The Nature of God Flashcards
Transcendent
Outside time and space
Impersonal
Beyond us, other worldly
Immanent
Within time and space, happening now
Anselm on timelessness
God is ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’.
God is timeless, as a consequence of his omnipotence.
God is impassible, simple (no parts) and outside of time to preserve his supremacy.
God is eternal
Time is contingent and God is necessary - he does not need time to exist
Anselm on free will
Is our timely existence pre-determined?
For Anslem, freedom lies in the choice and rectitude.
Free will is the ability to choose the right thing because one wants to choose it.
God by nature cannot choose evil.
God knows what will happen in the future, however it is, in time, changeable by our choices.
Rectitude
Doing the right thing
The eternal present
Anselm
The concept of eternity is not built on our concept of time.
Non-temporal concept.
The eternity is God is in another dimension, in which all periods of time are contained.
Anselm - Language and logic
Terms such as ‘foreknowledge or ‘predestined’ are terms which invoke aspects of time, so when we apply them to God to try to grasp his knowledge and action because we have no other vocabulary- we are working at the very edge of their meaning.
Richard Swinburne
Rejects the concept of God as timeless.
It is unbiblical to argue that God is wholly outside of time. e.g God now does this, now does that, now destroys Jerusalem, now lets the exiles return home, he forgives, brings, punishes and warns.
A timeless God is ‘radically incoherent’, it makes no sense of the life of worship and prayer.
How can a loving God be unable to answer prayers in the present?
God is everlasting
Paul Tillich
A timeless God would be lifeless, yet we speak of a ‘living God’.
Karl Barth
God is not timeless; the incarnation of Christ is an example of God acting intentionally and decisively in human history.
Alvin Plantinga - Free Will
Free will means being radically free.
Choice implies selecting something for a reason.
An action is only moral if it is freely done.
Plantinga - Possible worlds
God can do anything that is logically possible- the logically impossible is meaningless.
A world with moral actions by free creatures is a better world than any alternative.
A world with no evil and free choice is logically absurd.
God is omnibenevolent because he made a world where the greater good is possible.
Isaiah 57:15
“For thus says the high and lofty one, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy”
Nicholas Wolterstorff
An eternal God appeals to people because of how it differs from humans’ experience of life in the physical world.
We try and stave off time, and we regret this past, suggesting that things that change are imperfect.
Boethius on eternity
God is eternal - eternity being “the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life”
Life is not an experience of events following one another, so it does not involve change.
He is limitless and changeless
All of time is present to God
Aquians on eternity
Heavily influenced by boethius
God exists unendingly, he is outside of time, so it doesnt pass him.
It is in his nature to exist.
Atemporality
The state of being outside the time process.
Descartes on God’s omnipotence
God can do anything, including the logically impossible.
The phrase only applies to humans- nothing is logically impossible to him.
He can change the laws of physics at will.
His attributes are therefore not limited by human logic- he can be both timeless and omnibenevolent (be with us and be outside of time)
Criticisms of Descartes view on God’s omnipotence
Too vague?
What about a stone that is unable to be lifted?
Does this make God unpredictable and untrustworthy?
Problem of evil
Making a circle into a square is nonsense- lack of knowledge not power.
Why doesn’t God prevent evil?
Peter Vardy on God’s omnipotence
“God is limited by the universe he chose to create” He can do the logically impossible but chose not too so that free will isnt compromised. —- if God really is omnipotent he shouldnt have to compromise anything.
3 views of God’s omnipotence
- God can do anything, even the logically impossible
- God can do the logically possible
- God can do anything that is logically possible for God to do
Aquinas’ view on God’s omnipotence
God can do the logically possible
It is a contradiction to say that God can do something impossible.
“He can do anything that is absolutley possible”
God cannot change the past, he is perfect and is therefore not contradictory.
Omnipotence doesn’t cover contradictions
Criticisms of Aquinas’ view on God’s omnipotence
Undermines God- Swimming is logically possible for us but not God as he doesnt have a body
Peter Greach
Aquinas’ argument is based on the assumption that God is perfect.
Anthony Kenny on God’s omnipotence
Omnipotence is only a phrase that refers to God’s power. He can do anything that is logically possible for God to do.
“A being is omnipotent if it has every power which it is logically possible to possess”
Omnipotence is about power- not contradictions
Nelson Pike on God’s omnipotence
Omnipotence is only a phrase that refers to God’s power. He can do anything that is logically possible for God to do.
God chooses to do things which adhere with his perfect nature.
Criticisms on the view that God can do anything that is logically possible for him to do
Omnipotence loses its meaning - empty definition
You could apply it to an ant and justify omnipotence
God’s omniscience
God knows everything and anything- links to timelessness.
or God has limited knowledge, he cannot know the logically impossible (e.g. future) and he gains knowledge through time- links to him being everlasting.
Anselm on God’s omniscience
God is ‘supremely perceptive’
Criticisms on the view that God knows the future
If God knows the future then it must be necessary, so how can we have free will?
“without freedom there are no moral choice” - Kant
Schliermacher on God’s omniscience
God’s knowledge of us is similar to a parents, he can accurately predict how people will act, his knowledge is not causal- so we do still have free will.
Boethius on God’s omniscience
God has to be able to see everything at once ‘as though from a lofty peak’.
Our present, past and future form one ‘eternal present’ to God.
We are still free to move in our future.
Genesis 3
God has perfect knowledge of everything, including good and evil.
Jeremiah 1
“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”
William James
A Process Theologian
Chess Grand master analogy - can play multiple games at once as he knows all the moves his opponents will make- but they are still free in making those moves.
God’s goal for creation is guaranteed but the way we live is entirely down to our own free choices.
God cannot be timeless because he appears to be acting in time.
Anthony Kenny on God’s omniscience
It makes no sense to speak of God as knowing the future because there are no contingent future events to know as they haven’t happened yet.
The Christian understanding of God’s omnibenevolence
God is intrinsically loving
He can be both loving and immutable because he possesses love as a quality, he isn’t responding to anything so doesn’t have to change.
God loves us even if we reject him
Christian examples of God’s love
“Woe to them because they have strayed from me” -story of Hosea, Gomer and the people of Israel
Noah and the Ark- a loving a necessary act of destruction
The Resurrection- agape love
God suffered when he was rejected by the Israelites- suggesting he isn’t impassible and his knowledge changes as the future unfolds.
God’s love in the book of Psalms
Psalm 62- “Steadfast love” committed, reliable and trustworthy
Psalm 118 speaks of eternal love.
This love differs to the destructive love referenced in Hosea- is the extent of this destruction necessary?
John Stuart Mill on God’s omnibenevolence
He criticised omnibenevolence based on flaws in the design argument - as did Stephen Fry.
Aquinas on God’s omnibenevolence
We do not know God’s master plan- he empathises with our suffering.
Boethius on God’s omnibenevolence
The future is necessary so God cannot answer prayer, so he is not all loving.
Omnibenevolence + omniscience are not compatible
John Calvin
God elects who are saved and who are not.
Predestination
Swinburne on justice and punishment
The goodness of God is nothing without the justice of God.
He gives us the choice to do good or evil, and punishes or rewards us based on our choices.
Freedom only makes sense if there are genuine punishments.
He is not punishing us out of spite- it is necessary for genuine goodness.
Aquinas on God’s punishment
Hell is a place which is in separation from God.
God wants to reward everyone but some turn against him, so are not close with him after death.
John Hick on God’s punishment
‘epistemic distance’
There is no need for divine punishment because everyone has the chance to make their souls into the likeness of God.
Maurice Wiles
There are enough bad consequences of our wicked actions to make us aware of the burden of responsibility without the need for further divine punishment after death.
God loves us all through the gift of creation, he literally acts in the world
How can God help some and not others?
Don Cupitt
Earthly punishments are punishment enough- the realisation that we have failed to live up to our goals.
Presentism
Only focuses on the present moment. Reality is only in the present — Anselm rejects this view
Paul Helm
“God, considered as timeless, cannot have temporal relations with any of his creation”
CS Lewis
“Prayer doesnt change God it changes me” - links to timelessness
J.L.Mackie
Ideas of impossible actions were “only a form of words which fails to describe any state of affairs” = there is nothing that is logically impossible
Swinburne on God’s omnipotence
We need to establish what “everything” includes when speaking of omnipotence
Turning a circle into a square is not a thing
John Macquarie
God is not constrained by logic. He chooses to limit his power out of love for humanity.
