By Adam Lloyd Johnson, Ph.D.
On October 17, 2022, William Lane Craig discussed an article of mine in which I explained my Divine Love Theory. My article was published in the Worldview Bulletin Newsletter here: Divine Love Theory: How the Trinity Is the Source and Foundation of Morality.
You can listen to Craig’s podcast about my Divine Love Theory here: Divine Love Theory and the Trinity | Podcast | Reasonable Faith.
First, I’ll provide key quotes from Craig’s podcast. Craig said he has reservations about my Divine Love Theory because “it proposes that the love between the members of the Trinity is the source and foundation of morality, and I think that is a distorted and lopsided view because, as important as divine love is, it also equally belongs to God’s moral perfection to be just and to be holy.”
Craig noted that “I recently came to articulate a position on this while working on divine goodness for my systematic philosophical theology, and I gave a paper on the question ‘Is God’s moral perfection reducible to His love?’ … In it I criticize this so-called ‘Identity Thesis’ that identifies God’s moral perfection with His love and try to show how this is, in fact, biblically inadequate and does not take adequate cognizance of the fact of God’s justice, which is just as essential and just as significant as divine love. We have to include both in God’s moral perfection.”
In response to a section of my article where I wrote that the inner-trinitarian love provides the ultimate foundation for objective morality, Craig said, “I think that’s a mistake; that is wrong. The foundation for objective morality needs to include both love and justice. So while Adam is right that humans are good when they resemble this divine love in a morally pertinent sense, what about when they’re not good? What about when they flout God’s moral commands and they act hatefully and wrongly towards one another? Is there no retributive justice on God’s part to be demanded as punishment for sin? And I think biblically there certainly is. We incur a just desert for our failure to obey God’s commands and to resemble His love in a pertinent way.”
After a portion of my paper was read where I argued that if God is the ultimate reality, and if He exists as three divine persons in loving communion, then love is the basic fabric of reality, Craig said, “now, that again is this Identity Thesis, [that] love is the basic fabric of reality, that God’s moral character is identical with or reducible to His love, and that leaves out divine justice. It is radically incomplete and, therefore, although I like his emphasis upon relationality in God Himself and the importance of maintaining love relations, that’s very positive, but it’s incomplete, and I think Adam needs to supplement his theory with a robust account of God’s retributive justice and holiness.”
In the podcast the interviewer asked, “Do you think that if God were just one person like some monotheistic religions teach, that this loving, relational, communal aspect of reality would not be possible?” Craig responded by saying, “Well, I think that would be difficult to prove … because it seems to me that a unitarian God could still create created persons and love them and cherish them and hope that they would love Him as well so that there would still be relations that would be important to morality, but I think Adam would be right; it wouldn’t be grounded in ultimate reality in that God Himself would not be relational. I think the advantage of the Trinity is that those relationships are in the very being of God Himself and not merely something that’s contingently created when God creates human persons. So, I think on a unitarian view God could command us to relate, but He wouldn’t model it for us, whereas on the trinitarian view God actually models these relationships for us; He doesn’t simply command us to relate.”
After a portion of my paper was read where I wrote that love is the basis of morality and that it originates from within God’s inner life of three divine members in perfect loving communion with one another, Craig said, “this paragraph was interesting to me … because it is the same justification that defenders of the so-called ‘Identity Thesis’ like Jordan Wessling provide for equating God’s moral perfection with His love. And I think that the argument fails to take account of what one’s just desert is for failing to keep God’s commandments. It articulates our moral obligations to God and one another in terms of these loving relationships, but it fails to provide any account of one’s just desert for sin, for failing to keep God’s commands, and therefore, it’s seriously inadequate as a moral theory.”
I’m thankful for Craig’s critique. This is how theology and philosophy are supposed to work; we evaluate each other’s ideas, point out strengths and weaknesses, and in the process improve our understanding of God and His creation. Craig and I have been talking about moral philosophy for several years now. In 2016 I took an Independent Study in Specialized Research seminar under Craig’s direction for three credit hours as part of my Ph.D. My work from this eventually became part of my book Divine Love Theory: How the Trinity is the Source and Foundation of Morality which will be published by Kregel Academic in March 2023. In 2017 Craig encouraged me to organize a panel at the American Academy of Religion’s annual meeting in Boston. Craig and I both served on this panel and presented papers defending Divine Command Theory. Both of our papers were published in Philosophia Christi in 2018. That same year, I also organized and moderated a debate about Divine Command Theory between Craig and Erik Wielenberg at North Carolina State University. Together, we developed a book that included this debate, which was published by Routledge in 2021 as A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties?. I served as the editor and also wrote the first chapter.
In his podcast Craig critiqued my Divine Love Theory for ignoring God’s justice. Let me say at the outset that I wholeheartedly affirm God’s justice, His wrath, and His righteous punishment of our evil. I certainly don’t want to be associated with a ‘soft’ Christianity that only talks about God’s love while ignoring His righteousness. Throughout my teaching and preaching (I’m an ordained Southern Baptist pastor), I’ve often emphasized God’s holiness and His justice in punishing us for evil. Because of our evil choices we justly deserve not only physical death but an eternal death of being separated from God forever. The only way to be saved from this just punishment is to trust in Christ as your Lord and Savior.
Craig’s critique of my Divine Love Theory was based on the idea that my theory affirms what he calls the ‘Identity Thesis,’ namely, that God’s moral nature is reducible to His love. However, my Divine Love Theory doesn’t affirm this Identity Thesis. Thus, Craig’s critique was more about the failings of the Identity Thesis, not my Divine Love Theory.
It’s important to note that Craig and I are trying to explain different things. My Divine Love Theory is merely attempting to provide an explanation for moral value (what makes a human action morally good or bad) and moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong). On the other hand, Craig is focused on explaining God’s moral nature. For example, in the podcast he said he’s “working on divine goodness for my systematic philosophical theology.” He even titled his recent paper on this issue “Is God’s Moral Perfection Reducible to His Love?” and in it argued that, no, God’s moral perfection is not reducible to His love but includes His love and His justice. Craig explained that “in it I criticize this so-called ‘Identity Thesis’ that identifies God’s moral perfection with His love and try to show how this is, in fact, biblically inadequate and does not take adequate cognizance of the fact of God’s justice, which is just as essential and just as significant as divine love. We have to include both in God’s moral perfection.”
I understand why Craig mistakenly thought my theory affirms this Identity Thesis. After all, I wrote that “the inner-trinitarian love provides the ultimate foundation for objective morality.” Craig pointed out that this “is the same justification that defenders of the so-called Identity Thesis like Jordan Wessling provide for equating God’s moral perfection with His love.” While what I wrote may sound like Wessling’s Identity Thesis, that is not what I had in mind when I wrote that. In other words, Craig thought I was affirming the Identity Thesis here, but I was not. What I meant by this sentence is that the inner-trinitarian love provides the ultimate source and foundation for objective moral value (what makes a human action good or bad) and for objective moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong). The reason why my Divine Love Theory only focuses on explaining human moral value and obligation is because I developed my theory for the purpose of engaging atheists like Erik Wielenberg about the moral argument for God. The moral argument is often presented as follows:
- There are objective moral truths.
- God provides the best explanation for objective moral truths.
- Therefore, God exists.
Atheists like Wielenberg affirm premise one, that there are objective truths about moral value and obligation, but reject premise two, that God is the best explanation for these truths. Thus, I developed my Divine Love Theory in order to explain how a trinitarian God is a superior explanation for objective moral value and obligation compared to Wielenberg’s atheistic explanation. In other words, my theory doesn’t include much about God’s justice for the same reason Craig didn’t talk much about God’s justice in His debate with Wielenberg, i.e., because the discussion here is about providing an account of what both Wielenberg and Christians affirm—objective moral value and obligation.
I, like Craig, do affirm that God is loving and just. I also believe Craig is correct when he said that, in addition to divine love, “it also equally belongs to God’s moral perfection to be just and to be holy.” And I agree with Craig that if I were developing an explanation of God’s moral perfection, then, as Craig said, I certainly should include “a robust account of God’s retributive justice and holiness.” But my Divine Love Theory isn’t trying to provide an explanation of God’s moral perfection or God’s moral nature. Instead, my theory is merely attempting to provide an explanation for moral value (what makes a human action morally good or bad) and moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong). It doesn’t seem that God’s justice is part of this explanation for moral value (what makes a human action good or bad) or for moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong).
In addition, while moral value (what makes a human action good or bad) and moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong) can both be explained by appealing only to God’s love, if one were to explain why God punishes evil, another important aspect of morality, then one would certainly appeal to God’s justice. Craig implied this himself in his podcast when he said, “so while Adam is right that humans are good when they resemble this divine love in a morally pertinent sense, what about when they’re not good? What about when they flout God’s moral commands and they act hatefully and wrongly towards one another? Is there no retributive justice on God’s part to be demanded as punishment for sin? And I think biblically there certainly is. We incur a just desert for our failure to obey God’s commands and to resemble His love in a pertinent way.” He also said my theory “fails to take account of what one’s just desert is for failing to keep God’s commandments. It articulates our moral obligations to God and one another in terms of these loving relationships, but it fails to provide any account of one’s just desert for sin, for failing to keep God’s commands and therefore, it’s seriously inadequate as a moral theory.” My theory didn’t take into account what one’s just desert is for failing to keep God’s commandments because my theory isn’t trying to explain God’s punishment for evil but is only trying to explain moral value (what makes a human action good or bad) and moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong). If I were going to try and explain why God punishes evil, then I would certainly bring in truths about God’s justice.
Here’s an example that might help illustrate my point. I also affirm that God is omnipotent and omniscient, but it wouldn’t be necessary to appeal to those attributes of God to explain moral value (what makes a human action morally good or bad) and moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong). On the other hand, if I were trying to explain God’s nature overall, then part of that explanation would include His attributes of omnipotence and omniscience. Thus, in Craig’s case, in which he’s trying to explain God’s moral nature, his explanation should include God’s love and justice. But in my case, in which I’m merely trying to explain human moral value and moral obligation, my explanation doesn’t seem to require God’s justice.
Let me give another example which hopefully will clarify the difference. When I was a teenager, I had a white 1990 Mustang LX 5.0 which was a former state patrol car. It was a fast car, and I earned a few speeding tickets with it, which I justly deserved! However, if someone asked me why it was so fast, my explanation would include facts about its motor and possibly its tires, aerodynamic shape, and the little tweaks the state patrol did to make it speedier than a normal Mustang. However, in explaining why it was so fast, I wouldn’t include the fact that it was white and black in color and had cloth seats. While those facts were true about my car, they wouldn’t be part of an explanation of why it was so fast. Now if I was explaining my car in general, then I would include those attributes about its color and cloth interior. Similarly, if I were explaining God’s moral nature, then that explanation would include His love and justice. But in my Divine Love Theory, I’m merely trying to explain moral value (what makes a human action morally good or bad) and moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong), and that explanation doesn’t seem to require God’s attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, or justice.
In my Divine Love Theory, I explain moral obligation as follows: our moral obligations are generated by God’s commands because God should be loved and obeying Him is the way we love Him. Thus, obeying God’s commands is morally right, and disobeying them is morally wrong. This is a standard Divine Command Theory, which Craig, Robert Adams, and I [not a reflexive case] all affirm. It doesn’t seem that God’s justice, then, is part of the explanation of moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong). Keep in mind, though, that Divine Command Theory only deals with moral obligation (what makes a human action right or wrong), not moral value (what makes a human action good or bad).
In my Divine Love Theory, I explain moral value as follows: an action is morally good if it resembles the love between the members of the Trinity in a morally pertinent sense and is morally bad if it doesn’t. This is almost exactly how Robert Adams’s theory, which Craig affirms, explains moral value, except that Adams says an action is morally good if it resembles God’s nature in general (whereas I specify if it resembles the love between the members of the Trinity). Craig even himself affirmed in the podcast that I’m “right that humans are good when they resemble this divine love in a morally pertinent sense.” Thus, while God is just, His justness isn’t part of the explanation of what makes a human action good or bad.
Considering that human persons are vastly different from divine persons, some have wondered how human actions could resemble the trinitarian relationships. To understand this resemblance, consider two examples: first, a human being protecting an innocent person from a murderer, and second, a human being murdering an innocent person. It may seem puzzling how these actions could resemble the trinitarian relationships, or fail to resemble them in the second example, because the divine persons can’t die. The reason protecting an innocent person from a murderer reflects the trinitarian relationships is that, because of the way God created humans—that is, human nature—such an act is a loving thing to do, and doing something that is loving resembles the loving relationships between the persons of the Trinity; thus, it’s morally good. Conversely, because of the way God created humans, the act of murdering an innocent person is not a loving thing to do, and it doesn’t resemble the loving relationships between the persons of the Trinity; thus, it’s morally bad. In other words, it’s not the protecting of the innocent (or the murdering of the innocent) but the loving (or unloving) aspect of that action that resembles (or doesn’t resemble) the relationships among the persons of the Trinity. Thus, hypothetically, if God had made human beings such that we felt great pleasure at being murdered and then came back to life shortly after, then murder would be a loving thing for humans to do and thus morally good. In this way, then, facts about the human nature God created and facts about the relationships between the persons of the Trinity work together to determine what’s morally good and bad for humans to do.
The only way I can think of that God’s justice might be part of the explanation of human moral value is if one is trying to explain why it’s morally good for humans themselves to punish evil. We might want to say that humans punishing evil is good because it resembles God’s justice. However, it might very well be the case that humans punishing evil is good because it in some way resembles the love between the members of the Trinity in a morally pertinent sense. I’ll have to think more on this.
Let me reiterate that I agree with Craig’s point that, when explaining God’s moral nature, it’s important to include His love and His justice. In fact, in my forthcoming book Divine Love Theory: How the Trinity is the Source and Foundation of Morality, which I finished writing in 2020, I wrote that “a qualifying comment may be pertinent here. While it’s important not to ignore the inner-trinitarian relationships, it’s also incorrect to say that all of morality is grounded solely in these loving relationships, because, though they’re essential to God, they are only one essential aspect of Him. It would be inaccurate to separate off this particular aspect of God and claim that all of morality is based only on this one aspect.” In this book I do discuss God’s justice in that I spend two sections explaining how we’re morally accountable to God. In these sections I argue that my Divine Love Theory provides required elements for objective morality that Wielenberg’s theory does not, namely, a social context for moral obligation and a personal authority at the head of the chain of moral obligation.
In this section of my book, I wrote that “Immanuel Kant argued that in order for us to have moral obligations, there must be a head at the chain of moral obligation who is completely independent, without needs, and unlimited in power. Kant was explicit about this in his Critique of Practical Reason, where he wrote that ‘the moral law leads through the concept of the highest good, as the object and final end of pure practical reason, to religion, that is, to the recognition of all duties as divine commands, not as sanctions—that is, chosen and in themselves contingent ordinances of another’s will—but as essential laws of every free will in itself, which must nevertheless be regarded as commands of a supreme being because only from a will that is morally perfect (holy and beneficent) and at the same time all-powerful, and so through harmony with this will, can we hope to attain the highest good, which the moral law makes it our duty to take as the object of our endeavors.’ From this quote we can see that Kant added the following requirements for the head of the moral kingdom: he must be the supreme being, morally perfect, and all-powerful. According to Kant, then, for us to have real moral duties there must be someone—a head, so to speak—at the end of the chain of moral obligation.”
I then go on to argue that “Wielenberg’s model is lacking because it’s implausible to think that circumstances, natural events, situational factors, abstract objects, or even moral principles could, by themselves apart from God, generate moral obligations. We’re obligated not to impersonal things but to persons. In an impersonal universe with no personal authority at the head of the moral kingdom, there’s no one we’d be guilty before and accountable to. Additionally, our human-to-human personal relationships alone, while important, are not sufficient enough to generate objective moral obligations because other humans don’t have ultimate moral authority over us. Alternatively, an ultimate personal moral authority, such as a triune God, provides much greater warrant for thinking we really do have objective moral obligations. Therefore, because a personal authority at the head of the chain of moral obligation is required for morality to be objective, and since my Divine Love Theory contains this element while Wielenberg’s model does not, my theory is a superior explanation for objective morality compared to Wielenberg’s.”
To summarize, Craig strongly opposes the Identity Thesis and argues against it. But my Divine Love Theory doesn’t affirm this Identity Thesis, so Craig’s case against it doesn’t apply towards my Divine Love Theory. Interestingly, Craig said proponents of the Identity Thesis affirm that “God’s moral character is identical with or reducible to His love and that leaves out divine justice.” I haven’t yet read much by proponents of the Identity Thesis, but I wonder if maybe, at least for some of them, they actually don’t leave out justice completely but merely claim God’s justice ultimately flows from His love. In other words, this raises an interesting issue about whether love and justice are separate attributes of God or if one of these attributes is merely an extension of the other. I look forward to exploring that particular issue further. Regardless, Craig’s critique of my Divine Love Theory, that it fails to include God’s justice, doesn’t really apply because in my theory I’m only trying to explain moral value and moral obligation, and it doesn’t seem that God’s justice is required for that explanation. However, if one were to explain why God punishes evil or to explain God’s moral nature, as Craig is trying to do, then that explanation would require discussing both God’s love and justice.
© Adam Lloyd Johnson and Convincing Proof.