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This is the weekly Q & A blog post by our Research Professor in Philosophy, Dr. William Lane Craig.

Question

Hello Dr. Craig - please help me to understand, why must God be good? You have stated that goodness is fundamental to our concept of God, but why? What if our concept or definition of God is wrong? Why is it necessary that God be a being worthy of worship? Is that simply a condition that we have established to suit our preconception of God? Could a being like the gods of H P Lovecraft exist, immortal and amoral?

I respect your reasoning, and often feel that the inherent goodness of God is taken as a given, but I'm unclear why. Thanks! 

"It is conceptually necessary that God be good. That is to say, goodness belongs to the very concept of God, just as being unmarried belongs to the concept of a bachelor."

Michael

United States

Dr. William Lane Craig's Response

It seems to me that that last line says it all: 鈥渋t is conceptually necessary that God be good. That is to say, goodness belongs to the very concept of God, just as being unmarried belongs to the concept of a bachelor.鈥� Think about it. If someone said, 鈥淲hy must a bachelor be unmarried?鈥� we鈥檇 explain to him that by 鈥渁 bachelor鈥� we mean an unmarried male. Certainly, we could re-define the word 鈥渂achelor鈥� to mean something different or could imagine a language in which 鈥渂achelor鈥� means something different, but that has no relevance to the fact that the concept of being (what we in English call) a bachelor entails being unmarried. The conventionality of the words we assign to certain concepts doesn鈥檛 make the concepts themselves conventional.

So with regard to God, the concept of God is the concept of a being that is worthy of worship. That鈥檚 what we mean in usual theological contexts when we use the English word 鈥淕od.鈥� The word itself is conventional; we could use instead 鈥淒ieu鈥� or 鈥淒ios鈥� or 鈥淕ott鈥� or 鈥淏og.鈥� But if one is not talking about a being worthy of worship, then he鈥檚 just not talking about God. He鈥檚 talking about something else, say, the creator of the universe or the cosmic designer, who may not be good. But necessarily, he鈥檚 not talking about God. So, sure, there could be immoral and amoral gods, but in that case God presumably does not exist (unless you think He created these lower beings).

As St. Anselm saw, God is the greatest conceivable being. If there were something greater than God, then that would be God. But necessarily the greatest conceivable being is good because it is better to be morally good than morally imperfect. So when we talk about God, we鈥檙e talking about a perfectly good being. If you use the word 鈥淕od鈥� to talk about something else, then you鈥檙e just not talking about God. Again, the conventionality of the words we use does not make the relevant concepts conventional.

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