Introduction
The Euthyphro Dilemma is often cited as one of the oldest topics of contention in the history of philosophy. By asking whether goodness acquires its merit through the approval of a deity, or by virtue of a quality in and of itself, the dilemma raises incredibly consequential questions about metaethics, free will, theology, and more. Although originally raised in the context of the pagan beliefs of classical Grecian civilization, the dilemma's barb is considerably sharpened for the monotheist, whose belief is traditionally taken to require that God not be subject to external standards, and who at the same time believes firmly in a praiseworthy deity, thus recapitulating the two "horns" of the dilemma. In this article, I will present the dilemma and explore one attempted solution to this dilemma, termed "modified divine command theory". As we will see, this "solution" not only fails to avoid the dilemma, but also results in a significantly worse solution than the traditional divine command theory approach, especially the Islamic articulation that I defend.
The Dilemma
As mentioned in the introduction, the Euthyphro dilemma centers around two competing explanations for goodness and its relation to God, neither of which can be consistently maintained alongside the other1. On the one hand, God is considered the most praiseworthy being because He exemplifies qualities and performs acts that we consider "good"—being just, forgiving, forbearing, and so forth. This suggests that goodness exists as an independent standard to which even God conforms. On the other hand, God is considered the comprehensive explanation for the world and the creator of all objective standards, making Him the source who determines what counts as good rather than a being subject to pre-existing moral criteria. These two explanations generate a vicious circle: if God is praiseworthy because He conforms to moral goodness, then goodness appears independent of God's will; but if goodness derives its authority from God's commands, then calling God "good" becomes either trivial or meaningless.
Faced with these two competing explanations, theists have been forced to give preponderance to one horn of the dilemma over the other, and to bite the bullet regarding its potential consequences. Proponents of an independent standard of goodness, like the Mu'tazilites of Islamic Theology, or natural law theorists, affirm a realist notion of goodness at the expense of minimizing God's sovereignty, making Him a compelled being who must adhere to this standard in order to maintain His status. Proponents of God's sovereignty, like the Ash’arites2, or like many prominent Christian philosophers, ensure that God is not subject to an external standard, but render the notion of God's goodness as somewhat empty, and open themselves up to the possibility that God could render an outrageous act like rape or child murder to be "good" by His command. This second opinion has traditionally been termed "divine command theory", since goodness acquires its character by divine fiat, rather than any inborn quality itself.
Modified Divine Command Theory and its Discontents
In recent times, however, many Christian philosophers have suggested that there is a means to have one's cake and eat it too, holding to a realist notion of moral goodness while also ensuring that God is not subject to any independent standard3. This view — termed "modified divine command theory" — maintains that God is the ultimate standard of goodness in the world, as divine command theorists had done. However, unlike divine command theorists, they assert that God does not arbitrarily will for something to be good, but rather legislates according to His own nature. For example, justice is good for the world not because of an inborn quality in it, or because God arbitrarily decided to make it so, but rather, because God's own nature is just. According to its proponents, this renders the Euthypro a false dilemma, as their view manages to incorporate both horns without sacrificing one or the other.
Like its proponents, I think that MDCT is distinct from traditional divine command theory, and from approaches that accept the first horn of the dilemma and bite the bullet on God's sovereignty. But rather than regard its distinction as a point of merit, it is my contention that MDCT actually adopts the worst aspects of both approaches, leading to a handicapped view of both God and goodness.
This becomes clear when we consider the first horn of the Euthyphro dilemma. One of the reasons that the Euthyphro dilemma acquires such force is that humans tend to feel strongly that certain actions just are good, independent of who is commanding them, or why. On MDCT, this issue persists, despite the attempt to ground goodness in God's unchanging nature. Even on MDCT, because goodness is still grounded in something other than itself, goodness still lacks independent weight. If God's nature had included capriciousness and avarice, then these traits would be considered "good". Ultimately, whether or not something is good is thus still somewhat arbitrary, in that it depends not on features contained in itself, but on the seemingly unrelated fact that it is a quality of another agent4. While MDCT's rendering of God's nature as a standard for goodness does ultimately avert the worry that God could make rape or murder good by commanding them, this is a hollow victory.
The above issue also means that MDCT cannot truly explain *why* God is good, something that other moral realist views are able to do5, despite their other failures. If God's nature explains why a certain quality is good, then we cannot at the same time appeal to those qualities to explain why God (or His nature) is good, without creating a similar regress of explanations as we mentioned above. Thus, when considering the first horn of the dilemma, MDCT fails to ultimately guarantee the independence of goodness, and to explain what it is that makes God good.
A similar problem arises when we consider how MDCT relates to the second horn of the dilemma. The reason that the aforementioned drive to affirm an independent moral standard of goodness is so difficult to swallow, is the parallel desire to ensure God's absolute sovereignty, positing that all (real) standards, moral or otherwise, are products of Him, and that no quality of His is a product of an independent standard. On MDCT, God's sovereignty is notionally defended in that the standard of goodness is based on His nature, but in reality, this greatly constrains God's sovereignty. While the standard of goodness is located in God, God is still constrained by a standard that He cannot oppose, even if that standard is His own nature.
Thus, when considered in this manner, it should be clear that MDCT incorporates the weaknesses of both of the common approaches to the Euthyphro dilemma. Like realist approaches to the dilemma, MDCT constrains God's free will and power, ultimately leaving Him subject to a standard He cannot oppose. At the same time, like divine command theory, MDCT fails to explain why God is good, leaving the doctrine of God's goodness somewhat empty. In trying to have their cake and eat it too, MDCT proponents thus end up with an attempted explanation for the dilemma that is weaker than the traditional options they discard.
A Muslim Reflection on the Dilemma
Having established why I feel that MDCT fails to provide a reasonable solution to the Euthyphro dilemma, the question still remains on what an explanation should look like. As Muslims, we must be able to do more than articulate the flaws in existing Christian explanations of religious questions. Instead, we have to be able to defend Islamic answers to these problems, and show that Islam contains some wisdom in this matter that other religions do not.
One possible response to this problem is to consider the Ash’ari approach. As mentioned earlier, the Ash’ari school of Islamic theology is almost invariably described as adhering to a divine command theory response to the questions of the dilemma6. Partly in response to the dual extremes of the Mu'tazila and anthropomorphists, Ash’aris developed a sophisticated doctrine with a strong emphasis on God's transcendence. As I expressed in my first article7, God's transcendence means that he cannot be judged by any analogy to humans. Thus, the fact that humans feel that agents performing some acts are praiseworthy regardless of who they are, is not too different to a child who imagines that God must be an infinitely large and strong human. By keeping in mind that God is utterly transcendent, we can understand why the notion that he would be independent of human moral standards might not be so strange.
At the same time, however, God's transcendence does not leave Him totally other. While God is not dependent on any moral standard, that does not mean that He cannot Himself choose to act in a certain way, out of His complete free will. As the famous Hadith tells us, God has prohibited for Himself injustice89, and when He created his throne, he wrote upon it "My mercy overcomes my wrath"10. Thus, while we can affirm that God is utterly transcendent and capable of performing any act without censure, we can also affirm that he chooses to act in a way that often benefits humans.
To opponents, this will seem totally insufficient. Afterall, God's choosing to be merciful or just does not remove the issue that, at their core, there is nothing independently praiseworthy about these two qualities. And yet, to the Muslim, this should not be a problem. While other religions dilute God's oneness by irrational doctrines like the trinity, or by anthropomorphising Him and rendering Him existent in the world, Muslims are devoted lovers who recognize nothing except Him. At its core, there is nothing truly special in existence, except God. The fact that God does not have higher purposes that accord with human will, or does not follow a moral standard that accords with our intuitions, is no matter11. Ultimately, as the Prophet ﷺ stated, the truest word spoken by a poet is that of Labid: "Everything save God is vain..."12.
Sayre-McCord, Geoff. 2007. “Metaethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford.edu. January 23, 2007. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaethics/.
In keeping with the the introductory nature of this essay, I have refrained from discussing the Maturidi tradition, though it itself presents an extremely compelling solution to the Euthypro problem, as noted by Western philosophers such as John E. Hare, in his book “God’s Command”.
Koons, Jeremy. 2012. “Can God’s Goodness Save the Divine Command Theory from Euthyphro?” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 4 (1): 177. https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.v4i1.313.
See the above cited article for an extended discussion on why this argument applies to the particularist account of MDCT presented by Robert Adams
For a contemporary example of a realist view, see Swinburne’s “The Coherence of Theism”. Pre-modern examples of realist views are harder to present than might be anticipated, in part because metaethics does not seem to have been as contentious in the West as it was in the Muslim world. Thus, views on both sides of this issue have been attributed to the same figures, due to contradictory writings.
There have been attempts to contextualize the Ash’arite divine command theory as an epistemological answer, rather than a metaethical one. See Omar Farahat’s “The Foundation of Norms in Islamic Jurisprudence and Theology”. I generally agree that Ash’arite divine command theory should not be taken in isolation, but in general stick to the traditional portrayal here.
Tariq, Umar. 2025. “Reflections on Transcendence.” Substack.com. al Mu’allaqat: Notes from the Margins. May 2025. https://almuallaqat.substack.com/p/reflections-on-transcendence.
“Al-Adab Al-Mufrad 490 - Injustice - كتاب الظُّلْم - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم).” 2025. Sunnah.com. 2025. https://sunnah.com/adab:490.
Of course, this hadith is also interpreted to be a simple statement of divine command theory. Both interpretations will suffice for me, as does the ensuing hadith.
“Hadith 1, 40 Hadith Qudsi - Forty Hadith Qudsi - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم).” 2025. Sunnah.com. 2025. https://sunnah.com/qudsi40:1.
This comment is regarding the idea of a moral argument against divine command theory. Separate epistemological arguments exist, which would merit further consideration.
“Hamariweb.” 2025. Hamariweb.com Islam. 2025. https://hamariweb.com/islam/hadith/sunan-ibn-majah-3757/.