Post Edited (Sahid) : 7/6/2008 11:25:08 PM (GMT-5)

Not sure how this subject relates to the debate between D and me. Actually D and I agree that God is necessarily good or loving, i.e., God exists necessarily, and loving interpersonal relationality just defines that existence. It’s important to remember that the attributing of ‘necessity’ to God in some respect doesn’t meant the attribute or quality in question is ‘forced upon’, ‘given to’, or otherwise ‘required of’ God by some law, principle, or existence other than God himself. God’s character, I’d say, just is the standard which defines what ‘love’ is. Such love is the ‘way of necessary existence’.

Jeff: And wouldn't it be true that if God can not but be benevolent, that any true freedom He has would have nothing to do with choices of maximal benevolence over less-than-maximal-benevolence?

Tom: Right. God isn’t libertarianly free in the choice between good and evil (or less than maximally great).

Jeff: What then would be the motivation for the choice to create if not the choice of maximal benevolence over less-than-maximal-benevolence?

Tom: Grace. God’s not more good or loving if he creates than he is if he doesn’t. Whatever interpersonal traffic defines infinite love (the perceptions, valuations, deference to, reception from, choices and/or kenosis) obtain in God essentially and definitively. Creating doesn’t constitute a deeper or more profound experience of this for God. It’s the unnecessary, gracious overflow of love that results in creation.

So creating and not creating are 'equally loving options' for God, right.

Zach: I personally don't see why some Christians are not content to simply say that God is faithful and leave it at that. Inserting the word 'necessarily' does nothing for me except make me a little less impressed by that faithfulness. I mean, what's a stake?

Tom: It’s clear at least that you are not content to simply say God is faithful and leave it at that. For you, saying “God is faithful” obviously entails his being “contingently (or libertarianly) faithful” since the only other mode of faithfulness is “necessary” faithfulness and that leaves you less than impressed. So there’s nothing really “simple” about your saying “God is faithful.” You’re committed to a non-nessessary (i.e., contingent) form of that faithfulness. That's what you MEAN when you say "God is faithful."

Why can’t we just say “God is faithful” and REALLY mean neither "necessarily" or "contingently" faithful and leave it at that? Because there is no goodness, or love, or faithfulness that is not either necessary or contingnet. And we'd like to know which God is. I suppose it’s because our experience of other people admits various levels of faithfulness—not very faithful, mostly faithful, etc., and people naturally would like to know how faithful we can believe God is. Are we saying God is pretty much faithful? More faithful than most? We want to have some conception of just how good or loving God is, how trustworthy he is, how confident we can be in his love. I think we want to say God is ‘unfailingly’ good, and that’s certainly compatible with God’s being ‘necessarily’ loving.

[True, SOME people might be able to say "God is faithful" without having any understanding of the categories of necessity and contingency. They just never thought about it. Fine. But people interact and share thoughts. So hopefully such people will be challenged (by unbelievers if not beleivers) to defend or explain their vision of God.]

So the alternative is saying God is ‘contingently’ good, that is, all God’s choices to love are libertarian choices. There’s no third option I’m afraid. In this case then, God’s being evil is a possibility which God continues to avoid on a moment by moment basis in libertarian fashion (that is, with 50% probability if I remember yall’s definition of a libertarian choice not admitting ‘tendencies', remember? Tendencies suggest a solidification of the will, and you guys said that a libertarian choice by definition represents a 50% probability of either option obtaining).

So there’s just a 50% probability that God will continue to love us five minutes from now, just a 50% probability that God will not decide to change his mind and toss all the Mother Teresas irrevocably into hell and bring all the unrepentent Hitlers to heaven, just a 50% chance that nothing will separate us from the love of God as Paul claimed, etc. We’re only EVER facing a 50/50 chance of being plunged into such a world. But if we want to say that such things are inconceivable (and they are), then we’re just positing the necessity of divine goodness.

Just being consistent.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/7/2008 3:43:24 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 7/7/2008 4:06:05 AM (GMT-5)

Tom: It’s clear at least that you are not content to simply say God is faithful and leave it at that. For you, saying “God is faithful” obviously entails his being “contingently (or libertarianly) faithful” since the only other mode of faithfulness is “necessary” faithfulness and that leaves you less than impressed. So there’s nothing really “simple” about your saying “God is faithful.” You’re committed to a non-nessessary (i.e., contingent) form of that faithfulness. That's what you MEAN when you say "God is faithful."

Zach: I deny this. I didn't say it, nor did I mean it.

Tom: Why else would “necessarily” in “God is necessarily faithful” trouble you as you admit it does? In other words, Zach, I’m saying nobody (unless they're just ignorant of the issues, and that doesn't last long at all) says “God is faithful” without also intending one or either of “contingently” or “necessarily” before faithful. It certainly is the case that either one or the other is actually the case with respect to God's character.

Tom: And we'd like to know which God is.

Zach: Sure. But perfect faithfulness can be either necessary or contingent. For me it's the perfection of faithfulness which matters (for, I think, obvious reasons that I expect we all share). I don't see how necessity or its lack has anything to do with this issue.

Tom: True, a God who has always been faithful, but contingently so, has the same track record as a God who has been necessarily so for the same history. I’m talking about what this history gives us a right to expect for the future; so let me say "We'd like to know which God will be." And though you’re right in saying both ‘necessarily and ‘contingently’ faithfull share the same ‘performance history’ in the case of a God whose been successfully ‘contingently’ faithful over that history, this tells you nothing about whether God will continue to be faithful for the future, even the next five minutes IF it's also believed God is contingently/libertarianly good.

Zach: “How faithful we can believe God is” is not properly a question of necessity.

Tom: As I’m saying, change "is" in “How faithful we can believe God is” with “…will be.” That very much IS a question of ‘necessity’ or ‘contingency’.

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Zach: I've said that probabilities do not properly apply to choice. The closest they can come to saying anything is 50/50. But even this is a misuse of probability.

Tom: 50/50 then. But it's not a misuse of probability. Every day we form expectations of what people will do based on their character, and these choices regard 'good' and 'evil'. But what is it "to expect" in such cases but to form an opinion on the liklihood or probability of a particular outcome based on character?

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Tom: So there’s just a 50% probability that God will continue to love us five minutes from now as is now the case, just a 50% probability that God will not decide to change his mind and toss all the Mother Teresas irrevocably into hell and bring all the unrepentent Hitlers to heaven, just a 50% change that nothing will separate us from the love of God as Paul claimed, etc. We’re only EVER facing a 50/50 chance of being plunged into such a world. But if we want to say that such things are inconceivable (and they are), then we’re just positing the necessity of divine goodness.

Zach: Only if probability is misunderstood.

Tom: Not so Zach. We justifiably "expect" people of good character to be good. But all it means to "expect" is to "attribute a greater probablity" to a particular outcome, AND our expectations are grounded in the character of the person. They're not just 'stabes in the dark' type guesses. And we universally form such expectations.

Zach: None of this characterizes the 'mere contingent' viewpoint. From our limited viewpoint outside of another personal will, we have no resources by which to form probabilities.

Tom: You don’t need to share an insider’s viewpoint on the chooser. We just have to know THAT it’s a libertarian choice.

Anyhow, probabilities don’t reduce personal choice to something impersonal. Mother Teresa isn’t less personal because the likelihood of her doing good to the poor is greater than the liklihood of her doing evil to them. Nor have I just said something meaningless, inappropriate, or otherwise incompatible with the personal nature of her freedom and goodness in characterizing it with such probability.

I hope, Jeff, you see my point. If God’s choices to love and do good are ‘libertarian’ then there’s roughly just as great a probability that God will continue to love us as there is he won’t continue to do so. If that's too mathematically, then I can just say that we then have no more reason to expect God will continue to be loving and good than we do to expect he’s fail to do so. We have to posit the SAME openness and unpredictability of God’s future with respect to ‘good’ and ‘love’ that we do any genuinely libertarian choice. We can’t be confident of the future.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/7/2008 10:29:32 AM (GMT-5)

Laika: This is akin to the argument the exhaustive foreknowlege folks use, 'if God doesn't know the future as exhaustive and settled, how can we trust Him?' Tom asks, 'if God isn't necessarily good, how can we trust Him'?

Tom: I’m not saying we can’t trust God at all if his faithfulness is always a libertarian choice. I admitted that we experience trust on various levels with people we know. Some people are somewhat faithful, others are seldom faithful, others are completely faithful in some areas of their lives and very nearly so in all others.

But this meeting out of trust on various levels is an implicit recognition that our trust in others is based on our understanding of his/her ‘character’ and in the progressively solidifying nature of character. But Jeff and Zach deny that morally virtuous choices admit such solidification and thus predictability. I don’t think that. They do. And I was assuming their view in my conclusion to try to show where it leads.

‘I’ agree we can trust people, to greater or lesser degrees, to do the virtuous thing because I admit solidification into a virtue that remains admirable even after its compatibilistic. But Jeff and Zach don’t admit this. I guess you agree with that?

But if we don’t admit the possibility of ‘compatibilistically virtuous choice’ (as Jeff and Zach don’t), then the question arises as to what grounds we have for expecting God to continue to be loving, etc. This is not at all akin to the exhaustive foreknowlege folks use, ‘if God doesn't know the future as exhaustive and settled, how can we trust Him?’ For example, we both totally trust our wives. (Why do we always go to our wives for this example?!). We have a basis upon which to expect/trust that they’ll continue to love us. But what’s this basis? It can’t be ‘past performance’ IF we deny that past has had a solidifying effect of shaping the character of my wife and say instead that every moment of her continuance in virtue is like every previous moment, libertarianly won with no resulting effect upon character.

Laika: Who was it that said, 'genuine love requires freedom'? 

Tom: That would be Greg, right. But he admits that he means “…for creatures,” not for God. We were just chatting about this last month again. He said he still believes that God is necessarily loving. It’s creatures who must ‘become’ and so ‘form’ their character over time (because they’re created at all) who must ‘freely’ become so. He doesn’t apply it to God.

Laika: Additionally, how are we made in God's image if His qualities are all non-moral properties?

Tom: I don’t know that I’d say all his qualities are non-moral. I’d prefer to say that virtue (morally admirable choice) can be compatibilistic. I hope to become so myself.

T

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/7/2008 11:54:49 AM (GMT-5)

Laika: Actually I showed that according to a standard distribution (a distribution biased in your direction) UR is (1 - .9999999999999999999999) and Corey channelled 'Modes' and it all went to hell in a handbasket...

Tom: I never claimed UR was a 1. I’m happy with .9999999- . So was D for that matter. So we agree that it's as guaranteed as possible that UR will obtain? Great!

Laika: I think the more we choose one way, we 'solidify' more in that direction and are more predictably trustworthy in that direction (either direction).

Tom: I thought so. That places you on my side (across from Jeff and Zach) of this debate on a very crucial issue.

Laika: But that's vastly different from having a necessary property.

Tom: Given solidification over time, then, do you think solidification may eventually cross over into compatibilism, that is, into an irrevocable orientation toward the good? I'm just wondering if you agree that solification increasees over time, God's been loving and good for billions of years. How solidified do you think his character is? As solidified as possible but still libertarian with respect to evil? Is this another .99999999% thing? I'm just going with the idea that God IS (or at least WAS) libertarianly free with respect to evil for the sake of argument. THEN I'm going with the solidification idea you and I agree on. How solidified would you be in love if you've been loving without fail for billions and billions of years?

Laika: You wouldn't use "trust" with the property of a rock being hard. You'd be mixing moral qualities with non-moral properties.

Tom: I would ‘trust’ (as in ‘justifiably’ expect) the rock to be a rock five minutes from now (assuming it’ll still be ‘rock’ five minutes from now).

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Tom: That would be Greg, right. But he admits that he means “…for creatures,” not for God. We were just chatting about this last month again. He said he still believes that God is necessarily loving. It’s creatures who must ‘become’ and so ‘form’ their character over time (because they’re created at all) who must ‘freely’ become so. He doesn’t apply it to God.

Laika:  "[For creatures,] love requires freedom"?  This is saying that freedom is a property of love for some but not for others... it'd be a redefinition of love.

Tom: We’re talking about libertarian freedom, right? OK. He’s not saying it’s a property “of love” per se. He’s saying it’s a property of “creaturely becoming” per se, a “coming into loving, interpersonal being.” God isn’t in the process of such becoming. He’s essentially interpersonally and lovingly related. If you divorce ‘necessity’ from the essential trinitarian personhood of God, what DO you say is ‘necessary’ about God (essentially)? Or with Zach do you think God’s very existence and everything about God is contingent?

Laika: What's your definition of 'moral'?

Tom: I don’t think I’d say God is “moral” in precisely the same sense we are “moral.” God’s own essentially loving character I think generates or defines the standard that we measure our moral virtue against. So God would be moral in the sense of defining the standard and possibility of virtuous becoming in us. But I don’t think God is measured by this standard in the sense that the standard creates a relationship of obligation for God's moral becoming as it does for us.

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Zach: Expectation cannot always be reduced to probability. Certainly not in this case.

Tom: Give me an example of you ‘justifiably expecting’ (i.e., your expectation is objectively grounded as opposed to just hoping or guessing) someone to do X as opposed to not-X in which it’s also objectively the case that the probability of their doing X is roughly 50/50 (or if you don’t like the numbers, where the choice for X is libertarian and there’s no solidification of the will to ground ANY tendency to do X).

I’m all ears.

Zach: We have no logical proof of God's continuing faithfulness.

Tom: Who’s trying to argue that? What I’m saying is that IF we posit a necessarily existing God (and I think Jeff and Laika will agree with me against you on that much) we have THEN to give some account of the sense in which God exists necessarily. I’ll admit that necessary existence and necessarily loving character are two separate issues. I’m not trying to construct a logical proof for the latter in and of itself. I’m arguing that we ought to conclude that the necessity of necessary existence entails the necessity of loving character because what constitutes the former (necessary existence) is interpersonal trinitarian relations (of self-giving, valuation, affirmation, deference, kenosis, etc., all the stuff of a fully PERSONAL existence and wholeness). Consider what it means to say God is necessarily related and fully actualized interpersonally. If God exists necessarily as the fullest instantiation possible of interpersonal relations, how does ‘love’ NOT figure into THAT? We’d have to say love has nothing to do with defining the fullest expression of interpersonal relationality imaginable. But that would be to divorce ‘love’ from ‘interpersonal relationality’, in which case we end up saying God is necessarily the fullest instantiation of interpersonal relationality but that these persons and this relationality are only contingently loving. Necessary interpersonal relations of fully satisfied self-giving and self-receiving which is at the same time contingently loving? That's problematic. What pray tell does the fullest instantiation of interpersonal self-giving and receiving constitute IF NOT LOVE? That's just what love IS.

Dang I'm good.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/7/2008 3:17:10 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (Sahid) : 7/7/2008 9:05:32 PM (GMT-5)

Tom: We’re talking about libertarian freedom, right? OK. He’s not saying it’s a property “of love” per se. He’s saying it’s a property of “creaturely becoming” per se, a “coming into loving, interpersonal being.” God isn’t in the process of such becoming. He’s essentially interpersonally and lovingly related. If you divorce ‘necessity’ from the essential trinitarian personhood of God, what do you say is ‘necessary’ about God (essentially)? Or with Zach do you think God’s very existence and everything about God is contingent?

Laika: This is a bit of semantic sleight of hand. You make loving a state.

Tom: It is a state, if by that we mean a “way of being” (that includes the way we think, perceive, value, choose, etc.).

Laika: God is already in that state, we have to become to enter that state.

Tom: We seem to agree that God at least exists necessarily. Do you think part of what is necessary about that existence is the Trinity? I’m guessing you’ll agree. I don’t think you’ll want to argue that God exists necessarily but is only contingently triune. OK then—without any slight of hand—what do you basically think it means for God to be triune. Do we not mean to say that God is the fullest instantiation of personal being imaginable? If the Trinity just is maximally interpersonal existence (Father, Son, Spirit perfectly, maximally, perceiving, valuing, giving to and receiving from each other), then again I ask, How is it that this can obtain necessarily but the loving nature it only obtain contingently? If maximally interpersonal existence (with all that constitutes the fullest expression and enjoyment and beauty and glory of such existence—perceiving, valuing, and celebrating the life of the other in the fullest and most beautiful way possible) defines God essentially and necessarily, but such existence is not love (because God is only contingently loving), then somebody tell me what love is?

Laika: The becoming is the morally chosen action, not the loving.

Tom: No, loving God and others is what we’re choosing. But in choosing this consistently over time (as you agree) we give shape to our characters, we solidify…we “become” loving persons, persons who love as a matter of character. We have to become this for the simple reason that we’re creatures. We start out as babies pooping our pants and have to wait for our reason and emotions to develop into, or ‘become’, mature faculties that can make responsible choices. God doesn’t have to go through this process of becoming, does he? I don’t think so.

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Laika: God has moral properties and non-moral properties. I'm made in His moral image, not His non-moral image.

Tom: Alright, so you’ll argue with Zach that God is contingently (libertarianly) good. In light of that then help me understand your take on solidification, because you did agree that we “solidify” over time. You said, “the more we choose one way, we ‘solidify’ more in that direction.” So the more we “choose rightly” the more “rightly choosing” comes to define our character and in turn shape the sort of choices we make (or “wrongly choosing” if that’s our direction).

OK then. But you also insist we (and God) will forever be libertarianly free with respect to good/evil. So what happens to solidification and “the MORE we choose the MORE we solidify”? Given solidification over time, then, do you think solidification may eventually cross over into compatibilism, that is, into an irrevocable orientation toward the good? I'm just wondering if you agree that solification increasees over time, does it infinite increase but never arrive? God's been loving and good for billions of years. How solidified do you think his character is?

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Jeff: 1) I don't think God is libertarianly free with respect to benevolence. I don't think He can experience a sentient motivation to do other than maximal benevolence.

Tom: Smart man!

Jeff: 2) I want you guys to really think about Berlinski's point--that if God is free, then He too must be subject to a moral law outside of Himself.

Tom: I think he’s right. IF good has objective content grounded in the way things are (that is, good persist over time to be what it is; viz., it isn’t a contingently obtaining way of being so that what “the good” is might Tomorrow be consistent with abusing children for the hell of it), and IF God is libertarianly free with respect to good and evil (in which case God is NOT that which grounds the ever-persistent goodness of “the good”), then it follows that in being good and loving God is obeying some objective standard of good OTHER than himself and which is grounded in reality OTHER than himself.

Jeff: This is why he is an agnostic, I think. He can't make sense of it.

Tom: I’d be agnostic if the only God to believe in was one who had to obey a standard of goodness and love grounded in some reality outside himself.

Jeff: To say that God's grace "overflows" opens up other questions. First of all, is an "overflow" a volitional act?

Tom: Yes. A libertarian one at that!

Jeff: Second, does that mean that all of God's abundance of power is overflowing into other universes right now?

Tom: Who knows? Might be. But since the choice to create is gracious, free, and unnecessary, we don’t HAVE to say God’s created worlds other than our own.

Jeff: How would we answer that, e.g.? Would we say His power is infinite and thus overflowing into an infinite set of universes? At all times?

Tom: If it’s at all times and in all possible manner of expression, then it’s not free and gracious. So perhaps “overflow” isn’t the right word. When we put a glass under a running faucet, it eventually overflows and cannot BUT dump the extra water in every possible way. That’s NOT what I (or Greg, who uses “overflow” in his argument) mean.

I have an analogy for you, but it’ll have to wait. Gotta run and translate!

PS Zach, bro, whenever my view comes back to me in your responses I don’t recognize myself in them. You’re completely missing my points, so I must be doing a bad job of explaining myself. My bad.

Tom

An analogy that might help you Jeff.

Take a married couple and their having children. First, let’s dispense with all the unhealthy reasons for having children (because the couple is unhappy with each other and need to find something to cement their relationship or because there’s some other lack or deficiency in their own relationship which having kids will help solve). Second, let’s dispense with the purely ‘survival’ aspects of reproduction (we need to have children to keep the race going). Let’s assume a perfectly healthy loving relationship between husband and wife in which all the essential, defining aspects of “interpersonal loving relationality” are present. The couple doesn’t need to procreate to for the sake of the race’s survival or in order to save their marriage or supply something lacking in their own love and enjoyment of each other.

Why would such a couple have kids? Could they freely choose to have children? Of course they could. What possible motivation could they have? Well, Greg would say they’re having kids as an “overflow” of their love for each other. He means overflow in the sense that the choice to have kids, to express love through creation, is unnecessary to constituting what’s already there (in the glass so to speak). If our couple has children, there’s nothing they experience from having children that’s necessary to their own mutual love and relationship. Kids would be unnecessary to them in that respect. They’re full and satisfied. But they can have kids as a free and unnecessary (gracious) expression of their love. The kids won’t be any worse off if they’re never created, and neither creating them nor not creating them will constitute a real difference to the love the couple already has. So the couple makes the free and unnecessary choice to have them.

In this sense, having children and not having them are equally loving options. There’s motivation (to express and share love), but it’s an unnecessary act since the fullest expression of such shared love already exists between the couple. They’re not having kids to create a love that doesn’t already exist; that WOULD make creating a greater good than not creating.

[What would challenge this is if creating (or having kids) would entail the risk of irrevocable loss and suffering for any of the children, like eternal and irrevocable conscious torment. That would constitute a problem for the claim that God is internally perfectly satisfied AND necessarily loving AND that he creates unnecessarily and freely. It would seem then that if creating involves the risk of ULTIMATE loss for any of those created, a perfectly loving God would not take it and not creating would constitute a greater good than creating (in which case they’re NOT equally loving options). I think you see this Jeff.]

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 7/8/2008 5:30:57 AM (GMT-5)