In order to examine the problems this claim is followed by, first we must assess exactly what the statement means. The specific problems that arise from claiming it to be true and different depending on whether you say it because you believe that God commanding the actions make them good, or whether God would only command actions which are good absent from his will. These two different option form the basis for Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma in which Socrates asks Euthyphro that very question: ‘Is what is holy holy because the gods approve of it, or do they approve it because it is holy?’, with the former being known as the Divine Command Theory.
The notion of Divine Command Theory is primarily where this statement lies, because it states that anything God commands becomes good by definition, even if it may not have been thought of as good beforehand. This, however, creates the Arbitrariness Problem. If whatever God commands becomes good, then morality becomes completely arbitrary as it depends entirely upon
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However, this still corresponds to the statement at hand as it is still claiming that whatever God commands must be good. Martin claimed that this defence only “postpones the problem”, stating that it creates a new question: “is God’s character the way it is because it is good, or is God’s character good simply because it is God’s character?”. Here we fall back into all the problems that arise from the Divine Command Theory but instead for God’s character rather than his actions, and so this response does not work as a defence of the criticisms against Divine Command Theory. Many would argue that our standard of judgment as to either the actions or commands of God are made from a prior standard of moral behaviour and so we cannot say that what God commands is