A clever college student recently asked me this question. He was in a philosophy class studying Plato's account of Socrates' trial, and the question came up in class - is the virtuous thing virtuous because God loves it (i.e., His love of it makes it virtuous), or does God love the virtuous thing because of the fact that it's already virtuous (i.e., it possesses virtue, therefore God loves it).
On the one hand, if something is made virtuous by God's love for it, then the "goodness" of something is not an absolute attribute - it is not good apart from God's love for it. Furthermore, whatever God chooses to not love would thereby be made "bad," and God becomes the cause of evil.
On the other hand, if God loves something because it is good, then we have something that is good apart from God. This would mean that something other than God defined it to be good, and then we would have someone telling God what to consider good and what to consider bad. Someone would have taken away one of God's attributes.
Either way, we end up with a scenario we don't like.
After tossing this idea around for a bit, realizing that learned philosophers could very quickly and easily show me where my ideas are full of holes, I came to the opinion that my friend was facing a false dichotomy. He was given "A" and "B" as the only two possible answers - that it must be "A" or it must be "B." I think there is a better option than these two.
Something is "good" only as much as it resembles God's character. An act of kindness is only as good as its resemblance to God's kindness. A generous act is only as good as its resemblance to God's generosity. Love is only as good as it resembles the God of love. By the same token, something is "bad" to the degree that it departs from God's character. A lie departs from the character of the God of truth. Hatred departs from the character of the God of love.
The goodness of something does not exist apart from God, but is defined by God's character. Goodness is not a quality that exists apart from God's existence and nature. God loves something because it resembles His own character, not because it possesses its own good character apart from Him.
So, neither option is true. Something is not made good because God loves it. God doesn't love something because it has the independent quality of being good. The goodness of something is determined by its resemblance to God, and God loves the things that have that resemblance.
What does this matter? Is this just a philosophical treadmill, upon which you run and run, but never get anywhere?
I believe it's important at least in the point that God also loves us sinners, but not because we're good! That's how amazing grace is! He loves us anyway. He love us despite the fact that we don't strongly resemble His character. We are naturally quite unlike His character, and yet we are still the objects of His love. Furthermore, if we become more "good" by resembling Him more, He loves to see that, but He doesn't love us more because of it. He already loves us completely. We cannot garner more of God's love by becoming more "good" (even though He loves to see us become more "good").
Grace, then, allows us to be treated as perfectly "good," perfectly like God's character, even though we don't resemble Him that much (yet!). And then in Christ, His love for us will eventually make us that good - He will cause us to resemble Christ (1 John 3:1-3).
God's grace is truly amazing! Scandalous even.
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