Euthyphro, Rocks, and Mystery

Euthyphro

Are things good because God says so or does God say they are good because they already are?
Saying they are good simply because God says so seems to leave open the possibility of a world where slaughtering infants was good, but saying they are good and God just reports that fact seems to infringe upon God's freedom.

Solutions vary, but all I'm aware of try to somehow collapse the distinction. Either you say that things are good because a loving God says so, or you say that God causes things to be good be creating the world in a certain way and then reports on the normative facts he created in creating the world. 

I think it is helpful to distinguish here between three distinct sorts of grounding relations:
1. Ontological grounding: what makes it the case that x (where x is a way things are ethically or morally). This is (primarily, at least) what the Euthyphro dilemma is about.
2. Epistemological grounding: how do we know that p (where p is some proposition in ethics or morals). In this sense everyone agrees that we can infer from God's commands that doing what he says is good. God is, after all, omniscient and omnibenevolent, so he's not going to get things wrong here.
3. Motivational grounding: what motivates (or should motivate) us to φ.

The concern is generated by the hypothesis that 1 and 3 are going to match. Why would I think this? There are several reasons, primarily philosophical, as that is my main area, but augmented by Biblical reasons and in the context of history.

Philosophical

Quine has a famous argument called the Open Question Argument. He says that, for any account of what makes something good, it seems to be an open question for us to ask "well, yes, but is that really good?" So, if I say that good is xyz, Quine says, you will always be able to retort, "Okay, but is xyz really good?"

Many philosophers have tried to respond to this by giving an account of 'good' (or 'right' or 'should' or whatever they take the key moral term to be) in terms of what we find unavoidably motivating, or motivating on pain of irrationality. This tends to be a form of motivational internalism, that is, the claim that motivation for following norms is internal to (actual) belief in the norms. I tend to side with this response, which has as a consequence (I think) that the grounds and motivational base of morality are coextensive.

Biblical

There is also a bit of biblical interpretation going on here, though. When God gives commands, he (typically), precedes them with statements of fact besides "I said so" in virtue of which his people are supposed to obey them. That is, God himself seems to argue for his norms and command us to obey his Law in virtue of how he has created the world, and the motivation he provides is typically other than merely his command to do so

This feeds into my take on how to solve the Euthyphro dilemma: that God's commands cannot be out of step with how he created the world, but that in commanding he authoritatively makes the world such as to make his commands right. So there will always be both a this-worldly way of tracing out what is good, which is coherent with and evidences how God's own will is shaped, but is not simply superadded to the rest of the created world.  

History

A bit of history of philosophy background is relevant here:

In what we call the "early modern" period of philosophy, there was a shift to seeing the world as "atoms in motion" or a great clockwork machinge and lacking inherent teleology. Thus, norms have to be added back in to such a world through some agency. You can see this in, say, Hobbes (or Samuel Pufendorf), where the sovereign needs to exist in order to provide norms for us to follow. At this point, theologians start seeing God as creating a mechanistic universe, then having to do an additional act of creation to stick ethical rules in. While in Pufendorf there is supposed to be a "fittingness" between how the world is made and the superadded rules, and so there is a similarity to the "loving God" response, there still appears to be this odd case where the way the world is with creatures who are fashioned in a certain way, so that, say, skewering them causes pain, doesn't provide any moral reasons at all.

I happen to disagree with that early modern picture of a universe where norms need to be added in as something in addition to how the universe is structured materially. I suspect that much of contemporary Divine Command Theory (and claims that we need God for morality, besides) are reliant on presuming this picture.

Rocks, Math, and Logic:

The same basic problem arises with other domains which might be thought of as limiting God. Can God make a rock so big he cannot lift it? Can God make 2+2=5? Can God make it valid to deny the antecedent? Is God the God of logic or is he limited by it? Just as in the Euthyphro dilemma, what we are after is a way to collapse the distinction.

Amongst contenders on the rock question, I find somewhat fascinating the claim that God could make the rock and then lift it. To accept that, I think one must accept dialetheism, the view that there are true contradictions. Even if one accepts dialetheism, however, it seems that God's lifting the rock would make it false that he had made a rock he could not lift, and so doesn't seem to be a contender to be a dialetheia. Notice that it'd be really hard to translate this over to the Euthyphro dilemma.

One could instead pull the same move as some advocates of libertarian free will do and say that God could willingly give up his ability to lift a certain weight in order to make the rock. Then God limits himself rather than being limited from without.

Another option is to say that it would be inconsistent with his character or nature to make the rock, but then one needs to articulate what it is about his nature that makes that so. I see this as liable to parallel the "commands of a loving God" response to Euthyphro, but if one fleshes it out in other ways it might amount to my response.

The paradox arises from the fact that if he can't make the rock, then he seems to be limited in his ability to create, but if he can then he seems to be limited in his ability to lift. If all we ask is what the limits of each power are without reference to each other, the paradox (I think) dissolves: God can make a maximally heavy rock, and God can lift such a rock, hence he cannot make a rock so big he cannot lift it, since both powers are maximally great.

Ramifications

Complementarianism

I am concerned that complementarianism may rest on a version of divine command theory (the view that things are good because God says so), and a rather controversial version at that.

To put my point slightly differently: God has one will in creation, redemption, and sanctification, so if the reasons for not ordaining women are not available in how women are fashioned, then we need a different account of the harmony of God's will in creating women and in promulgating the rule barring women from ordination.

There is also a pedagogical or moral psych way of looking at this: in following a norm, we act for some reason. In complementarianism, there are two kinds of reasons on offer: those implicitly demeaning women and those which defer to mystery. The latter, I would argue, are legalistic, because they make it about obedience "just do it because God said so" rather than acting out of a loving relationship with God who cares for our well-being. That then turns to the pattern of rules in Scripture: indicatives precede imperatives; the Red Sea comes before Sinai.

Mystery

Could we simply defer to God's incomprehensibility in these domains? Could we, for instance, say that God is good, and we do not understand it, but he has commanded x, y, and z, so we should trust and obey? This is a move made with (in my opinion) disturbing regularity in white evangelical spaces. What I hope to have argued here is that God has so fashioned us that, and God has demonstrated a pattern consonant with the belief that our moral behavior emerges from the context of what we take to be true about ourselves and the world God has fashioned around us. Our actions form us into people who see the world in a certain way, and our understanding of the world circles back to inform our behavior. This is, in my opinion, the understanding which gives sense to spiritual disciplines.

Now, in some cases we might begin to engage in certain behaviors without understanding exactly what is good about it. Some of us might follow some of God's commands because we trust God and do not yet understand the command. However, if many of us do this and fail to be able to give an adequate account, even verbally, of how the practice shapes us into Christ's likeness and all holiness, then we should worry, especially if there is a counter-proposal on offer about how it is not command by God, tends to produce various sinful practices and attitudes, harms the flock, and can only be pursued from a sense of mystery or for unbiblical reasons.

It is one thing to trust a holy and good God who has proven himself in your life over and over again, as Abraham did on Mount Moriah; it is quite another to trust sinful man's interpretations of the Bible in a context where many questions have been raised about the validity of (many of) those men's cultural cachet, interpretations, and biblical qualifications to lead.

Furthermore, where we are asked to trust that God is simply greater than us, his thoughts higher than our thoughts and his ways above our ways, this is predicated on a relationship with him where he has given ample evidence of his love and provision for us in the very domain he is asking us to trust him. Thus, in our individual lives, where we are not yet ready to simply trust, the response ought not be "but God says so!" But, rather, a return to Calvary where God proved his love for us. If, then, our account of the norms underlying the denial of homosexual marriage or women ordained as preachers is to defer to mystery, then we must recognize that it presumes women and gay people will experience ample provision from God in their relationships to give them confidence to trust God in these areas. Further, where the time has simply not been long enough or the provision extensive enough, we cannot simply command with laws unrooted in the Gospel, but must reach out with a loving acceptance that these are, at best, secondary issues, and perhaps tertiary, for God has not seen fit to provide the kinds of grounds required to root us immediately in the Gospel with these commands.

Gospel Ethics

Underlying this whole argument is this very simple principle:

    If you command and cannot say how Christ's life death and resurrection makes following the command freeing, then you have not yet preached Christ from the text, and have therefore not yet interpreted the text properly to your hearers.