also responded to this post, and I want to highlight it because of how important this topic is.
John says: “For you, morality is grounded in God’s nature, not in his commands. But this is a difference that makes no difference.”
Actually, it does make a difference. Your argument was that God’s commands are arbitrary (arbitrary implying they occur for no reason). God’s commands are based on His nature, thus they have a reason and are not arbitrary.
John wrote: “God cannot be known to be good here either, without a standard of goodness that shows he is good.”
But this, of course, ignores the whole point that I made about it being a definition.
Let’s look at it this way. John says there must be a standard of goodness that shows God is good. Let us call that standard X.
How do we know that X is good?
It doesn’t matter what standard you pick, at some point you get to the level of definition. Something is good because it is what defines good.
God is good because God defines good. He does not have to conform to some higher standard–He is the higher standard.
John wrote: “Furthermore, we usually call someone good when they make good choices.”
But this presupposes that we already know what is good. How can we know if someone makes “good choices” unless we know what is good? The reason that we can say that people who make good decisions are good (assuming that’s accurate) is because there is a standard by which we can compare those people.
Again, God is the standard. He is the definition of what is good.
John says: “So an additional question here is whether or not God has ever made any good choices.”
No it’s not, because God’s choices are irrelevant to the issue of whether or not He is the definition of good. Thus, the rest of John’s argument is non sequitur too.
John concludes: “Again, all we can say is that God is….well….God, and his commands are….well….his commands.”
Yes, indeed. God is God, and His commands are His commands. God is the standard of what is good. So when He commands something, what He commands is good. If we conform to that, we are labeled good. If we do not, we are labeled evil. This is definitional. This is how it works.
Again, it’s like me saying “Wavelength X is brown.” If Wavelength Y = Wavelength X, then Y is brown. Otherwise it is not. This is simple definition.
Perhaps John doesn’t like the term “good” to be defined as God’s nature. Fine, he can establish his own definition and then prove why God must obey that definition. He has yet to do this.
