In an earlier thread, Lukas Novak writes,
. . . God simply does not need any causal acts to mediate his causal power. He is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately. It is only with respect to this causal power which is an aspect of his essence that we call the selfsame essence an "act" (in the sense of activity).
The above is a response to the line I have been taking, which is essentially as follows.
God necessarily exists. What's more, he is simple. God creates our universe U. U, having been created, exists. (And it wouldn't have existed had it not been created by God.) But U exists contingently, which implies (given that God created U) that God might not have created U. Now consider God's creating of U. This creative action is at least notionally distinct both from God and from U. On the face of it, we must distinguish among God, God's creative action, and the effect of this action, namely, U.
We now ask: Is the divine creative action necessary or contingent? I will now argue that it is not necessary. God exists in every possible world. If his creating of U occurred in every possible world, then U would exist in every possible world. But then U would not be contingent (existent in some but not all worlds), but necessary. Therefore, God's creating of U, given that U is contingent, is also contingent: it occurs in all and only those world in which U exists.
So God's creating U is contingent. But God is necessary. It follows that God cannot be identical to his creating U. But this contradicts the doctrine of divine simplicity one of the entailments of which is that God is identical to each of his intrinsic properties. So the following propositions constitute an inconsistent triad, or antilogism.
1) God is simple
2) All created concreta are contingent.
3) No contingent effect has a necessary cause.
Given that the limbs of the triad are collectively inconsistent, one of them must be rejected.
A) Reject simplicity. If God is not simple, then we can say that God is really (and not just notionally) distinct from his creative acts, and that, while God exists in every world, he creates only in some. This solution upholds the contingency of created concreta, and preserves the intuitive notion that a contingent effect cannot have a necessary cause.
B) Retain simplicity but accept the consequence that creatures are necessary beings. That is, retain simplicity and accept modal collapse.
C) Retain simplicity, but reject the notion that no contingent effect has a necessary cause. This, I take it, is Novak's way out. As I quoted him above, ". . . God simply does not need any causal acts to mediate his causal power. He is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately."
The difference between me and Novak is that I consider the above triad to be an aporia, a problem for which there is no satisfactory solution. Novak, however, thinks that there is a satisfactory rational solution by way of rejecting (3). He accepts divine simplicity, and he rejects modal collapse. He concludes that there is no difference in God corresponding to the difference between the existence of U and the nonexistence of U. The creation of U is not the realization of a divine potential to create U, and God's refraining from creating anything is not the realization of a divine potential to refrain from creating. And this for the reason that there is nothing potential in God: God is purely actual.
Novak's solution satisfies him, but it doesn't satisfy me. It sounds like magic to me. I find the following unintelligible: "He [God] is causally efficient through his very essence, directly, and contingently, imparting being to the created essences immediately." The words make sense, of course, but I find that they do not express an intelligible proposition.
Here, I think, is where the discussion must end.
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