Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Occasionalism, Omnipotence, and Matthew 23:9

 "Secondary causes are mere occasional causes, occasions of the exercise of the causality of the only true productive cause, God."

And call no man your father upon earth, for One is your Father, who is in Heaven. (Matthew, 23:9)

Posted by: Simon Neale | Sunday, February 18, 2024 at 03:21 PM

Before we can evaluate Mr. Neale's suggestion we need to take a step back. Since occasionalism and divine omnipotence are related topics, consider four combinatorially possible views of the latter.  What is it for God to be all-powerful?

A) God can do anything at all, and anything at all that gets done is done by God. God is all-powerful (omnipotent) in that (i) God has power over everything, including the laws of logic, and (ii) God alone exercises all the power that is exercised.   God is then the only genuine efficient cause, and all so-called 'secondary causes' are not causes stricto sensu, but mere occasions for the exercise of the efficient causality of the one and only 'primary cause.' Accordingly, 'secondary' in 'secondary cause' is an alienans adjective: it 'alienates' or 'others' the sense of  'cause' to such an extent that a secondary cause is not a cause. (Cognate examples: a decoy duck is not a duck; artificial leather is not leather, etc. Leather does not come into kinds, real and artificial, etc. More on this topic in my Adjectives category.)) 

The above understanding of divine omnipotence is occasionalist and makes God out to be absolutely sovereign: he is lord of all orders, the physical, the spiritual, the logical, the moral, and even the modal.  A less extreme version of occasionalism results from the deletion of clause (i). Thus:

B) God cannot do everything, but everything that is doable and gets does is done by God. Thus God cannot do what is logically impossible or command or do what is morally wrong. Nor does his will determine what is merely possible and what is necessary. All the power that is exercisable, which is to say permitted by logic, morality, and modality, is exercised by God alone. This too is occasionalism since it denies that so-called 'secondary causes' are genuine causes.

C) God cannot do everything, and not every exercise of causal power is an exercise of divine power: there are genuine natural or secondary causes. On this non-occasionalist view both God and secondary causes are genuine causes.

D) God can do everything but not everything that gets done is done by God. I don't believe anyone has held this view; I include it only for combinatorial completeness. Having brought it up, I now set it aside.

As for the New Testament verse, I read it as logically consistent with (C) and thus as not logically requiring (entailing) the truth of either (A) or (B). Since the verse does not entail the truth of occasionalism, it is consistent with (A) and with (B).  

Why not say the following? My biological father is a real cause (or rather part-cause, along with my mother and various other causal factors) of my coming to exist.  If I have a Father in heaven, he too is a real cause, of anything's having come to exist and of anything's remaining in existence. The 'horizontal' causality of natural causes presupposes the 'vertical' causality of the divine cause in that without the causa prima, there would be no causae secundae. 

The difference between my two fathers is that the first is natural whereas the second is supernatural. The first is a spiritual animal, whereas the second is a pure spirit. But both are real. The word 'father' is not used univocally in application to both, nor equivocally.  It is used analogically, but literally.  Thus 'father' is being used literally of God and not metaphorically as when I say  that the subversion of language is the mother of all subversion.  That use of 'mother' is metaphorical or figurative.

Does this 'hold water'? I fear that my glib explanation hides aporiai.  I am not in the clear when it comes to the analogia entis, and the formidable Erich Pryzwara, brilliant and erudite as he is, is too obscure to be of much help.

Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis

The book has been recently translated.  

Unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Josef Pieper as to the 'unreadibility' of the book: "The unfinished, and hardly readable book, Analogia Entis (1932), which he himself declares is the quintessence of his view, in fact gives no idea of the wealth of concrete material he spread out before us in those days."

Of course, the book is not strictly unreadable: I am reading it and getting something out of it.   But it has many of the faults of Continental writing and old-time scholastic writing. 

To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely.  Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid, and the same goes for many Europeans to the east of France.

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5 responses to “Occasionalism, Omnipotence, and Matthew 23:9”

  1. Dmitri Avatar
    Dmitri

    Hi Bill
    This gem of a judgment illustrates one of the reasons I read your blog attentively for years:
    To make a really good philosopher you need to start with someone possessing a love of truth, spiritual depth, metaphysical aptitude, and historical erudition. Then some nuts-and-bolts analyst needs to beat on him with the logic stick until he can express himself clearly and precisely. Such a thrashing would have done gentlemen such as E. Gilson and J. Maritain a world of good. Gallic writing in philosophy tends toward the flabby and the florid, and the same goes for many Europeans to the east of France.
    Can only nod in agreement having read a bit of Russian philosophers from the early to mid-20th century before the Marxist-Leninist dumb asses overtook philosophy in USSR. And I am talking about the “serious ones” like Berdyaev and Lossky and Solovyev. There are exceptions — Shestov at times — but not too many.

    Reply
  2. BV Avatar
    BV

    Thank you for your kind comment, Dmitri.
    Berdyaev was a big favorite of mine in undergraduate days. I’ve read a number of his books, beginning with The Beginning and the End. I know about Lossky and Soloviev, but haven’t read them. I have read Shestov.
    Here is a very rich essay by Czeslaw Milosz on Shestov: https://www.angelfire.com/nb/shestov/milosz.html
    Tomorrow I’ll put up something about Shestov and the Fall of man.
    Here is a short note on Berdyaev: https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/11/berdyaev-communism-as-a-form-of-idolatry.html
    And here is another: https://williamfvallicella.substack.com/p/berdyaev-on-the-moral-source-of-atheism
    Real philosophy ceased to exist in the USSR and its satellites such as the DDR, and it will cease to exist here if we don’t beat the destructive Left into the dirt.
    This is why this blog mixes political polemic with non-polemical philosophy.

    Reply
  3. Dmitri Avatar
    Dmitri

    Thanks for the links Bill! I will read the ones I am not familiar with. I am a big fan of Milosz the essayist and the critic and have read that thoughtful essay on Shestov. And the one on Weil in the same collection, I have the book in my library.
    Russian philosophy tended to be deeply religious in the strict Orthodox orientation — Soloviev was an exception in the religious sense as he was strongly ecumenical in his leanings.
    One modern exception to the dull Marxist-Leninist mainstream in Soviet times was this guy “Alexander Zinoviev” . He was an eminent logician (worked on multi-valued logic and his work was noted and valued in the West by Michael Dummett in particular), In the 1970ies he wrote a sharp and really funny — for the educated Homo Soveticus reader — anti-Soviet satire novel translated as “Yawning Heights” that got him expelled from the USSR. He lost his Russian citizenship in the process. He lived and worked in exile in Germany for about 20 years. Funny enough, he returned to Russia at the end of 90ies at the invitation of post-perestroika Russian leadership, got his citizenship restored and ended his life a supporter of … Stalinism. He was quite a character, fought in WW2 before becoming a philosopher, but he was, in my opinion, a contrarian for the sake of it — of the “whatever mainstream believes in I am against it” type. That’s the only explanation I have for his turnaround. His later works, the ones that brought him a relative literary fame in Russia, are a curious mix of sociology, humor and absurdist logical jokes.

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  4. BV Avatar
    BV

    No doubt you have read Milosz, *The Captive Mind.* Belongs on every anti-commie bookshelf.
    Thanks for the info about Zinoviev. I once knew a contrarian. One time I said to him, “You know, John, you really are a contrary fellow.” He shot back, “No I’m not!”

    Reply
  5. Vernadsky Avatar
    Vernadsky

    Excuse me for the deviation, but I just want to inform you that there are will really cataclysmic changes in Russia – completely physical – that are based on Vladimir Vernadsky’s philosophy of the noosphere (I don’t know if you’re familiar, similar to Huxley and Le Roa’s noosphere).
    It is “Strategy for the development of nature-like (convergent) technologies” (summary) – a fundamental strategy for Russia’s future. Here and here. In case someone is interested. (You can read about this nowhere else, I don’t know why, since Russia has been the most talked about country in the world for almost 2 years.)
    Three stages of implementation are assumed, the third of which – Formation of the basic elements of the nature–like technosphere (2033-2037) – also includes: “medical systems based on technologies of correction of the psychophysiological sphere of a person.”
    However, this is definitely not a concept of the future peculiar only to Russia, so under another name, you can find the same plans in (I guess most more developed) other countries. Sorry for off-topic.

    Reply

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