🧠 Escaping Euthyphro’s Snare: Reclaiming Divine Goodness in Reformed Theodicy

By William M. Brennan

The ancient dilemma posed by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro remains a thorn in the side of many theological systems:

“Is something good because God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?”

Applied to Christian theology, the challenge becomes this: Is goodness something external to God that He obeys, or is it something arbitrary, defined solely by divine will?

In seeking to protect divine sovereignty, modern Reformed thinkers like Gordon Clark and Herman Hoeksema fall—ironically—into opposite sides of this dilemma. Each departs from classic Reformed orthodoxy and, in doing so, redefines divine goodness in troubling ways.

Clark: Goodness as Arbitrary Divine Fiat

Gordon Clark took a voluntarist view of divine goodness. In his system, whatever God wills is ipso facto good. There is no intrinsic moral structure in God's nature that governs His will. Moral law simply reflects divine volition.

“God’s will is not subject to moral laws; rather, moral laws are the expressions of his will.”
— Religion, Reason, and Revelation, p. 217

“Whatever God does is right, simply because God does it.”
— God and Evil: The Problem Solved, p. 9

The result? God’s power is preserved—but His goodness becomes unintelligible. If justice or cruelty are equally valid under God's sovereign decree, then God becomes unknowable in any moral sense. This collapses ethics into raw divine fiat.

Hoeksema: Goodness as a Principle Above God

On the other extreme stands Herman Hoeksema, a supralapsarian theologian and founder of the Protestant Reformed Churches. Hoeksema also seeks to uphold divine sovereignty but ends up treating God's actions as responses to a higher principle of glory and justice. In this way, goodness becomes a standard above God—a kind of metaphysical blueprint He follows.

“God does not love the reprobate. He hates them and never wills their salvation.”
— Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1, p. 310

“Even in time, the reprobate are not the objects of God’s favor or grace… they were never loved.”
— Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1, p. 313

In this system, God does not offer salvation out of love or goodness within Himself, but rather as a function of divine justice and glory—concepts treated as higher than His benevolence. Hoeksema, then, reduces goodness to a form of rigid determinism where reprobation is not a sorrowful reality but a cold necessity.

The Orthodox Reformed Answer: Goodness Within God

Classic Reformed orthodoxy, however, offers a better way—by affirming the doctrine of divine simplicity. God is not subject to an external moral law (as Hoeksema implies), nor does He invent goodness by decree (as Clark asserts). Rather:

God is goodness itself.

His will flows from His nature, and His decrees reflect His unchanging, unified, and morally perfect essence.

Theologians like Bavinck, Turretin, and Calvin hold this line with clarity:

“God is not subject to a law above Him, nor is He lawless; His will is the expression of His being, which is holy, wise, and good.”
— Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, p. 213

“The goodness of God is not an external rule to which He conforms, nor a product of His mere will; it is an essential attribute, eternally in God Himself.”
— Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 1, p. 239

“God is the fountain of all righteousness, so that whatever He wills must be considered just… yet His will is never divorced from His nature.”
— John Calvin, Institutes, 3.23.2

In this view, divine sovereignty and divine goodness are not at odds, because God’s will and actions flow from the fullness of who He is—perfect in justice, mercy, wisdom, and love.

The Real Problem with Clark and Hoeksema

Both Gordon Clark and Herman Hoeksema, in their zeal to preserve God's sovereignty, fall into opposite traps:

• Clark places goodness below God—as something He arbitrarily defines by command.
• Hoeksema places goodness above God—as something He conforms to for the sake of “glory” or “justice.”
• Reformed orthodoxy locates goodness within God.

Their common error? They both separate God from goodness in order to avoid the charge that He is not morally upright in ordaining sin, evil, or reprobation. In doing so, they seek to escape the force of assigning less-than-benevolent motivations to God's handling of part of His creation.

But the true safeguard of God's righteousness is not abstraction, redefinition, or determinism—it is the eternal, perfect, unified character of God Himself.

Final Thoughts

The Euthyphro dilemma is not an impassable wall for biblical theism. The Reformed tradition, rooted in Scripture and enriched by confessional theology, teaches that God is good because He is God, and all His ways are just.

“The Lord is righteous in all His ways, and kind in all His works.”
— Psalm 145:17

References

1. Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation (Craig Press, 1961), p. 217.
2. Gordon H. Clark, God and Evil: The Problem Solved (Trinity Foundation, 1996), p. 9.
3. Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1 (Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2004), pp. 310–313.
4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2: God and Creation, trans. John Vriend (Baker Academic, 2004), p. 213.
5. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 1, trans. George M. Giger (P&R, 1992), p. 239.
6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster Press, 1960), 3.23.2.