God, The Source of Morality, and the Source of Logic

Many theists argue that God is the source of morality and its essential and defining source. As a matter of intellectual consistency should these same theists hold that God is in the same way the source of logic?

 

It is a theme of theistic apologetics that without God there could be no moral principles. What is wrong is so because and only because God so decreed. It seems to follow that, had God decreed that boiling children in oil was morally required, then morally required it would be. In fairness, I grant that the apologist would respond, “of course God wouldn't so decree, and although he could so decree as a matter of his power, he couldn't as a matter of his goodness, and so it is grossly unfair, if not blasphemous, to bring up such hideous cases.”

I will skip by the interesting question of whether if the omnipotent and omniscient creator of all did commend baby boiling, that wouldn't count as part of his goodness – there being no standard for goodness outside of God. I so skip because I am not planning here to retread the well worn paths of argument over the thesis that God is the sole source of morality, paths that lead back at least as far as Socrates in the Euthyphro.

Instead, my present interest is to confront the majority theistic position that God is the source of morality with the majority theistic position that God's omnipotence does not stretch so far as a power to do what is logically impossible. That is, I want to call your attention to the tension between the contention that God is the mandating source of morality but not the mandating source of logic.

Part of the argument that it must be God that mandates morality is that a single, objective, authoritative source is the only possible floodgate against the tides of relativism. If God does not mandate morality then, one way or another, humans must be its source, and if humans are, then there is, in the end, nothing that precludes that it should be morally permissible to boil babies on Thursdays. Without considering all the serious lacunae in this argument, let us apply it straight away to logic. If we do not have God as the mandating source of logic, then what is it that would preclude the logical permissibility of “p and not-p” on Thursdays?

At this point, it will be useful to recapitulate a bit of the history of theism and logic. Tertullian, while still a Church Father, before veering into what has been deemed heresy, wrote: “Nihil impossiblile Deo nisi quod non vult.” “Nothing is impossible for God except what he does not wish to do.” Although I have no business interpreting Tertullian, I will report that some whose business is such have interpreted this as implying that God could create a stone that he cannot lift and then lift it. As the mandating source of logic, God could change it to create what we now would regard as a contradiction. He doesn't do so, because it is his will not to, just as it is his will not morally to require baby boiling.

Descartes was explicit that logic being decreed by God, God's omnipotence extends even to what is logically impossible. The Tertullian-Cartesian position has not, however, been very popular. More commonly accepted, including, significantly, by Aquinas, is the view that God's omnipotence does not embrace what is logically impossible. God is either not the mandating source of logic or in mandating it, he closed the door to its modification. The stone paradox is answered, then, by saying that God cannot make a logically impossible stone – but that is not a limitation of omnipotence “rightly understood.”

There are, however, some strong similarities between morality and logic. Both can be expressed in terms of principles, rules, or laws. Both guide conduct. Most importantly, both have a kind of force that usually strikes us as objective and almost coercive. It is not going to be moral to boil babies even if the person at the kettle, all his friends, or even the whole world sincerely believe it to be a great thing to do. The whole world can be morally wrong, or so it seems to many of us. Similarly, there are doubtless people who could sincerely assert a clothed version of: “(if p then q) & (if not-p then q) & not-q,” but they will be wrong too.

The fact is that logic, if anything, seems more objective and more inflexibly coercive than morality. If these unbending and external-seeming features of morality that require the hypothesis of a mandating God, then why don't they in the case of logic as well? So if God mandated morality, why should we not hold with Turtullian and Descartes that he also mandated logic?

I am not saying it is impossible to hold that God mandates morality but does not mandate logic, but  only that it requires a real argument. It may be embarrassing to say that God can lift a rock he made unliftable, but that is not itself reason enough for the different treatment of morality and logic in their relation to God.

I think I can hear some theists saying, "O, but logic and morality are entirely different. Logic is just a matter of the way we humans have constructed language to answer to our communication needs." If that is so, however, mightn't morality be a matter of the way we humans have constructed action guiding principles to answer to our coordination needs?