Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God's motivation - about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God's moral perfection consists in God's being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed.
The aim of God's Own Ethics is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God's own ethics is like.
According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God's conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely
perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.
Every version of the argument from evil requires a premise concerning God's motivation - about the actions that God is motivated to perform or the states of affairs that God is motivated to bring about. The typical source of this premise is a conviction that God is, obviously, morally perfect, where God's moral perfection consists in God's being motivated to act in accordance with the norms of morality by which both we and God are governed.
The aim of God's Own Ethics is to challenge this understanding by giving arguments against this view of God as morally perfect and by offering an alternative account of what God's own ethics is like.
According to this alternative account, God is in no way required to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, though God may rationally do so. Any norms of conduct that favor the promotion of creaturely well-being that govern God's conduct are norms that are contingently self-imposed by God. This revised understanding of divine ethics should lead us to revise sharply downward our assessment of the force of the argument from evil while leaving intact our conception of God as an absolutely
perfect being, supremely worthy of worship.
Introduction
Part I: The Ethics of an Anselmian Being
1: Anselmianism about God
2: Is the Anselmian being loving?
3: Is the Anselmian being morally good?
4: The ethics of the Anselmian being I (promotion)
5: The ethics of the Anselmian being II (respect)
6: The argument from evil and the ethics of the Anselmian being
Part II: God's Ethics
7: Worship-worthiness and allegiance-worthiness
8: The good of religion and contingent divine ethics
9: The argument from evil and God's contingent ethics
Mark C. Murphy is McDevitt Professor of Religious Philosophy at
Georgetown University. He works in ethics, political philosophy,
philosophy of law, and philosophy of religion, and serves as the
editor of the journal Faith and Philosophy. He is the author of
Natural Law and Practical Rationality, An Essay on Divine
Authority, Natural Law in Jurisprudence and Politics, Philosophy of
Law: The Fundamentals, and God and Moral Law (Oxford University
Press).
The book is highly recommended for graduate students and
professionals; its readers will be challenged to more explicitly
clarify and evaluate their own understanding of God's ethics.
*Timothy D. Miller, Lee University, Religious Studies Review*
I am glad that this book was written, for I look forward to the
discussion it will undoubtedly inspire. Our understanding of the
argument from evil has progressed greatly in the last half century
or so -- witness, for instance, the distinctions between the
logical problem of evil and the evidential problem of evil, and
between theodicies and skeptical theism. I believe that further
exploration of the idea of "God's own ethics" will lead to yet more
progress in our understanding of the argument from evil, and Murphy
has surely helped us down this path of progress.
*Craig Duncan, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews*
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