Reading: St. Augustine, The City of God, pp. 156 86
The editors of our text point out that there is an ambiguity in the claim: the good is what God wills. That is, it must mean one or the other of the following two statements:
1) God wills what is good because it is good
2) What is good is good because God wills it
In the first statement, what is good is that way because of its own inherent goodness, whether or not God wills it. Its goodness stands on its own so to speak. But, because it is good, God wills it.
In the second statement, a thing has no inherent goodness. Its goodness is externally determined by Gods will.
(Note: Those of you who took Philosophy of The Human Person with me will recognize this as the Euthyphro Dilemma.)
In your discussion post please do the following:
1) Identify which of the two statements you tend to agree with.
2) Develop a sincere argument in support of the statement you DO NOT agree with.
3) Carefully describe how the argument you created in 2) is not really persuasive. (In other words, argue against what you argued in 2.)
4)Write two challenging questions about this topic
