Abstract

Perhaps no one in the English speaking world has carried on a philosophical defence of theism like Richard Swinburne. Yet in all of Swinburne's work there is little use of a long‐standing view in the Christian tradition that God is good, and that his goodness is interchangeable with his being. While Swinburne does little with the idea of goodness, Iris Murdoch proposes an anti‐theistic view that insists on the Good without God. My argument is that both Swinburne's indifference to the notion of the good and Murdoch's ‘Good without God’ take away from the promise of theism. I suggest an Augustinian alternative that insists on the equation of God and the Good without falling into the problems inherent in both Swinburne and Murdoch's views.