Sorry buddy, your God isnt objective, because he is a person anything that is based on a person is not objective. If he was objective he would do things that are considered good INDEPENDENT of his own opinion. EVERYTHING in your worldview is just the personal emotional opinion of your god.This is simply an equivocation with the word "subjective." Objectivity in meta-ethics concerns whether there are objective moral norms, i.e., moral principles that are transcendent, unchanging, and universally binding on humanity. The only basis for such moral norms is theistic. These are based in God’s nature, not in his emotional whims. If ethics were a standard extrinsic to God to which he must submit, he would not be God, which is incoherent.
Christian morality is rooted in the eternal will of God and the unchanging nature of God, both of which he has revealed to us and has made universally binding upon us. Yes, God is personal, but ethics must be personal by necessity in order for them to be normative. Law is an expression of God’s Covenant Lordship. This is not "subjective" in the relevant sense.
The question is how can any morality be normative without a Person who holds individuals accountable? Ethics must be personal. But it cannot merely be based in the human person or culture, otherwise it forfeits objectivity.
Another way of putting this is that ethics must be personal, but they cannot be person-variant in order to be meaningful. That is the important distinction between the two senses of the word "subjective."
"If ethics were a standard extrinsic to God to which he must submit, he would not be God, which is incoherent."
ReplyDeleteIsn't this an argument that advocates of a strong view of divine simplicity would use, i.e. God must be identical to good on pain of making goodness something other than God to which He must submit? How would you respond to that?
That was a statement that probably requires a few layers of argumentation to show. The basic point is, if ethics are *more ultimate* than God himself, then where do they come from? What is more ultimate than God to which he must submit? And who holds him to this standard (recognizing that ethics must be personal)? If morality were extrinsic to God, he would be less than perfect, less than ultimate, and therefore (according to the Christian understanding) less than God.
ReplyDeleteI'm also inclined to a model of divine simplicity, so I would agree that goodness is not something outside of God in which he participates, but that goodness is his nature.