To this the believer will correctly reply that if God is not only good...

To this the believer will correctly reply that if God is not only good, but also omniscient, his knowledge of effects and consequences will make him a better moral guide than anyone else. What one should note about this reply is that although it provides us with a reason for doing what God commands, if we act only for this reason, we shall be in the position of taking God’s advice rather than of being obedient to him.

But this is normally impossible in actual religions on other specifically religious grounds. For, first of all, God does not only know better than we what the outcomes of alternative courses of action will be; it is he who makes these alternative outcomes be what they are. And where, as often, God makes it a condition of a favorable outcome for us that we obey him, he provides us with quite another sort of reason for obeying him.