Chapter 9
Holiness
Some time ago a rabbi friend, Howard Deitcher, told me he would be teaching two 7th-Grade classes in a Hebrew day school not very far from where I live, while he was on sabbatical from his university post in Jerusalem. In both classes, one an “honors class,” and the other a “standard class,” he and his students would be reading Leviticus, the third book of the Torah.
Although I was myself a bit vague about what was in Leviticus, I did seem to remember that there was a motley collection of commandments specified there and that following these commandments was said, among other things, to be required for being holy. Since Howie was interested in, and supportive of, my efforts to do philosophy with kids, I suggested that I might come to his classes and discuss the “Euthyphro Problem” with his students. He liked the idea and we made arrangements for it to happen.
The Euthyphro Problem gets its name from Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro, which, in turn, gets its name from Socrates’s conversation partner in that dialogue. Euthyphro, like many other conversation partners Plato gives Socrates in the dialogues he wrote, never seems very happy about being questioned by Socrates. On the other hand, Euthyphro does seem remarkably confident about what is holiness is and what being holy requires of us. His confidence that he knows what holiness is makes him a natural candidate for Socratic cross-examination.
Briefly put, the incident with which the dialogue begins is this. Euthyphro meets Socrates near a courthouse in Athens where Socrates has to begin dealing with charges of impiety, or unholiness, against himself. As it happens, Euthyphro is lodging a charge of impiety against his own father. Socrates does discuss his own case briefly, but attention soon turns to Euthyphro. Socrates expresses surprise that Euthyphro would want to charge his own father with impiety. After all, dishonoring one’s father in this way might seem to be itself impious. The ancient Greeks, like Jews, Christians, and Muslims through the ages, have thought we have a religious obligation to honor our parents.
As Euthyphro’s story unfolds, it turns out that a family servant, in a drunken rage, had killed one of the household slaves; Euthyphro’s father had had the murderer bound and thrown into a ditch, not caring if he would die, which he did. Since such negligent homicide was considered by Athenian society to be a sort of societal pollution that would displease to the gods, Euthyphro resolved to charge his father in court with impiety.
Socrates’s encounter with Euthyphro is an ideal set-up for Socrates to insist that Euthyphro, since he is bringing a charge of impiety, or unholiness, against his own father, must certainly know what piety, or holiness, is. The rest of the dialogue consists of Euthyphro’s efforts, all of them unsuccessful, to explain what holiness is. In the middle of the discussion, after Euthyphro has suggested that the holy is simply what the gods love — whatever that should turn out to be – Socrates asks the question that has turned out to be the most famous line from the whole dialogue: “Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy,” he wants to know, “or is it holy because the gods love it?” (10a) It is this question that poses what has come to be called “the Euthyphro Problem.”
The Euthyphro problem is about divine standards. If we suppose that divine approval is definitive of holiness – that being loved or approved by the gods is just what holiness consists in – then we have to allow, it seems, that what counts as holy could be decided by nothing more than a divine whim. If, on the other hand, we suppose that holiness is something independent of divine approval, a standard the gods appeal to when they decide what they love or approve of, then the gods turn out to be subordinate to the standard of holiness just as human beings are. And that may seem to encroach on their sovereignty.
Translated into a monotheistic context, the Euthyphro problem poses the question, “Does God command us to do what is right because it is right, or is it right simply because God commands it?” If we say it is right simply because God commands it, we seem to allow that morality might be a matter of divine whim. If, on the other hand, we say that God commands us to do what is right because it is right, we seem to be supposing that God Himself is subject to the moral law, and is not sovereign over it.
After meeting with Howie, I went home and read through the biblical book of Leviticus to find the best chapter to use for discussing the Euthyphro problem. I chose Chapter 19, which, in part, goes this way:
And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to all the congregation of the people of Israel, You shall be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy. Everyone one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my sabbaths: I am the Lord your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves molten gods: I am the Lord your God.
When you offer a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord, you shall offer it so that you may be accepted. It shall be eaten the same day you offer it, or on the morrow; and anything left over until the third day shall be burned with fire. If it is eaten at all on the third day, it is an abomination; it will not be accepted, and everyone who eats it shall bear his iniquity, because he has profaned a holy thing of the Lord; and that person shall be cut off from his people. . . .
“You shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie to one another. And you shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. . . .
“You shall keep my statutes. You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind; you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed; nor shall there come upon you a garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff. . . .
“You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measures of length or weight or quantity. You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And You shall observe all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them: I am the Lord.” (19:1-8, 11-12, 19, 35-37)
I thought this chapter would be ideal for posing the Euthyphro problem. On the one hand, it contains commandments we think of as definitive of religious practice, such as keeping the Sabbath and not worshiping idols. Moreover, it contains other commandments central to morality, such as the command not to lie or cheat. But the most striking thing is that there are also commandments in this chapter that seem to be totally arbitrary – unrelated to the requirements for true worship and equally unrelated to the requirements of morality, such as the prohibition against interbreeding cattle, and especially the prohibition against wearing a garment made of two different kinds of stuff. What could such commandments have to do with being holy – except for the raw fact that, according to Leviticus 19:19, they are also God’s commandments?
Howie agreed to jump ahead in his curriculum and read Leviticus 19 with his students in advance of my appearance. For my class visit I brought with me this story, which the Euthyphro Problem had inspired.
Holiness
Ruth and Sam had just come out of a class at Maimonides School, where they had been discussing the part of Leviticus 19:19 that says, “You shall not put on cloth from a mixture of two kinds of materials.”
Ruth: “That seems pretty silly to me, that business about not wearing any clothing made of two kids of material.”
Sam: “It’s part of shaatnez, you know.”
Ruth: “I know. But it still seems pretty silly to me.”
Sam: “I know. But it still seems pretty silly to me.”
Sam: “Well, that’s what it says; that’s what God told Moses to tell the people of Israel.”
Ruth: “I know, but look. One of my jackets is 100 percent cotton. Another one is 55 percent cotton and 45 percent polyester. How can it matter to God which jacket I wear? Surely he’s got better things to think about.
Sam: “Well, you can’t pick and choose, you know. Either you take the Torah seriously, or you don’t.”
Ruth: “But God wants me to use my own brain, doesn’t he? So the law here has got to make sense to me. I can see the point of the law against stealing. And I think leaving some of the harvest for the poor is important. But this cloth business is ridiculous.”
Sam: “Okay, sure, some of the laws have to do with ethics. And that’s part of being holy. Anybody can understand the ethics part. Holy includes being ethical, but, of course, you can be ethical without being holy.”
Ruth: “Okay, if you’re so smart, what does being holy mean?”
Sam: That’s what the whole chapter tells you. To be holy is to do all those things we are told by God to do.
Ruth: “Okay, but here’s a question for you. I doing all those things holy because God commands them, or does God command them because they are holy things to do?”
Sam: “That sounds like a trick question.”
Ruth: “Well, it is, in a way. But it’s not just a trick question. It’s also important. Look, your mom and dad want you to eat a balanced died because it’s good for you, right? It isn’t good for you because your mom and dad want you to eat it. Right?”
Sam: “Okay, eating a balanced diet would be good for you, whether or not your mom or dad wanted you to eat it. I get that.”
Ruth: “Good. So is doing all those things you have to do to keep the law like eating a balanced diet? Are they doing holy things, things that make you more holy, whether or not God wants you to do them?”
Sam: “I’m not sure. What’s the alternative?”
Ruth: “Well, the alternative is that God’s wanting us to do these things is what makes doing them holy. It’s like, if pickles and strawberry ice cream are my favorite kinds of food, they are my favorites because I like them better than anything else. That’s what makes them my favorites. It’s not that I like them better than anything else because they are my favorites.
Sam: “Okay. So what difference does all this make, anyway?”
Ruth: “Well, if doing those things is holy because God tells us to do them, then there doesn’t have to be anything that all those different things have in common – not stealing, not lying, not leaving some of the harvest for the poor, not worshipping idols, and not wearing garments with two kinds of materials. It might be that all those very different things have in common is that God just happens to want us to do them. And God’s wanting us to do them is what makes them holy, or anyway, it makes us a little more holy when we do them.”
Sam: “Maybe I get it now. If doing all these very different things is doing holy things just because God wants us to do them, then there may not be anything they all have in common, except that God wants us to do them. That’s the bottom line. It’s like my favorite food, pickles and strawberry ice cream, don’t have anything in common, except that I like them better than anything else.”
Ruth: “Yeah! So which is it? Is doing these things holy because God wants us to do them, or does God want us to do them because they are holy?”
* * *
In our Western theological traditions, whether Jewish, Christian, or Islamic, the pure positions taken up in response to the Euthyphro Problem can be called “Theological Rationalism” and “Theological Voluntarism.” According to Theological Rationalism, God, too, is subject to the moral law. Thus if God issues a command to us human beings, God must have an adequate reason for His commandment, whether we can understand that reason or not. Moreover, we are holy when we do what God commands because, as God recognizes, doing those things make us conform to the moral law and to the right standards of conduct.
According to Theological Voluntarism, by contrast, God is the author of morality and of what counts as right conduct. Thus, we are holy when we do what God commands simply because God has commanded it. Perhaps we think of ourselves as conforming to morality, but it is God who defines, by His will, what is to count as moral.
Translated back into the polytheistic context of ancient Greece, the Rationalist position would be the view that, when the gods love or approve of something, they apply a standard that is independent of their whims. A certain act of ritual sacrifice would then, if loved by the gods, be loved because it really is holy and Euthyphro’s father’s homicide would be disapproved of by the gods because it is, in itself, impious. By contrast, the Voluntarist position would be the view that the gods’ love of something, or approval of it, is what makes holy whatever practice they love or approve of, and divine disfavor is what makes whatever they hate or disapprove of impious or unholy.
I asked the kids in Howie’s two classes to think about Ruth’s question (“is doing these things holy because God wants us to do them, or does God want us to do them because they are holy?”) and then to write down an answer on a piece of paper. After they had finished writing down an answer, I said, they could tell us what they had written down and we would discuss their answers.
My thought was that seventh-graders should be able to write their thoughts down satisfactorily. Having to write down an answer to a difficult question like this does tend to focus one’s mind. They could, of course, change their minds in the light of what other kids said, or in the light of their own further reflections. But having something written down could serve for them as at least a beginning position on this difficult question.
Most of the kids complied readily with my request. A few raised their hands and told me they didn’t know what to say, or weren’t sure how to say it. I encouraged them to do the best they could. Very soon everyone had written down an answer.
Most of the kids showed at least some sympathy for the rationalist position, although only a minority were strict rationalists. What (entirely reasonably!) aroused at least a certain amount of sympathy for the rationalist position was the fear that God’s laws should be seen as completely arbitrary and based on nothing more than divine whim.
Of course, by having Ruth focus on the command not to wear garments of mixed cloth I had forced them to consider that at least some commands might be purely arbitrary. Here is, from one rationalist, a stalwart attempt to ward off the threat of arbitrariness:
- It might depend on perspective. To God, he has a reason for these things being holy, and that’s why he’s commanding them. But to our perspective, if we don’t know the reason, then they’re holy because he commanded them.
Another student rationalist put the idea this way:
- For all the things that we are commanded to do, there’s a reason, but we may not understand what it is.
The heart of the rationalist position comes out in this student’s response to Ruth’s question:
- God wants us to do these things because they are holy. If God [had]told us to kill, steal, and commit adultery, would [those] be holy thing[s] to do? I don’t think so. I think these things are holy and God wants us to do them because they are holy.
Though brief, this response gets exactly right what has made the rationalist position as attractive as it has been through the centuries.
As I have already indicated, the voluntarist responses in these two classes were much more numerous. The justifications the voluntarists gave for their position were also more varied. Many of them used the apparent arbitrariness of such commandments as the prohibition against wearing garments of mixed cloth as the foundation for their position. Many of them came from orthodox families. I suspect they had taken on the idea that one can show special piety by following a law one can see no rational justification for. It might even be considered impious to ask for a justification for every divine command.
One thing the voluntarists emphasized in their responses was that God alone is truly holy. Human beings, as well as certain laws and customs, can be holy in a derivative way, derivative, that is, from the will of God. That seems to be the idea behind these answers:
- It’s more like these things are holy because God wants us to do them, because God is the most holy [being] there is [. . .]His holiness makes what he wants us to do holy.
- Anything he says is holy.
- The only reason for something to be holy is that God makes it holy. So how can God want us to do something because he things it is holy?
- He created them holy. There can’t be a way that something is just holy, just by itself, unless God makes it holy.
- God is the maximum holy there is, and if he wants us to do them, they are holy almost automatically.
Here is a response that moves from the idea of God as Himself maximally holy to the idea that God is responsible for making holy things holy:
- God made the standards of what’s holy. There wasn’t anything holy until God said it was.
That idea can easily be developed into one of God’s complete sovereignty:
- He can do anything he wants, so why would he have to have a reason? He doesn’t have to have a reason.
But another way to develop it is to see in God the creative source of whatever is good and holy, as here:
- There wasn’t anything there [in fact, no holiness] before God created it.
- Anything [God] says is holy.
So far I have discussed the Euthyphro Problem as if there were only two possible responses, the rationalist response and the voluntarist response. But, of course, there have also been attempts through the ages to combine these positions in some way. Some of the kids in these two classes were also interested in developing some sort of combined position. Here are three fine examples of this approach:
- It’s on two levels. First, God made them holy. And then he want us to do them because they are holy.
- Don’t kill is logical, but it’s not holy in its own right. [It’s not holy until] God commands it.
- It can be both. Things that we wouldn’t have thought of by ourselves that don’t seem to have any reason are holy because God says them. But things we would think up by ourselves, which have an ethical reason, which any people would follow, [what makes them holy] is that God commanded them.
The second of the above, (14), is a promising way to begin sorting out the relation between morality and religious faith. And (15) finds a particularly strong resonance in Jewish tradition, but also, to some extent, in other Western religious traditions.
Some students in these two classes were amazingly articulate in their attempts to grapple with the Euthyphro problem. This was especially true of students in the honors class. But, in a way, I was more impressed by one of the kids in the standard class. She had found it very difficult to formulate her response. She kept raising her hand and voicing her frustration. I kept telling her to do the best she could and we would talk about her idea later.
I’m not at all sure that I got this student’s idea. But it seemed to be something like this: God created everything, she said, and that seemed to include reasons for doing things, or at least the basis we have for reasons to do things. But, if that is right, God could hardly be said to need a reason for what he commanded.
If I have this student’s thought right, it is indeed a very interesting one. But even if I didn’t get it right, she was certainly exemplary in the way she worked at trying to get clear about it herself. Socrates would have been proud of her.
The headmaster of that school attended one of the sessions I had with his students. He sent me a note expressing appreciation for my visit, but also expressing the thought that it might be better to begin with what the rabbis had had to say about the Euthyphro question.
I would certainly have no trouble discussing the Euthyphro Problem in the course of reading some rabbinical commentary. In fact, when I teach medieval philosophy I read Maimonides on the Euthyphro Problem. I have to say, however, that what these seventh-graders came up with, without having read Maimonides, compares very favorably with what my university students can say after having read Maimonides. In fact, I have never had more interesting discussions on the Euthyphro Problem with students of any age than I had with those seventh-graders.i