If we try and get around this by arguing that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture, we are caught in the trap of the meaningless of the assertion that God is good. Stace, writing in the 1930's, put forward what at the time would have been considered by many a modern, enlightened argument in favour of an absolute moral standard, even though he was not arguing what that standard should be. Let us look at why I call Stace's argument modern and enlightened. It is modern and enlightened because Stace mounts an argument based on reason to argue the dangerousness of ethical relativism. If ethical relativism can be shown to be unreasonable, goes his argument, then all that is reasonable is ethical absolutism.
Progress means an advance from lower to higher, from worse to better.
But on the basis of ethical relativity it has no meaning to say that the standards of one age are better or worse than those of a previous age. For there is no common standard by which both can be measured. All moral valuation thus vanishes. There is nothing to prevent each man from being a rule unto himself. The result will be moral chaos and the collapse of all effective standards.