ubcgcu

The Interface of Divine & Human Goodness

Next, I want to talk about how this transcendent goodness is trinitarian and relational, a personal goodness of a tri-personal God. Freedom has to have strong morality at its core (Timothy Snyder) to produce trust. This transcendent goodness I want to explore begins in God and then flows to creation as gift. It automatically has a relationship to the immanent human world. It is communicable, but at the same time, the understanding and experience of goodness involves a journey towards the triune God.

A full defence of trinitarian theology of goodness is beyond the scope of this discussion, so instead, I will limit this discussion to the exploration of what trinitarian goodness looks like as a plausibility structure, and how it assists in answering some of the problems, weaknesses, and gaps in ethics today. It also provides a discourse and a subject position from which to further protest late modern aspirations toward the hegemony of the ideology of the aesthetic. The task of ethics, from within this plausibility structure, is to assist the individual in the journey forward from human nature as it is—with its inclination toward the good, but with a lack of substantive context, and a lack of robust moral sources. Freedom gets interpreted as negative freedom from: Thus, there is a temptation toward evil, harm, and irresponsibility. On the other hand, I want to show the concrete embodiment of what the self can become in heuristic relationship to God’s goodness. This is to spark the expansion of the moral imagination for the common good.

Let us proceed. Rooted in the Trinity, this transcendent horizon of goodness involves the dynamic action of all three persons of the Christian Trinity in the world, not separate from the world or society. Here are some of the implications that human goodness can be defined in the light of divine goodness, rather than in exclusion of it. According to this theological/philosophical stance, “the trinitarian action in creation, revelation, and inspiration in the world is all part of the moral horizon in which human moral reflection occurs” (C. Schwöbel, 1992, 71). The transcendent is effective in the various culture-spheres of the immanent and entails significant implications for the moral self. 

This goodness is communicated through creation represented by the Father, through the Son the God-Man in the incarnation, and by the Holy Spirit as the source of empowerment and inspiration of human morality and moral growth and transformation. The three persons create the conditions (the horizon) for knowing and doing the good (C. Schwöbel, 1992, 73). Here’s how it plays out: The Father as Creator has established the order, and the possibility of goodness in creation, a relational structure of goodness. The Son in Jesus Christ is the revelation of divine goodness, a dramatic means to see, encounter, and experience God’s goodness within the human historical sphere, the dynamic articulation of divine goodness within human culture. The Spirit is the inspiration of goodness in human creatures, a key source of the motivation towards good (constitutive good) for the moral self. 

This articulation shows key ways that the finite human is made aware of and drawn up into the transcendent relationship, making divine goodness accessible and efficacious within the realm of human experience, yet without being assimilated into, or reduced to, this realm. According to Schwöbel, 

It is one of the implications of this trinitarian conception of divine agency that the intentionality of divine action is not to be inferred from the structure of the world God has created, but has to be understood as grounded in the revelation in the Son. It is this paradigmatic action that is authenticated by the inspiration of the Spirit which then provides the framework for the interpretation of God’s work in creation. In a similar way the character of the work of the Spirit as inspiration indicates how God involves human beings in the realization of his intentions. It is the context of the interrelatedness of creation, revelation, and inspiration that we can talk about God’s action in terms of free, intentional action. (C. Schwöbel, 1992, 70) 

Transcendent goodness is both secure and relevant because it resides in the integrity of the trinitarian relationality, the sociality of God, and yet it becomes accessible and possible to execute within the human condition because of the creation, revelation, and inspiration of the Trinity. This means that Charles Taylor’s transcendent turn to a greater horizon of the good such as agape is not a fantasy. It provides a robust plausibility structure, and a dynamic context for human identity, as well as an open horizon for moral and spiritual growth towards a self with a transcendent dimension of depth (a thick self). This plausibility structure will be further elaborated in future posts. In mapping the self this way, it will add detail to Taylor’s proposal of a renewed moral geography that includes God in a fruitful manner. 

Now by definition, transcendent goodness is much more than an absolute or a highest principle. We cannot reduce it to Kant’s moral imperative, or a utilitarian good (result oriented). Goodness is of the very essence of God. The claim that God is good entails a distinctive character trait predicate. D. Stephen Long attempts such an articulation when he writes: “God is good in the most excellent way” (D. S. Long, 2001, 21). This means that there can be no greater good, nor a position of goodness from which to judge God—another very significant point. There is no gnostic higher moral vantage point above God. This is a qualitative transcendence that is completely worthy of our love and admiration (the best, most beautiful, most excellent goodness). This theological viewpoint is particularly endemic to the poetry of the book of Psalms. Biblically, God is the gold standard by which all human currencies of the good are measured. Put another way, there is an irreducible density to God’s goodness; it has tremendous moral weight. 

“Christian faith is a way of seeing the world which beholds an unseen level of depth of love, goodness, significance which we do not make, but in which we can participate…. Our world is poetic at its core.” ~Dr. Judith Wolfe, St. Andrew’s University 

Christoph Schwöbel proceeds logically and profoundly from this perspective to say that in creation: 

God has set the conditions for being and doing the good and for knowledge of the good in the human condition. On this account, transcendent divine goodness is the ontological ground of the human good; the human moral horizon is rooted in God, contextualized by God, not vice versa. Furthermore, the knowledge of the good is intimately linked with the knowledge of God, and one’s relation to the good is ultimately connected to one’s relationship to God. (C.Schwoebel, 1992, 72)  

One cannot conjure such goodness; it exists prior to human existence. D. Stephen Long adds further important texture to the distinction between human and divine goodness: 

Participation in God is necessary for the good and for freedom. Evil arises when freedom is lost through turning towards one’s own autonomous resources for ethics. The fall does not result from people seeking to be more than they are capable of through pride but from their becoming less than they could be because they separate the knowledge of the good from its true end, God, and find themselves self-sufficient. . . . Seeking the good through nonparticipation in God, through the “virtue of what was in themselves” makes disobedience possible. (D. S. Long, 2001, 128)

So we are not alone in figuring out our morality and ethics, inventing them from the ground up, a priori. What are the implications of the transcendent turn to agape love in further substantiating the case for transcendent goodness as a source of the self? Dr. Quentin Genuis applies this concept of a thick moral self to medical ethics in a UBC GFCF lecture on March 4, 2025. Lecture Recording Found Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=386P0LbiYx8

Gordon E. Carkner, PhD, Meta-Educator, Author, Blogger, YouTube Webinars and Scholarly Lectures.

Dr. Carkner offered a workshop at Apologetics Canada 2025 Conference on Saturday, March 8 in Abbotsford, B.C., Canada to rethink the modern identity quest via the discourse of incarnation. He will post a version of this on YouTube in the near future. Find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u74STiS7Yfc&t=1478s

Carkner, G. E. (2024). Towards an Incarnational Spiritual Culture: Grounding Our Identity in Christ. Eugene, Or: Wipf & Stock. See especially chapter 5.

Long, D. S. (2001). The Goodness of God: Theology, the Church and Social Order. Grand Rapids, MI: BrazosSchwöbel,

C. (1992). God’s Goodness and Human Morality. In C. Schwöbel, God: Action and revelation (pp. 63-82). Kampen, Holland: Pharos. 

Vanhoozer, K. J. (2024). Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What it Means to Read the Bible Theologically. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic.