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Single Idea 6291

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

Full Idea

Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.

Gist of Idea

No one is good except God

Source

Jesus (reports [c.32]), quoted by St Matthew - 01: Gospel of St Matthew 19.17

Book Ref

'The Bible', ed/tr. the Church [Collins 1950], p.467


A Reaction

This remark raises the problem that if God is good, there must be some separate moral standard by which he can be judged good. What is that standard? It is related to the problem of whether Plato's Form of the Beautiful is itself beautiful.


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

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