Miguel wrote:

That being said, there are other ways to show God is morally good, I believe.

One argument I developed is that if God is omniscient, then it is very plausible that he is perfectly virtuous and morally good....

As I read this, I am inferring that there are few or no purely philosophical arguments for God’s moral goodness.   Is that correct?   

Are we deriving God’s moral goodness from divine revelation?

joewaked wrote:

Miguel wrote:

It's because goodness is convertible with being. That's the traditional doctrine of the convertibility of the transcendentals: being, truth and goodness. Read the relevant passages in Five Proofs for it, and/or the chapter on the transcendentals in Feser's "Aquinas". Briefly, though, take the example of triangles: a carefully drawn triangle made with rulers and pencils is closer to a perfect representation of triangularity than a shitty triangle hastily drawn on the seat of a moving bus. The first triangle is, in this sense, a "truer" representation of triangularity, since it approximates it more perfectly, whereas the second one has many accidents which deviate more from a perfect representation of triangularity. In this sense the first triangle is also a better (more good) representation of triangularity, while the second is a worse triangle. There is, therefore, a kind of convertibility of truth and good into being...

 
Responding only to the first part of your explanation.

In Five Proofs, Feser does explain “goodness” the way you’re referencing, which was my summary in an previous post above:

“When we speak of God being Good, we are speaking about His being Pure Actuality and having absolutely no privations, and thus, conforming perfectly to His nature or essence.”

Are you and I saying the same thing?

 
I think so. And since moral goodness is goodness as applied to rational agents, God is also morally good, since He is perfect goodness itself and lacks no perfection. But God is not good in exactly the same way we can say a man is good (as if we predicated "good" univocally to both men and God); God is not good either in a manner completely different from how a man can be good (as if we predicated "good" equivocally); rather we predicate it by analogy, because being itself is already analogical (God's being is not the same as our being; as a matter of fact God just is pure being, His essence is existence; likewise God's nature just is goodness and truth, just is perfection).

Regarding the convertibility of the transcendentals, I would take truth out of the equation because truth is the correspondence of the intellect with reality, and reality is that which is, so the important convertibility is between good and being.

Now, it is evident that the notion of good applies only to living beings, and particularly to self-conscious beings, as it does not make sense to speak of the good of a star or of a rock.

It is also evident that the good of living beings is to be in fullness, as the privation of the good of living beings is their diminution in being and, in the extreme case, their no longer being, i.e. their death.

So, good = being.

Now, as Joewaked mentioned, there are two senses in which we speak of the goodness of a being:

Intrinsic goodness, i.e. goodness in itself. In terms of being, to what degree of fullness it is.

Since God Is the absolute fullness of Being, He Is infinitely Good in Himself.

Moral goodness, i.e. goodness towards others. In terms of being, to what extent it causes or helps other beings to be in fullness. This goodness can be quantified in absolute or relative terms, the latter by comparing diffused good with intrinsic good, i.e. to what extent intrinsic good is self diffusive.

If intrinsic and moral goodness are related as per the axiom "bonum est diffusivum sui", from God's infinite intrinsic goodness we can expect Him to have (actually to Be, as per absolute divine simplicity) infinite absolute and maximal relative moral goodness.

Infinite absolute and maximal relative moral goodness implies that God eternally enunciates his perfect knowledge of Himself generating another Person Who Is the same absolute fullness of Being as He Is. It also implies that the generated Person can love the First just as the First loves Him, so that both breathe as one principle a third consubstantial Person Who Is their mutual gift of absolute Love.

As easily seen, this is just Roman Catholic trinitarian doctrine, explicitely including Filioque.

Thus, the generation of a consubstantial Son with Whom He spirates a consubstantial Holy Spirit shows that God the Father is infinitely good in absolute terms, as the emanated Persons Are the absolute fullness of Being, and maximally good in relative terms, as the emanated Persons Are all God the Father Is, except being the Father.

As the diffusion of good resulting from the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit is infinitely greater, both absolutely and relatively, than any diffusion of good that can result from creation, creation is not necessary and does not increase the degree of realization of divine moral goodness in the trinitarian processions, much like the addition of any finite number does not increase a transfinite number (and much less the absolute infinite, which is the mathematical analogue to God). Even the difussion of good resulting from God's elevating creatures to be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4) stands to the difussion of good resulting from trinitarian processions as a transfinite number stands to the absolute infinite, i.e. the addition of the former does not increase the latter.

This demonstrates not the factuality of the Trinity, but that it is possible that God begets a consubstantial Son, and breathes with Him a consubstantial Spirit, necessarily by nature, from his being infinite Good. It is an extremely abridged exposition of St. Bonaventure's "necessary reasons" for the Trinity, based on God's nature as infinite Good and on the axiom "bonum est diffusivum sui".

 

Last edited by Johannes (2/27/2018 3:57 pm)

ficino wrote:

joewaked wrote:

ficino wrote:

I have seen it argued that God is not morally good because moral goodness is a property of persons, and God is not a person. God is not held to have duties or obligations.

 
If by “person” we mean an individual substance of a rational nature i.e., one that can choose to act freely, then God is a person.

Edward Feser says that God is personal but God is not "a person." God is not a member of a kind. God is not "a/an" anything except perhaps an entity, but being is not a genus.
 

How do we reconcile this then with Catholic (Christian) theology of the Trinity?

If I recall correctly, someone on another board said that Fr. Brian Davies said that God is not a moral agent because God has no moral duties. All God's providence, said Davis (acc to this commentator), and mercies are totally gratuitous. I would suppose that Davies would say that God is the supreme of all agents but deny "moral" as a qualifier of God's agency.

Is God rightly called a moral agent, or morally good, under other versions of classical theism?