The Euthyphro dilemma: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it's good?

Why the dilemma is famous

This is one of the oldest challenges in philosophy, and it's still widely used against the moral argument. It seems to trap the believer. On the first horn, morality is arbitrary. On the second, God is unnecessary for morality. Either way, the moral argument for God fails.

The third option

Most theistic philosophers since the medieval period, including Thomas Aquinas, have responded that the dilemma is a false choice. There's a third option: God commands things because he is good. Goodness is neither arbitrary nor independent of God. It's grounded in God's own nature.

Here's how it works. God's commands flow from his character, which is essentially loving, just and faithful. He doesn't command cruelty because cruelty contradicts his nature. And goodness isn't an external standard God looks up to; God's character is the standard. The philosopher Robert Adams developed a careful version of this view in Finite and Infinite Goods, and David Baggett and Jerry Walls defend it in Good God.

Isn't that just moving the dilemma?

A skeptic might ask: is God's nature good because it's God's, or because it meets some standard? This is a fair push. But every theory of morality has to stop somewhere. An atheist moral realist says moral facts are just there, as the bedrock of reality. The theist says the bedrock is a perfectly good personal being. The question is which explains morality better. A personal God has advantages: persons can issue commands, have intentions and relate to us. Abstract moral facts floating free don't command anything.

Could God command anything?

Some worry: what if God commanded torturing children? But this is like asking "what if a square had five sides?" A perfectly good God couldn't command that, because it contradicts his nature. That's not a limit on God's power any more than not being able to lie is a defect.

A fair concession

Philosophers are still divided on whether the third option fully escapes the dilemma. It's one of the more technical parts of the debate, and reasonable people come down differently.

How to explain this to a friend

This one can sound very technical, so keep it simple. Explain that the dilemma offers two options, God's commands are arbitrary or goodness is independent of God, and that Christians have long pointed to a third: God's commands come from his good character. A human analogy helps. A truly honest person doesn't consult a rulebook before telling the truth; honesty flows from who they are. In a similar way, God's commands express his nature.

It's also worth noting what the skeptic's own view requires. If goodness is independent of God, it still has to come from somewhere, or simply be there with no explanation. Comparing the two stopping points, a perfectly good personal God or impersonal moral facts, often helps a friend see that the dilemma doesn't end the conversation but moves it to a deeper question.

The bottom line

The Euthyphro dilemma has a third option: God's commands are good because they flow from his perfectly good nature. That makes morality neither arbitrary nor independent of God. For the wider argument, see The moral argument for God.