God’s attributes
Omnipotence
Omnipotence means ‘all powerful’. It is the power to do anything. However, it must be
understood as ‘anything’ that does not involve contradiction.
Aquinas: Omnipotence is limited to what is logically possible. He cannot make 2+2=5 or a round
square because it involves a contradiction.
‘Paradox of the stone’: If God is omnipotent, can he make a stone that an omnipotent being can not
lift.
This paradox is meant to prove no being can be omnipotent. There is a problem with the very
concept of omnipotence.
The answer is no: Such a putative object is logically impossible. There is a contradiction in the
notion of a stone that an omnipotent being cannot lift. Therefore, it is not a restriction on God’s
power that he cannot create such an object. God can be omnipotent without being able to make
such a stone.
Omniscience
Omniscience is to know everything (it is assumed this knowledge is propositional). Therefore, God,
if omniscient, knows all true propositions.
Issue: To deal with the problem of evil, theists will almost certainly invoke the claim that God has
given us free will. If we have free will (on a natural understanding), we have the ability to choose
between alternatives. He must then already know our choice before we have made it. That seems to
suggest our decision is fixed, conflicting with the idea that we have free will.
Various solutions
Reply 1: Put God outside time. Therefore, the ‘already knows’ can be challenged. God is
transcendent. God has a timeless perspective. There is no ‘now’ or ‘already’ for God.
Reply 2: Maybe omniscience is limited to the past and present. We can say the future choices of free
agents are not logically knowable. Therefore its not a limit on God’s omniscience that he cannot
know my future choices.
Reply 3: We don’t have free will, or at least not in the way we think we do. We can reject the
libertarian conception of freedom – this is to say that we can be free even if the world is
deterministic, God can in principle, know what we are going to do: in a deterministic world, the
future is entailed by, and can be read off from, knowledge of the total state of the world at one time,
plus knowledge of the laws of nature.
Background reply to all: God is ‘incomprehensible’. Isaiah 40:28, “his understanding no one can
fathom”. Therefore, we cannot understand how he knows and also that we have free will.
, Omnibenevolence
Omnibenevolence refers to all the all loving, perfect goodness of God.
Euthyphro dilemma: issue about the relation between goodness and Gods will or attitude. I.e. are
good things good because God loves them, or are things good because God loves them.
Another way of stating this: Does God’s choosing/willing something suffice for it being good. Or is it
that for anything to count as good, it must conform to standards independent of God’s will.
Dilemma = choice between two unattractive options, in this case:
Divine Command Theory: the view that whatever God wills/commands is good, in virtue of
the fact that He wills/commands it
o Unattractive because it makes morality arbitrary, meaning God could will evil
things and they would be good. This seems ridiculous.
Possible objection = since God is good, this is not a real possibility. To say
God willed evil would be to contradict oneself.
However, is this reply begging the question and abandoning Divine
Command Theory as you are invoking an independent standard of goodness
o Unattractive because it means morality lacks any rationality
Counterintuitive: we think God is wise and think that reaching correct moral
judgements require rationality
Moral argument is only possible due to morality’s rational constraints
This means moral properties would not necessarily supervenes on non
moral properties
o Makes Gods goodness a tautology
We praise God for his goodness, but if God chooses what is good, how can
such praise be appropriate, if anything he did would be considered good?
Independent moral standards: Gods choices count as good, because he conforms to
standards
This is problematic as it suggests God is not fully in charge:
o Threat to omnipotence- surely an omnipotent being good change moral standards
Could argue moral truths are necessary truths
o Threat to his sovereignty- God is seen as the ultimate authority on all matters, but
this would mean there are standards independent of His will
Also, God would not be the creator of moral law, he is not necessary for its authority
to continue and therefore, he is not sovereign
o Threaten God’s freedom of will- God could not will anything other than the
standards
Gods relation to time
Everlasting = he is within time (immanence), but has no end
God (at least as incarnate form) has a birth, death and a time.
God ‘listens’ to our prayers, how can he do that if he’s not in time
Eternal = he is outside time, he transcends time,
o Solution to the problem of omniscience
o Events are not unfolding for him as they do for us, his knowledge does not change
with the passage of time, nor does he get older, nor change in any other way
o Fits well if perfection requires immutability (changelessness)
o Also fits nicely with the view that God is the creator
, Problem with all of this: notion of timeless existence is conceptually obscure. What does
God’s existing “outside of time” mean? It is a spatial metaphor. Therefore, how do we get a
non-metaphorical grasp?
Why do we believe God is immutable? (Changeless)
Because he is changeless with respect to these properties:
Existence
Knowledge
Goodness
Simplicity (one part/partless)
Perfection
The incompatibility of omniscience and immutability
The argument goes like this:
1. A perfect being must be omniscient
2. A perfect being must be immutable
3. An omniscient being always knows what time it is
4. A being that always knows what time it is is subject to change
(At time1, God knew it was time 1, at time2 god knew it was time 2)
He therefore, knew different propositions at different times
5. THF, there is no perfect being
Best objection: a being may be considered perfect if it is thus and so in certain circumstances.
Therefore, in different circumstances, the state of perfection may be different. Therefore, maybe it is
essential for a perfect being to change to remain perfect. Maybe, we can drop the immutability
claim without rejecting that God is perfect.
, Ontological argument
All a priori argument, as they just focus on the concept and infer existence from this.
Anselm’s (11th century)
God is a “being than which nothing greater can be conceived”.
Anselm says that Atheists grasp the concept of God, but say he exists only in the mind. The
atheist is committed to saying “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived exists
in the mind”.
However, “a being than which nothing greater can be conceived” cannot exist in the mind as
it would be created if it existed in reality as well.
Therefore, it would be a contradiction to say that the being than which nothing greater can
be conceived exists in the mind.
The real objection challenges the move between these two premises:
The atheist conceived of a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, to:
There exists, in the atheists mind, as a mental object, a being than which nothing greater can
be conceived
However, the first premise does not entail the next.
Without this second premise, no contradiction will arise.
Anselm believes that to conceive of something is to have some sort of mental object that had the
attributes that you conceive of the thing of having. This is a mistake.
The representation does not HAVE the properties – it represents the object of having the
properties.
Gaunilo – the overload objection
A ‘reductio ad absurdum’ argument: take the reasoning of the argument and apply it to a different
set of premises to prove a conclusion we know to be false.
E.g.
Define “the perfect island” as an ‘island such that nothing greater can be conceived’.
We can then run the same argument.
However, we know the island doesn’t exist.
Therefore, there must be a problem with the structure of the argument.
1. Anselm’s reply: whatever else there is, other than God, can be conceived not to exist.
In other words, God is unique in being such hat he can’t be conceived of as not existing.
God alone is “conceptually necessary” (can’t be conceived of as not existing).
The perfect island by comparison, is conceptually contingent (can be conceived of as not existing).
In criticism of Anselm: God may well be uniquely at the top of the hierarchy, in the sense that
nothing greater is conceivable. However, this doesn’t show why Gaunilo has not proved, by
analogous argument, the existence of – the greatest conceivable island/apple/chair etc.
However this does not answer Anselm’s reply that God is conceptually necessary. If this were true,
it would distinguish God from Gaunilo’s examples. However, this is a new premise that Anselm has
not supported.
