METAPHYSICS OF GOD
THE CONCEPT AND NATURE OF ‘GOD’
- Metaphysics: A fundamental question of reality (existence, causation, free will, etc).
- God = classical theism (judo-christian).
- Attributes of God:
• Omnipotent
• Omniscient
• Omnipresent
• Omnibenevolent
• Eternal or everlasting
• Transcendent
• Immutable
• Perfect
• 'Creator'
OMNIPOTENCE
- St. Thomas Aquinas’ (1225-74) exploration of God's omnipotence:
Issue: Logical impossibilities - can God make a square circle, or 2 + 2 = 6?
Aquinas' defence: God can do anything that is logically possible - thus, supposedly, still
omnipotent.
Issue: God can't change - he is immutable. And God cannot sin - he is all good and
perfect.
Aquinas' defence: God can do anything which is logically possible and that doesn’t
contradict his nature.
Issue: The paradox of the stone (Can God make a stone so heavy he cannot lift it?) - it is i
incoherent to claim that there is something an omnipotent being cannot do!
- Defences of God’s Omnipotence:
Mavrodes’ Defence:
1. God is omnipotent
2. Omnipotent beings can do anything which does not contradict their nature or is
self contradicting (a logically impossible task).
3. For an omnipotent being, lifting this stone is a logically impossible task!
4. Therefore God is still omnipotent.
- Anthony Flew’s response: All these adaptions are just qualifying (altering to t a
belief) the de nition of God and, according to Flew, people (speci cally religious
believes) who qualify “die a death of a thousand quali cations”.
Savage’s Defence:
• Savage thinks that he resolves the Paradox of the Stone by claiming that the
paradox doesn’t imply God’s limits. Instead Savage shows that for an omnipotent
being God’s power is limitless. God can, can, can!
• “If x can create Stones of any poundage, and y can lift stones of any poundage,
then x cannot create a stone which y cannot lift and yet x is not thereby limited in
power” - Savage.
OMNISCIENCE
- Three types of knowledge:
• Propositional (that), Acquaintance (of) and Ability (how).
- What does God know?
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, • Aquinas: God has perfect (complete) knowledge.
• God knows all propositional knowledge
• God knows all details
- Our propositional knowledge: Subject + Predicate
- Whereas, God knows things directly, without breaking them down into concepts.
- Alston: Likens Aquinas’ view of God’s knowledge to the rst glance of a wide reaching view,
before the details are identi ed. So God knows ‘x’ completely, whereas we know ‘x’ in its
roles.
- Does God know the future?/What form(s) of knowledge does God know?
Aquinas:
• Yes! But the future is not the future to God.
• God knows what will happen in the future as he sees all simultaneously.
• God is out of time; eternal.
Willian Lane Craig:
• God knows all propositional knowledge, and all appropriate non-propositional
knowledge.
- God knows all things that are logically possible (can’t know the area of a square
circle).
Issues:
- Omnipotence does t with other attributes.
Immutability Vs. Omniscience
- Kretzmann:
1. A perfect bring is not subject to change.
2. A perfect being knows everything.
3. A being that knows everything always knows what time it is.
4. A being that ,knows the time is subject to change.
5. A perfect being is subject to change.
6. A perfect being is not a perfect being
7. Therefore there is no perfect being.
- Kretzmann then anticipates certain critiques of this, and then responds to them.
Issue with 4: Untrue of an eternal being or a timeless God.
Kretzmann’s response: No! If you knew it was 1:30 and now you know it is 1:40 then your
knowledge has changed. ( I don’t feel this is su cient).
Issue with 3 and 4: Isn’t time a relevant concept? Maybe created or only relevant to humans?
Kretzmann’s response: Then God isn’t omniscient, as he doesn’t know what the time is now.
Issue with 2: God is omniscient in the sense that God cannot know what is logically
impossible for God to know.
Kretzmann’s response: This is unsatisfactory! It is like saying that because i’m mortal it is logically
impossible for me not to die. And then saying that dying is no limitation
on me - when it is! This means you can’t have a perfect, omniscient
being.
Freewill Vs. Omniscience
1. God knows everything
2. God knows my future choices
3. God knows these decisions before i perform them
4. Therefore I cannot choose otherwise
5. Thus I am not free
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,- God’s nature makes events and actions casually necessary (cannot be otherwise)
- Kenny provides two contradicting (or incompatible) propositions:
1. God knows beforehand everything men will do
and 2. Some human actions appear free
- This can lead us to the following:
1. If God knows beforehand everything men will do
2. God has created robots rather than beings in his own image
3. We are no longer morally responsible for our actions as we cannot act otherwise (causal
necessity)
4. No point to judgement (Heaven or Hell), or is God unjust.
5. What is the point in Jesus
6. God is responsible for all evil
7. Questions the loving nature of God
- Kenny outlines one solution to his issue - An eternal God.
• How can God have knowledge but not foreknowledge?
—> If God is eternal then God does not have knowledge before the event
(foreknowledge), as God is not in time.
- Aristotle:
• Does God have knowledge of our future actions?
—> Yes, but they’re not future to God.
- Kenny's Solution to the Problem of Free Will and God's omniscience
• We can't be said to have knowledge of the future (JTB), as there is no 'truth' as of yet.
• Kenny- likes the idea that God is omniscient and that humans have free will and
responsible beings.
- Kenny is attempting to establish:
• Everlasting God
• Omniscience
• That humans have free will
- Kenny's argument:
P1. God's knowledge of our future actions are not necessary truths in the way that past
events are.
P2. God's knowledge of our future actions are beliefs (knowledge needs to be JTB - and
we can’t have to T yet).
P3. God knows his creation and all the possible free choices we can make.
P4. So from what God knows about me he believes that I will write this down.
P5. I have freedom to write this down or not write this down as God only believes that I will
C. Therefore God knows all that he can possibly know and we are free.
- Kenny is making the point that God can only know what it is possible to know about future
events = certain beliefs.
- Issue: But this God isn't all-knowing --> and now issue with immutability.
-> He's limited to beliefs when it comes to future events. For this to be knowledge
we need God's belief to correspond with external . This cannot happen in the future.
COMPETING VIEWS ON GOD’S RELATIONSHIP WITH TIME
God is in time Vs. God is out of time
(Everlasting Vs. Eternal)
- Outside of time:
• Traditional view - found in Biblical texts such as creation story.
• As creator of space and time in Genesis 1, God must be separate and distinct from time:
- Eternal.
- A temporal (experiences things simultaneously).
, - Transcendent (apart from and not subject to limitations of the physical universe).
- Eternal.
- A temporal (experiences things simultaneously).
- Transcendent (apart from and not subject to limitations of the physical universe).
• Boetheus, Aquinas, and Kretzmann + Stump all take this view.
• Aquinas likens and eternal God to an observer on a mountain top, who is able to see all
events at once.
- God in time:
• Also found to be so in many biblical texts which God interferes.
• As a personal and loving God it makes sense to think of God as being in time and
being aware of its creation.
• Everlasting/sempiternal
• Imminent/present and sustaining
• Temporal God experiences things in a linear way.
Eternal (Out Of Time)
- God is perfect and hence is not subject to time because time implies imperfection: when time
passes one changes and lose what you were previously - Argument found in Anselm’s
Proslogion.
- Aquinas’ argument from Immutability:
P1: Everything (within time) changes
P2: God is immutable
P3: God cannot be temporal
C: God is outside of time
- Objection to Eternal God:
• Kenny attempts to show that a being which experiences all events simultaneously is
incoherent
P1. The concept of eternity given to us by Aquinas, Kretzmann, and Stump
involves the idea that Rome burning to the ground in 64 CE is simultaneous
with eternity.
P2. The concept of eternity given to us also involves the idea that me writing this in
Sept. 2018 is simultaneous with eternity.
P3. Therefore 64 CE is simultaneous with Sept. 2018.
P4. Past and present (and future) cannot be simultaneous with one another.
C. Therefore the concept of eternity is incoherent.
- Objection to Kenny:
• Kretzmann and Stump argue that we can have an eternal God and it makes sense to claim
that this God can have knowledge of all events simultaneously.
—> This life of in nite duration is experienced simultaneously.
- Kretzmann and Stump’s response to Kenny:
• An eternal God who sees all events simultaneously makes sense. According to Einstein
there are two types of simultaneity:
E - (Eternal) -occurring at the same eternal present to an eternal being
T - simultaneity (Temporal) -occurring at the same time to temporal beings
• What appears to be simultaneous to one being is not necessarily to another. - Depends of
our frame of reference (position) - See train analogy for example.
- Objection to Kretzmann and Stump:
• This might make sense to a God who is in time, and subject to our laws of motion (an
imminent God), but this doesn’t apply to an eternal god - Thus this only functions as an
analogy, no better then the view of God atop a hill.
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