Category: God
How are God and Truth Related? (2021 Expanded Version)
By my count, there are five different ways to think about the relation of God and truth:
1) There is truth, but there is no God.
2) There is truth, and there is God, but God is not the ontological ground of truth.
3) There is truth, there is God, and God is the ontological ground of truth: truth ultimately depends for its existence on the existence of God. There is truth only because there is God. (This 'because' signifies a relation that is neither empirically-causal nor merely logical. Call it the relation of ontological grounding.)
4) There is no truth, because there is no God.
5) There is God, but no truth.
Ad (1). This is the view of many if not most today. There are truths, and among these truths is the truth that God does not exist. This, I take it, is the standard atheist view. The standard atheist does not deny that there are truths; he presupposes that there are and that they are absolute. It is just that one of these truths is that there is no God.
Ad (2). This, I take it, would be the standard theist view among analytic philosophers. There are truths, and one of the truths is that God exists. Consider a philosopher who holds that God is a necessary being and who also holds that it is necessarily the case that there are some truths. Such a philosopher would have to hold that the existence of God is logically equivalent to the existence of some truths. That is, he would have to hold that, necessarily God exists if and only if truths exist. But this philosopher would deny the truth of the subjunctive conditional, If, per impossibile, God were not to exist, then truths would not exist either. That is, he would deny that God is the ontological ground of truth.
Ad (3). This is the view that I am inclined to accept, were I to accept a view. Thus I would affirm the subjunctive conditional lately mentioned. The difference between (2) and (3) is subtle. On both sides it is held that both the existence of God and the existence of some truths are necessary, but the Augustinian — to give him a name — holds that God is the ultimate 'source' of all truth and thus of all intelligibility, or, if you prefer, the ultimate 'ground' of all truth and intelligibility. Therefore, if, per impossibile, God were not to exist, truth would not exist either.
Ad (4). This is Nietzsche's view. Tod Gottes = Tod der Wahrheit. The death of God is the death of truth. By 'truth' I of course mean absolute truth which cannot be perspectival or in any way relative. Truth cannot be relative, as I have argued many times.
Ad (5). I have the impression that certain post-modernists hold this. It is a view not worth discussing.
I should think only the first three views have any merit.
But each of the three has difficulties and none of the three can be strictly proven.
A. I will argue against the admittedly plausible first view by arguing for the third view.
Among the truths, there are necessary truths such as the laws of logic. Now a truth is a true truth-bearer, a true proposition, say. (There are different candidates for the office of truth-bearer; we needn't list them here.) Now nothing can have a property unless it exists. (Call this principle Anti-Meinong). So no proposition can have the property of being true unless the proposition exists. By definition, a necessary truth is true in every metaphysically possible world. It follows that a necessarily true proposition exists in every possible world including worlds in which there are no finite minds. (I assume, plausibly, that there are such worlds.)
But — and this is the crucial move in this reasoning — a proposition is a thought-accusative that cannot exist except in, or rather for, a mind. Thus there are no truths in themselves that float free of minds. Now if there is no God, or rather, if there is no necessarily existent mind, then every mind is contingent. A contradiction ensues: there is a possible world W such that, in W, there exists a thought-accusative that is not the thought-accusative of any mind. For example, the proposition expressed by '7 + 5 = 12' is true and exists in every possible world including those worlds in which there are no minds. This contradiction ensues on the assumption that there is no necessarily existent mind.
Therefore, there is a necessarily existent mind. "And this all men call God."
If the argument just given is sound, then (3) is true, and (1) is false.
Here are the ways an atheist might respond to the argument for (3):
a) Deny that there are necessary truths.
b) Deny that truth is a property of propositions.
c) Deny Anti-Meinong, the principle that whatever has a property exists.
d) Deny that propositions are thought-accusatives; accept some sort of Platonism about propositions.
But each of these denials involves problems of its own.
Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia
On deism, God starts the universe existing, but then he takes it easy, allowing it to exist on its own in virtue of its 'existential inertia.' The latter is an analog of inertia in physics. Newton's First Law states that a body at rest or in uniform rectilinear motion continues in its state of rest or motion unless acted upon by an external force. Analogously, what could be called the First Law of Deistic Metaphysics states that an existing thing continues to exist on its own without external assistance unless acted upon by an external annihilatory force. This is but a rough and preliminary formulation of the thesis of existential inertia. Continuing to exist is the 'default.' Suppose I bring a primitive table into existence by placing a board on a stump. The thought behind 'existential inertia' is that the compound object that just came to be does not need something to keep it from blinking out of existence a nanosecond, microsecond, millisecond . . . later.
On classical theism, by contrast with deism, God is no mere cosmic starter-upper: creatures need God not only to begin to exist but to continue existing moment by moment. A defense of classical theism against deism must therefore include a rejection of existential inertia.
Steven Nemes offers a rejection of existential inertia in his article Deism, Classical Theism, and Existential Inertia. He solicits my comments. I am happy to oblige.
He defines the phrase as follows:
Let’s say that the existence of a thing is “inertial” if and only if it continues to exist over time, in the absence of annihilating factors, without the assistance of anything outside of it.
He gives the example of a cat which, "once in existence, continues to exist over time, so long as nothing intervenes to destroy it, without anything outside of the cat helping it or sustaining it in existence." But surely the cat cannot continue to exist without air, water, food, a tolerable range of temperatures, and so on, factors clearly external to the cat. Note also that Nemes' definition presupposes that only temporal items are existentially inertial which is not obvious: on a classically theistic scheme even so-called 'abstract objects' are going to have to be existentially inertial. But I won't worry this second point in this entry.
Here is a better way to convey the notion of existential inertia. Suppose a deistic god creates exactly one iron sphere and nothing else. In this world there is nothing to cause the sphere to rust or otherwise corrode away into nonexistence. Nor does it, like a living organism, require anything external to it to continue to exist. It doesn't need oxygen or water like Nemes' cat. And it has no internal mechanism to self-destruct. The sphere exists inertially iff its 'default setting' is continued existence which is to say: it has no intrinsic tendency to cease to exist.
The sphere is of course a contingent being. Hence there is no necessity that it continue to exist. But while there is no necessity that it continue to exist, it will continue to exist absent some external annihilatory force. The deistic god could zap it out of existence, but if he doesn't, it will continue to exist on its own 'steam.' He needn't do anything to keep it in existence, and of course he can't if he is truly deistic.
And the same goes for the cat, despite the cat's need for materials in its environment such as oxygen and food. It too will continue to exist if those things are supplied without the need for a special metaphysical factor to keep it from sliding into nonbeing. The critter's natural default is to existence.
Nemes's Argument against Existential Inertia
1) The real existence of the cat does not show itself as one of its properties.
2) "The real existence of the cat is thus not a part of that total complex of individuated properties which make up the particular cat which we experience. "
3) "The unexperienceable real existence of the experienceable cat must therefore be something that is somehow “outside” of the cat, and yet “pointed at it” in such a way that the cat exists."
4) "This is easy to understand if we say that the existence of the cat consists in its standing on the receiving end of an existence-endowing relation to “something else.” ". . . a “something else” that is not itself an individual thing with properties but rather pure existence itself. And this “pure existence itself,” according to classical theists, is God."
(1) is true. (2) appears merely to unpack (explicate) (1); if so, it too is true. The transition to (3), however, is a non sequitur. The real existence of the cat might be hidden within it or an empirically inaccessible feature of it. Absent further premises, one cannot conclude that the real existence is 'outside' the cat.
Of course, I am not endorsing existential inertia; I am merely pointing out that the above argument, as it stands, is invalid. Perhaps with further work it can be made valid.
Can Kant Refer to God?
This is a re-working of an entry from 19 September 2016. It relates to present concerns about limit concepts and whether and to what extent God can be subsumed under our concepts.
……………………….
Ed Buckner raises the title question, and he wants my help with it. How can I refuse? I'll say a little now, and perhaps more later.
Kant was brought up a rationalist within the Wolffian school, but then along came David Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber. This awakening began his Critical period in which he struggles mightily to find a via media between rationalism and empiricism. The result of his struggle, the Critical philosophy, is of great historical significance but it is also an unstable tissue of apparently irresolvable tensions. As a result there are competing interpretations of his doctrines.
I will propose two readings relevant to Ed's question. But first a reformulation and clarification of the question.
Can one think about God and meaningfully predicate properties of him? For example, can one meaningfully say of God that he exists, is omnipotent, and is the cause of the existence of the natural world? Or is it rather the case that such assertions are meaningless and that the category of causality, for example, has a meaningful application only within the realm of phenomena but not between the phenomenal realm as a whole and a putative transcendent causa prima? Are the bounds of sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) also the bounds of sense (Sinn), or are there senseful, meaningful assertions that transgress the bounds of sensibility?
Weak or Moderate Reading. On this reading, we can think about God and meaningfully make predications of him, but we cannot have any knowledge of God and his attributes. We cannot have knowledge of God because knowledge necessarily involves the interplay of two very different factors, conceptual interpretation via the categories of the understanding, and sensory givenness. God, however, is not given to the senses, outer or inner. In Kantian jargon, there is no intuition, keine Anschauung, of God. For intellects of our type, all intuition is sensible intuition. The Sage of Koenigsberg will not countenance any mystical intuition, any Platonic or Plotinian visio intellectualis, at least not in this life. That sort of thing he dismisses in the Enlightenment manner as Schwaermerei, 'enthusiasm' in an obsolete 18th century sense of the English term.
But while Kant denies that there is knowledge of God here below whether by pure reason or by mystical intuition, he aims to secure a 'safe space' for faith: "I have found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith." (Preface to 2nd ed. of Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1787, B xxx.) Now if God and the soul are objects of faith, this would imply that we can think of them and thus refer to them even if we cannot have knowledge of them.
As for the soul, it is the object of the branch of metaphysica specialis called rational psychology. Since all our intuition is sensible, there is no sensible intuition of the soul. As is well-known, Kant denies that special metaphysics in all three branches (psychology, cosmology, and theology) is possible as science, als Wissenschaft. To be science it would have to include synthetic a priori judgments, but these are possible only with respect to phenomena.
Kant's key question is: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible? He believes that they are actual in mathematics and physics, and would have to be actual in metaphysics if the latter were a science. Kant concludes that synthetic a priori judgments are possible in mathematics and physics only because the world of experience (Erfahrung) is not a world of things in themselves whose existence, nature, and law-like regularity are independent of our mental contribution, but a merely phenomenal world to whose construction (transcendental) mind makes an indispensable contribution.
The dignity and necessity of the synthetic causal principle — every event has a cause — is rescued from the jaws of Humean skepticism, but the price is high: the only world we can know is the world of phenomena. This is not a world of illusions, but a world of intersubjectively valid objects of experience. But while objective in the sense of intersubjectively valid, these objects do not exist in themselves. Things in themselves (noumena in the negative sense) are beyond our ken. Yet we must posit them since the appearances are appearances of something (obj. gen.). And it is presumably the affection of our sense organs by these things in themselves that gives rise to the sensory manifold that is then organized by a priori forms (categories and forms of sensibility) on the side of the subject. The restriction of human knowledge to phenomena secures the objectivity (intersubjective validity) of our knowledge, but by the same stroke rules out any knowledge of the objects of special metaphysics (God, the soul, the world as a whole).
On the moderate reading, then, Kant restricts the cognitive employment of the categories of the understanding to phenomena but not their thinking employment. We can think about and refer to the positive noumena, God, the soul, and the world as a whole, but we cannot have any knowledge of them. (And the same goes for the negative noumena that correspond to sensible appearances.) We can talk sense about God and the soul, and predicate properties of these entities, but we cannot come to have knowledge of them. Thus we can meaningfully speak of the soul as a simple substance which remains numerically self-same over time and through its changing states, but we cannot know that it has these properties.
The weak reading is represented by the following argument:
1) A necessary condition of knowledge is intuition (Anschauung).
2) In us, the only mode of intuition is sensible. We have no faculty of intellectual intuition.
3) The concept of God is the concept of an entity that cannot be an object of the senses.
Therefore
4) God is unknowable by us. (1, 2, 3)
Nevertheless
5) God is thinkable by us. (3)
Strong or Extreme Reading. On this reading, we cannot talk sense about positive or negative noumena: such categories as substance and causality cannot be meaningfully applied beyond the bounds of sensibility to God, the soul, angels, libertarianly free noumena agents, the world as a whole, or even things in themselves. Riffing on P. F. Strawson one could say that on the strong reading the bounds of sensibility are the bounds of sense. This reading wins the day in post-Kantian philosophy. Fichte liquidates the Ding an sich, the neo-Kantians reduce the transcendental ego to a mere concept (Rickert, e.g.), the categories which for Kant were ahistorical and fixed become historicized and relativized, and we end up with a conceptual relativism which fuels a lot of the nonsense of the present day, e.g., race and sex as social constructs, etc.
The strong reading is represented by the following argument:
1*) A necessary condition of meaningful objective reference is intuition.
2) In us, the only mode of intuition is sensible. We have no faculty of intellectual intuition.
3) The concept of God is the concept of an entity that cannot be an object of the senses.
Therefore
4*) God cannot be meaningfully referred to by us.
So my answer to Ed Buckner's title question is: It depends. It depends on whether we read Kant in the weak way or in the strong way. Read in the weak way, Kant is saying that the categories of the understanding have no cognitive employment in the absence of sensory input, but they do have an empty logical employment and objective reference/meaning. Read in the strong way, the categories are devoid of objective reference/meaning in the absence of sensory givenness. If so, the concept of God is a limit concept in the negative sense: it merely marks a limit to our understanding, but does not point beyond that limit. At best, the concept of God is a regulative Idea whose employment is purely immanent.
What is a Limit Concept? The Example of Prime Matter
In an earlier entry I suggested that the concept God is a limit concept or Grenzbegriff. I now need to back up a few steps and clarify the concept limit concept and give some non-divine examples. If I cannot supply any non-divine examples, then I might justifiably be accused of ad-hoc-ery.
Terminological note: The term Grenzbegriff first enters philosophy in 1781 in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Curiously, he uses the term only once in the works he himself published. The term surfaces a few more times in his Nachlass. The sole passage in the published works is at A255/B311 where Kant remarks that the concept noumenon is a Grenzbegriff.
In the earlier post I distinguished between ordinary concepts and limit concepts. I said in effect that ordinary concepts 'track' essences and are more or less adequate 'captures' of the essences of things encountered in experience. Limit concepts, I said, 'point beyond' ordinary experience. Thus the concept of God does not and cannot represent the essence of God but it can serve to conceptualize God as that which lies beyond ordinary conceptualization. The concept of God is a limit concept that points beyond itself to something real that cannot be subsumed under ordinary concepts.
But there is an ambiguity here that I glossed over in the earlier entry. Can't there be limit concepts that simply limit without 'pointing beyond'? How do I know that the concept of God is not like this? (This is connected with the question whether the concept of God might just be a regulative ideal in Kant's sense.)
The trailhead is where the road ends. But further locomotion is possible on foot or in some other non-motorized manner (horse, mountain bike, pogo stick . . .) The limit in this example has a this-side and an accessible far side. The limit points beyond the paved road to the unpaved trail. But let us say that I have reached the end of the road figuratively speaking: I have just died. Assuming mortalism, my death is a limit to my life beyond which there is nothing. Some limits are such that the this-side has a far-side; others have only a far-side.
So we should distinguish between limit concepts that simply limit and limit concepts that both limit and point beyond.
Example: Prime Matter
The concept of prime matter is clearly a limit concept. For prime matter is matter at the lowest level of hylomorphic analysis. Now does this concept point beyond itself to something real, prime matter in itself? Or does this concept simply mark a limit to the hylomorphic analysis of the real?
To pursue this question, a little primer on hylomorphism is needed.
Given that thought sometimes makes contact with reality, one can ask: what must real things be like if thought is to be able to make contact with them? What must these things be like if they are to be intelligible to us? A realist answer is that these mind-independent things must be conformable to our thought, and our thought to them. There must be some sort of isomorphism between thought and thing. Since we cannot grasp anything unstructured, reality must have structure. So there have to be principles of form and organization in things. But reality is not exhausted by forms and structures; there is also that which supports form and structure. In this way matter comes into the picture. Forms are determinations. Matter, in a sense that embraces both primary and secondary matter, is the determinable as such.
Proximate matter can be encountered in experience, at least in typical cases. The proximate matter of a chair consists of its legs, seat, back. But this proximate matter itself has form. A leg, for example, has a shape and thus a form. (Form is not identical to shape, since there are forms that are not shapes; but shapes are forms.) Suppose the leg has the geometrical form of a cylinder. (Of course it will have other forms as well, the forms of smoothness and brownness, say.) The cylindrical form is the form of some matter. The matter of this cylindrical form is wood, say. But a piece of wood is a partite entity the parts of which have form and matter. For example, the complex carbohydrate cellulose is found in wood. It has a form and a proximate matter. But cellulose is made of beta-glucose molecules. Molecules are made of atoms, atoms of subatomic particles like electrons, and these of quarks, and so it goes.
Hylomorphic analysis is thus iterable. The iteration cannot be infinite: the material world cannot be hylomorphic compounds 'all the way down,' or 'all the way up' for that matter. The iteration has a lower limit in prime or primordial or ultimate matter (materia prima), just as it has an upper limit in pure form, and ultimately in the forma formarum, God, the purely actual being. Must hylomorphic analysis proceed all the way to prime matter, or can it coherently stop one step shy of it at the lowest level of materia secunda? I think that if one starts down the hylomorphic road one must drive to its bitter end in prime matter. (Cf. Feser's manual, p. 173 for what I read as an argument to this conclusion.) Ultimate matter, precisely because it is ultimate, has no form of its own. As John Haldane describes it, it is "stuff of no kind." (“A Return to Form in the Philosophy of Mind” in Form and Matter, ed. Oderberg, p. 50) We could say that prime matter is the wholly indeterminate determinable. As wholly indeterminate, it is wholly determinable.
The Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter
While it is easy to appreciate the logic that leads to the positing of prime matter, it is difficult to see that what is posited is coherently thinkable. Here is one consideration among several. Call it the Antinomy of the Existence of Prime Matter. It may be compressed into the following aporetic dyad:
-
Prime matter exists.
-
Prime matter does not exist.
Argument for limb (1). There is real substantial change and it cannot be reduced to accidental change. All change is reduction of potency to act, and all change requires an underlying substrate of change that remains self-same and secures the diachronic identity of that which changes. The substrate of a change is the matter of the change. What changes in a change are forms, whether accidental or substantial. Without the potency-act and matter-form distinctions we cannot accommodate the fact of change and avoid both the Heraclitean doctrine of radical flux and the Eleatic denial of change. Or so say the scholastics. In the case of accidental change, the subject or substrate is secondary matter (materia secunda). But substantial change is change too, and so it also requires a substrate which cannot be secondary matter and so must be prime matter. Given what we must assume to make sense of the plain fact of both accidental and substantial change, “prime matter must exist.” (Feser's manual, p. 172) It must exist in reality as the common basis of every substantial change.
So if substantial change occurs, prime matter exists!
Argument for limb (2). Prime matter is pure potency. It has to be, given the exigencies of accounting for substantial as opposed to accidental change. As pure potency, prime matter is wholly indeterminate and wholly formless. In itself, then, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually, as is obvious. But it also does not exist potentially: prime matter does not have potential Being. This is because the principle of the metaphysical priority of act over potency requires that every existing potency (e.g., the never actualized potency of a sugar cube to dissolve in water) be grounded in something actual (e.g., the sugar cube). The pure potency which is prime matter is not, however, grounded in anything actual. (Note that one cannot say that prime matter is a pure potency grounded in each primary substance. Prime matter is the ultimate stuff of each primary substance; it is not potency possessed by these substances.) Therefore, prime matter does not exist. It does not exist actually and it does not exist potentially. This is also evident from the first of the twenty-four Thomistic theses:
Potency and act are a complete division of being. Hence whatever is must be either pure act or a unit composed of potency and act as its primary and intrinsic principles. (Quoted by Feser, Schol. Metaph., p. 31)
If so, prime matter does not exist. For prime matter is neither pure act nor composed of potency and act. It is interesting to observe that while purely actual Being can itself be by being something actual, purely potential Being cannot itself be by being something potential (or actual). God is actual Being (Sein, esse) and an actual being (Seiendes, ens). But prime matter is neither potential nor actual. So prime matter neither is actually nor is potentially.
It thus appears that we have cogent arguments for both limbs of a contradiction. If the contradiction is real and not merely apparent, and the arguments for the dyad's limbs are cogent, then there is no prime matter, the very concept thereof being self-contradictory. But the concept does seem to make sense. To solve the above dyad, then, we may simply deny that prime matter exists. (And let the scholastics worry about how to account for substantial change.) If we deny that prime matter exists, we are left with the concept, but nothing to which it 'points.' The concept of prime matter would then be a limit concept that merely marks a limit to our hylomorphic analysis of the real, but does not refer beyond itself to anything real.
Of course, I am not maintaining that the concept of God is like this. I am merely giving an example of a non-divine limit concept and explaining the difference between limit concepts that are 'immanent' and merely regulate our thinking activity, and those that are 'transcendent' and point beyond.
Summing Up the Dialectic
Some claim that God is inconceivable. According to a stock objection, this is either false or meaningless. It is false if the claimant is operating with some concept of God, and meaningless if with no concept of God. I replied to the objection by distinguishing between ordinary and limit concepts. If the concept of God is a limit concept, then it can be true both that we have a concept of God and that God is nonetheless inconceivable in that he falls under no ordinary concept.
What I have yet to show is the concept of God is a limit concept in the positive or transcendent sense or 'pointing' sense and a not a limit concept that merely limits us to the this-side. The concept of prime matter is most plausibly viewed as a limit concept in the negative or immanent sense. Why isn't the God concept like this?
On God’s Not Falling Under Concepts
Fr. Deinhammer tells us, ". . . Gott fällt nicht unter Begriffe, er ist absolut unbegreiflich. . . ." "God does not fall under concepts; he is absolutely inconceivable or unconceptualizable. . . ."
Edward the Logician sent me an e-mail in which he forwards a stock objection:
Who is it who is absolutely inconceivable or unconceptualizable? Either ‘he’ tells us, or not. If so, the proposition is false. If not, the proposition is incoherent.
I appreciate that you are quoting the person who wrote to you, but my aporia stands.
Ed's aporetic point can be summed up as follows. Talk of God as inconceivable is either false or meaningless. If the person who claims that God is inconceivable is operating with some concept of God, then the claim is meaningful but false. If, on the other hand, the person is operating with no concept of God, then saying that God is inconceivable is no better than saying that X is inconceivable, which says nothing and is therefore meaningless. (X is inconceivable is at best a propositional function, not a proposition, hence neither true nor false. To make a proposition out of it you must either bind the free variable 'x' with a quantifier or else substitute a proper name for 'x.')
A Response to the Objection
Suppose we make a distinction between those concepts that can capture the essences or natures of the things of which they are the concepts, and those concepts that cannot. Call the first type ordinary concepts and the second limit concepts (Grenzbegriffe). Thus the concept cube captures the essence of every cube, which is to be a three-dimensional solid bounded by six square faces or sides with three meeting at each vertex, and it captures this essence fully. The concept heliotropic plant captures, partially, the essence of those plants which exhibit diurnal or seasonal motion of plant parts in response to the direction of the sun.
Now the concept God cannot be ordinary since this concept cannot capture the essence of God. For in God essence and existence are one, and there is no ordinary concept of existence. (The existence of a thing, as other than its essence, cannot be conceptualized.) Again, in God there is no real distinction between God and his nature, whereas no ordinary concept captures the individuality of the thing of which it is the concept. Since God is (identically) his nature, there can be no ordinary concept of God.
There is, then, a tolerably clear sense in which God is unconceptualizable or unbegreiflich: he cannot be grasped by the use of any ordinary concept. But it doesn't follow that we have no concept of God. The concept God is a limit concept: it is the concept of something that cannot be grasped using ordinary concepts. It is the concept of something that lies at the outer limits of discursive intelligibility, and indeed just beyond that limit. We can argue up to this Infinite Object/Subject, but then discursive operations must cease. We can however point to God, in a manner of speaking, using limit concepts. The concept God is the concept of an infinite, absolute and wholly transcendent reality whose realitas formalis so exceeds our powers of understanding that it cannot be taken up into the realitas objectiva of any of our ordinary concepts.
If this is right, then there is a way between the horns of the above dilemma. But of course it needs further elaboration and explanation.
God as Uniquely Unique
I hit upon 'uniquely unique' a while back as an apt predicate of God. But it is only the formulation that is original; the thought is ancient.
To be unique is to be one of a kind. It will be allowed that nothing counts as God unless it is unique. So at a bare minimum, God must be the one and only instance of the divine kind. (This kind could be thought of as the conjunction of the divine attributes.) Beyond that, it will be allowed that whatever counts as God must be essentially unique: nothing that just happens to be uniquely of the divine kind could count as God. What's more, it will be allowed that nothing counts as God that is not a necessary being. Putting these three allowances together, I say that God is not just essentially, but necessarily unique. (In the patois of 'possible worlds,' God is unique in every metaphysically possible world in which he exists, and he exists in every such possible world. By contrast, Socrates is essentially human, but not necessarily human inasmuch as he does not exist in every metaphysically possible world.)
But some of us want to go further still. We want to say that God is uniquely unique. His uniqueness extends to his mode of being unique. He is unique in a way that no other thing is unique. Suppose there is more than one necessarily unique being. The necessarily unique God would then be just one of many necessarily unique beings. In that case he would not be uniquely unique. He would share the property of being necessarily unique with other items. (Fregean Gedanken and Bolzanian Saetze an sich and other platonica are epistemically possible candidates.)
But then something greater could be conceived, namely, a being that transcends the distinction between kind and instance in terms of which uniqueness is ordinarily defined. If I asked someone such as Alvin Plantinga wherein resides the divine uniqueness, he would presumably say that it resides in the fact that the there is one and only one possible instance of the divine nature: this nature exists in every world and God instantiates it in every world. But then God is just another necessarily unique necessary being.
A truly transcendent God, however, must transcend the ontological framework applicable to everything other than God. So he must transcend the distinction between kind and instance. In a truly transcendent God there cannot be real distinctions of any kind and thus no real distinction between kind and instance, nature and individual having the nature.
Now if God transcends the distinction between instance and kind/nature, and is uniquely unique, unique in a way that no other being is or could be unique, then that is equivalent to maintaining that God is ontologically simple. (See my SEP entry.)
But why think that God is ontologically simple and uniquely unique? Here is where the paths diverge.
Some of us feel impelled to say that a God worth his salt cannot be anything other than the absolute reality, the Absolute. So God cannot be relative to anything or dependent on anything or immanent in anything as he would be if he were just one more being among beings. For then he would be immanent to what I earlier called the Discursive Framework. It is rather the case that God transcends this framework. If God is the Absolute, then he must be simple; otherwise he would depend on properties distinct from himself to be what he is.
Again, if God is the Absolute, then he cannot be one of many; he must be the ONE that makes possible the one and the many. As such he transcends the Discursive Framework in which the one opposes the many. The ONE, however, is the ONE of both the one and many. It cannot be brought into opposition to anything.
"But such a God as you are describing is ineffable! I want a God that that can be addressed in petitionary prayer, a God that is a Thou to my I."
What you want is to stop short at a highest finite object, when the religious-metaphysical quest is animated by dissatisfaction with every finite thing. The truly religious quester is a nihilist with respect to every finite object. A God worthy of our highest quest must be absolute, simple, transcendent, and ineffable.
Can the Existence of God be Proven?
A reader inquires,
I was wondering whether you had any direction you could offer for rational arguments for God's existence?
If you are looking for arguments that are not merely rational, but rationally compelling, I don't believe that there are any. I also believe that there aren't any such arguments for the nonexistence of God. A rationally compelling argument for a proposition is a proof; a rationally compelling argument for its logical contradictory is a disproof. When it comes to God, and not just God, there are no proofs or disproofs. There are arguments, some better than others. That's as good as it gets.
Note that my claim that this is so is not a proposition that I claim to be able to prove. I claim merely that it is reasonable to believe. I do believe it and will continue to believe until someone gives me a compelling reason not to believe it. If I am right, however, that cannot happen. For my meta-philosophical thesis is substantive, and if I am right, said thesis can neither be proven nor disproven. So the the best you could do would be counter me with the contradictory of my meta-thesis. But then we would be in a stand-off.
What is it for an argument to be rationally compelling?
Philosophers make reasoned cases for all manner of propositions, but their colleagues typically do not find these arguments to be compelling. So a reasoned case need not be a compelling case. But it depends on what exactly is meant by 'compelling.' I suggest that a (rationally) compelling argument is one which forces the 'consumer' of the argument to accept the argument's conclusion on pain of being irrational. (What is it to be irrational? That's a long story I cannot now go into, but the worst form of irrationality would be the acceptance of a logical contradiction.) I will assume that the 'consumer' is intelligent, sincere, open to having his mind changed, and well-versed in the subject matter of the argument. Now it may be that there are a few arguments that are rationally compelling in this sense, but there are precious few, and surely no arguments for or against the existence of God.
To appreciate this, note first that arguments have premises and that no argument can prove its own premises. (An argument of the form p therefore p is an argument valid in point of logical form in which premise and conclusion are identical, but no one will take an argument of this form as proving that p.) Now given that no argument can prove its own premises, what reason could one give for accepting the premises of a given argument? Suppose deductive argument A has P1 and P2 as premises and that conclusion C follows logically from the premises. Why accept P1 and P2? One could adduce further arguments B and C for P1 and P2 respectively. But then the problem arises all over again. For arguments B and C themselves have premises. If P3 is a premise of B, what reason could one give for the acceptance of P3? One could adduce argument D. But D too has premises, and if you think this through you soon realize that you have brought down upon your head an infinite regress which is vicious. The regress is vicious because the task of justifying by argument all the premises involved cannot be completed.
To avoid argumentative regress we need premises that are self-justifying in the sense that they are justified, but not justified by anything external to themselves. Such propositions could be said to be self-evident. But what is self-evident to one person is often not self-evident to another. This plain fact forces a distinction between subjective and objective self-evidence. Clearly, subjective self-evidence is not good enough. If it merely seems to subject S that p is self-evident, that does not suffice to establish that p is objectively self-evident. Trouble is, when someone announces that such-and-such is objectively self-evident that too is a claim about how it seems to that person, so that it is not clear that what is being claimed as objectively self-evident is not in the end itself merely subjectively self-evident.
Example. Suppose an argument for the existence of God employs the premise, 'Every event has a cause.' Is this premise self-evident? No. Why can't there be an uncaused event? So how does one know that that premise is true? It is a plausible premise, no doubt, but plausibility is not the same as truth. And if you do not know that the premises of your argument are true, then your argument, even if logically impeccable in every other way, does not amount to a proof, strictly speaking. Knowledge entails certainty, objective certainty.
My point is that there are hardly any rationally compelling arguments for substantive theses. But one can make reasoned cases for theses. Therefore, a reasoned case is not the same as a compelling argument.
Because people are naturally dogmatic and crave doxastic security, they are unwilling to accept my meta-philosophical thesis that there are hardly any compelling arguments for substantive theses. They want to believe that their pet beliefs are compellingly provable and that people who do not accept their 'proofs' are either irrational or morally defective. Their tendency is to accept as sound any old argument for the conclusions they antecedently accept, no matter how shoddy the argument, and to reject as unsound arguments that issue in conclusions they do not accept. Their craving for doxastic security swamps and suborns their critical faculties.
One way to refute what I am saying would be by providing a compelling argument for the existence of God, or a compelling argument for the nonexistence of God. You won't be able to do it.
In the absence of compelling arguments, what should one do?
I don't believe that there can be talk of proof when it comes to God, the soul, and other big topics, assuming you use 'proof' strictly. After considering all the evidence for and against, you will have to decide what you will believe and how you will live. The will comes into it. One freedom comes into it. I thus espouse a limited doxastic voluntarism. In the shadowlands of this life there is light enough and darkness enough to lend support to either answer, that of the theist and that of his opposite number. So it is up to you to decide what you will believe and how you will live.
For me the following consideration clinches the matter. Bring the theoretical question back down to your lived life, your Existenz in the existentialist sense. How will you live, starting right now and for the rest of your days? Will you live as if you will be utterly extinguished in a few years or will you live as if what you do and leave undone right now matters, really matters? Will you live as if life is serious, or will you live as if it is some sort of cosmic joke? Will you live as if something is at stake in this life, however dimly descried, or will you live as if nothing is ultimately at stake? Will you live life as if it has an Absolute Meaning that transcends the petty particular relative meanings of the quotidian round? Will you take the norms that conscience reveals as so many pointers to an Unseen Order to which this paltry and transient sublunary order is but prelude?
It is your life. You decide. You can drift and not decide, but your drifting in the currents of social suggestion and according to the idols of the age is a deficient mode of decision. Not to decide is to decide.
Now suppose that when Drs. Mary Neal and Eben Alexander die the body's death, they become nothing. Suppose that their phenomenologically vivid paranormal after-death experiences were revelatory of nothing real, that their experiences were just the imaginings of malfunctioning brains at the outer limits of biological life. What will they have lost by believing as they did?
Nothing! Nothing at all. You could of course say that they were wrong and were living in illusion and giving themselves and others false hope. But no one will ever know one way or the other. And if the body's death is the last word, then nothing ultimately matters, and so it can't matter that they were wrong if turns out that they were.
If they were right, however, then the moral transformation that their taking seriously of their experiences has wrought in them can be expected to redound to their benefit when they pass from this sphere.
More on “God + World = God”
The thesis under examination as expressed by Diogenes Allen: "The world plus God is not more than God alone. God less the world is not less than God alone." Is this a defensible position? Let's consider both sides of the question.
A. First, a crisp little argument against the view.
Consider two possible scenarios. In the first, God alone exists. In the second, God exists and creates a world. On a view of God according to which he is libertarianly free, both scenarios are indeed possible. It is possible that God create and it is possible that he not create. There is no necessity that God create; his creating is free in the 'could have done otherwise' sense. Clearly, the scenarios are different. But if God + World = God, then there is no difference between the two scenarios. For on that supposition, God alone exists in both scenarios. Therefore, it is not the case that God + World = God.
To extend the argument:
If God is Being itself, ipsum esse subsistens, Being in its plenitude and infinity, then how could there be anything else? If God is Being itself, and thus not a being among beings, how could there be any 'ontological room' for anything else? How is creation so much as possible if God is Being itself? Isn't the Thomist line, as articulated by Diogenes Allen and Etienne Gilson (quoted previously) just obviously mistaken?
After all, it is evident to the senses, even if not self-evident, that this material world of time and change exists: it is not nothing. Nor it is a dream or an illusion. Nor is it a world of Spinozistic modes, but a world of finite substances. I would also say that it is 'better known' that this material world of multiple substances exists than that God exists. But suppose God does exist. Then both the world (creatures) and God exist. Is it not perfectly obvious that the totality of reality is greater with both God and creation than with God alone? Someone who maintains that God + world = God is maintaining in effect that there are no creatures at all.
B. Now let's consider what could be said in favor of the view.
Given the force of the arguments for the thesis that God is not a being among beings, arguments we cannot rehearse again here, it is reasonable to hold that God is Being itself. This leaves us with the task of attaching some tolerably clear meaning to 'God + world = God' in the teeth of the argument contra. This cannot be done if there are no modes of Being. For if everything that exists exists in the same way (mode), and if G exists and W exists, and they are numerically distinct, then it is self-evident that there is a totality of existents and that this totality is greater if G and W both exist than if G alone exists.
So we need to bring in modes of Being or existence. To motivate the modes-of-Being doctrine, consider an analogy. I am standing before a mirror looking at my image. How many men? One, not two. I'm a man; my mirror image is not a man. An image, reflection, picture, drawing, sculpture of a man is not a man. To be of a man is not to be a man. My image is of a man (genitivus objectivus); it is not a man. And yet my mirror image is not nothing: it exists. I exist and my image exists. Both exist, but in different ways. I exist whether or not any mirror image of me exists; but no mirror image of me exists unless I exist. Note too that the mirror image is dependent on me for its existence at each moment of its existence, unlike a photograph or a sculpture. (Herein an analogy with creatio continuans.)
It is also worth noting that there is a correspondence between the visual properties of the man and the visual properties displayed in the image. (This fact is what allows a dentist to do precision work on a tooth without looking at it directly.) Now we cannot say that the man and his image instantiate the same quidditative properties since, e.g., the man is bearded but his image is not. But we can say that the same visual properties instantiated by the man are displayed in the image. While the image is not bearded, it is an image of a bearded man. There are two different properties, but they are related: being bearded, being of something bearded, where the 'of' is an objective genitive.
Man and image both exist. Yet there is an important difference. I say it is a difference in mode of existence. The image, unlike the man, exists dependently or derivatively, and it depends existentially on the very original of which it is the image. Existential dependence is not a quidditative property. This mode of existence is no more a quidditative property than existence is.
So I say we need a tripartite distinction: quiddity (nature, essence in the broad sense); general or quantificational existence, the existence expressed by the particular quantifier; mode of existence.
Now it makes a certain amount of sense to say that Man + Mirror Image = Man. This could be explained by saying that there is no totality of independent existents that has both me and my mirror image in it. If we are adding and subtracting over a domain of independent existents, then it is true that Man + Image = Man.
Accordingly, 'God + World = God' could be explained by saying that there is no totality of a se existents that has both God and creatures in it.
C. Aporetic Conclusion
The argument I gave in section A will strike many as compelling. But what I said in section B shows that it is not compelling. If one holds that God exists in a different way than creatures, then there is no totality in reality to which God and creatures all belong. One can of course say that something is (identically) God and that something is (identically) Socrates and that *Something is (identically) ____* has exactly the same sense, no matter what you throw into the gap: no matter what its mode of Being. But that implies only that there is a merely conceptual totality to which God and creatures all belong. In this merely excogitated conceptual totality, however, abstraction is made from the real existence of the things in question, and their different modes of Being.
I grant that God and Socrates both exist in the quantificational sense of 'exists,' a sense univocal across all existential sentences regardless of subject matter; but that is consistent with there being no commonality in reality between God and creatures to warrant talk of a totality in reality containing both.
My interim conclusion is aporetic: both positions on our question are reasonably maintained. They cannot both be true, but they can both be reasonably upheld.
I would be satisfied if Dale Tuggy and the 'supreme (miniscule) being theists' would agree with me and other '(majuscule) Being theists' that it is a stand-off.
God and Our Rights
Conservatives regularly say that our rights come from God, not from the state. It is true that they do not come from the state. But if they come from God, then their existence is as questionable as the existence of God. Now discussions with leftists are not likely to lead anywhere; but they certainly won't lead anywhere if we invoke premises leftists are sure to reject. The Left has always been reliably anti-religion and atheist, and so there is no chance of reaching them if we insist that rights come from God. So from a practical point of view, we should not bring up God in attempts to find common ground with leftists. It suffices to say that our rights are natural, not conventional. We could say that the right to life, say, is just there, inscribed in the nature of things, and leave it at that. Why wave a red flag before a leftist bull who suspects theists of being closet theocrats?
Now I am not sanguine about the prospects of fruitful discussion with leftists, but we ought to make the effort since talking with is better than shooting at. Apart from our practical interests, the topic is theoretically fascinating.
The following aporetic tetrad is a partial map of the conceptual terrain:
1) Unalienable rights, and the duties they generate, have an absolute character incompatible with their being conferred or withheld arbitrarily by those who happen to control the state apparatus.
2) Rights and duties cannot have this absolute character unless their source is God.
3) There are unalienable rights.
4) There is no God.
Although individually plausible, the members of this foursome are collectively inconsistent. So something has to give. (1) is a conceptual truth and so is not up for rejection.
Suppose you endorse (1), (2), and (3). You would then have a valid argument for the rejection of (4) and thus for the existence of God.
But (2) is not self-evident. And so the argument to God is not rationally compelling. It is epistemically possible that moral absolutes 'hang in the air' with no need of support by an Infinite Mind. An atheist could validly argue from (1), (3), and (4) to the negation of (2).
More drastically, one could validly argue that there are no unalienable rights via the acceptance of (1), (2), and (4). Imagine a naturalist who argues that if there were unalienable rights, they would have to have the absolute character that only God could ground, but that, since there is no God, there are no unalienable rights.
From a logical point of view, that argument is as good as the other two.
I have reasons to not be a metaphysical naturalist, and I have a strong intuition that some rights are absolute and unalienable; I am therefore within my epistemic rights in accepting the argument to God, despite its not being rationally compelling. But then no argument for any substantive thesis in a subject like this is rationally compelling.
An Atheological Argument from the Evil of Radical Skepticism
Bradley Schneider sends this argument of his devising:
Premise 1: If God exists, God has the power to eliminate/overcome/defeat any evil in reality without creating more evil (i.e., God and evil can coexist but God should prevail over evil in the end).
Premise 2: Radical skepticism about the world is an evil (NOT that radical skeptics are evil; rather, our inability to counter radical skepticism and to be sure about our knowledge of reality is an evil).
Premise 3: God cannot eliminate radical skepticism without overriding free will (creating another evil) — e.g., a skeptic who dies and goes to heaven may still not be convinced that he or she is not under an illusion created by a Cartesian demon; heaven could be part of the illusion.
Conclusion: God does not exist.
I accept the first two premises. With respect to the second, I have long believed that our deep and irremediable ignorance on matters of great importance to us is a major evil and germane both to the case for God's nonexistence, but also to the anti-natalist case. (Atheists who argue to the nonexistence of God from evil ought to consider whether the manifold evils of this world don't also put paid to the notion that human life is worth living and propagating.)
I balk, however, at the third premise. Schneider seems to be assuming that the origin of radical skepticism is in a free decision not to accept some putative givenness. There is, I admit, the willful refusal on the part of certain perverse individuals to accept the evident, and even the self-evident; as I see it, however, the origin of radical skepticism is not in a free refusal to accept what is evident or self-evident, but in a set of considerations that the skeptic finds compelling. A skeptic is not a willful denier, but a doubter, and indeed one whose doubt is in the service of cognition. He doesn't doubt for the sake of doubting, but for the sake of knowing. The skeptic wants to know, but he has high standards: he wants objective certainty, not mere subjective conviction. He doubts whatever can be doubted in order to arrive at epistemic bedrock. This is what motivates the hyperbolic doubt of the Dream Argument and the considerations anent the evil genius.
I therefore reject the claim that "God cannot eliminate radical skepticism without overriding free will . . . ." Free will doesn't come into it. Heaven is the Beatific Vision, and in that vision there will be such a perfect coalescence of finite knower and Infinite Object that no doubt can arise. In the visio beata, radical skepticism will not be possible. A mundane analog is supplied by the experience of a sensory quale such as a felt pain, or rather pleasure. In the moment that one feels it, one cannot doubt it, so long as one attends to its phenomenal features alone and brackets (in Husserl's sense) all external considerations as to causes, effects, etc. The phenomenology is indubitable whatever may be the case with the etiology.
So if heaven is the Beatific Vision, heaven cannot be illusory. But this highly refined, highly Platonic, Thomist take on heaven is not for everyone. It is not for Protestants whose conception is cruder. I call that conception Life 2.0 and I contrast in with the Thomist conception in Conceiving the Afterlife: Life 2.0 or Beatific Vision ? On a crude conception, according to which Jethro will be united after death with his faithful hound 'Blue,' drink home brew, and hunt rabbits, there is room for illusion. It could be that there is a whole series of quasi-material 'spiritual' heavens above the sublunary but shy of the ultimate heaven of the Beatific Vision, but I won't pursue that speculation here.
It just so happens that I am now reading Pierre Rousselot, Intelligence (Marquette UP, 1999), which is a translation of L'Intellectualisme de Saint Thomas. On p. 35, we read:
By a profoundly logical coincidence the beatific vision, which is the final cause of the world and ultimate perfection of the created spirit, is also, according to Thomas, the only example of a created knowledge other than the intuitions of personal consciousness which seizes and possesses being such as it is, directly, not only without abstraction but with no mediation whatever. The beatific vision is perfect intellection with regard both to its object and to its mode of operation; on this account we must study it here; otherwise it would be impossible to have an exact idea of what intellection is in itself.
This text supports my analogy above. "The intuitions of personal consciousness" are the felt qualia I referred to. These are "created knowledges" Writ Very Small, paltry sublunary analogs (e.g., the smell of burnt toast) of the ultimate coalescence of subject and object in the visio beata. But in both the sublunary and beatific cases, Being (esse) is seized and possessed directly, not via abstract concepts and without the mediation of epistemic deputies and mediators. Being is grasped itself and not via representations. The little mysticisms of sensation prefigure the Big Mysticism of Ultimate Beatitude.
My prose is starting to 'flow French,' but I trust you catch my drift.
How Could God be Justice itself?
David Gudeman writes; I reply:
George Berkeley was the first author who really shook my confidence in my existing world view. Before I read Berkeley, I had a Mr. Johnson-style contempt of physical idealism; after reading Berkeley, I realized that I had been naive–not because Berkeley was necessarily right, but because once I suppressed my presuppositions, I found him hard to refute, and came to realize how logically futile Mr. Johnson's refutation was.
Well, no one calls it 'physical idealism.' Stick with 'Berkeleyan idealism.' And of course it cannot be refuted ad lapidem, by kicking a stone. Berkeley was not an eliminativist about material objects. He did not maintain that rocks and trees do not exist; he did not question WHETHER they are; he offered an unusual ontological account of WHAT they are, namely ideas in the divine mind.
I offer this story as evidence of my good faith in the following, because I know I have irritated you before by bringing up topics like this, and very much do not want to do so again. In particular, I do have hopes that there is something to be found here if only I can come to grasp it.With that, I'd like to ask you if you can explain what you mean by phrases like "God is the measure of Justice. God is Justice itself." (From this entry.)To me this looks like a couple of category errors. God is a person, a measure of justice is a measure, and justice is a quality. How can these three be equated in any literal sense? [. . .]
Fair questions.
A. I take it that you will grant me that God is a wholly just person. Now assume the following: God is unique; there are non-divine persons; none of the latter are wholly just. You and I are non-divine persons, and neither of us is wholly just, although one of us may be more just than the other. There are degrees of justice in non-divine (created) persons. Now it makes sense to say that God sets the standard with respect to justice or being just. God is the measure of justice in that he is just to the highest degree, and we fail to measure up, to different degrees.
It therefore makes sense to say that God, a person, is the standard, exemplar, measure of justice. There is no category mistake. The second alleged category mistake is harder to deal with, and a wholly satisfactory answer is not possible because when we discuss God, the ultimate source of all being, value, and intrinsic intelligibility, we are at the outer limit of intelligibility. (The Intelligent Source of all intrinsic intelligibility, because it is an Other Mind, cannot be understood with the clarity and completeness with which we understand ordinary objects among objects.) All I can hope to show is that the accusation of category mistake can be turned aside or rationally repelled. So here we go.
B. God is a just person, and he is just to the highest possible degree. Now is God just in virtue of instantiating a property of justice that exists independently of him? You say justice is a quality. I'll play along. Is God just in virtue of instantiating this quality? (Perhaps you are thinking of this quality as a necessarily existent 'abstract object.') If you say yes, then you compromise God's aseity, his from-himself-ness. God is the Absolute. Not an absolute, but the Absolute. As such, he cannot be dependent on anything external to himself for his existence or nature. You will grant that God cannot have a cause of his existence external to himself. You must also grant that for God to be God he cannot be dependent on anything external to himself for his nature (essence). So he can't be just in virtue of instantiating your quality, justice. God sets the standard by being the standard: there is no standard of justice outside of God that he needs to conform to.
If so, if God is not an instance of justice, a just entity, then he must be (identically) justice. The Platonist Augustine drew this conclusion, one that entails the divine simplicity, and the Jansenists followed Augustine in this. God is like a self-exemplifying Platonic Form or paradigm. Supreme Wisdom is itself wise; supreme Justice is itself just. God is at once each of his attributes and also their unique instance. God is, but he is not a being among beings. God is (identically) Being itself, but not in a way the detracts from his being a being, or to be precise, the being. For God to be God he must be unique in the highest possible sense: not one of a kind, not necessarily one of a kind, but necessarily such that in him kind and instance are one.
The theist faces a dilemma. Either God is or is not distinct from his attributes. if the former, then God is not God. If the latter, then God is beyond the comprehension of the discursive intellect.
(But is the second horn so bad? A God worth his salt must be transcendent, Transcendence itself. (Otherwise, your god is an idol. Whatever you say about Islam, it at least has a lively sense of the transcendence of God.)
In conclusion, Gudeman's second accusation of category error can be rationally resisted as I have just done. One can cogently argue up to the divine simplicity. The problem, however — and I freely admit it — is that the discursive intellect cannot wrap itself around (cannot understand) how something can be ontologically simple. One is reduced to pointing beyond the discursive sphere.
Here we reach an impasse beyond which we cannot move by philosophical means. But what justifies the conceit that the only way to the ultimate truth is the philosophical way?
Pascal the Jansenist
Herewith, a note on Pascal inspired by Leszek Kolakowski's fascinating book, God Owes Us Nothing (University of Chicago, 1995).
Faith is a divine gift, bestowed arbitrarily, not a reward for merit. We postlapsarians groaning under Adam's sin are wholly without merit. There is no way we can get right with God by our own efforts. Grace is both necessary and sufficient for salvation. God cannot be called unjust in arbitrarily bestowing the grace that leads to faith and salvation on some but not others — for God is not measured by Justice, a standard external to him; God is the measure of Justice. God is Justice itself. In this respect he is like a self-exemplifying Platonic Form. Justice is just; God is Justice; God is just. Whatever Supreme Justice does is just by definition. This is a consequence of God's absolute sovereignty. Kolakowski hasn't (so far in my reading) mentioned divine simplicity, but this doctrine is arguably entailed by absolute sovereignty.
And so the very question whether God acts justly in damning some and saving others presupposes what cannot be the case given absolute sovereignty, namely, that God can be judged by a standard external to him. This view leads by inexorable logic to some horrific consequences. One is the justice of the consignment of unbaptized infants to eternal torment. Pascal bites the Augustinian bullet. See p. 85 ff.
Is Classical Theism a Type of Idealism?
I return an affirmative answer.
If God creates ex nihilo, and everything concrete other than God is created by God, and God is a pure spirit, then one type of metaphysical realism can be excluded at the outset. This realism asserts that there are radically transcendent uncreated concrete things other than God. 'Radically transcendent' means 'transcendent of any mind, finite or infinite.' On this view, radically transcendent items exist and have most of their properties independently of any mind, including the divine mind. Call this realism-1. We could also call it extreme metaphysical realism.
No classical theist could be a realist-1. For on classical theism, everything other than God is created by God, created out of nothing, mind you, and not out of Avicennian mere possibles or any cognate sort of item. ('Out of nothing' is a privative expression that means 'not out of something.') We also note that on classical theism, God is not merely an originating cause of things other than himself, but a continuing cause that keeps these things in existence moment-by-moment. He is not a mere cosmic starter-upper.
Corresponding to realism-1, as its opposite, is idealism-1. This is the view that everything other than God is created ex nihilo by God, who is a pure spirit, and who therefore creates in a purely spiritual way. (To simplify the discussion, let us leave to one side the problem of so-called 'abstract objects.') It seems to me, therefore, that there is a very clear sense in which classical theism is a type of idealism. For on classical theism God brings into existence and keeps in existence every concretum other than himself and he does so by his purely mental/spiritual activity. We could call this type of idealism onto-theological absolute idealism. This is not to say that the entire physical cosmos is a content of the divine mind; it is rather an accusative or intentional object of the divine mind. Though not radically transcendent, it is a transcendence-in-immanence, to borrow some Husserlian phraseology.
So if the universe is expanding, that is not to say that the divine mind or any part thereof is expanding. If an intentional object has a property P it does not follow that a mind trained upon this object, or an act of this mind or a content in this mind has P. Perceiving a blue coffee cup, I have as intentional object something blue; but my mind is not blue, nor is the perceiving blue, nor any mental content that mediates the perceiving. If I perceive or imagine or in any way think of an extended sticky surface, neither my mind nor any part of it becomes extended or sticky. Same with God. He retains his difference from the physical cosmos even while said cosmos is nothing more than his merely intentional object incapable of existing on its own.
Actually, what I just wrote is only an approximation to what I really want to say. For just as God is sui generis, I think the relation between God and the world is also sui generis, and as such not an instance of the intentional relation with which we are familiar in our own mental lives. The former is only analogous to the latter. If one takes the divine transcendence seriously, then God cannot be a being among beings; equally, God's relation to the world cannot be a relation among relations. If we achieve any understanding in these lofty precincts, it is not the sort of understanding one achieves by subsuming a new case under an old pattern; God does not fit any pre-existing pattern, nor does his 'relation' to the world fit any pre-existing pattern. The Absolute cannot be an instance of a type. If we achieve any understanding here it will be via various groping analogies. These analogies can only take us so far. In the end we must confess the infirmity of finite reason in respect of the Absolute that is the Paradigm Existent.
There is also the well-known problem that the intentional 'relation' is not, strictly speaking, a relation. It is at best analogous to a relation. So it looks as if we have a double analogy going here. The God-world relation is analogous to something analogous to a relation in the strict sense. Let me explain.
If x stands in relation R to y, then both x, y exist. But x can stand in the intentional 'relation' to y even if y does not exist in reality. It is a plain fact that we sometimes have very definite thoughts about objects that do not exist, the planet Vulcan, for example. What about the creating/sustaining 'relation'? The holding of this 'relation' as between God and Socrates cannot presuppose the existence in reality of both relata. It presupposes the existence of God no doubt, but if it presupposed the existence of Socrates then there would be no need for the creating/sustaining ex nihilo of Socrates. Creating is a producing, a causing to exist, and indeed moment by moment.
For this reason, creation/sustaining cannot be a relation, strictly speaking. It follows that the createdness of a creature cannot be a relational property, strictly speaking. Now the createdness of a creature is its existence or Being. So the existence of a creature cannot be a relational property thereof; but it is like a relational property thereof.
What I have done so far is argue that classical theism is a form of idealism, a form of idealism that is the opposite of an extreme from of metaphysical realism, the form I referred to as 'realism-1.' If you say that no one has ever held such a form of realism, I will point to Ayn Rand. (See Rand and Peikoff on God and Existence.)
Moderate Realism (Realism-2)
Realism holds with respect to some of the objects of finite minds. Not for merely intentional objects, of course, but for things like trees and mountains and cats and chairs and their parts. They exist and have most of their properties independently of the mental activity of finite minds such as ours. We can call this realism-2.
Kant held that empirical realism and transcendental idealism are logically compatible and he subscribed to both. Now the idealism I urge is not a mere transcendental idealism, but a full-throated onto-theological absolute idealism; but it too is compatible, as far as I can see, with the empirical reality of most of the objects of ectypal intellects such as ours. The divine spontaneity makes them exist and renders them available to the receptivity of ectypal intellects. Realism-2 is consistent with idealism-1.
My thesis, then, is that classical theism is a type of idealism; it is onto-theological absolute idealism. If everything concrete is created originally and sustained ongoingly ex nihilo by a purely spiritual being, an Absolute Mind, and by purely spiritual activity, then this is better denominated 'idealism' than 'realism.' Is that not obvious?
But trouble looms as I will argue in the next entry in this series. And so we will have to consider whether the sui generis, absolutely unique status of God and his relation to the world is good reason to withhold both appellations, 'realism' and 'idealism.'
Rand and Peikoff on God and Existence
The following is by Leonard Peikoff, acolyte of Ayn Rand:
Every argument for God and every attribute ascribed to Him rests on a false metaphysical premise. None can survive for a moment on a correct metaphysics . . . .
Existence exists, and only existence exists. Existence is a primary: it is uncreated, indestructible, eternal. So if you are to postulate something beyond existence—some supernatural realm—you must do it by openly denying reason, dispensing with definitions, proofs, arguments, and saying flatly, “To Hell with argument, I have faith.” That, of course, is a willful rejection of reason.
Objectivism advocates reason as man’s sole means of knowledge, and therefore, for the reasons I have already given, it is atheist. It denies any supernatural dimension presented as a contradiction of nature, of existence. This applies not only to God, but also to every variant of the supernatural ever advocated or to be advocated. In other words, we accept reality, and that’s all.
Most professional philosophers consider Rand and Co. not worth discussing. Nihil philosophicum a nobis alienum putamus, however, is one of my mottoes (see here for explanation); so I will engage the Randian ideas to see if they generate any light. But I will try to avoid the polemical and tabloid style Rand and friends favor.
In the quotation above we meet once again our old friend 'Existence exists.' Ayn Rand & Co. use 'existence' to refer to what exists, not to something — a property perhaps — in virtue of which existents exist. Now It cannot be denied that all existing things exist, and that only existing things exist. This is entirely trivial, a logical truth. Anyone who denies it embraces the following formal-logical contradiction: There are existing things that do not exist. We should all agree, then, with the first sentence of the second paragraph. Existence exists!
So far, so good.
But then Peikoff tells us that to postulate something supernatural such as God is "to postulate something beyond existence." Now it may well be that there is no God or anything beyond nature. But how would it follow that there is something beyond existence, i.e., beyond what exists, if God exists? It may well be that everything that exists is a thing of nature. Distinguished philosophers have held that reality is exhausted by the space-time system and its contents. But the nonexistence of God or of so-called abstract objects does not follow from the triviality that everything that exists exists. Does it take a genius to see that the following argument is invalid?
1. Existence exists.
ergo
2. God does not exist.
One cannot derive a substantive metaphysical conclusion from a mere tautology. No doubt, whatever exists exists. But one cannot exclude God from the company of what exists by asserting the tautology that whatever exists exists. The above argument is a non sequitur. Here is an example of a valid argument:
3. Nothing supernatural exists.
4. God is supernatural.
ergo
5. God does not exist.
For Peikoff to get the result he wants, the nonexistence of God, from the premise 'Existence exists,' he must conflate 'existence' with 'natural existence.' Instead of saying "only existence exists," he should have said 'only natural existence exists.' But then he would lose the self-evidence of "Existence exists and only existence exists." And he would also be begging the question.
Conflating a trivial self-evident thesis with a nontrivial controversial thesis has all the advantages of theft over honest toil as Russell said in a different connection. It would take a certain amount of honest philosophical toil to construct a really good argument for the nonexistence of any and all supernatural entities. But terminological mischief is easy. What Peikoff seems to be doing above is smuggling the nonexistence of the supernatural into the term 'existence' Clearly, this is an intellectually disreputable move.
It is like a bad ontological argument in reverse. On one bad version of the ontological argument, one defines God into existence by smuggling the notion of existence into the concept of God and then announcing that since we have the concept of God, God must exist. Peikoff is doing the opposite: he defines God and the supernatural out of existence by importing their nonexistence into the term 'existence.' But you can no more define God out of existence than you can define him into existence.
An Objection and a Reply
"You are missing something important. The claim that existence exists is the claim that whatever exists, exists independently of all consciousness, including divine consciousness. It is a substantive claim, not a mere tautology. It is a claim about the nature of existence. It asserts the primacy of existence over consciousness. It is a statement of extreme metaphysical realism: to exist is to be independent of all minds and their states. This axiom implies that no existents are created or caused to exist by a mind. But then God, as the creator of everything distinct from himself, cannot exist."
Here, then, is a Rand-inspired argument for the nonexistence of God resting on Rand's axiom of existence.
1) To exist is to exist independently of all consciousness. (The notorious axiom)
2) Things other than God exist. (Obviously true)
Therefore
3) Things other than God exist independently of all consciousness. (Follows from 1 and 2)
4) If God exists, then it is not the case that everything that exists exists independently of all consciousness. (True given the classical conception of God as creator according to which whatever exists that is not God is maintained in existence moment-by-moment by God's creative power.)
Therefore
5) God does not exist. (Follows from 3 and 4 by standard logical rules including modus tollens)
This argument stands and falls with its first premise. Why should we accept it? It is not self-evident. Its negation — some items that exist depend for their existence on consciousness — is not a contradiction. Indeed, the negation is true: my current headache pain exists but it would not not exist were I not conscious of it. My felt pain depends for its existence on consciousness.
Note also that the argument can be run in reverse with no breach of logical propriety. Simply deny the conclusion and then infer the negation of the initial premise. In brief: if God exists, then Rand's existence axiom is false. This shows that the argument is not rationally compelling. Of course, the argument run in reverse is also not rationally compelling. So we have a stand-off.
We read above that existence, i.e. existents, are uncreated, indestructible, and eternal. Well, if there is no God, then existents are uncreated. But how could they be indestructible? Is the Moon indestructible? Obviously not. Is there anything in nature that is indestructible? No. So what might Rand or rather Peikoff mean by his strange assertion? Does he mean that, while each natural item is destructible, it is 'indestructible' that there be some natural items or other?
And how can natural items be eternal? What is eternal is outside of time. But everything in nature in in time. Perhaps he means that everything in nature is omnitemporal, i.e., existent at every time. But the Moon did not always exist and will not always exist.
I conclude that the Randian existence axiom does not bear up well under scrutiny. Classical theism has its own problems to which I will be returning.
(Rand below looks a little like Nancy "the Ripper" Pelosi. Both leave a lot to be desired character-wise, but Rand is sharp as a tack while Pelosi is dumb as a post.)