Nature of God

Renee Descartes

1. Descartes believed that God is supremely perfect - derived from his ontological argument, therefore there is no limit on his power.

2. Things may be impossible, but God can override those laws, he can perform logical impossibilities.

Arguments For Descartes

1. The laws of logic are human constructs, and God is not bound by human constructs and human laws - they are human as humans invented them e.g. Aristotle - syllogistic logic.

2. From a religious perspective, there are paradoxes in scripture, which God could only fulfil if he can perform logical contradictions e.g. John 1:18 “no one has seen God” and Genesis 32:30 “I have seen God face-to-face”.

In the Quran 50:16 “We are closer to him than his jugular vein” and “He established Himself above the throne” Quran 57:4, contrasting his apparent closeness to humans, whilst also transcendence distance.

3. Radical Omnipotence - William of Ockham - God’s omnipotence means he can do anything he wills, even if it violates logic, as God is not subject to any external standard.

Problems with Descartes

1. To say God can do logically impossible things doesn’t make sense, as anything that appears to be a logical impossibility is just a problem with language. E.g. can God make a rock so heavy he can’t lift? What does it mean Gods ‘lifting’ anthropomorphising God.

2. Logical impossibilities are nonsensical concepts - there is no such thing as a square circle, to ask God to make something logically impossible is an incoherent request.

3. Logic is part of the nature of God, He is a rational being, He cannot violate the laws of logic, as they are part of his own rational nature. “Nothing which implies contradiction falls under the omnipotence of God” (Summa Theologica, Part I, Q.25, Art.3) - Aquinas

4. It removes human free will, as if God can make it possible for humans to be both free and not free, and responsible and not responsible, then moral and ethical systems would collapse.

Aquinas

1. We use analogies to talk about God as that is the only way one can talk about God.

2. When we talk about his omnipotence its only the logically possible.

3. He said that to ask can God sin is a non-question as its a logical impossibility.

Arguments For Aquinas

1. Leibniz said that logical impossibilities are inherently non-sensical, so God’s inability to perform them does not undermine his omnipotence.

2. C.S. Lewis said that things like a square circle are not real ‘tasks’ but a meaningless combination of words. His quote: "Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible.”

3. Certain immutable truths exist e.g. 2+2=4, which exist outside of God’s will, even an omnipotent being cannot alter them.

Problems with Aquinas

1. If God cannot do logically impossible things then is he truly omnipotent?

2. Peter Geach - argument that Aquinas is putting forward assumes God is perfect.

3. Aquinas has a false definition of God, as by definition, if He is omnipotent he must be able to do logically impossible things.

4. God is the author of logic, so what may appear logically contradictory to humans might not hold true in a divine context.

5. Human logic is finite and cannot fully comprehend God’s divine nature, so saying he cannot perform logical impossibilities is coming from a place of ignorance.

Augustine

God can do whatever He wills to do, but he chooses not to do evil things, and create evil as that is against his nature.

Anthony Kenny

‘It must be a narrower omnipotence, consisting in the possession of all logically possible powers which it is logically possible for a being with attributes of God to possess.’

Rejects that God can do the logically impossible, only the logically possible, but can do it all.

Richard Dawkins

1. Omnipotence and omniscience and incompatible.

2. If God knows what is going to do in the future he will plan it out, he now cannot change his mind, so he is not totally omnipotent.

3. But it is wholly irrelevant because God does not exist.

A.N. Whitehead and C. Hartshorne

1. Bush analogy, it is easier to cut down a bush with sharp scissors, despite the resistance of the branches, shows our power, much like God’s power, free will is our resistance.

2. This is a descriptor of his omnipotence.

3. Similar thing shown in Bible: Tower of Babel - resistance to God, he overcame all of it, but didn’t allow it to come to the stage where they would be equally able to oppose him.

John MacQuarrie and Peter Vardy

God limits himself for our benefit - to enable us to have free will, showing his love for us.

Boethius on God and Time

1. God is not subject to the same laws of time as we are.

2. God is eternal - so He is out of past present and future.

3. A ‘simultaneous present’

4. When we understand this, it is clear how God knows.

Boethius Analogy - View from the Mountain

1. Boethius uses the analogy of a view from the top of a mountain.

2. God can view all past, present and future simultaneously.

3. Everything that has is and will happen is definitely happening by ‘simple necessity’.

4. Our perspective is conditional, things may or may not happen from our perspective.

Boethius’ view of the Problem

1. If God knows everything that will happen, then we have no free will, as we act according to God’s foreknowledge.

2. If we do have free will then God cannot know what is going to happen in the future - he is not omnipotent.

3. If we all agree that wicked people should be punished and just people should be rewarded.

4. They can only be responsible if they have free will.

5. Either God is omniscient and we have no free will, or we are free and God is not omniscient.

Boethius on Necessity

Two types of necessity:

1. Simple necessity - this is what must happen.

2. Conditional necessity e.g. waking up - this must happen, otherwise he wouldn’t wake up, but he gets to choose when he wakes up.

Boethius Solution

1. God had simultaneous knowledge of the past, present and future.

2. Everything is certain and necessary (simple) from his view.

3. We see things sequentially, so much of the future is conditional and dependent on our free will.

4. Therefore, we are responsible, and it is fair to punish and reward.

Arguments For Boethius

1. It aligns with religious views of God, if God created the world, e.g. creating time, then He must exist outside of it, not temporal.

2. There are problems with both free will (God knowing what we are going to do) and determinism (things existing independently of other things), so Boethius’s compatibilist view that divine foreknowledge and free will can exist without contradiction is a good middle ground - he allows for the logic of the principle of causation, whilst ensuring free will exists.

3. He justifies reward and punishment, by saying that if humans were mere puppets of fate, moral responsibility would be undermined, thus he argues in favour of free will, to ensure moral responsibility exists.

Arguments Against Boethius

1. Religion expects more than God than simply gazing at the world from a mountain top. Religion believes that God is not deistic - he intervenes in the world.

2. There is the problem of evil, as if God allows free will as Boethius suggests, and then humans do evil, God has allowed evil to exist, so how can he be all-good, but He is all-good, so we cannot have free will.

3. Human ignorance - Humans tend to be unaware of the consequences of their actions, meaning their free will is constrained by their ignorance, is one truly free if they no know better than how they act?

4. Clashes with religious views that may reject free will, e.g. Kohelet 3:1-2 “There is a time for everything, a time to be born, and a time to die”. Are we free if everything has a ‘time’ for it to happen.

Anselm

1. Agrees that God is timeless, but disagrees with Boethius.

2. He uses time as a ‘fourth dimension’ similar to the way we speak about height width and depth.

3. Humans describe things from their perspective e.g. ‘over here’ or ‘over there’

4. God however is omnipresent, so every moment is equally real and present to God.

5. God encompasses all of time so he is ‘aeternitas’ (eternity)

Omniscience

All-knowing, having knowledge of everything there is to possibly know.

Free Will

The ability to act differently to how you will or do act.

Problem of Omniscience and Free Will

1. If God is omniscient then He knows all of our future choices.

2. Thus, we cannot do anything different to what we will do, as God knows exactly what we are going to do.

3. Therefore, we have no free will.

4. Some argue that calling God omniscient does not mean that He knows everything, but rather that his knowledge is unsurpassed by the knowledge of any other being.

Predestination

We are destined to act a certain way.

Problem with Predestination and Free Will

1. God’s omnipotence means that everyone’s lives are predetermine.

2. If this is true then we cannot have free will.

3. This means we either have free will or God is omniscient.

Two Methods of Looking at Predestination and Free Will

1. If God knows that you will have beans on toast for supper then that is what you will have - ergo God’s knowledge predestined us to have beans on toast.

2. If you have beans on toast for supper, then that is what God knows - ergo us having beans on toast causes God’s knowledge, so we are free to choose.

Maimonides on Omniscience and Free Will - Jewish View

Maimonides Laws of Repentance 5,1: “Every man has free will”

Maimonides Laws of Repentance 5,5: Essentially says that there is a clear contradiction with omniscience and free will, and we do not have the power or knowledge to understand how God works, but rest assured we do have free will.

Hasdai Crescas on Omniscience and Free Will - Jewish View

1. Crescas says that humans are like bronze, and a piece of bronze can be made into lots of things: sword, ball, etc.

2. An external cause fashions them into one of these options and determines their present form.

3. The same is true of people, they themselves can choose between different possible options, but their relation to external causes determines their actual choices.

4. This leads to the theological problem of how people can be punished for things they cannot control.

5. Crescas answers this by saying that the punishment of the sinner is not a special act of divine providence to punish him, but rather the natural consequences of the sinners bad actions.

Dawkins

Although not specifically mentioning Maimonides he said “It is a mystery kind of thinking is lazy and damaging”.

Twin Paradox

1. In the twin paradox, one twin makes a journey into a space in a high-speed rocket, returning home to find that the twin who remained on Earth has aged more.

2. This is an outcome of Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity: time depends on space; it behaves like a fourth dimension.

3. There is height, width, length and time.

4. Just as we believe that if God exists, he has no height, width or length, so similarly will have no time.

Eternity

1. God is timeless.

2. Therefore he is forever and infinite.

3. Therefore, he never changes, as change is by definition temporal.

4. This idea is expressed in Judaism in the hymn: Adon Olam, with the words “and when all shall end, he alone shall reign”

Augustine on Time

1. God is in time.

2. At a certain point in time, He created the world.

3. What was happening in eternity before the Creation?

4. It cannot be that God existed in time before He created time.

5. Therefore, we must remove the concept of time from our idea of God.

Aquinas on Time

Aquinas reminds us that our use of language concerning God is not precise, but analogical, God does not think, but something very similar to thinking goes on.

Swinburne - Everlasting God - Sempiternal

1. God experiences time as we do.

2. He knows the past and the present completely.

3. He knows the future insofar as it is predictable.

4. He knows what can be known, but not the free actions of the people.

5. A God experiencing times with is much more relevant to us.

6. God would be immanent, closer understanding of us and able to interact.

7. For Swinburne, this understanding is closer to the idea of the Biblical God.

8. This would be difficult to understand if God was outside of time.

Swinburne of Omniscience and Free Will

1. Swinburne’s definition of omniscience is everything that is logically possible to know.

2. Since the future hasn’t happened yet, it cannot be logically known.

3. As God is everlasting, in time, he can only know the past and present.

4. To some extent, omniscience may leave room for God’s free choices, e.g. to respond to prayers.

Swinburne on Omnipotence and Supreme Goodness

1. To commit evil is to fail to be supremely good.

2. If God is supremely good, that God cannot commit evil.

3. Therefore, if God is supremely good, there is something that God cannot do.

4. Therefore, God cannot be both supremely good and omnipotent.

A Timeless God Makes More Sense

1. One characteristic of God is that He is unchanging, as why would the supreme moral author of the universe need to change, and since anything in time is subject to change, that would mean that if God is in time then He is subject to change.

2. Aquinas believes that God’s omniscience is best understood in timelessness, as if God knows all things, past, present and future, then all those things exist simultaneously in His ‘divine mind’. This preserves God’s omnipotence without having to wait for events to happen.

3. Boethius’ view from the mountain analogy

4. Twin paradox.

An Everlasting God Makes More Sense

1. Swinburne’s idea that God experiences time as we do - makes it easier to relate to God, hard to connect to an abstract concept, whether we believe in its rational truth is almost irrelevant.

2. Aligns with religious belief, specifically Biblical, where God exists in time, evidenced by the fact that he answers prayers, such as Moses praying to God not to destroy the Bnei Yisroel.

3. It means that God is much more flexible, and can respond to present moral situations, rather than being stuck with outdated and unchanging laws that may no longer be suited for the current generation.

Omnibenevolence

A deity with perfect or unlimited goodness.

Process Theology

1. One problem raised is the logical problem of evil, God is all good and all powerful, but evil still exists.

2. Process theology suggests God limits his power and therefore cannot intervene, but can rather be empathetic.

Argument Against Process Theology

1. It is functionally irrelevant that He limited His power.

2. He is still choosing not to intervene, just does so by limiting His power.

Euthyphro Dilemma

1. Posed by Plato

2. Is an action good because God commands it or does God command what is good?

God Justly Judges Human Actions

1. God by definition is just, so every judgement He makes is Just.

2. Jewish perspective: Yom Kippur (Day of atonement), the fact that we have it, shows that God judges us.

3. Boethius argues that as God is outside of time, and sees things in a present, freewill is preserved. Therefore reward and punishment is just.

4. Anselm argues that God is with us in the moment of choice meaning we have freewill and does reward and punish justly.

5. Swinburne argues that God does not know what our choices will be as they haven’t happened yet, thus God is just.

God does not Justly Judge Human Actions

1. If we do not have free will, then God cannot justly judge us, as He has predetermined what we are going to do.

2. Euthyphro dilemma suggests that either God has to live up to a standard of goodness or He could command something to be good that we consider evil. Either way, God is not good or not in charge of goodness, so is not able to judge justly.

3. God seems to be unjust as He allows evil to happen. If that is the case, how can he judge us for bad choices.

4. In order to solve the problem of evil, one can say that God does not know evil exists, He is not omniscient, and if he does not even know of evil, then how can He judge justly. This can be shown in gnostic thought, such as the concept of the Demiurge - a lower type God that created the material world, but is ignorant of higher spiritual truths, such as evil.

Critically assess the view that God is omnibenevolent

He isn’t omnibenevolent

Problem of free will - euthrypho dilemma

however, religion - Yom Kippur

Free-will Boethius

Conclusion: God is omnibenevolent