God's Attributes Flashcards
Temporality- Eternal and Everlasting
Everlasting- God has existed throughout all time
Eternal- God is perceived to exist independently of time, unchanging, infinite and timeless
Temporality- Geach
Everlasting- ‘God is the supreme Grand Master’ whose plan will be executed regardless of what happens- he anticipates all events
Temporality- Hartshorne and Process Theologians
Everlasting- God is part of the world as well as being above it, and is held by the laws of physics, does not know the future, no preconceived plan, nor can he force people to be morally good- gives free will due to lack of predetermination
Temporality- Cullman
Everlasting- God moves through time with us and knows all that is logically possible to know
Temporality- Lafleur
Everlasting- If God existed outside of the bounds of time, he would have no access to the present, no means of interacting with us, and so no religious significance or even omnipotence
Temporality- Pike
Everlasting- if God is timeless, he knows exactly what is going to happen and what a person will do- therefore this future is already, permanently decided, as in a simulation- thereby ridding humans of free will
Temporality- Kierkegaard
Everlasting- God cannot be active in time if he is apart from it
Temporality- Augustine
Eternal- Time exists only within the created universe and does not apply to God- ‘thy “today” yields not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday’
Temporality- Descartes
Eternal- God can do the logically impossible and interact with us from outside of time
Temporality- Boethius
Eternal- God experiences all things as an eternal present, so there is no “foreknowledge” which imposes necessity on the “future”.
‘If you consider the divine foreknowledge through which God knows all things, you will conclude that it is not a knowledge of things in the future, but a knowledge of an unchanging present’
Temporality- Criticisms of Boethius
Faith is understood in Judeo-Christian belief as fulfilling a covenant between God and his people, which implies a sense of progress and a level of involvement between God and his people, which seems impossible if God is outside of time- Boethius’ God is more similar to Aristotle’s Prime Mover.
Boethius’ argument marginalises God’s omnipotence as he is devalued to little more than a spectator
Temporality- Criticisms of Boethius (Kotarbinski)
Everlasting- To speak of existence in any sense is to build a sense of duration into it- you cannot separate existence from temporality
Temporality- Bible
Contradicts itself. God interacts in a supposed present (everlasting), but is supposedly unchanging and infinite (I am the Lord; I change not). No clear interpretation
Temporality- two views of time (Craig)
Only the present is real, and all past, present and future are equally real. Craig- in order to view God as timeless, one needs to view time as one unitary thing rather than a continuous process
Temporality- God as Timeless
God is frozen in time, unable to act and intervene within time, in a single, unchanging state of mental consciousness
Temporality- God as Temporal
Constantly in change, as is knowledge and experience, which signals improvement, meaning he was less perfect than he is and less perfect than he will be- invalidates omnibenevolence
God is the victim of the passing of time like any of us
Craig argues that change of knowledge does not automatically signal improvement
Temporality- Swinburne
Everlasting- If God experiences all moments at once, then all earthly moments take place at once. God cannot exist in metric time- he would need a standardised clock system, there is therefore no sense in saying there was a long or short time before God created the universe- no time measurement could exist
Omnibenevolence- Euthyphro Dilemma
Are acts good or bad because God chose them to be so, or are they intrinsically good or bad? Socrates- “Is piety loved by the Gods because it is pious, or is it piety because it is loved by the Gods?”
Omnibenevolence- Divine Command Theory
Things are right because God commands them- if morality can exist independently of God, this suggests that God’s omnibenevolence and goodness is limited
Omnibenevolence- Kraal
“The Euthyphro Dilemma can be diagnosed as a false dilemma. This is because there is a further alternative: that the good is neither the good independently of God’s will, nor because God wills it, for God and goodness are identical”.
God and goodness are one- it is not a question of which came first
Omnibenevolence- Divine Command Theory Counterargument
Dawkins- God does not set a practical example of goodness in the Bible
If we understand good/bad as dependent on God’s will, God’s goodness is arguably not significant, as he could have assigned us to perceive torture as good and kindness as bad- invalidates idea of inherent, independent good apart from God’s will
Omnibenevolence- Augustine
‘God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived’- must be omnibenevolent
Omnibenevolence- Two Central Ideas
- That God is perfect- “the perfection of everything exist in God, he lacks no excellence of any sort”- Aquinas
- That God is believed to be morally good- ‘Everything that God has created is good; nothing is to be rejected, but everything is to received with a prayer of thanks’- Bible
Omnibenevolence- Aquinas
God is all-loving, this love must be reciprocated. Responded to criticism with argument of greater good and divine plan- any evil is a necessary part of greater good (unconvincing). God’s justice is unanswerable standard- ‘God’s is a law unto himself’, God’s goodness can only be spoken of in analogies
Omnibenevolence- Frankena
Justice does not mean treating everyone equally- just because people live different lives with seemingly varying levels of treatment does not mean there is no higher justice
Omnibenevolence- Salvation
Salvation supposedly proof of God’s goodness- some would argue this is exclusive. Calvin- nobody inherently deserves salvation- better to offer to a few than to none. This does, however, detract from the ‘omni’
Omnibenevolence- Mill
God cannot be all-loving if he created an imperfect world
Omnibenevolence- Hick
God cannot be omnibenevolent if hell exists
Omnipotence- Bible
God cannot change, break a promise, lie or be stopped
Omnipotence- Craig
Omnipotence means complete capability of the logically possible- cannot make a round square, but this does not detract from omnipotence. However, if God can create things, such as the universe, ex nihilo, it suggests he can commit the logically impossible
Omnipotence- Rowe
‘God could no more cease to be perfectly good than a triangle could cease to have three angles’- sin is not a choice for God, but a logical incoherency just like a round square
Omnipotence- Augustine
God is that of which nothing greater can be conceived- must be omnipotent
Omnibenevolence- Wilkinson
God’s goodness should not be understood as if he is a regular moral agent, a ‘person among persons’
Omnipotence- Muller
Aquinas ‘refuses to allow the powers of God to be restricted in its creation’- God must be withheld by logic
Omniscience- forms of truth
Direct truth (facts) and potential truths (lessons or instructions). Omniscience means knowing all factual truth
Omniscience- potential truths
To know all potential truth (non-propositional knowledge) would be to know false statements- if God believed he was a sinner, that is a thing he could know, but is a clear imperfection- understands how a sinner can know and feel to be a sinner, but cannot feel it himself
Omniscience- Molina
Hierarchy of God’s knowledge- natural, middle and free. Free and Middle are not necessary to God
Omniscience- Natural knowledge
Natural- necessary truths, laws of mathematics and physics, all logically possible truths0 everything that could be.
Omniscience- Free knowledge
All contingent truths, depending on the reality they’re in- everything that will be
Omniscience- Middle Knowledge
All hypothetical truths of what any agent would do in any situation- everything that would be
