Classical Theism, Philosophy, and Religion Forum » On Divine Properties/Psychology

Marty · 9/29/2016 5:47 pm

Let's say we accept in some respects the cosmological argument for the necessity of a necessary being and move onto divine properties, and whether or not we can safely get to a God that has an intellect and is perfectly good.

i) How can we say that a mind that's transcendent completely from the conditions of time (be eternal) be said to make a decision? An decision/action would mean something like, "A drive/act towards something, to be ahead of one's-self, to act towards one's possibilities, or to look at some x that is not yet." (I'm using something like Heidegger's notion of Dasein). Yes, this drive requires someone to have a nature, but it's nature is generally geared towards a nature that's not yet actualized. This is why someone like Heidegger makes Dasein both itself and not itself; it's essence includes transcendence - a forgoing of oneself. However, a God that is pure act can hardly be said to have ever made a decision - as an eternal decision seems to have always been such a way, and to always be such a way without any further determination.

To pull an example I've had with a friend of mine including someone sitting on a chair for all of eternity: I cannot possibly conceive of someone always choos-ing (temporal state) to sit in a chair eternally. For a choice to be considered, one first of all has to have in mind something in which one is not yet doing - this then opens up the possibility as the chair as something "to sit on" in which we determine a choice for ourselves. But If I find myself always sitting on a chair, from "here" since eternally, I should not be able to say I made any determination on my end as a choice to be sitting from start to end - I can't not even be able to conceive of time at all. It's instead to find myself thrown into a world suddenly without choice, and simply do have participate in the only nature I have. And yes, in a normal example one could get off the chair at any point, but then this example would fail because in order to stop sitting I would have to think of not sitting on a chair (once again open up future possibilities of something I'm not yet doing) but God can't stop choosing to stop being God which means being existence - he's, if you will, "thrown" into the duty of being God without beginnings. He doesn't have a future possibility of which he's not. He's literally everything.

It might be a response to say this is anthropomorphizing God. However, I think to even talk about a God that's not radically Other, a completely transcend God is automatically to do this. We seem to do this in classic theism when we point to the pure simplicity of God, the intellect and agency of God, and the divine goodness of God.

ii) How can we say that a perfect being is absolutely good, and this necessarily follows from the intellect, divine power, and divine presence? a) Someone could just simply deny ethics and say the world is cosmologically ambivalent, or that God simply doesn't have that attribute whatsoever - ethical nihilism. b) I'm not sure if it's a very satisfying answer to say that God being in some way "ontologically good" seems to work, either. I'm not quite sure how it tells us anything about the moral agency of God.

c) Taking a look at someone like Samuel Clarke's response to why "the supreme author of all things must be infinitely good, just, and true" doesn't seem to click with me at first either. He says the following:

i) "he must have infinite knowledge and the perfection of wisdom, so that it’s absolutely impossible that he should err or be in any respect ignorant of the true relations and fitness or unfitness of things, or be by any means deceived or tricked"
ii) "he is self-existent, absolutely independent and all powerful: so that, not lacking anything, his will can’t be influenced by any wrong emotion; and not depending on anything, his power can’t be limited by any superior strength."

Then it follows:

a) "The supreme cause must be infinitely good, and here is why. . . . He is necessarily happy in the eternal enjoyment of his own infinite perfections, so the only motive he can possibly have for making any creatures at all is to communicate to them his own perfections, according to their different capacities (arising from the variety of natures that it was fit for infinite wisdom to produce), and according to their different improvements (arising from the liberty that is essential to the constitution of intelligent and active beings. A further reason for holding that he must be infinitely good is this: being necessarily all-sufficient he must be infinitely removed from all malice and envy, and from all other possible causes or temptations of doing evil—which obviously can only be effects of lack and weakness, of imperfection or of depravity."

b) "He must in the same way be infinitely just; and here is why. The rule of equity is nothing but the very nature of things and their necessary relations one to another; and acting justly is nothing but suiting the features of things to the qualifications of persons, according to the basic fitness and agreeableness that I earlier showed to be necessarily in nature in advance of anyone’s choices or decisions. Obviously, then, he who knows perfectly this rule of equity and necessarily judges things as they are; who has complete power to carry out justice according to that knowledge, and no possible temptation to deviate from it; who can’t be imposed upon by any deceit, swayed by any bias, or awed by any power; must always do what is right, without unfairness or partiality, without prejudice or favouritism."

c) "He must be true and faithful, in all his declarations and all his promises. This is very obvious. The only possible reason for speaking falsely is ashness, forgetfulness, inconstancy or weakness, fear of evil, or hope of gain; and an infinitely wise, all-sufficient, and good being must be infinitely removed from all these. Thus, just as it is impossible for him to be deceived, it is impossible for him to deceive others in any way. In brief, all evil and all imperfections whatsoever plainly arise either from shortness of understanding, defect of power, or faultiness of will. . . . It’s clear that the supreme cause and author of all things must be infinitely distant from all these things, so it follows undeniably that he must be a being of infinite goodness, justice, truth, and all other moral perfections."

a/b) If there is an accusation leveled against the atheist here for anthropomorphizing God about the intellect, it's surely done when someone like Clarke says God is infinitely happy. But let's say we accept this. Does this follow that God then is infinitely good because he is infinitely happy? Is there a contradiction involved here if we were to assume otherwise? Does a perfect being have to be removed of all malice and envy? How do we establish this through divine psychology? Perhaps it's a cheap shot to think that God could be malicious and not act follow with the rule of equity.

c) Perhaps, or evil is not the deprivation of the Good; perhaps it's not a psychological deficiency. What would be the counter-response to this?

iwpoe · 9/29/2016 7:28 pm

I am thinking this through.

Greg · 9/29/2016 9:49 pm

Marty wrote:
i) How can we say that a mind that's transcendent completely from the conditions of time (be eternal) be said to make a decision?

Aquinas perhaps would hesitate to say that God makes a decision. He is eternally deciding.

He relies on a distinction between eternity and sempiternity. A sempiternal being exists through an infinite past and into an infinite future. It is neither generated nor corrupted. But it is still in time.

Eternity is literally outside time; time is the measure of change, so whatever is changeless must be eternal. It's not that something eternal sits there without changing from an infinite past through an infinite future; it rather exists in a separate "eternal now", which exists, as it were, "all at once". Different philosophers have worked on how to relate this eternity to creation, which exists in time. A common approach is to say that eternity is simultaneous with each moment in time, but the simultaneity relation is not transitive. So God exists simultaneously with Napoleon and with you and me, but it does not follow, nor is it true, that you and I exist simultaneously with Napoleon.

There are questions as to how this theory should be understood. Aquinas seems to be an A-theorist and presentist sometimes, suggesting that all that really exists is what exists now, that the passing of time is real and corresponds to change among creation. But the characterization of eternity seems to require a B-theory; all moments are "really present" to God. William Lane Craig has argued that Aquinas contradicts himself here.

But the idea is that God's willing to create is just a single act in eternity. He never goes from not creating to creating. There is no moment when he hasn't decided to create. He rather causes each moment to exist from eternity, from without time. Further, God's willing things to exist is a sort of effusive consequence of his willing of his own goodness, which is all he wills essentially, and his will is identical to him.

Marty wrote:
ii) How can we say that a perfect being is absolutely good, and this necessarily follows from the intellect, divine power, and divine presence? a) Someone could just simply deny ethics and say the world is cosmologically ambivalent, or that God simply doesn't have that attribute whatsoever - ethical nihilism. b) I'm not sure if it's a very satisfying answer to say that God being in some way "ontologically good" seems to work, either. I'm not quite sure how it tells us anything about the moral agency of God.

Well, to articulate Aquinas's position again, he is going to say that, to start, we must argue against ethical--or at least, value--nihilists. One must show that there is such a thing as ontological goodness before there's any point in trying to show that God is Goodness Itself. Aquinas does that by adopting an account of the transcendentals whereby a thing's goodness consists in its greater attainment toward the complete actuality corresponding to its form. Since God lacks nothing, he is perfectly good.

This had always been my beef with Plantinga's ontological argument when I was an atheist (though admittedly I never read Plantinga himself, or any serious and sympathetic treatment). It was said that maximal excellence requires moral perfection, but I didn't think there was or could be any such property referred to by "moral perfection". I guess you could say I thought nihilism and materialism were necessarily true, and denying that had to rest on some confusion about mereology. I guess that seems like a rather strong position without a very good argument. But I think the way I thought about it was this: Kripke thinks not just that there are no unicorns but that there could be no unicorns, because unicorns are fictional creatures and there is no fact of the matter about any horse-like thing with what looks like a horn on what looks like its head is actually a unicorn. I thought similarly about moral properties. To think that such a property is possible was a mistake, so clearly there also could be no property of "maximal excellence".

There remains a question of God's "moral goodness". I suspect the right answer to say here is that morality is excellence of a thing's reason and will. That there's such a thing as moral goodness for humans depends on that moral goodness being part of their creator's plan for them. Further, the good life for a human is one that "participates" (in Aquinas's refined, non-neo-Platonic sense) in God's ontological goodness. So we can at least say that God is concerned with what is good for man in the sense that the good for man participates in his providence.

But I'm not sure we can or need to go further than that. There are Thomists who argue that, since God has no ends because he lacks nothing, it is improper to speak of God's "moral" goodness.

Marty · 9/29/2016 11:20 pm

Greg wrote:
Aquinas perhaps would hesitate to say that God makes a decision. He is eternally deciding.

I don't see how it's possible to be "eternally deciding", and what the distinction between that and merely "deciding" is. It seems to once again evoke different possible choices to make, none of which seem coherent with what God's essence is. Either his Reason is similar to our own intellect, or our Reason's ability to conceptualize such a thing is impossible which forces us to cease speculation into the radical nature of God - he is completely transcendent.

Greg wrote:
He relies on a distinction between eternity and sempiternity. A sempiternal being exists through an infinite past and into an infinite future. It is neither generated nor corrupted. But it is still in time.

Eternity is literally outside time; time is the measure of change, so whatever is changeless must be eternal. It's not that something eternal sits there without changing from an infinite past through an infinite future; it rather exists in a separate "eternal now", which exists, as it were, "all at once". Different philosophers have worked on how to relate this eternity to creation, which exists in time. A common approach is to say that eternity is simultaneous with each moment in time, but the simultaneity relation is not transitive. So God exists simultaneously with Napoleon and with you and me, but it does not follow, nor is it true, that you and I exist simultaneously with Napoleon.

I can grant this, but I think the same problem emerges. It's why I think maybe the transcendental subject has problems. How can you be said to be thinking at all (a type of activity), or making any decision at all if you're not temporal? (If you instead enable the conditions of possibility for such things to be as such.) To always know everything, to have no biases, (etc) amounts to the same as always being some x forever, and never having the ability to transcend one's nature. It's in my opinion to deny the possibility of freedom - as that requires to have a type of a "essence" that allows us to transcend ourselves as well. It's why philosophers such as Heidegger say it's impossible to say that we're a present-at-hand being, but that particularly seems like the only type of being that satisfies classic ontology.

Greg wrote:
But the idea is that God's willing to create is just a single act in eternity. He never goes from not creating to creating. There is no moment when he hasn't decided to create. He rather causes each moment to exist from eternity, from without time. Further, God's willing things to exist is a sort of effusive consequence of his willing of his own goodness, which is all he wills essentially, and his will is identical to him.

The cosmological argument seems to suggest there is a timeless cause that's possible. I don't know if I accept this intuitively, but it seems to a part of the Thomistic project which you just sort of have to accept, and since it seems to be a logical conclusion that follows from all contingent being require an necessary ground, time itself needs to be conditioned by something outside itself. Of course we don't really seem to know anything about such a thing other than it is there. Which seems ulimately unsatisfying to a lot of people.

Greg wrote:
Well, to articulate Aquinas's position again, he is going to say that, to start, we must argue against ethical--or at least, value--nihilists. One must show that there is such a thing as ontological goodness before there's any point in trying to show that God is Goodness Itself. Aquinas does that by adopting an account of the transcendentals whereby a thing's goodness consists in its greater attainment toward the complete actuality corresponding to its form. Since God lacks nothing, he is perfectly good.

Right, but that's why I initially said this doesn't seem to resemble any ethical theories. Nor does it seem like a good way to convince an ethical nihilist.

Greg wrote:
There remains a question of God's "moral goodness". I suspect the right answer to say here is that morality is excellence of a thing's reason and will. That there's such a thing as moral goodness for humans depends on that moral goodness being part of their creator's plan for them. Further, the good life for a human is one that "participates" (in Aquinas's refined, non-neo-Platonic sense) in God's ontological goodness. So we can at least say that God is concerned with what is good for man in the sense that the good for man participates in his providence.

But I'm not sure we can or need to go further than that. There are Thomists who argue that, since God has no ends because he lacks nothing, it is improper to speak of God's "moral" goodness.

But we simply can't presuppose God's "ontological goodness" as equal to the ethically good? We can't just think because he has an intellect that it is necessarily good. And it seems as though there's plenty of just things within the world that are not that good - all which come from one source.

Last edited by Marty (9/30/2016 3:35 am)

884heid · 9/30/2016 7:53 am

i've seen a thread on reddit recently that is somewhat concomitant to issue that you're discussing here. The discussion revolves around Divine intellect and freedom. Scroll down until you see user Wokeupabug contrasting the classical theist's position and the Spinozist position regarding the aforementioned topics (more accurately, the theological debate that's been heated before Spinoza was even born). I think his subsequent responses are also quite good.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/4b5v5r/how_have_theists_defended_gods_free_creation_of/

Last edited by 884heid (9/30/2016 8:02 am)

Greg · 9/30/2016 8:12 am

Marty wrote:
I don't see how it's possible to be "eternally deciding", and what the distinction between that and merely "deciding" is. It seems to once again evoke different possible choices to make, none of which seem coherent with what God's essence is.

Well, one way to get at the difficulty is by way of the distinction between temporal and counterfactual possibility. As we know, those are not mutually entailing. Someone who decides undergoes a change in time. God wills from eternity his own goodness and that the world exist. There's no point when he changes from not-willing to willing, but it is true that in his willing there is a sense in which one possibility among many is being singled out.

The other point to bear in mind here is that the theory is not stated in abstraction from the arguments for it. The reason for holding this is that the world exists and depends on God. It is caused by God at each moment it exist, but God is pure act and must be outside of time because time is the measure of change and God does not change. Further, as in the case of our own wills, the only object that necessitates God's will is complete goodness. While he must will his own goodness of necessity, he need not will any limited, created goodness of necessity. This is why it is thought that it is counterfactually possible that God could have creates something else, though it is not temporally possible. Further, it will be on account of the goodness of whatever is created that God does create, and that is characteristic of intelligent action.

So it seems to me that there is ample reason to view God's eternal decision to create as analogous to decisions that humans make. There are differences and constraints that emerge from a commitment to divine simplicity, but there is nothing particularly obscure about them.

Marty wrote:
How can you be said to be thinking at all (a type of activity), or making any decision at all if you're not temporal? (If you instead enable the conditions of possibility for such things to be as such.)

The simple assertion that thinking is impossible outside of time begs the question here. The point of a classical theists' account of divine knowledge is precisely to answer questions like these. So Aquinas will argue that God knows creation in a single act, by knowing his own power, and that God's knowledge is not discursive. Accounts such as these might be specious, and they will depend on a particular understanding of knowledge and action, but since they are supposed to answer these exact questions, the asking of these questions cannot amount to a critique of them.

Marty wrote:
It's in my opinion to deny the possibility of freedom - as that requires to have a type of a "essence" that allows us to transcend ourselves as well.

God may not be free in this sense. I'm not sure I understand it. But he is free in another sense that Thomists recognize and care about.

Marty wrote:
But we simply can't presuppose God's "ontological goodness" as equal to the ethically good? We can't just think because he has an intellect that it is necessarily good. And it seems as though there's plenty of just things within the world that are not that good - all which come from one source.

I am acknowledging that showing that God is perfectly ontologically good is not the same as showing that God is perfectly morally or ethically good. I am acknowledging that establishing the latter requires further work and raises further questions.

The correct way to pursue this issue, though, is going to be saying what we are looking for in inquiring as to whether God is perfectly morally or ethically good. Thomists don't think that ontological and moral goodness are the same thing, but they think that the two are related and, in fact, that the latter depends on the former as a proper part. Someone who wants to argue that God might be morally evil or neutral, because moral goodness and ontological goodness are not the same thing generally, is going to have to craft an argument that appreciates the Thomists' commitments on these matters.

Marty · 10/02/2016 7:16 pm

How is it counterfactually possible that God could have created something other than what he did if his being is necessarily the way it is eternally? What would have motivated God to doing so? It seems like he would've already had to create the best of all possible world if his creation was part of his being. Doesn't a necessary being mean there couldn't have never entered a counterfactual possibility whatsoever - just the actuality of his being, and the one eternal decision that somehow already always was?

greg wrote:
So it seems to me that there is ample reason to view God's eternal decision to create as analogous to decisions that humans make.

The analogy cannot work, because we're both i) temporal, and ii) each decision changes whom we are since we're not an eternally, self-same, present-at-hand being. Our being requires transcendence.

Greg wrote:
Accounts such as these might be specious, and they will depend on a particular understanding of knowledge and action, but since they are supposed to answer these exact questions, the asking of these questions cannot amount to a critique of them.

But I didn't simply assert the claims, I've provided an example of why it cannot work.

greg wrote:
God may not be free in this sense. I'm not sure I understand it. But he is free in another sense that Thomists recognize and care about.

But then the Thomistics are in a solipistic bubble without care for other historical philosophers whom wrote extensively on the nature of freedom, and transcendental philosophy. But this doesn't seem true, as I recall there are at least some, say, Husserliean Thomistics. So I'm sure some have paid attention to phenomenology. There's also surely people whom reply to the anylatical deparements like Feser. Although, I never really hear Thomistics reply to anti-realists, idealists, phenomenologists like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas or the Contiential weak theologists. Always wondered what kind of dialouges would pop up there.

Last edited by Marty (10/02/2016 7:34 pm)

Greg · 10/02/2016 8:45 pm

Marty wrote:
How is it counterfactually possible that God could have created something other than what he did if his being is necessarily the way it is eternally?

There's no evident contradiction in "it is possible for God to have created something other than he did & God is necessary and eternal". Certainly, it is possible to question the coherence of such a view, but to draw out an incoherence, additional assumptions are going to have to be added, some of which the Thomist will probably want to reject. Until the argument is made explicit, I can't try to answer it.

Marty wrote:
What would have motivated God to doing so?

When God wills the existence of anything other than himself, he wills it on account of its own goodness, which is ordered to his own. But because the ultimate end--God--is necessary and necessarily good, there can be no need for God to will anything other than himself. He can will something other than himself just because "it befits the divine goodness [like other goodnesses] that other things should be partakers therein."

Marty wrote:
The analogy cannot work, because we're both i) temporal, and ii) each decision changes whom we are since we're not an eternally, self-same, present-at-hand being. Our being requires transcendence.

By saying that we can speak of God's deciding as analogous to our own, I am invoking Thomas's doctrine of analogy.

That said, part of both that doctrine and of the conventional understanding of analogies is that, if there is an analogy between two things worth mentioning, then those two things will also be disanalogous in some respects. So that there are differences between God's decisions and our decisions does not suggest that they are not analogous. The senses in which the analogy breaks down are supposed to be implied in the nature of the arguments given.

Marty wrote:
Greg wrote:
Accounts such as these might be specious, and they will depend on a particular understanding of knowledge and action, but since they are supposed to answer these exact questions, the asking of these questions cannot amount to a critique of them.
But I didn't simply assert the claims, I've provided an example of why it cannot work.

What was the example, a person choosing to sit in a chair for all eternity? That example confuses eternity and sempiternity. Or are you referring to something else?

(Though I also don't see any problem with a sempiternal being freely choosing to sit in a chair eternally. If it were within such a being's power to stand up--and it just constantly chooses not to--I don't see why I shouldn't say it is not free.)

In general, any argument against the view that thinking can occur outside of time is going to have to consider what someone Aquinas means by saying what it is for God to think outside of time.

Marty wrote:
greg wrote:
God may not be free in this sense. I'm not sure I understand it. But he is free in another sense that Thomists recognize and care about.
But then the Thomistics are in a solipistic bubble without care for other historical philosophers whom wrote extensively on the nature of freedom, and transcendental philosophy.

All I mean is that there are tons of different accounts of freedom; that God, as Thomists understand him, is not free according to one of them is not, in itself, remarkable. God may be 'free-A' (free in Aquinas's sense) without being 'free-T' (free in the sense capable of transcending his own essence). Ok. Maybe that would be a big deal and, if true, undermines Aquinas's project, but maybe it wouldn't be. That would require further argument.

Marty wrote:
But this doesn't seem true, as I recall there are at least some, say, Husserliean Thomistics.

There are Thomists schooled in continental philosophy. I'm familiar neither with them nor with continental philosophy.

Last edited by Greg (10/02/2016 8:49 pm)

iwpoe · 10/02/2016 9:02 pm

Marty, I *am* conversant with continental philosophy. Would you talk more about what you mean about freedom as transcendence and why you think it applies to God?

I strongly suspect that the nation of freedom Sartre riffs out of Heidegger, as I understand it (keeping in mind that freedom in phenomenology is a fairly low interest topic for me) simply won't work when applied to God as conceived of in classical metaphysical theology- if only because of the issue of a difference about temporality. In Heideggerian jargon, I'd be willing to go so far as to say "God doesn't have a world/God isn't a Da-sein, because he's got no Da (there) "

Marty · 10/02/2016 10:03 pm

iwpoe wrote:
Marty, I *am* conversant with continental philosophy. Would you talk more about what you mean about freedom as transcendence and why you think it applies to God?

I strongly suspect that the nation of freedom Sartre riffs out of Heidegger, as I understand it (keeping in mind that freedom in phenomenology is a fairly low interest topic for me) simply won't work when applied to God as conceived of in classical metaphysical theology- if only because of the issue of a difference about temporality. In Heideggerian jargon, I'd be willing to go so far as to say "God doesn't have a world/God isn't a Da-sein, because he's got no Da (there) "

Dasein's essence lies in it's existence. Which as you may know, doesn't mean to exist and while existing it produces it's own essence, but rather it's essence is in it's understanding itself via it's ecstatic nature. One of it's ecstasis is understanding - or futural understanding as care ("being-ahead-of-oneself"). Which just means that all Daseins are looking towards possibilities, some possible x that is not-yet. In order to have freedom (free-will) means to be able to be ahead of oneself in these possibilities to then "bring-back" as a possibility to actualize. This seems at least one of the prerequisite for choices; for if we were merely objectively present beings, then we would have no awareness of the past, or the future, these distinctions would collapse. We would have no aspect of transcendence - which means this "forgoing of ourselves". But if the distinction collapses, then I'm not sure how we could even talk about possibilities. If God merely eternally is, he can't possibly conceptualize anything that he's not, and doesn't seem to have any possible freedom in determining whether or not his being will unfold to one possibility or another.

You might be right though; this type of freedom might be purely finite. But then it seems impossible to draw any conclusion to how God's freedom actually develops at all, other than it just does without him having any limitations on himself.