Euthyphro Dilemma, Divine Simplicity, and Modal Collapse
One way between the horns of the dilemma is via the doctrine of divine simplicity. But said doctrine leads to modal collapse. From the frying pan into the fire.
The Question
God commands all and only the morally obligatory. But does he command it because it is obligatory, or is it obligatory because he commands it? The question naturally arises, but issues in a dilemma. A dilemma is a very specific sort of problem in which there are exactly two alternatives, neither of which is acceptable. Thus we speak of the 'horns' of a dilemma, and of being 'impaled' on its horns.
Bear in mind the following tripartite distinction. For any agent that issues a command, there is (i) the commanding, (ii) that which is commanded (the content of the act of commanding), and (iii) the relevant normative property of the content. Contents of commands can be either permissible, impermissible, or obligatory. Note the ambiguity of 'command' as between the act of commanding, and the content commanded. And note that while finite agents sometimes command what is morally impermissible, this is never the case with God. Everything God commands is morally obligatory. The question is whether the divine commanding makes the action obligatory, or whether it is obligatory independently of God's command. In the latter case, God is at most the advocate and enforcer of an obligation but not its legislator.
Horn One
If God commands an action because it is obligatory, then the obligatoriness of the action is not due to God's command, but is logically antecedent to it. God is then subject to an independently existing system of norms that are not in his control. He is then an advocate of the moral order and its enforcer, but not its source, with negative consequences for the divine sovereignty. God is the Absolute, and the Absolute cannot be dependent on anything external to it for its existence, nature, modal status, or anything else, including the justification of its commands. The sovereign God is the absolute lord of all orders, including the moral order.
Horn Two
If an action is obligatory because God commands it, then the normative quality of the action — its being obligatory — derives from a fact, the fact of God's commanding the action. This is puzzling: how can the mere fact that an agent issues a command make the content of the command objectively binding? Of course, God is not any old agent: he is morally perfect. So you can be sure that he won't command anything that is not categorically obligatory. Still, the move from fact to norm is puzzling. The puzzle is heightened if the agent is free in the 'could have done otherwise' sense. If God is free in this sense, libertarianly free, then he might not have commanded the action, in which case it would not have been obligatory. This is an unacceptable result. If it is impermissible to kill babies for sexual gratification, and obligatory to refrain from such an action, normative properties cannot derive from any being's free will. For that would make morality arbitrary. The normative proposition It is impermissible to kill babies for sexual gratification, if true, is necessarily true. Its truth value cannot then depend on a contingent command even if the one who commands is God.
Constraints on a Solution
We are assuming that God exists, that morality is objective and not up to the whim of any being, and that God is sovereign over the moral order, and indeed, absolute lord of all orders. So we cannot solve the dilemma by denying that God exists, or by grasping one or the other of the horns, or by limiting divine sovereignty. We must find a way between the horns. If we succeed, we will have shown that the dilemma is a false alternative.
The problem has two sides. First, how do we get from a fact to a norm? To be precise, how do get from the facticity of a commanding to the normativity of the content commanded? Second, how do we ensure that the norm is absolute? We would have a solution if it could be shown that the fact just is the norm, and the fact could not have been different.
William Mann's Solution via Divine Simplicity
Mann's solution is built on the notion that, with respect to necessary truths and absolute values, God is not free to will otherwise than he wills. In this way the second horn, and arbitrarity, is avoided. But how can God be sovereign over the moral order if he cannot will otherwise than he wills? If I understand the solution, it is that sovereignty is maintained and the first horn is avoided if the constraint on divine freedom is internal to God as it would be if “absolute values are the expression of that [God's] rational autonomy.” (William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality, Oxford UP, 2015,168) Thus God is not free as possessing the liberty of indifference with respect to necessary truths and absolute values, but he is nonetheless free as the rationally autonomous creative source of necessary truths and absolute values. God then is the source of necessary truths and absolute values, not their admirer or advocate. God is not subject to the moral order; he is the source of it. Indeed, he is identical to it. Does Mann's solution require the doctrine of divine simplicity? It would seem so. This doctrine implies that knowing and willing are identical in God. If so, then the truth value and modal status of necessary truths, including necessary moral truths, cannot be otherwise in which case God cannot will them to be otherwise.
On the doctrine of divine simplicity, then, the Euthyphro Dilemma turns out to be a false dilemma: the simplicity doctrine allows for a third possibility, a way between the horns.* God is Goodness itself, not a good being among others. As such, he just is the content of morality. The moral order is not external to him nor antecedent to him logically or ontologically: he is not subject to it. Sovereignty is preserved. Arbitrarity is avoided because God cannot will any moral contents other than the ones he wills, and the ones he wills follow necessarily from his omnibenevolent nature.
Problem Solved?
If God is absolutely sovereign, as he must be to be God, then he is sovereign over every order including the MODAL order. It is cogently arguable, however, that the simplicity doctrine entails the collapse of modal distinctions and thus the collapse of the modal order.
It looks as if we can solve the Euthyphro problem, but only by generating a different problem. The Euthyphro problem is solved by saying that (i) the obligatory is obligatory because God commands it, but (ii) the contents of the divine commands could not have been otherwise. They could not have been otherwise because these contents are contained within the unchangeable divine nature which is wholly good. Hence God is neither subject to an external moral order, nor the arbitrary creator of it. God is the moral order. In God, the facticity of the commanding and the normativity of the contents commanded are one.
But if God, because he is absolutely sovereign, cannot be subject to a logically or ontologically prior MORAL order, then he also cannot be subject to a logically or ontologically prior MODAL order. As absolutely sovereign, God must be sovereign over all orders. It cannot be that the possible and the necessary subsist in sublime independence of God. It cannot be that creation is the selective actualization of some proper subset of self-subsisting mere possibles, or the actualization of one among an infinity of possible worlds. Creation is not actualization. For then God would not be creating out of nothing, but out of possibles the Being of which would be independent of God's Being. Creation out of mere possibles would subordinate God to the modal order in violation of his absolute sovereignty, his being the lord of all orders.
God, then, cannot be subject to a modal order independent of him. So one might think to import into God the modal distinctions, for example, the distinction between the merely possible and the actual. This importation would parallel the importation into the divine nature of the various contents of divine commands. One might suppose that God entertains mere possibles which, as merely possible, subsist only as accusatives of his thinking, but then actualizes some of them, super-adding existence to them. The mere possibles that need an act of divine actualization in order to exist would then contingently exist, which is of course the result we want. But this importation of modal distinctions into God is impossible on the doctrine of divine simplicity. There cannot be in God a distinction between his actual and his merely possible creative decisions, decisions which cannot fail to be efficacious. This distinction in God between actual and merely possible creative decisions conflicts with DDS and its commitment to God's being purely actual (actus purus).
Conclusion
The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) allows for a solution of the Euthyphro dilemma with the following advantages: it upholds the existence of God, the objectivity of morality, the non-arbitrarity of the divine will, and God's sovereignty over the moral order. But God, to be God, must be the absolute lord of all orders, including the modal order. The simplicity doctrine, however, needed to solve the Euthyphro dilemma entails the collapse of the modal order in which case it is not there to for God to be sovereign over. The modal order collapses because divine simplicity entails that all is necessary: God himself is necessary, and so are all of his creative decisions. What God wills, he necessarily wills: the fact of his willing a world of creatures coincides with the necessity of his willing the very world of creatures that he wills. It follows that creatures are not contingent but necessary, despite their having their necessity from another, from God. The objectivity of the modal distinctions, however, needs to be upheld just as much as the objectivity of morality. But this is impossible if DDS is true. So while God must be simple to be God, he cannot be simple if if he is the creator of our universe, a universe whose contingency is the point of departure for the ascent to the divine absolute.
Welcome to the aporetics of the Absolute!
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*A dilemma is said to be false if there is a third possibility, and thus a way between the horns. The contemporary Thomist, Edward Feser, maintains that the Euthyphro dilemma is false:
Divine simplicity also entails, of course, that God’s will just is God’s goodness which just is His immutable and necessary existence. That means that what is objectively good and what God wills for us as morally obligatory are really the same thing considered under different descriptions, and that neither could have been other than they are. There can be no question then, either of God’s having arbitrarily commanded something different for us (torturing babies for fun, or whatever) or of there being a standard of goodness apart from Him. Again, the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one; the third option that it fails to consider is that what is morally obligatory is what God commands in accordance with a non-arbitrary and unchanging standard of goodness that is not independent of Him.