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Single Idea 5757

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

Full Idea

That which by its own nature is something distinct from supreme good, cannot be supreme good. ..It is impossible for anything to be by nature better than that from which it is derived, so that which is the origin of all things is supreme good.

Gist of Idea

God is the supreme good, so no source of goodness could take precedence over God

Source

Boethius (The Consolations of Philosophy [c.520], III.X)

Book Ref

Boethius: 'The Consolations of Philosophy', ed/tr. Watts,V.E. [Penguin 1969], p.101

A Reaction

This is the contortion early Christians got into once they decided God had to be 'supreme' in the moral world (and every other world). Boethius allows a possible external source of all morality, but then has to say that this source is morally inferior.

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]