1.4A- The nature of God NEEDS REVIEWING Flashcards
Omnipotence
The meaning of omnipotence is ‘all-powerful’, the idea that God can do anything. The difficulty lies in determining what that ‘anything’ might be.
Descartes and Omnipotence: Omnipotence
Descartes argues that God can do anything, including the logically impossible. For example, God could make a square circle or round square. This suggests that God is not limited by anything, even logic.
Swinburne and Omnipotence: Omnipotence
Swinburne’s understanding of omnipotence disagrees with Descartes because he argues God cannot do the logically impossible. For example, God cannot make a shape that is square and round at the same time because this is self-contradictory since part of the definition of being round precludes the idea of being square. So, Swinburne argues that God’s omnipotence must be limited to the logically possible.
C.S. Lewis’ response to SwinburneL Omnipotence
C.S. Lewis commented that simply adding the words ;Gd can’ to the beginning of a nonsense sentence doesn’t change the meaning. Thus, saying ‘God can create a square circle’ is still nonsense.
Aquinas and Omnipotence: Omnipotence
Aquinas argued that God is completely omnipotent in the sense of being in charge of the whole world, creating it and keeping it in existence. Aquinas said that God is omnipotent because: ‘he can do everything that is absolutely possible’. So, Aquinas is saying that God can do anything logically possible, but if it is not logically possible then it cannot be done, even by God.
Augustine and omnipotence: Omnipotence
Augustine suggests that God’s omnipotence means that he can do anything he wills or chooses to do. “He [God] is called omnipotent because He does what He wills”. Simply put, God can do anything, but his nature means he won’t. This does not cause a ‘Paradox of Omnipotence’ because God can do anything but chooses not to.
Kenny and omnipotence: Omnipotence
There is no difference between what God has the power to do and what is logically possible for God to do.
Macquarrie and omnipotence: Omnipotence
John Macquarrie argues that any limitations on God’s omnipotence are self-imposed. For Macqaurrie, God is not constrained by logic, the physical world, or actions of human beings, but is by his omnipotence only because he chooses to limit his own power out of love for humanity.
Vardy and omnipotence: Omnipotence
-suggests that God’s omnipotence is much more limited than many Christians have previously suggested.
-suggests that God created the universe in such a way that his ability to act is necessarily limited.
-The whole of the universe is finely tuned and that in order for it to remain this way, God’s omnipotence has to be very much limited. However, this limitation is self-imposed. God chose to create the universe in this way, knowing what it would mean, and therefore it is still right to call God omnipotent because nothing limits his power except when he chooses.
Boethius and eternity: Omniscience
-Boethius’ idea of God being eternal means that God has a relationship with time that is different to how humans experience time.
-Humans (like other creatures) are finite, have a beginning in the past, experience the present and will have an end in the future. For Boethius, God cannot be subject to time, so to be eternal means to be outside of past, present and future.
Boethius and omscience: Omniscience
-A God that is outside of time surveys the whole of time in an eternal present (like seeing a whole film at once rather than frame by frame). All the past, present and future (what we call time) is ‘now’ to God.
-Boethius calls God’s eternity a ‘simultaneous present’ because there is no past or future for God, only the present.
-It is a difficult concept to grasp because our language is expressed in terms of time. For example, ‘tomorrow’, ‘I remember when I was five’. Boethius explains that our understanding of time is different to God’s view.
-The eternal nature of God is timeless, outside of time, viewing everything in one glance, as a simultaneous present.
-When we understand this nature of God, then Boethius claims that it becomes clear how God knows.
-God does not know what will happen but knows only as it is happening. God’s knowledge is providential rather than a prior knowledge of what will happen (or foreknowledge).
Aquinas and omniscience: Omniscience
Aquinas supported Boethius’ view. Alternatively, Aquinas used an illustration to help explain it:
-Imagine you are standing on top of a tower on a hill. You have a bird’s eye view of the whole road and who is walking along it, whereas the travellers see only what is directly before or behind them. So, God views eternity all in one glance rather than as a succession of events, one after another.
Anselm and omniscience: Omniscience
-Anselm argues that God’s knowledge is simply a matter of perspective.
-Using human perspective, God knows what happened yesterday, what is happening today and what will happen tomorrow.
-But God knows because each moment is equally present in God because He is eternal.
Dummett and omniscience: Omniscience
-Dummett reminds us that God’s knowledge is beyond perspective, as it includes everything.
-One consequence of this, presumably, is that by knowing everything, God has complete understanding of everything.
Aquinas and the analogy of love: Omnibenevolence
-Aquinas argued that we need to remember that when we speak of the love of God, we are using analogy.
-We are talking of a love that is like ours in some respects, but we have to bear in mind that our God is infinitely greater than us and that we can only understand a tiny proportion of divine love.
Swinburne and omnibenevolence: Omnibenevolence
Richard Swinburne claims in The Coherence of Theism that “God is so constituted that he always does the morally best action… and no morally bad action.”
Davis’ response to Swinburne: Omnibenevolence
Brian Davies, argues that God’s goodness must not be a case of simply being well behaved as a good child might be. For Davies, Swinburne’s claim is overly simplistic, or reductionist, “The idea seems to be that God is good because he manages, in spite of alternatives open to him, to be well behaved.”
Wilkinson and goodness: Omnibenevolence
M.K. Wilkinson argues that God’s goodness should be understood as part of his creative action.
Aquinas and God’s justice: Omnibenevolence
-Aquinas draws attention to the special nature of justice in God.
-Aquinas’ argument is that God’s justice is not and cannot be like ours on earth.
-For God, certain types of justice do not apply.
-God needs nothing from us.
-For Aquinas, God’s justice is about giving everyone what they need.
-For Aquinas, then, God’s justice lies in doing the right thing as a good God who wills a good universe. God is not answerable to anyone, he is a standard of justice.
Davis response to Aquinas on God’s omnibenevolence: Omnibenevolence
Davis argues that Aquinas does not see God as a moral person. The Bible sees God as righteous in the sense that he never breaks a covenant with his people and is always true to his own nature. A bad person is one who goes against his own-and human- nature in a destructive way. God is perfectly good because he never contradicts his own nature.
Calvin and God’s justice: Omnibenevolence
-John Calvin emphasised the unworthiness of any human compared to God.
-Throughout his works, there is an emphasis on the greatness of God and the ‘littleness’ of human existence in comparison.
-He argued humankind have a corrupt nature and therefore damnable.
-By granting salvation to these, God reveals his goodness.
-They are small in number and their election is demonstrated by their membership of the Church and by the goodness of their lives.
-Outside the Church, there is no salvation.
-Calvin’s response to criticisms of his intial argument whether this view is truly merciful is to argue that there is no injustice and no reason for the dammned to complain as no one deserves to be saved. God exercises his mercy in selecting a small number for salvation.
The Roman Catholic Church and salvation: Omnibenevolence
-The Roman Catholic Church for centuries insisted on the requirement of baptism for salvation, but accepted the notion of ‘Baptism of Desire’ whereby those who had faith in God and lived their lives according to his values might be saved.
The Bible and omnibenevolence: Omnibenevolence
-The Christian understanding of God holds unequivocally that God’s nature is love. This idea is not just a New Testament concept, but can be seen in the Old Testament too. The Old Testament speaks mainly of God’s love for Israel rather than for particular individuals.
-Some biblical examples of this is Hosea 11:4, Hosea 11:12, Hosea 7:13, Psalm 62:12, Exodus 19:4-6, Amos 3:2 and 1 John 4:7-9.
The Euthyphro Dilemma: Omnibenevolence
-In Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro: “Is piety loved by the Gods because it is pious, or is it Piety because it is loved by Gods?”
-That is, are certain acts classed as good or bad because God has chosen them to be so, or because they are intrinsically good or bad?
-If we acknowledge that the former is correct (good or bad because God has chosen them to be so), then it can be said God’s goodness is not significant.
-It is entirely arbitrary and, if God had chosen differently, then torture could be good and kindness could be bad, This then raises questions over why God’s goodness should be revered and worshipped.
Dawkins and the goodness of God: Omnibenevolence
-In his work The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins argues that the God presented in the Bible does not set an example of moral goodness that people can look up to (for example, when God tests Abraham’s faith by commanding him to kill his son Isaac- God only intervenes to stop this when Abraham is about to carry out the command).
-For Dawkins, this is an example of God’s immorality- a clear distance from God being the ultimate source of Good.
-God puts man and son through an awful ordeal to satisfy his own curiosity-certainly not demonstrating love or goodness. -Dawkins describes God as ‘obnoxious’.
The definitons of eternal: Eternity
-Christianity claims that God is eternal, but what does this mean?
-There are two main views:
-1.The view most commonly adopted by classical theologians, is that God is timeless. In other words, God is outside time, and is not bound by time, God is the creator of time. God is described as ‘eternal’ or ‘atemporal’
-2.The other view is that God is everlasting, and that in other words, it is the belief that God moves along the same timeline that we do but never begins or ends, and the future holds some level of uncertainty for God also. This view describes God as ‘sempiternal’.
St. Augustine (Atemporal): Eternity
-For Augustine, the problem was that God had made the world at a particular point in time, which raised the issue of what God bad been doing all the while beforehand if God moves along the same time line as we do.
-Augustine wondered why, if God is everlasting, he picked that particular moment to create the universe, and how God might have been spending his time in the eternity before the universe existed.
-For Augustine, the biblical account of creation points towards a timeless God, who chooses to create day and night, and chooses to create the seasons, as described in Genesis, but who transcends notions of ‘before’ and ‘after’.
-For Augustine, there cannot have been a ‘before’ for God.
Boethius (atemporal): eternity
-Boethius argues that God is outside time.
-If God is outside time, he cannot know any facts about the temporal world or the actions of human beings.
-God is therefore alive in his own eternity and simply knows all events timelessly- past, present, and future all together- including all the actions of humans.
-If God is a perfect being, it must follow that God must have the perfect form of existence.
-The perfect form of existence would be timeless rather than in time, because a temporal being would not be able to experience all of life at once in the way a non-temporal being would.
-If God were temporal, there are many things in God’s life that have passed and cannot occur again, such as creating the universe.
-These events would only be in God’s memory. Such a temporary life is not compatible with the being of God, because even a perfect memory of events is not as perfect as a present reality.
-Boethius (like Aquinas, later) wished to distinguish the eternity of God from Aristotle’s world of everlasting (and beginningless) existence.
-For Aristotle, God is unchanging and quite indifferent to the universe. But Boethius goes much further, distinguishing in an interesting way between our knowledge of God and his own knowledge.
-God’s eternity is discussed by Boethius in this context. He speaks of God as ‘remaining’ and enduring’ and living ‘always’. This is a problem. These words imply time, but he wants to deny the idea that time is in God, perhaps a reality beyond our understanding- one whose knowledge is not as ours is, time-constrained, but which is an understanding of an eternal order.
-But this moves us beyond things we can easily understand.
Criticisms of God as timeless
-God’s timelessness would mean that God could only have knowledge of timeless truths such as mathematical truths- ‘a triangle is a three-sided figure with internal angles adding up to 180 degree’ - or tautologies like ‘a bachelor is an unmarried man’.
-God would not and could not have any knowledge of any human activities. If I were to say that I am going to the gym for an hour tonight after work and will be going again on Saturday. God could have no idea about the temporal references- an hour, tonight, Saturday- because all of these are in God’s eternal present.
-God as timeless appears to contradict the teaching of Christianity. Nearly all the narratives in the Old Testament and New Testament describe God as acting in specific times and places. If God act in time as the Bible teaches, then God must be in time, and therefore not eternal.
Anselm (atemporal): Eternity
-Has a 4-dimensionalist approach (past, present, future, and time/eternity)
-God is spaceless and timeless
-all time and space is ‘in’ God
-God has foreknowledge
-Anselm argues that every moment is equally real and equally present to God, all times and places are in God equally.
Swinburne (Sempiternal): Eternity
-He argues that the concept of timelessness as applied to God has no meaning. First of all, he looks at the Bible and declares that there is no evidence of a timeless God in it.
-He comments on one statement in the book of Revelation in the New Testament that might be interpreted as relating to God’s timelessness, such as in Revelation 22:13.
-It is Swinburne’s judgement, however, that this single statement does not provide sufficient evidence for a doctrine of divine timelessness in the Bible.
-Swinburne also concludes that the very idea of God’s timelessness does not make sense, because God “would have to be aware simultaneously of all the events of human history that happen at different times as they happen.”
-But Swinburne finds this a logically impossible idea. For it to be true, God would have to have simultaneous knowledge- of two events happening at different times. This is not logically coherent. He cites the example of two different events concerning the destruction of Jerusalem.
-Swinburne’s conclusion is that there are no convincing reasons for believing in the timelessness of God.
-To maintain this view is both against the evidence of the Bible and logically incoherent. For him, the idea of timelessness as a characteristic of God is not necessary.
Boethius and free will
Boethius discusses free will in three ways:
1. a term Boethius uses as he prefers it to ‘foreknowledge’
2. God knows what will happen and, in guiding the world, see what he knows will happen as necessarily about to happen.
3. Humans have no free will
Anselm and free will
-Asks ‘Does God know whether I am going to sin or not going to sin?’.
-The implication is if God knows what we will do, then we cannot choose differently.
-Like Boethius, Anselm answers this by considering two types of necessity, but he names them preceding and following necessity.
-God knows the sun will rise tomorrow because it is a preceding necessity, dependant on physical laws which are part of God’s knowledge.
Plantinga and free will
-Plantinga’s free will defence (for the Problem of Evil) is based on two ideas: the radical nature of free will and the nature of God’s omnipotence.
-It is freedom to do the right thing but, for Plantinga, it means being radically free.
-Plantinga agrees with Aquinas’ idea that to say that God is omnipotent means that he can do anything logically possible.
-It is no limit to omnipotence not to be able to do the logically impossible, because the logically impossible is meaningless. From this, Plantinga goes on to consider what is logically possible to God.
-He considers different types of possible worlds, to see whether God did indeed make the best possible world.
-He concludes that a world that contains moral actions by free creatures is a better world than any alternative.
-But, for there to be moral action, there must be free choice and the possibly reality of bad choices and moral evil.
-A world with no evil and free choice is, argues Plantinga, logically absurd. The only way to get rid of evil would be by getting rid of freewill and morality.
Brian Davies’ argument on free will and omnipotence
-Davies argues that, if God is truly omniscient, the he knows all that will be true in the future (categorically true, as God cannot be wrong).
-It follows that, is a person knows ‘x’ will happen, then ‘x’ has to happen.
-So, if God knows that a future event is going to happen, then that future event has to happen otherwise God would be wrong (which is a contradiction in terms- an omniscient God cannot be wrong). So, if God is aware that a future event is going to happen, then as a result of his omniscience that even has to happen, otherwise God would not be omniscient- therefore the event is necessary (cannot be thought not to happen).
-If human action is truly free, then it can never be seen to be necessary.
-Therefore, for Davies, if God is omniscient, then there can be no free human actions.
