QuestionsWhat makes something right?God's will is the supreme rule of justice
What makes something right?God's will

God's will is the supreme rule of justice

Calvin's voluntarism; "he is a law to himself"

Jean Calvin 1509 · 1564Reformation theologian: every human being carries a natural sense of the divine.
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What it claims

God's will is the supreme rule of justice: there is no good higher than it before which God would have to answer, and his decrees cannot be judged as one judges a man's.

Why

Nothing is higher than God's will to judge it: so what he wills is just because he wills it.

The same idea through history
Jean Calvin1559Calvin writes this passage in answer to those who find predestination cruel: why does God condemn people who have not yet acted? He refuses to look for a reason higher than God's will, but he also refuses the idea of a "lawless" God. He writes in Latin in 1559, then in French in 1560.
Guillaume d'Ockham1320Ockham says God could command anything that is not contradictory. Calvin goes less far: he expressly rejects the "absolute power" of the schoolmen and says God's will is pure of all vice.
In short

"God's will is the supreme rule of justice" is an argument by Jean Calvin (Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 23, 2 (Latin 1559, French 1560), 1559) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: god's will). Its claim: God's will is the supreme rule of justice: there is no good higher than it before which God would have to answer, and his decrees cannot be judged as one judges a man's. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P2, P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 2 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, 23, 2 (Latin 1559, French 1560)
Valid with an implicit premise

Calvin answers an old reproach: if God chose in advance who will be saved and who will be lost, is he not a tyrant? His answer is radical. One cannot ask why God willed this, for there is nothing higher than his will to explain or judge it. His will is the rule of justice, not its subject. But Calvin adds a precision: God is not "lawless". His will is pure of all vice, and it is the law of all laws. So he does not say that God could will anything at all.

P1God's will is the cause of everything that exists. If it had a cause itself, that cause would come before it, which it is not lawful to imagine. So nothing higher than God's will can be found.
P2 · implicit premiseA standard of justice to which God would have to conform would be something higher than his will.
P3 · implicit premiseIf there is no standard above God's will, then it is itself the rule of justice: what he wills must be held to be just because he wills it.
P4This will is nevertheless not lawless: it is pure of all vice, the sovereign rule of perfection, and God is a law to himself. For this reason Calvin rejects the "absolute power" of the schoolmen.
Therefore God's will is the supreme rule of justice: there is no good higher than it before which God would have to answer, and his decrees cannot be judged as one judges a man's.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P2 and P3, the computer finds a case where nothing is above God's will and yet justice has a foundation other than that will: for example God's own nature, which is not a cause outside his will.
The argument is valid with the two hidden premises. P1 says no cause is above God's will; P2 makes any higher standard such a cause; so there is no higher standard, and by P3 the divine will is the supreme rule. P4 prevents us from concluding that this will is arbitrary. The objections target P2 (would a standard God follows really be above him, or in his nature?) and the conclusion (why praise a God whose goodness is only what he wills?).
Analogy. In a country, the supreme law is the Constitution: one cannot ask what higher law it obeys, because it fixes what is legal. Calvin says: God's will is the Constitution of the universe. But he adds that it is not a despot's whim, because this will is pure of all vice.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics) 1686 · attacks the conclusion

To say that things are good by no standard of goodness, but by God's will alone, destroys all love of God and all his glory. Why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy doing the opposite? What is left of his justice and wisdom if there is only despotic power, where will takes the place of reason and, as in the tyrants' definition, whatever pleases the most powerful is just?

Calvin replies
Calvin (in the same paragraph) 1560 · Calvin had set aside "absolute power" in advance
Calvin says in the passage itself that he does not hold the idea of a lawless God: God is a law to himself, and his will, pure of all vice and the sovereign rule of perfection, is the law of all laws. He calls the schoolmen's absolute power "profane". For him God's will is therefore not a measureless power but perfection itself.
Leibniz (Theodicy) 1710
Leibniz reads Calvin himself. Calvin acknowledged, he says, that God's decrees conform to justice and wisdom, even if the reasons for this conformity are unknown to us. "Thus, according to him, the rules of goodness and justice are prior to God's decrees." So Leibniz pulls Calvin towards the camp opposed to voluntarism, against the reading suggested by the words "for the very reason that he wills it".
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the whole debate is whether saying God's will is "pure of all vice" amounts to recognising a norm of the good before it. Calvin answers no, since this purity is God's very nature. Leibniz judges yes, and that Calvin at bottom thinks like the other theologians. Interpreters of Calvin remain divided.
Plato (the Euthyphro dilemma) 399 BC · attacks premise 2

Is the holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods? If God wills the good because it is good, there is a standard before his will. If it is good because God wills it, then nothing obliges God to will the good, and "God is just" teaches nothing. (See the argument "The Euthyphro dilemma".)

a defender replies
see the argument
Robert Adams defender of the argument · 1999 · Modern reply: the standard is in God's nature, not in his will
Adams (Finite and Infinite Goods, 1999) places the standard of the good in God's nature: to be good is to resemble God. As Mark Murphy sets it out, this view is theocentric without being voluntarist about the good; for Adams, only obligation depends on God's commands. The comparison with Calvin's "law to himself" is ours. (See Adams's argument.)
see the argument
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: the discussion is still open. Defenders say God's nature stops the series of reasons without arbitrariness; critics say arbitrariness is only moved, from his will to his nature.
Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals) 1785 · attacks the conclusion

To recognise the Holy One of the Gospels as holy, he must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection. Our concept of God as the supreme good comes from the idea of moral perfection that reason frames a priori. Moral judgment therefore comes before the knowledge of God's will and cannot depend on it.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Calvin in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Kant puts the question of knowledge: how would we know that a will is holy without a prior moral criterion? Calvin writes in the same passage that we are not "fit or competent judges" to pronounce on this matter by our own sense, which Kant denies for morality. We found no reply from Calvin's defenders aimed at this text of Kant's.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: for Kant, morality is known by reason before any revelation. For Calvin, human judgment is too damaged to judge God. The two positions do not agree, and the discussion is about what reason can know of the good.