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Single Idea 20702

[filed under theme 28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / c. God is the good ]

Full Idea

If we can know that God exists and if God's goodness is not moral goodness, then moral goodness is not the highest form of goodness we know. There is the goodness of God to be reckoned with.

Gist of Idea

The goodness of God may be a higher form than the goodness of moral agents

Source

Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 3 'Goodness')

Book Ref

Davies,Brian: 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion' [OUP 1993], p.48

A Reaction

This idea is to counter the charge that God fails to meet human standards for an ideal moral agent. But it sounds hand-wavy, since we presumably cannot comprehend the sort of goodness that is postulated here.

The 14 ideas with the same theme [view of morality as identical with God]:

1662 A new concept of God as unswerving goodness emerges from Socrates' commitment to virtue [Vlastos on Socrates]
2058 God must be the epitome of goodness, and we can only approach a divine state by being as good as possible [Plato]
6291 No one is good except God [Jesus]
8140 God is love [John]
8141 He that does evil has not seen God [John]
5757 God is the supreme good, so no source of goodness could take precedence over God [Boethius]
5758 God is the good [Boethius]
4825 To say that God promotes what is good is false, as it sets up a goal beyond God [Spinoza]
6250 We say God is good if we think everything he does aims at the happiness of his creatures [Hutcheson]
8105 We can't exactly conceive virtue without the idea of God [Joubert]
23816 Attention to a transcendent reality motivates a duty to foster the good of humanity [Weil]
23754 The only choice is between supernatural good, or evil [Weil]
22345 Moral philosophy needs a central concept with all the traditional attributes of God [Murdoch]
20702 The goodness of God may be a higher form than the goodness of moral agents [Davies,B]