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Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality, by David Baggett, Jerry L. Walls
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This book aims to reinvigorate discussions of moral arguments for God's existence. To open this debate, Baggett and Walls argue that God's love and moral goodness are perfect, without defect, necessary, and recognizable. After integrating insights from the literature of both moral apologetics and theistic ethics, they defend theistic ethics against a variety of objections and, in so doing, bolster the case for the moral argument for God's existence. It is the intention of the authors to see this aspect of natural theology resume its rightful place of prominence, by showing how a worldview predicated on the God of both classical theism and historical Christian orthodoxy has more than adequate resources to answer the Euthyphro Dilemma, speak to the problem of evil, illumine natural law, and highlight the moral significance of the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. Ultimately, the authors argue, there is principled reason to believe that morality itself provides excellent reasons to look for a transcendent source of its authority and reality, and a source that is more than an abstract principle.
- Sales Rank: #530203 in Books
- Published on: 2011-04-20
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.10" h x .80" w x 9.10" l, .90 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 304 pages
Review
"Good God provides a spirited defense of the claim that morality requires God as its foundation. The authors provide powerful reasons for rejecting the usual philosophical objections to this view, and a strong case for the advantages of their view over secular rivals. Although the book shows a deep knowledge of contemporary moral philosophy, it is accessible to non-specialists and written in a clear and engaging style."
-- C. Stephen Evans, University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Baylor University
"This is, on awhole, a very good book. It gathers together arguments for an ambitious thesis, that 'morality ultimately needs God to make full ratonal sense."
--John Hare, Yale University
About the Author
David Baggett is professor of philosophy at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. His books include C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness and Beauty; Did the Resurrection Happen? : A Conversation with Gary Habermas and Antony Flew; Tennis and Philosophy: What the Racket is All About; and Sherlock Holmes and Philosophy. Jerry L. Walls recently served as a Research Fellow in The Center for Philosophy of Religion at Notre Dame, and is currently a visiting scholar there. Among his books are Hell: The Logic of Damnation, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy, and Purgatory: The Logic of Total Transformation. He is also the editor of The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology.
Most helpful customer reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful.
Clear and Compelling
By Kyle Blanchette
In "Good God," David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls bring some much needed clarity and boldness to contemporary discussions about theistic ethics. Right from the start, the authors begin with seven key distinctions and clarifications (such as conceivability vs. possibility, knowing vs. being, and good vs. right) that are employed with great deftness throughout the course of this rich, eminently intelligible work, helping the reader to understand exactly what is at stake in the at-once classic and contemporary debate over God and morality.
The authors intend for their work to function as a cumulative-case-style moral argument, and they find themselves on both the offensive and defensive sides of this task. Indeed, the sheer scope of Baggett and Walls' analysis is stunning in itself. Nearly every conceivable angle on the relationship between God and morality is touched upon, including Euthyphro-style objections, the problem of evil, the relationship between God and goodness, the logic of divine command theory, the problem of abhorrent commands (especially in Old Testament narratives), the relationship between theistic ethics and the Christian view of the afterlife, and even the problematic nature of Calvinism for theistic ethics. None of these forays has the sense of being haphazard or unduly truncated. The book's sprawling coverage adds greatly to its persuasiveness, giving the reader the sense that theistically-grounded ethics have unparalleled explanatory power.
In terms of difficulty, the content of the book would be largely accessible to undergraduate students of philosophy, though it would still likely prove a challenge. Despite the somewhat challenging nature of the prose, the authors manage to use only as much philosophical jargon as is necessary to make their substantive, rigorous points. For the more technically inclined, there are two rigorous appendices that deal with arbitrariness objections to divine command theory and the logic behind moral outrage at horrendous evil (and the resources Christian theists have in dealing with it). Baggett and Walls do not deal directly with the many secular meta-ethical alternatives to theistic ethics that aim to underwrite objective moral value; that is a task they have reserved for a forthcoming work dedicated to the subject.
I think what I like most about this book is the authors' willingness to stake their ground and lay out their positions clearly yet judiciously, particularly on issues that have received little if any treatment in theistic ethics. For instance, Baggett and Walls offer an ingenious algorithm for assessing whether or not we can accept a difficult divine command as possibly coming from a perfectly good God (and they employ a helpful distinction between a command that is "difficult" to reconcile with God's perfect goodness, and one that is downright "impossible" to so reconcile it). This creative piece of philosophy is highly relevant and useful for theists in light of current New Atheist attacks on the morality of the God of the Bible. Their approach is both a rational and an epistemically humble way of dealing with a tough issue, and it shows that theists can indeed apply discretion with regard to what can reasonably qualify as a command from a perfectly good God.
I would heartily recommend this book both for Christian theists who are seeking to understand the moral implications of their worldview, and for atheists who wish to catch a glimpse of the vision and power of theistically-grounded ethics.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Review; and John Hare
By LAD
-I would recommend this book highly. It's lucidly written with playful wit while covering an array of topics that concern both atheist and theist alike. Baggett and Walls' (Henceforth Baggett) essential point is that morality does not make sense unless it is given by God. This book is such a good read, in part, because this thesis is so applicable, especially in response to the New Atheism crowd who believe they can have a sensible morality apart from God.
Baggett constructs a moral apologetic by offering multiple versions of the moral argument. He details a theistic ethic. And by answering normativity, epistemic, autonomy, and arbitrariness objections, Baggett strengthens the moral argument not only for God's existence but also for God's love and moral goodness as perfect, necessary, and recognizable.
These discussions also inform our understanding of natural law, the problem of evil, conquest narratives, and the moral relevance of the Trinity, incarnation, resurrection, and afterlife. The moral argument for God's existence is powerful and persuasive but too often neglected in natural theology.
Some of the specific subject matter is given below as preview.
The author addresses the Euthyphro Dilemma and seeks the best reconciliation. Both horns of this dilemma are uncomfortable and undesired by theists: to affirm that something is good because God commands it is to invite arbitrariness, but to affirm instead that God commands what is already moral makes it seem as if morality is independent of God and God is accountable to it. Murray Macbeath's response is that God chooses actions because they maximize our happiness, which might be the reason they are moral. This question will be a motif developed throughout the text as Baggett proceeds to answer it.
Baggett defends an Anselmian conception of God against charges that it is unbiblical and that it wrongly predicates moral goodness and perfect moral goodness of God. The "conceivability argument" is specifically addressed and rejected. It states that because God's sinning is conceivable, sinning is possible, and God is thus not impeccable. This argument is problematic, for conceivability is a fuzzy concept. This argument does not seem to be employing a definition of epistemic possibility, and if it is instead using conceivability to mean something closer to imaginability, our ability to think of the proposition with mental clarity, then that is equally problematic given that there are propositions known to be true that our imagination fails to sufficiently grasp.
He argues that in order for the moral argument to provide rational reason to believe in God, God's goodness must be recognizable. Otherwise the word "good" is being used to refer to something that isn't recognizably good, an equivocation. For this reason, he rejects Calvinism. Calvinists ascribe to radical voluntarism, the former horn of the Euthyphro dilemma, that whatever God does is good because he does it (arbitrariness). Baggett challenges this notion by posing counter examples. What if God commanded us to torture children? This would immediately strike us as intuitively wrong, and to admit it as "good" would entirely erode any intelligible understanding of what goodness is.
Baggett does not claim that the moral argument settles all apologetic concerns relating to God's existence; however he it does point to a transcendental source (God). Confidence in morality as real, objective, prescriptive, and authoritative is requisite for a workable moral argument for God's existence. Nonetheless, someone can be rational in believing in objective morality even while doubting God's existence because there are good reasons for moral realism by itself.
He condones the atheist for believing in objective morality, for she, whether she realizes it or not, is accepting the seeds of the moral argument. Two sorts of atheists broadly represent the opponents discussed throughout this book: the moral objectivist and the Nietzschian. The former, perhaps the New Atheist crowd, attempts to make sense of morality without God, while the ladder rejects it. Baggett encourages the atheist to cultivate his sense of moral realism, for it is that conviction that may point to a more coherent (and likely theistic) set of beliefs.
There seems to be something profoundly right about not giving morality up, the author states. In trying to understand the truth of reality, morality is one subject too obviousness to toss. The Calvinist too, who Baggett critiques as lacking a true sense of God's recognizable love, still holds that God loves everyone.
Once again, this is a fantastic read, not only for a student of philosophy, but also for the convicted laymen. It is fluid and accessible meanwhile challenging but fun. Seriously, read it.
-John Hare wrote an interesting and helpful review of this book. One point of his I wish to discuss as it is, I believe, a bit unfair. Hare states that the book would be better off without chapter four, A Reformed Tradition Not Quite Right. This was the chapter I mentioned above which dealt with Calvinism's resultant unintelligible definition of goodness. First of all, and I admit this is trivial of me to mention, Hare notes the book's sarcasm towards Calvinism. While this is true, it's actually quite funny and part of Baggett's humorous writing style.
Secondly, Hare states that "They do not discuss either the biblical texts that lie behind the Calvinist view or the motivation that also lies behind it." Hare is assuming that Baggett is providing philosophical arguments against Calvinism while ignoring the scriptural or exegetical arguments for Calvinism. This is not the case. Baggett's philophical arguments should cause us not to reject Calvinism prima facie, but to reflect on the alleged scriptural interpretation supporting Calvinism and reexamine those verses. Baggett illustrates that the Calvinist, upon admitting that goodness is something defined simply by what God commands (voluntarism), even if that command is to torture babies, is left with an unintelligible sense of God's goodness. We should take great pause here beacuse we know that the concept of God's goodness or omnibenevolence is essential to our interpretation of the scriptures. If Calvinism discards a concept that is obvious to a careful interpretation of scripture, what else might they discard? The skepticism should cause us to reaxime how the Calvinist is performing his exegesis.
LAD
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
An insightful exploration of God, morality, faith, and reason
By Leslie Keeney
The premise of "Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality" is that the existence of a universal moral intuition, and the philosophical conclusions drawn from the analysis of this intuition, rationally lead to a belief in a good God. "In a nutshell," said David Baggett in an interview with the Evangelical Philosophical Society, "our aim is to show that the God of classical theism and orthodox Christianity is reasonably thought to make best sense of moral truths that most everyone--theists and atheists alike--claim to believe in."
One of the things I most appreciate about this book is the authors' unapologetic honesty about the nature of reality. "If our goal is the pursuit of truth rather than winning an argument" they write, "then what good reason is there to deny what seems undeniable: that there are authoritative moral obligations?" It is refreshing for trained philosophers to have an unapologetic commitment to what goes on in the real world. The authors feel free to assume that this belief is true both because they instinctively know it and because most people in most places instinctively know it too. In response to a philosopher or theologian who might construct a syllogism in which God could, for example, issue a command to torture children for fun, the authors respond, "What could we possibly appeal to as more morally obvious than the falsehood of that conclusion?"
Another positive aspect of this book is its defense of the relationship between faith and reason. Anyone who has hung around evangelical Christians for any amount of time has heard someone say that faith is only truly faith when it believes something that doesn't make sense. The logic (yes, I use that word on purpose) of this theory is that if faith is taken outside the bounds of reason, then it is immune to arguments against it. Recently, this idea has been taken in by post-modernists, dressed up in cooler clothes, and taught to say that God must, by definition, be outside the bounds of reason, otherwise He would not be God. While there have been entire books written defending the assertion that human reason is an essential and inevitable part of understanding God, Baggett and Walls spend just two short sections discussing the direct relationship between reason/philosophy and faith. The entire book, however, is an example of how clear thinking takes one closer to God, not farther away.
It's admirable that the authors do not attempt to pander to the Christian mass market by attempting to simplify things that cannot be simplified. Some things in life are nuanced and complex--and cannot be reduced to a bumper sticker. Unlike other Christian ethicists, the authors do not assume that morality must be monolithic in order to demonstratively exist. They don't get bogged down trying to explain why one culture thinks that sex outside marriage is OK and another one doesn't; they are confident that their argument will hold water as long at they can demonstrate the existence of a few "absolute, non-negotiable moral truths"--things like selflessness, courage, kindness, fairness, and yes, the belief that inflicting pain for one's own pleasure is wrong. "The moral argument doesn't necessarily need many such absolute, non-negotiable obligations," they admit, "but it needs at least some."
One of primary vehicles the authors use to explore the moral argument for God is what is called the "Euthyphro Dilemma." In its simplest terms, this is the philosophical puzzle that asks whether God is good because He decides what is good and then acts in a way consistent with what He has already decided (what is called the "voluntarist" position), or whether He is good because He freely chooses to do what is already considered good ("nonvoluntarist"). While knowing the name of the Euthyphro Dilemma isn't really of any use (except to impress people at parties), the argument itself can be used to demonstrate pretty convincingly that God's relationship with morality is, at best, contradictory. After exploring several aspects of the voluntarist position, the authors conclude that there are just too many problems with it to hold up under examination. Unfortunately, the other horn of the dilemma isn't any better and neither view seems to reflect the God of the Bible--a God who is both completely sovereign and inherently good. "So in the face of all this," the authors ask, "what's an honest theist to do?" What the authors do is jump off the horns completely and land on a third alternative--that God is at the root of all there is; that God is, in His very essence, the ultimate good. In the author's words "God and the ultimate Good are ontologically inseparable." What's good is good because it reflects God's essential nature, and since God's essential nature cannot be other than what it is, then good cannot be other than it is either. The writers call their solution "theistic activism," and lest anyone think that their idea is new, the authors site Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes (and even Jonathon Edwards), as all having a similar conviction.
This review certainly does not do justice to the authors' thorough examination of their subject, which is explored with the insight and dexterity of trained, experienced philosophers. But it's my conviction that in order to be truly persuasive, an argument must also have an element of intuitiveness about it. The conclusion of any syllogism must resonate with people who can then respond "Yes, that is exactly what I think, although I've never been able to articulate it before." That God is good and that He is sovereign is an assertion that almost every theist would agree with. What Baggett and Walls give us is the ability to respond to those who would say that He can't be both.
The only criticism I have of the book is that I wish it was longer. There are several things that I would have liked to learn more about. What sociological and anthropological evidence is there for universal moral intuition? What are the more nuanced arguments that naturalists use to explain morality? And for someone who does not have a background in philosophy, I would have appreciated a more detailed description of the Platonist belief system. But if my only complaint is that I want more, the authors have done their job admirably.
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