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World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World ‘Relation’

Fr. Aidan Kimel in a recent comment:

I just started reading Philosophy for Understanding Theology by Diogenes Allen. The first chapter is devoted to the doctrine of creation.  These two sentences jumped out at me: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Do you agree? How would you unpack them?

These are hard sayings indeed.  Herewith, some rough notes on the aporetics of the situation.

By 'world' here is meant the totality of creatures, the totality of beings brought into existence by God from nothing.  Now if  God is a being among beings, it would make no sense at all to say that "The world plus God is not more than God alone."  For if we add the uncreated being (God) to the created beings, then we have more beings.  We have a totality T that is larger than T minus God.  If God is a being among beings, then there is a totality of beings that all exist in the same way and in the same sense, and this totality includes both God and creatures such that subtracting God or subtracting creatures would affect the 'cardinality' of this totality.

But if God is not a being among beings, but Being itself in its absolute fullness, as per the metaphysics of Exodus 3:14 (Ego sum qui sum, "I am who am") then there is no totality of beings all existing  in the same way having both God and creatures as members.  When we speak of God and creatures,

. . . we are dealing with two orders of being not to be added together or subtracted; they are, in all rigour, incommensurable, and that is also why they are compossible.  God added nothing to Himself by the creation of the world, nor would anything be taken away from Him by its annihilation — events which would be of capital importance for the created things concerned, but null for Being Who would be in no wise concerned qua being. (Etienne Gilson, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, Scribners 1936, p. 96.  Gilson's Gifford lectures, 1931-1932.)

Gilson_w_cluny_49Here, I am afraid, I will end up supplying some 'ammo' to Tuggy, Rhoda, and Anderson. For the Gilson passage teeters on the brink of incoherence.  We are told that there are two orders of being but that they are incommensurable. This can't be right, at least not without qualification.   If there are two orders of being, then they are commensurable in respect of being.  There has to be some sense in which God and Socrates both are.  Otherwise, God and creatures are totally disconnected, with the consequence that creatures fall away into nothingness.  For if God is Being itself, and there is no common measure, no commensurability whatsoever, between God and creatures, then creatures are nothing.  God is all in all. God alone is.  Gilson is well aware of the dialectical pressure in this monistic direction: "As soon as we identify God with Being it becomes clear that there is a sense in which God alone is." (65)  If we emphasize the plenitude and transcendence of God, then this sensible world of matter and change is "banished at one stroke into the penumbra of mere appearance, relegated to the inferior status of a quasi-unreality." (64)  But of course Christian metaphysics is not a strict monism; so a way must be found to assign the proper degree of reality to the plural world.

Here is the problem in a nutshell.  God cannot be a being among beings.  "But if God is Being, how can there be anything other than Himself?" (84)  We need to find a way to avoid both radical ontological pluralism and radical ontological monism.

It's a variation on the old problem of the One and the Many.

A. If Being itself alone is, then beings are not.  But then  the One lacks the many.  Not good: the manifold is evident to the senses and the intellect.

B. If beings alone are, then Being is not.  But then the many lacks the One.  Not good: the many is the many of the One.  A sheer manifold with no real unity would not a cosmos make.  The world is one, really one.

C. If Being and beings both are in the same way and and the same sense, then either Being is itself just another being among beings and we are back with radical pluralism, or Being alone is and we are back with radical monism.

Gilson's Thomist solution  invokes the notions of participation and analogy.  God is Being itself in its purity and plenitude and infinity.  Creatures exist by participation in the divine Being: they are limited participators in unlimited Being. So both God and creatures exist, but in different ways.  God exists simply and 'unparticipatedly.'  Creatures exist by participation.  God and creatures do not form a totality in which each member exists in the same way.  We can thus avoid each of (A), (B), and (C).

But the notion of participation is a difficult one as Gilson realizes.  It appears "repugnant to logical thought" (96):  ". . . every participation supposes that the participator  both is, and is not, that in which it participates." (96)  How so?

I exist, but contingently.  My Being is not my own, but received from another, from God, who is Being itself.  So my Being is God's Being.  But I am not God or anything else.  So I have my own Being that distinguishes me numerically from everything else.  So I am and am not that in which I participate.

Gilson does not show a convincing way around this contradiction.

The One of the many is not one of the many: as the source of the many, the One cannot be just one more member of the many.  Nor can the One of the many be the same as the many: it cannot divide without remainder into the many.  The One is transcendent of the many.  But while transcendent, it cannot be wholly other than the many. For, as Plotinus says, "It is by the One that all beings are beings."  The One, as the principle by which each member of the many exists, cannot be something indifferent to the many or external to the many, or other than the many, or merely related to the many. The One is immanent to the many.  The One is immanent to the many without being the same as the many.  The One is neither the same as the many nor other than the many.  The One is both transcendent of the many and immanent in the many. Theologically, God is said to be both transcendent and omnipresent.

What should we conclude from these affronts to the discursive intellect?  That there is just nothing to talk about here, or that there is but it is beyond the grasp of our paltry intellects?  If what I have written above is logical nonsense, yet it seems to be important, well-motivated, rigorously articulated nonsense.

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Is He Your Prophet?
Pascal, Buber, and the God of the Philosophers
The Aporetics of Baptism

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9 responses to “World + God = God? The Aporetics of the God-World ‘Relation’”

  1. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    >>The One of the many is not one of the many<< Fantastic! >>So I am and am not that in which I participate. Gilson does not show a convincing way around this contradiction.<< I don't think it's accurate to say that this is a "contradiction." A mystery, sure, but if your proposition is true then the "am" on each side of the conjunct cannot mean the same thing in the same respect. This is part of what I was trying (shabbily) to say earlier re: God "exists." Each of these propositions seem to be true, without contradiction: 1. I am (i.e. I participate in) that in which I participate. 2. I am not (i.e. I am not the preeminent fullness of) that in which I participate. I think to establish a univocal meaning of "am" underlying the participation language in this sort of proposition is exactly what a rigorously participatory metaphysics won't let you do, much to Scotus' dismay: "Et ne fiat contentio de nomine univocationis, univocum conceptum dico qui ita est unus quod ejus unitas sufficit ad contradictionem affirmando et negando epusm de eodem pro medio syllogistico." Scotus, Philosophical Writings trans. Wolter, 20.

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  2. Fr Aidan Kimel Avatar
    Fr Aidan Kimel

    Thanks, Bill, for this post. If I am reading you rightly, you believe that if we are going to say both “God exists” and “the world exists,” then God and the world are commensurable with regard to existence or being. Therefore God plus the world does equal two, contrary to Gilson and Allen. Am I understanding you correctly?

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  3. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Josh,
    Your comment was one of those I found among the spammed. Don’t ask me why.
    To be pedantic, the translation of the Latin sentence is found on Wolter, p. 23.
    I assume that we both hold that there are no true contradictions (contra G. Priest’s dialetheism). So by a mystery you mean a true proposition that, in itself, is non-contradictory, but appears (or even must appear to us here below) as contradictory. Is that right?
    You do, however, go on to make a distinction in respects to show that there is no contradiction and that we can see that there isn’t. But then the target sentence does not express a mystery.

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  4. Dave Bagwill Avatar
    Dave Bagwill

    Buber had an interesting line: “This is Thou; this also is not Thou”.
    He was referring to the world of “it” as against the world of “Thou” – a person can be, to us, both an “it” – some thing to which we relate mostly objectively, to which we are oriented only as to his utility (to vastly oversimplify what B is saying) – or as a “Thou” – someone we can meet (and B means much more by ‘meet’ than a greeting and a chat)and in that meeting, between man and man, humanity happens. Depth can happen. It is the ‘between-ness’ that is important.
    Does this relate to the ‘One-and-Many’ topic? Perhaps. God’s ‘way of Being’ is to be constant Thou, always fully present, and not needing creatures to be complete. Our ‘way of being’ complete is to raise ourselves to being a “Thou” to God, consciously, with intent. So the ‘modes of existence’ in this respect are certainly different.
    I don’t draw any further inferences from this, but I think it could be expanded.

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  5. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Dave,
    We sometimes use contradictory sentences to express non-contradictory propositions. For example, ‘The news is both good and bad.’ Something similar is probably going on with Buber. The check-out girl at the supermarket both is and is not a Thou: She is an IT and thus not a Thou if I relate to her as an appendage of the checkout machinery; she is a Thou if I relate to her as another I by perhaps looking her in the eye and saying something like, ‘I haven’t seen you in a while.’ There is no contradiction here.
    But there appears to be a contradiction above, though I haven’t really made it clear.

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  6. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    Fr. Kimel,
    Consider two possible scenarios. In the first God alone exists. In the second God exists and creates a world. Those are two very different scenarios. If God + the world = God, then there is no difference between the scenarios.
    Therefore, it cannot be right to say that God + world = God.
    What say you?

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  7. Fr Aidan Kimel Avatar
    Fr Aidan Kimel

    Bill, here is a comment that I left on my blog in response to a reader’s question; and I thought it might be relevant to the discussion here:
    “Been thinking a lot about what is theologically at stake in the debate between “Being” Christians and “Supreme being” Christians. Perhaps not a lot, given that the latter traditionally advance sufficient qualifications (God is eternal, impassible, immutable, etc.) to ensure that God is not to be understood as a finite being. On the other hand, with the increasing popularity of temporal, mutable, and passible construals of divinity, the difference between the two camps becomes accentuated and important.
    “What is at issue? I suggest the following: a non-contrastive, non-competitive understanding of divine transcendence. Only such an understanding supports the kinds of things Christians need to say about divine immanence, divine agency, and mystical union.”
    What do you think?

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  8. Bill Vallicella Avatar
    Bill Vallicella

    First, I like your commenter’s terminology: Being Xians vs. Supreme being Xians. But I would broaden it: Being theists versus supreme being theists.
    Tuggy, Rhoda, and the boys surely have ways of upholding the uniqueness of God. And surely they do not maintain that God is a finite being among finite beings.
    Unfortunately, I don’t understand your commenter’s second para.

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  9. Josh Avatar
    Josh

    Sorry for the delay–just saw this now–and for leading folks astray with the incorrect page number.
    >>I assume that we both hold that there are no true contradictions (contra G. Priest’s dialetheism).<< I am not familiar with any position that would admit them, but yes, I agree that there are no true contradictions. >>So by a mystery you mean a true proposition that, in itself, is non-contradictory, but appears (or even must appear to us here below) as contradictory. Is that right?<< This is definitely too thin a definition of "mystery"; for often a simple conceptual analysis is enough to resolve these sorts of scenarios. What's more, there seem to be instances of mysterious language which do not invite suspicion of contradiction at all. You've opened up a nice problem for me, though--currently having a lot of difficulty coming up with a more satisfactory definition. I'm inclined to think that genuinely mysterious language is marked by its being non-literal--perhaps while still retaining its ability to refer. What happens to contradiction and logical inference in this case I have no idea.

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