3a. The Concept of God

What is God’s perfection?

• God is ‘maximally great’

• Perfection incudes reality, self-sufficiency, necessity

How is God personal?

• Intellect (rationality and knowledge)

• Will (morality and power)

How is God a perfect mind?

• God has perfect attributes of personhood (omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness)

• God can’t change

• Mind, not matter (all matter changes, has parts)

What is omniscience?

• All knowing

• God is the most perfect possible being

• Knows everything it is possible to know

What is supreme goodness?

• If goodness = morally good, then ‘God is good’ = ‘God’s will is always in accordance with moral values’

Why immanence and transcendence?

• If no immanence, God is remote

• Might lose the concept of God as a moral arbiter, miracles, sustainer

• If no transcendence, pantheism is true (universe is identical with divinity)

• God is all things and all things are God

• Might lose the concept of creator, self-sufficiency, personal

What is Boethius’ notion of eternity?

• An eternal being has:

• The complete possession all at once of illimitable life

• Life in whole fullness

• Always present to itself

What is temporal simultaneity?

• When two things exist at the same moment

What is eternal simultaneity?

• Two events occur in one and the same eternal present

What is ET-Simultaneity?

• One event needs to be temporal and the other needs to be eternal

• One is temporally present whereas one is eternally present

• For some observer, both are present

What is atemporal duration?

• Duration = something that lasts through time

• God’s entire existence is present, neither past nor future

What are the implications of the paradox of the stone?

• If God can’t create the stone or lift it he is not all powerful

• If there is something that an omnipotent being cannot do then omnipotence is impossible

What are the 5 responses to the paradox of the stone?

• There are some things an omnipotent being cannot do (Aquinas + Swinburne)

• God can do all things but chooses not to (Vardy)

• The ‘problem’ arises from a misunderstanding either of the ‘problem’ itself (Savage) or of the language used to describe God (Macquarrie)

• God is not omnipotent, but is ‘unsurpassable great’ (Whitehead and Hartshorne)

• God can do anything, including the logically possible (Descartes)

What is the Euthyphro Dilemma?

• Is morality whatever God wills it to be or is morality something independent of God?

• Either:

• Morality is independent of what God wills (God not supremely good)

• Morality is whatever God wills (God’s goodness = tautological)

What are the three solutions to the Euthyphro dilemma?

• Accept the first lemma - Doctor Analogy (gives medicine not health, God gives guidance not good)

• Accept the second lemma (God’s will is guided by His love/ morality is based on the dictates of logic, culture etc)

• It is not an analytic truth that God is good (reject the dilemma, God and ‘morally good’ are different concepts, but the same property, like water + H20)

What is the problem of omniscience and free will?

1. An action is free if one is able to do or refrain from doing it

2. Truth is a condition of knowledge

3. If God knows what I will do before I do it, then it must be true that I do that action

C1. Therefore, it cannot be true that God knows what I will do before I do it and be true that I don’t do that action

4. If it is true that I do that action, then nothing I can do can prevent it being the case that I do that action

C2. Therefore, if God knows what I will do before I do it, then I cannot refrain from doing that action

C3. Therefore, if God knows what I will do before I do it, then that action is not free

6. Conversely, if my actions are free, God does not know what I will do before I do it

C4. Therefore, free will and omniscience are incompatible

How does Swinburne’s understanding of the relationship between God and time intend to solve the problem of omniscience and free will?

• If God had fixed his intentions eternally, he would be a being within the ability to react to emotions of man

• God is instead in continual interaction with men

What are the ideas of possibilism and Aquinas’ idea that inability to do the logically impossible is not a limitation?

Possibilism: God can do anything that is logically possible, and it is not logically possible to know what is in the future

Aquinas: Not doing what is logically possible is not a limitation, and this God not knowing the future isn’t an issue

What are the problems with Swinburne’s understanding of God’s relationship to time?

• A God that changes may not preserve omniscience, as it implies that God is constantly learning

• God = limited by time

What is Kenny’s compatibilism?

• God can know what I will do before I do it and yet I can act freely

• Whatever God knows is true = necessarily true

• Whatever God knows is necessarily true = false

• Thus, God can know what I will do, but the fact that I will do it is contingent (not necessary that I do it)

What is Schleiermacher’s argument for omniscience and free will?

• God knows what we will do because he knows us

• God makes perfectly accurate predictions about our actions