The nature/attributes of God Flashcards
Explain Descartes view on God’s omnipotence
o Descartes argued God could do anything, even which is logically impossible. E.g. God could made a square-circle, because God is the supreme perfection and has no limitations.
o He argued that the laws of maths only exist in the way that they do because God created them that way, and God can change them or override them whenever he likes.
o Descartes rejected other understandings of omnipotence as he thought that they dishonour and put limits on the greatness of God. Saying God had to conform to the laws of logic made it sound as though God was no more powerful than Zeus, who was a god only of the fates and nothing else (unlike Christianity’s God).
o God could also be capable of doing evil as well (because he’s omnipotent), and incapable (because of his love) at the same time, even though this involves a logical contradiction. We can’t see how a God like this exists because we’re limited by logic and by the smallness of human understanding.
Explain the criticisms to Descartes view on God’s omnipotence
- -Most Christian scholars have argued that this kind of understanding of omnipotence is wrong, suggesting that God can do anything but logical contradictions as they’re not ‘things’. It’s not the lack of power that prevents God from making a square circle, but it’s the fact that a square circle is nonsense.
- -Descartes view of God makes him unpredictable, which means he could do anything (and therefore can’t be relied upon). God’s moral rules might change at any minute, or be both true and false at the same time. It makes it impossible for people to have a relationship with God or trust in him for their salvations.
- -If God is really all-powerful that he could do anything at all, then God has to be capable of doing evil, of being unforgiving, of turning against us, and of failing.
- -Descartes’s view is problematic for theodicies, as most Christian thinkers (such as Irenaeus, Augustine and John Hick) suggest God couldn’t act in any other way than the way he does without depriving us of our free will. Suffering is a result of free will. According to Descartes, the laws of logic allow us to have free will without the consequences of evil, then the existence of evil becomes something God could change if he wanted to, but which he chooses to inflict on us for no reason. This then becomes difficult to reconcile with the idea that God is perfectly loving.
- -His understanding of God isn’t supported by the Bible. For example, in 23:19 it claims that because God is God and not human, he can’t fail like us. The Bible emphasises that God’s omnipotence is great but doesn’t support the idea that he could do the logically impossible.
Can God only do the logically possible?
o Thomas Aquinas argued that God is omnipotent in the sense of being in charge of the world, creating it and keeping it in existence.
o Aquinas said that God is omnipotent as ‘he can do anything that is absolutely possible’, and that ‘everything that does not imply a contradiction is among those possibilities in respect of which God is called omnipotent’ (Aquinas, Summa Theologica).
o Meaning God can do anything logically possible, but if it isn’t logically possible then it can’t be done, even by God. If something is logically contradictory, such as a square-circle, then it’s not a thing that can be made at all.
o In his book ‘The Coherence of Theism’ (1977), Richard Swinburne argued God’s omnipotence means that God can create all ‘things’, but self-contradictory definitions don’t refer to ‘things’. A square-circle isn’t a ‘thing’ so God can’t make one.
o This, for Swinburne, isn’t a challenge to God’s omnipotence, as God remains capable of doing and creating everything.
Does God deliberately limit his own powers for our benefit?
o In ‘The Puzzle of Evil’ (1992), Peter Vardy suggests that God’s omnipotence is limited than most Christians believe. God isn’t in control of the whole history, Vardy says it’s wrong to suggest that everything that happens is because of the will of God.
o Vardy suggests that God made the universe in a way that his ability to act is necessarily limited. He argues that the universe is perfectly suited for the existence of free, rational human beings, and that in order for it to remain this way, God’s omnipotence’s has to be limited. But this limitations self-imposed by God.
o John Macquarrie makes a similar point in ‘Principles of Christian Theology’ (1966), that God’s limitations are self-imposed as he chooses to limit his own power out of love for humanity.
o The idea of God being self-limited has been explored by Christology (a branch of theodicy involved with understanding the name of Christ). In answer to the puzzle of how Jesus could’ve been God’s son, given that Jesus didn’t always display God’s attributes of omnipotence or timelessness or being without a body, theologians have developed a doctrine known as ‘kenosis’.
o Kenosis is ‘self-emptying’. Meaning God deliberately empties himself of some of his divine attributes before coming to earth, in order to make Jesus’ encounter with humanity possible. Jesus had to have human limitations in order to be human at all, and this was because of God’s own choice and freely given love.
o This idea became popular in 20th and 21st centuries, perhaps because of the need for Christianity to re-evaluate the idea of God’s omnipotence of the 20th century wars, and also because of rising interest in ‘existentialist’ ways of thinking, where free will and finding personal meaning is emphasised.
Are there problems with the idea of God’s omnipotence due to religious language?
o Macquarrie and other thinkers emphasise that when they speak of God’s power, they’re using analogy, and that God’s power is different from our own. But the word ‘power’ refers to power within this world, so when it’s applied to God, it can’t be applied literally because God is infinitely greater than we are.
o Aquinas argues that there will always be aspects of God’s nature that are unknowable to us. Even if we can understand it partially, and express them partially with the use of analogy, we should nevertheless bear in mind that God’s omnipotence is something we can’t comprehend. This is because we are human and are weak minded.
What does it mean to say that God is Omniscient?
- -Schleiermacher’s tried to solve whether God’s omniscience restricts our freedom by drawing an analogy of the knowledge that a married couple have of each other’s future behaviour to conclude that God could be omniscient while still allowing people to act freely. In this analogy he states that we can guess what the friend’s actions would be because you are very close with them, it doesn’t involve you restricting their freedom. E.g. If a married couple went to a restaurant and the wife was vegetarian and the husband loved chicken, it would be obvious that the wife would only eat a vegetarian meal while the husband would eat something chicken-related. For Schleiermacher, this is comparable with God’s knowledge of our actions. His knowledge doesn’t force or affect what we do, so we can still be held morally responsible and still make genuinely free choices.
- -A problem with Schleiermacher is that God’s knowledge is weak while ours aren’t. In the example of the couple, the husband could be wrong in thinking his wife would choose a vegetarian meal, unlike God who is never wrong and makes no mistakes. God is also said to know the future, rather than making a reliable prediction of it, it’s the certainty of omniscient knowledge that makes it difficult to reconcile with human freedom.
- -If God’s omniscience determines our choices, then God can’t justifiably punish us when we do wrong or reward us when we do good. The problem for our moral freedom is challenged further with the belief God made all life individually, making each person in accordance with his plans. If God deliberately made many people evil then perhaps God can be held responsible for all kinds of evil, including moral-evil. Another problem is that God knew what religion people would chose, and therefore it’s pointless for us to act like good people so we can go to heaven as our place in the afterlife is already made by God.
- -A counter-criticism to this is that if God instead wondered how his creation would turn out without fully knowing, then it devalues God’s power. It means God could be surprised, or can make choices that turn out to have been unwise. God’s capabilities seem to be limited.
What is the view that God is timeless? (atemporal)
- -The most commonly adopted view by classic theologians (such as Aquinas and Schleiermacher) is that God is timeless. Meaning, God is outside time, and isn’t bound by time; God is the creator of time.
- -Supporters say if God were bound by time, then he would be much more limited. He wouldn’t know what the outcomes of actions might be; he would have to wait and see how events turn out before deciding what to do next. There might be times when God’s plan is affected due to unseen difficulties- and then God would have to make another plan. This limits God’s omnipotence and omniscience.
- -Supporters say that other concepts of God’s relationship with time don’t recognise the uniqueness of God. God can bring things about in time, and cause changes in people without being changed himself, as God isn’t a person in the same way we are. There are things that are possible for God due to his unique existence even if we can’t see how they’re possible
What is the view that God is everlasting? (sempiternal)
- -The other view that God is everlasting. Meaning God moves along the same timelines that we do but never begins or ends. The past is past for God as well as for us, and past events are fixed for God just as they are for us. The future is unknown to us and is also, to some extent, unknown to God as it hasn’t happened yet.
- -Supporters say atemporal views of God limit our free will: when God knows what we’re going to do, there’s nothing we can influence it to change, and nothing for which we can be held responsible.
- -Another difficulty is connected with the problem of evil: it’s hard to believe an Omni-benevolent God who knows that pain and suffering will happen but doesn’t protect us.
Explain God is timeless in the thinking of Augustine and Aquinas
- -Augustine questioned what was God doing before he made the universe. He came to the conclusion that the Bible portrays 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 can’t have been a ‘before’ for God.
- -In his book ‘The city of God’, Augustine argues God is timeless. Aquinas followed his view, adding that when we speak of God, we need to recognise that the language we use is analogical and not univocal. Meaning any words that we use to describe God can’t be applied directly, as God isn’t like us.
- -Aquinas argues we have to use analogy. We could say God moves in a mysterious way- and when we do, we’re using the word ‘moves’ analogically. Aquinas wanted to argue that when we’re trying to understand the attributes of God, difficulties arise as we’re taking our own language too literally, and failing to take account of the unknowability of God.
- -However some argue that if God is outside of time then is he’s incapable of love. Some modern scholars argue that love involves emotional response, feeling happy when the loved one is happy and worried when the loved one is unhappy. An unchanging God that is outside time however would feel the same way forever, whether people were happily worshiping him or suffering a terrible pain.
- -Aquinas argued that God could be both loving and unchanging as he’s God, unlike us as we can’t be loving and unchanging at the same time. God’s unchanging nature doesn’t prevent him from having relationships. God doesn’t change, but his creations change. People can either move towards or away God, and so there’s a unique relationship for the existence of love even though God is unchanging.
- -Richard Creel, in his book ‘Divine impassibility’ (1986) agrees with Aquinas. Saying God can know what his own will is, in response to any of an infinite number of possibilities. He doesn’t need to wait for us to use our free will and then see how to act. While we still have free will, God can still know what all of the possibilities are, and can know in advance what his will is in response to each of those possibilities.
Explain Boethius and ‘The Consolation of philosophy’
- -Sixth century Christian Philosopher, Boethius, took up the problem of God’s omniscience and judgment. He asked whether it would be fair of God to praise or blame people if they didn’t have any real moral freedom and were constrained by what God already knew about their future.
- -In his book, ‘The consolation of philosophy’, he argues humans exist within time. They have pasts that are fixed once they have happened, they have a present that is gone in an instant, and futures that are uncertain. Because the future is uncertain, humans have genuine free will.
- -God sees things differently than us. When God is knowing, he doesn’t have the same constraints in time that we have. God, therefore, doesn’t have a past, present and future and so ‘his knowledge, too, transcends all temporal change and abides in the immediacy of his presence’. God can look down on us, moving along our timelines, ‘as though from a lofty peak above them’ (Boethius- ‘The consolation of philosophy’).
- -As God doesn’t know things in advance of them happening, Boethius thought, it makes no sense to talk of what God should have known in the past or what God will come to know in the future. Meaning God can’t be accused of having a lack of wisdom in not realising that Adam and Eve would disobey him. God doesn’t know what we will do in the future because there is no future for God. Time in our world works simultaneously with God.
- -Boethius concludes that we have a free choice and can be rewarded or punished with justice.
Explain Anselm’s four-dimensionalist approach to the timelessness of God
- -‘Presentism’ is a philosophical concept that argues only the present moment exists. The past is gone, and the future hasn’t happened yet. Meaning we can’t know what will happen next week because it doesn’t exist yet.
- -A 4D-view of time differs from presentism, in that the past and the future exist in the same way that the present exists. Terms such as ‘yesterday’ and ‘the past’ are relative terms, relative to the person doing the perceiving at any given moment in time, just as ‘right next to me’ are relative to the person in any given place in space.
- -We are limited by space as well as by time, so we live in a presentism way. But because God is eternal, in Anselm’s thinking, God is unlimited by either space or time, and therefore God can be in the past, present and future all at once, just as He can be in the whole universe at once.
- -For Anselm, the 4D understanding of the eternity of God means that we do have free will. God can see the free choices that we have made or will make.
- -Boethius wrote about God being able to see our free actions ‘as though’ from a lofty peak, whereas Anselm thought there was no ‘as though’ about it. God literally can see us in our pasts, presents and futures, because of his eternal timelessness.
- -Therefore, God can judge us for our free actions.
Explain Swinburne’s view of a God in time
- -Swinburne argues if God is timeless and therefore unchallengeable, then He can’t have a ‘life’.
- -A person with a life has to be changeable, he argues, in order to have relationships and respond to people according to what they do. A timeless God wouldn’t be able to love because a timeless God is unchallengeable and is therefore not affected by anything.
- -He argues that the view of a timeless God contradicts the Bible because “If God had thus fixed his intentions ‘from all eternity’ he would be a very lifeless thing; not a person who reacts to men with sympathy or anger, pardon or chastening because he chooses to there and then”. (The Coherence of Theism)
- -In the Bible, Swinburne argues, God doesn’t have fixed purposes for all eternity. In contrast, God interacts with people, and God’s decisions about what will happen may change because of his ongoing relationships with individuals.
- -A biblical example, which might support Swinburne’s view, is the story in Isaiah of King Hezekiah’s illness where Hezekiah (a devoted Christian) is informed that God will give him a terrible illness. Hezekiah begs God to not do this through his prayers, which eventually happens.
- -Perhaps Swinburne is right: God has been planning to end Hezekiah’s life but was persuaded to change his mind in response to his prayer. However, there are also passages where the challenges of God is emphasised: ‘God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?’ (23:19)
- -Unlike humanity, God knows with perfect knowledge what he will do, and has no need to alter his views or intentions.
Explain the Omni benevolence and justice of God
o The Christian understanding of God holds that God’s nature is love. His love, like His existence, has no cause. It is not brought into being by something else but is part of the nature of God from the start.
o In the Bible, God’s love is compared with the love of a human parent, full of tenderness for the child and profoundly hurt when the child rejects the love shown: “To them, I was like one who lifts infants to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them…” (11:4, 12)
o In the New Testament, the word used for Christian love is ‘agape’. Agape has the connotations of showing love through actions rather than feelings or emotions. Many people believe God incarnating as Jesus is an example of agape as he died for our sins because of his love for humanity.
o Aquinas argued when we speak of God’s love, we are using an analogy. We are talking of a love that is like ours in some respects, but we have to bear in mind that God is infinitely greater than us and that we can only understand tiny proportions of divine love.
o Most Christians argue that we can’t understand the love of God as he works in mysterious ways and our minds are too weak to comprehend such greatness. God doesn’t leave us to suffer on our own. Christians believe that in Christ, God came to earth in human form and suffered with us. They believe that God is with us in our pain, even if we don’t understand the reasons for it.
o In his book, ‘The Crucified God’, Jürgen Moltmann argues that Christianity shows that God doesn’t just sit outside time being perfect and unchanged. He gets involved with us and shares the pains of humanity. Moltmann concluded that God exists within time rather than in the timeless, eternal way suggested by Anselm.
Is it possible, or necessary, to resolve the apparent conflicts between the traditional attributes of God?
- -One way to address the apparent conflict between traditional attributes of God is to adopt the view that God can’t be understood by the finite human mind. Aquinas emphasises this point, that God is essentially unknowable: we can learn about Him, and explore what we understand of God and strive to do the things God seems to want of us, but in the end, we will not understand him completely.
- -Perhaps the idea of God having a range of attributes, such as eternity, love and power, is an effort to break God down into manageable pieces so that we can comprehend God more easily. If we were trying to understand a magnificent building, we might look at it from different angles for example. We wouldn’t be able to take it all in at once because we are so much smaller than the building. This might give rise to apparent contradictions. Some people might argue that windows are for looking in from the outside, while others might argue that they are for looking outward. This demonstrates only the different limited perspectives of the viewers, not that the building couldn’t exist at all.
- -However, critics aren’t satisfied with the view that any apparent contradictions are due to our own limitations and that we shouldn’t expect to understand God. Dawkins argues that this ‘it’s a mystery’ kind of thinking is lazy, and the idea of not being able to understand God is a good reason to not believe in God.
- -J.L. Mackie writes of the ‘miracle of theism’, claiming ironically that it’s a ‘miracle’ that reasonable people should continue to support Christian beliefs given their incoherence.
Which understanding of the relationship between God and time is the most useful?
- -Critics of Boethius and Anselm argue it’s impossible to anger or please God if He was outside time and able to be in the future as well as in the past and present. God would always be the same, and so He couldn’t ‘become’ pleased or angry, no matter what we did.
- -Another problem is that God perhaps can’t be totally omniscient if He was outside of time because God couldn’t know what day or what time it is.
- -Also, God being outside time raises the question of how He works in our world (as He doesn’t live in our world).
- -However, those in favour of Boethius and Anselm argue a timeless God seems to be better than a God who exists in time, capable of offering eternal life to people and able to make promises with certainty.
- -Critics of Augustine argue what was God doing before the universe was made? It can be argued that a God who is outside of time is superior to One who is within time as He is not constrained by time. A God who existed in time would have to wait and see what happens rather than knowing. Perhaps a God who exists in time can’t be all-knowing if He doesn’t know what the future holds and has to deal with unforeseen evets.
- -However a God who’s in time seems to be more personal and capable of having relationships with us, and this view of a God in time perhaps allows more scope for human free will.
