Category: God
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Divine Simplicity, Modal Collapse, and a Powers Theory of Modality
This is the third in a series on whether the doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) entails modal collapse (MC). #1 is here and #2 here. Most of us hold that not everything possible is actual, and that not everything actual is necessary. I will assume that most of us are right. A doctrine entails modal…
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From the Mailbag: Modality and Perfection
Daniel C. writes, A quick remark on your recent possible worlds post. You only mention it in passing but one thing possible worlds talk surely does throw into sharp relief is the issue of the modality of modal statements i.e. if a certain proposition is possibly true is it necessarily possibly true or merely possibly…
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Is God Beyond All Being?
This is a redacted re-posting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 8 May 2015. It answers a question Fr. Kimel poses in the comments to Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse. ………………………………. Fr. Aidan Kimel writes, Reading through Vallicella’s article, I kept asking myself, Would Mascall agree with the proposition “existence exists”? I…
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The Multiverse Idea: Does it Help with the Question ‘Why Something Rather than Nothing?’
If 'universe' refers to the totality of what exists in space-time, then there can be only one universe. Call that the ontological use of 'universe.' On that use, which accords with etymology and common sense, there cannot be multiple universes or parallel universes. But if 'universe' refers to the totality of what we can 'see'…
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Woody Allen, Meet Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange: Meaning and Desire
To repeat some of what I wrote earlier, According to Woody Allen, we all know that human existence is meaningless and that it ends, utterly and meaninglessly, with death. We all know this, he thinks, but we hide the horrible reality from ourselves with all sorts of evasions and distractions. Worldly people, for example, imagine that they will live…
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God, Pronouns, and Anthropomorphism
I was delighted to hear from an old student of mine from 35 years ago. He writes, In your writings, you often refer to God in pronouns bearing gender. Does such language result in God’s anthropomorphism? I would reformulate the question as follows: In your writings, whenever you refer to God using a third-person pronoun,…
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If God Created the World, Who Created the Creator? A Good Koan?
Thomas Merton, Journals, vol. 5, p. 183, entry of 25 December 1964: St Maximus [the Confessor] says that he who "has sanctified his senses by looking with purity at all things" becomes like God. This is, I think, what the Zen masters tried to do. A letter from John Wu spoke of running into [D.…
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The Leftist-Islamist Axis of Evil and Divine Sovereignty
James S. writes, Your point about the twin threats coming from the Left and from Islam reminded me of an email I received from Fr. Schall some months ago when I shared a draft of the Syllabus with him. He made the same point, as both the Left and Islam are voluntarist systems where will…
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Can Belief in Man Substitute for Belief in God?
A slightly redacted re-post from 26 September 2009. ……………………………… The fact and extent of natural and moral evil make belief in a providential power difficult. But they also make belief in man and human progress difficult. There is the opium of religion, but also the opium of the intellectuals, the opium of future-oriented utopian naturalisms such…
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Cosmic Meaninglessness and the Theistic Gambit
This is the third in a series on David Benatar's The Human Predicament (Oxford UP, 2017). This entry covers pp. 35-45 of Chapter 3. The good news from Chapter 2 was that there is meaning at the terrestrial level. The bad news from Chapter 3 is that there is none at the cosmic level, or from…
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Creation, Existence, and Extreme Metaphysical Realism
This entry is a continuation of the ruminations in The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation. Recapitulation Divine creation ex nihilo is a spiritual/mental 'process' whereby an object of the divine consciousness is posited as non-object, as more than a merely intentional object, and thus as a transcendent reality. By 'transcendent reality' I mean an item…
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Unbegriff
This passage from Schopenhauer illustrates one of my favorite German words, Unbegriff, for which we have no simple equivalent in standard English. "An impersonal God is no God at all, but only a word misused, an unconcept, a contradictio in adjecto, a philosophy professor's shibboleth, a word with which he tries to weasel his way…
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The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation
God freely creates beings that are both (i) wholly dependent on God's creative activity at every moment for their existence, and yet (ii) beings in their own own right, not merely intentional objects of the divine mind. The extreme case of this is God's free creation of finite minds, finite subjects, finite unities of consciousness…
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How Can a Simple God Know Contingent Truths?
Chris M writes, If God simply is his act of existence, and if his existence is necessary, how can God have knowledge of contingent truths? What I mean is that it is possible for God to do other than he does (say not create, or create different things.) If he did differently – say, if…
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God, Necessity, and Truth
Jacques e-mails: You think that if God exists, He exists necessarily, and if He does not exist, He does not exist necessarily. But suppose that God does not exist. We agree, I think, that we can't rationally rule out the possibility? For instance, you've often argued that our evidence doesn't settle the question of theism…