Eternal law that even God obeys
If law, matter and intelligences are uncreated and God became God by obeying law, then the law - not God - is ultimate, and nothing explains the law.
What the Church claims
God is the supreme being and author of the plan of salvation; yet LDS scripture also teaches laws 'irrevocably decreed' that bind blessings, justice that God cannot override without ceasing to be God, and uncreated intelligence and element.
Once the evidence is in, this claim: Contested. The two halves of the claim pull against each other inside the Church's own scripture, and no official teaching reconciles them. LDS philosophers have real answers, but they buy coherence by giving up the sovereignty members are taught from the pulpit. Contested because the tension is genuine and unresolved rather than fatal.
The record
- D&C 130:20-21 teaches a law 'irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world' on which every blessing is predicated.
- D&C 88 calls the light of Christ 'the law by which all things are governed' and says 'That which is governed by law is also preserved by law'; every kingdom has a law with bounds and conditions. The passage can be read either as God being the source of law (v. 13, 42) or as law being a condition on all beings.
- Alma 42 says three times that if justice were destroyed or robbed 'God would cease to be God' (vv. 13, 22, 25). Taken at face value this makes God's godhood conditional on something other than his will.
- 2 Nephi 2:13 chains law -> sin -> righteousness -> happiness, and v. 11 makes 'opposition in all things' a necessity ('it must needs be') rather than a divine choice; v. 14 nevertheless says God 'hath created all things'.
- D&C 93:29, 33 and Abraham 3:18 teach that intelligence 'was not created or made, neither indeed can be', that 'the elements are eternal', and that spirits 'have no beginning'. God therefore confronts realities he did not make.
- Francis Beckwith's version of the objection: because the LDS God attained godhood by obeying pre-existing moral law, he 'is not the being in whom morality ultimately rests'; the LDS God is contingent and non-ultimate.
- Blake Ostler's reply (the most developed LDS answer): necessary moral truths would hold even in a world without God, so nobody's God grounds them; putting them in God's 'nature' merely relocates Euthyphro; and a God who is good by necessity rather than by choice 'is not a moral being in any meaningful sense'.
- Cleon Skousen's popular 'intelligences' theory (1980 Dallas missionary talk) holds that God's power rests on the trust and honor of the intelligences, and reads Alma 42's 'cease to be God' literally. Ostler rejects it as making God's status precarious and the Father unjust.
The moving target
- 1843-04: All blessings are obtained by obedience to a law decreed before the world.
- 1833-05: Intelligence and element are uncreated and eternal.
- 2000: God's power is the power to do whatever is 'consistent with the natures of eternal existences'; eternal principles are co-eternal with God.
The exchange
Blake T. Ostler (FAIR/FARMS Review)
Everyone faces Euthyphro. If moral truths are necessary they are independent of any God; classical theists who put them in God's nature have only renamed the problem. The LDS view is at least honest that God is good because he freely and always chooses the good.
The answer: The tu quoque is partly fair but does not remove the LDS-specific difficulty. Classical theism identifies the ultimate explanation with a necessary being; LDS theology has a plurality of brute ultimates (law, matter, intelligences, and at least one God) with no account of why just these exist or why the law has the content it has - including contingent-looking content such as ordinances, priesthood keys and a blood atonement. Ostler's 'semantic necessity' covers 'torturing babies is wrong'; it does not cover 'baptism by immersion by an authorized priesthood holder is required'. And if the law is simply there, God is a law-follower and guide, not the source of obligation, which is a real revision of what most members think they are worshipping.
What they get right: Ostler is right that divine-nature theories do not obviously escape Euthyphro, and that this objection is not a uniquely Mormon problem. A secular critic cannot use it as a point in favor of classical Christianity.
common FAIR/BYU reading; cf. Ostler on Skousen
'God would cease to be God' is rhetorical - a per impossibile statement stressing that God will never be unjust, not a metaphysical claim that law outranks him. D&C 88 makes God the giver of law.
The answer: That reading is available for Alma 42, but it sits awkwardly with D&C 130:20-21 (law 'irrevocably decreed' and binding on how God blesses) and with the King Follett teaching that God himself advanced to godhood, which requires a standard prior to him. Leaders and popular teachers such as Skousen have in fact taught the literal reading for decades, so critics are not inventing it.
Both cases at full strength
The skeptics' case
LDS scripture gives law, element and intelligence the same uncreated status it gives God, and makes God's continued godhood conditional on justice being satisfied. Two versions of the objection follow. The Christian-theist version (Beckwith and Parrish) says such a God is not the ultimate ground of morality or being and so is not God in the philosophically relevant sense. The secular version is simpler: a theology that posits several unexplained brute ultimates, one of which is a very powerful embodied person, has explained nothing that naturalism leaves unexplained, and has added a law whose specific contents (ordinances, authority, blood atonement) look historically contingent rather than necessary. Ostler's reply shows the classical alternative has its own Euthyphro problem, but that is a reason to doubt both, not a defense of the LDS picture. The remaining cost is internal: if the law is independent, then the plan's harsh features cannot be excused as God's inscrutable will (he did not write the rules), yet they also cannot be shown to be necessary.
The apologetic case
Ostler and Paulsen argue that a God who works within eternal realities is more coherent, not less: it avoids making God the author of evil, makes divine goodness a free moral achievement rather than a metaphysical accident, and mirrors the fact that classical theists also admit constraints on God (logic, counterfactuals of freedom). On this view 'law' is not a rival deity but the description of how free, co-eternal persons can flourish together, and God is worshipped for his perfect love rather than for metaphysical ultimacy.
What would change this
A canonical or First Presidency statement that God is the author (not the subject) of all law, with an account of how that fits D&C 130 and King Follett; or a philosophical demonstration that the specific LDS ordinance requirements are necessary rather than contingent.
Closely related
- Justice, mercy and who is being paid
- A finite God and the regress of gods
- The problem of evil under a finite God
- Vicarious redemption: the moral objection
Sources
- Doctrine and Covenants 88
- Doctrine and Covenants 130
- Alma 42
- 2 Nephi 2
- Blake T. Ostler: complete works
- Review of Beckwith & Parrish, The Mormon Concept of God: A Philosophical Analysis
- Philosophical Problems with the Mormon Concept of God
- Moral Obligation and Mormonism: A Response to Francis Beckwith
- Blake Ostler's Critique of Cleon Skousen on the Atonement
- Joseph Smith and the Problem of Evil
- Discourse, 7 April 1844, as Reported by William Clayton (p. 3)
- Doctrine and Covenants 93
- Abraham 3
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