1b) to what extent are things only good because God commands them? (10)
To find out the extent to which things are only good because of God commanding them you would first have to decide whether an action or thing becomes good because of God commanding it or if it is good before. Other questions which should be examined include whether the things God has commanded you to do are actually ‘good’ and if the things God has said are wrong and immoral really are. Personally I believe that many things can be good even if God has not declared it to be so and this point has become increasingly obvious throughout time; one of the most renowned and obviously ridiculous examples of things that God has informed us is not ‘good’ is homosexuality. In my opinion this is the best example of why the answer to our question is a ‘very small extent’; God, Christianity and many other religions are absolutely against homosexuality with no exceptions at all taking a strictly deontological view on the matter. Despite the act you would think, not hurting anyone Leviticus 18:22 clearly states that this is an abomination and those who practice homosexuality should be put to death, yet the entire religion of Christianity is based upon love, love of oneself, love of your neighbour, and most importantly love of God. But why should the love of another man be considered evil? God has clearly commanded that humans should not be gay and that the act is wrong, evil, and most poignantly not ‘good’ but then sets the double standard of having his son tell us that Gods message to the rest of the world can be summed up with “You must love your neighbour as yourself”-Jesus Christ.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, and it is not easily angered. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres. - Corinthians 1:13
The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro; and asks the question ‘is something good because God commands it, or does God command something because it is good?’ The dilemma is that if the acts being performed are morally good because they are good by nature, then they are independent of God. These acts would already be good in themselves, and God would have to appeal to them to "find out" what is good. On the other hand, if something is good because God commands that it is good, then goodness is arbitrary; and God could have called murder good and honesty not good. Alternatively, there is a third option that many people don’t think about, which is that God good appeals to nothing other than his own character for the standard of what is good and then reveals what is good to us. It is wrong to lie because God cannot lie, not because God had to discover lying was wrong or that he arbitrarily declared it to be wrong. This means that God does not arbitrarily declare something to be good (ignoring his own nature) or say that something is good by nature (recognizing a standard outside of himself). Both of these situations ignore the biblical option that good is a revelation of God's nature. In other words, God is good by nature; and he reveals that nature to us which is what we call ‘good’. The question is does this then imply that Gods power is limited? The consequences of God being limited by himself would mean that he was no longer omnipotent or omniscient and no Christian would be able to accept this when his word is their absolute law. "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? – Socrates
This leads us on to the Divine Command Theory which states that “an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by what God commands, and that to be moral is to follow his commands.” The problem with this theory is that if God commands something that we could describe as unjust or immoral, then why should we believe that it is now a good act? An example of this that is when in the bible God kills an estimated three million people whereas the Devil, a being of pure evil, killed ten… while under Gods command. Surely the extent to which God’s commands are morally good cannot be large if he’s saying one thing about goodness and doing another, surely not everyone out of the three million could have sinned and deserved death.
In conclusion, I see no reason why an action would be made morally right just because God has commanded it 2,000 years ago and so the extent to which him commanding something and making it ‘good’ is minute. The original makes even less sense in divine command theory where the main rule is to do what God says even If you don’t understand it which is just ridiculous when you believe God is the one who gave you the ability to reason and question things (free will).