God's own ethics : norms of divine agency and the argument from evil

221 Pages·2017·1.11 MB·English

by  Murphy

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/2017, SPi
God’s Own Ethics
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/2017, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/2017, SPi
God’s Own Ethics
Norms of Divine Agency and the
Argument from Evil
Mark C. Murphy
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 03/07/2017, SPi
3
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For Jeanette
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
0.1 God’s Ethics and the Argument from Evil 1
0.2 Conceptions of God 2
0.3 Two Initial Objections 4
0.4 The Argument to Come 5
Part I. The Ethics of an Anselmian Being
1. Anselmianism about God 9
1.1 ‘An Anselmian Being’ 9
1.2 Reasoning about the Anselmian Being: The Distributive
Assumption Defended 10
1.3 Reasoning about the Anselmian Being: The Absolute Greatness
Assumption Defended 16
1.4 Key Anselmian Theses 19
2. Is the Anselmian Being Loving? 22
2.1 Love and Moral Goodness 22
2.2 Moral Goodness 23
2.3 Necessary Love Does Not Go beyond Necessary Moral Goodness 29
2.4 Against Being Loving as an Anselmian Perfection: The Supreme
Degree Formulation 34
2.5 Against Being Loving as an Anselmian Perfection: The Optimal
Level Formulation 42
2.6 Is Love as Divine Perfection Divinely Revealed? 43
3. Is the Anselmian Being Morally Good? 45
3.1 Love and Moral Goodness, Again 45
3.2 Some Kantian-Style Objections 46
3.3 Logical Gaps between Well-Being and Reasons 48
3.4 What Sorts of Reasons? 58
3.5 The Appeal to Intrinsic Value 60
3.6 Moral Goodness as a Perfection Independent of Rationality? 62
3.7 Where Matters Stand 65
4. The Ethics of the Anselmian Being I (Promotion) 67
4.1 The Central Theses regarding the Ethics of the Anselmian Being 67
4.2 The Existence and Perfection/Well-Being of Creatures Give the
Anselmian Being Justifying Reasons for Promotion 68
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viii contents
4.3 The Existence and Perfection/Well-Being of Creatures Do Not Give
the Anselmian Being Requiring Reasons for Promotion 70
4.4 The Value of Creatures and the Reasons of the Anselmian Being 75
4.5 Does the Appeal to Creaturely Goodness as Participated
Goodness Undermine the Justifying Reasons to Create? 83
4.6 Reasons to Promote and Reasons to Respect 84
5. The Ethics of the Anselmian Being II (Respect) 85
5.1 The Anselmian Being Does Not Intend Evil 85
5.2 The Intended/Foreseen Distinction 87
5.3 Intention and Foresight in the Anselmian Being 89
5.4 The Anselmian Being’s Requiring Reasons against Intending Evil 93
5.5 The Anselmian Being’s Decisive Reasons against Intending Evil 99
5.6 An Objection from Divine Sovereignty 101
6. The Argument from Evil and the Ethics of the Anselmian Being 103
6.1 The Failure of Arguments from Evil against the Existence
of the Anselmian Being 103
6.2 The Logical Problem of Evil 104
6.3 The Evidential Problem of Evil 106
6.4 Skeptical Theism 110
6.5 An Argument from Evil Based on Divine Intentions 116
6.6 The Arguments from Evil That Remain 122
Part II. God’s Ethics
7. Worship-Worthiness and Allegiance-Worthiness 129
7.1 Worship-Worthiness 129
7.2 Allegiance-Worthiness I: Alliance 134
7.3 Allegiance-Worthiness II: Authority and Obedience 138
7.4 Contingent Allegiance-Worthiness 144
8. The Good of Religion and Contingent Divine Ethics 147
8.1 Contingent Divine Ethics and Allegiance-Worthiness 147
8.2 The Good of ‘Religion’ 148
8.3 Religion and Familiar Welfare-Oriented Moral Goodness 156
8.4 The Conditions of Availability of the Good of Religion 161
8.5 Contingent Allegiance-Worthiness, Again 168
8.6 How the Anselmian Being Can Have a Contingent Ethics 170
9. The Argument from Evil and God’s Contingent Ethics 179
9.1 Two Revived Formulations of the Argument from Evil 179
9.2 Contingent Divine Ethics and the Argument from Evil 180
9.3 Christian Theism and the Argument from Evil 186
9.4 Is This Book a Rearguard Action against the Argument from Evil? 193
Works Cited 199
Index 207
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Acknowledgments
I owe great debts to philosophers who took time from the development of their own
excellent work to read drafts of this manuscript and to offer comments and sugges-
tions. Kevin Vallier, Heath White, and Scott Davison deserve my thanks on this score,
as well as Anne Jeffrey, who not only read and commented carefully on chapter drafts
while she was in the thick of her dissertation work, but also listened to me whine and
complain about them.
A number of good philosophers offered criticisms on various portions of the
argument. I thank Karl Adam, Julia Annas, Robert Audi, Bill Blattner, Tom Christiano,
Terence Cuneo, Steve Davis, Michael DePaul, Trent Dougherty, Paul Draper, Michael
Gorman, John Greco, Keith Hankins, Tobias Hoffmann, Chris Howard, Stephen
Kershnar, Mark Lance, Brian Leftow, Alasdair MacIntyre, Christian Miller, David
Owen, Adam Pelser, Ryan Preston-Roedder, Alex Pruss, Mike Rea, Travis Rieder,
Connie Rosati, Danny Shahar, Jeff Speaks, Jim Sterba, Jada Twedt Strabbing, Mark
Timmons, Patrick Todd, Chris Tucker, Peter van Inwagen, Matthias Vorwerk, Brandon
Warmke, and Ray Yeo. I benefited also from the thorough comments of two anonymous
readers at Oxford University Press. I am grateful also to Phil Dines, the copyeditor, for
his great care and good sense in getting the manuscript in shape.
I presented some of this material to Georgetown graduate seminars on the problem
of evil and on the explanation of reasons for action. The discussion in these seminars
was tremendously helpful, and I thank the students in these seminars, especially Gabe
Broughton, Jake Earl, Quentin Fisher, and Kelly Heuer, for their critical feedback.
I also presented portions of the manuscript at the Challenges to Moral and Religious
Belief conference at Purdue University, the Baylor–Georgetown–Notre Dame
Philosophy of Religion conference, the Theistic Ethics Workshop, and colloquia at
Arizona, Wake Forest, and Catholic University of America. I am grateful to the audi-
ence members at these events, who generously engaged with my arguments and
offered useful criticisms.
I am grateful to the editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for permission
to use some of the material from my entry “Perfect Goodness.” I thank also Oxford
University Press for permission to use some of the material from “Toward God’s Own
Ethics” (Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief, ed. Michael Bergmann and Patrick
Kain, 2014, pp. 154–71), and Palgrave Macmillan generously allowed my use of some
of the text of “Intention, Foresight, and Success” (Human Values: New Essays on Ethics
and Natural Law, ed. David S. Oderberg and Timothy Chappell, 2004, pp. 262–78). I
thank the journal Faith and Philosophy for allowing use of a few paragraphs from my
“Divine Command, Divine Will, and Moral Obligation” (15 (1998), pp. 3–27) and the