Abstract

Theists acknowledge God's goodness. But in what sense is God good? The natural way to understand the assertion that God is good is that moral goodness is being ascribed to God. Moreover, I contend that God is morally good by virtue of having some important cluster of morally good-making qualities which human beings admire in themselves and in other human beings. Call this the Univocity Thesis. ;Some philosophers and theologians believe that there are insuperable difficulties associated with this sort of ascription of goodness to God. This dissertation sketches a plausible defense of the Univocity Thesis as a philosophically and theologically acceptable account of the moral goodness of God. ;Analytically speaking, the dissertation has three main parts . I identify and discuss several theological or philosophical problems generated by the Univocity Thesis. The objections which I discuss break down into two broad categories. Some see the existence, the amount, or the kinds of evil in the world as a serious objection to the thesis I defend. Others claim the significant ontological differences between human beings and God make it impossible for the Univocity Thesis to be true. For some, this is because they believe that none of the words we use to describe created objects are literally applicable to God. Others are more modest. They claim that God is so different from human beings that none of the words we use to ascribe moral virtues to human beings are literally applicable to God. ;Another part of the dissertation is an identification of the resources available to the theist for response to these problems. Included in this part is an inquiry into and critical discussion of the treatment of 'good' in Aristotle and in contemporary metaethics. I contend that there is nothing about the meaning or semantic features of 'good' from which it follows that 'good' can be abscribed to God only in some non-univocal sense. Finally I use the resources available to me to defend the Univocity Thesis against the common sorts of difficulties which have been raised against it