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the_rickster
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| Posted 9/13/2003 4:07 PM (GMT -6) |   |
Would open theists affirm that God is infinite? And what would this mean?
Thanks
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Alan Rhoda
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| Posted 10/3/2003 3:32 PM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Would open theists affirm that God is infinite? And what would this mean?
Good questions, Rick, but one has to ask them in reverse order. We first need some specification of what is meant by saying that God is infinite, and only then can we meaningfully answer the question of whether God is infinite. Generally, we might say that for God to be infinite is for him not to be limited or constrained by anything outside himself. Both classical and open theists affirm this, but in different senses:
(a) God is not limited in any way by anything apart from himself.
(b) God is not essentially limited by anything apart from himself.
Classical theists like Aquinas, Augustine, Calvin, etc. affirm (a). Open theists, as well as Molinists and free will theists of all stripes, affirm (b). The difference between these is that on (b) God can choose to allow his creation to make a difference to what God himself knows or does, whereas on (a) God cannot do so.
quote:
If God must be temporal in order to relate to a temporal world, must God also be spacial to relate to a spacial world? Must God be finite to relate to a finite world?
The claim by Craig and others is not that God must be "temporal" (as opposed to "eternal") in order to interact with a temporal creation, for it is maintained that God's essential nature does not and cannot change. For Craig, God can change, and therefore enter into time, only with respect to his accidental attributes. If God is really related to a temporal world, argues Craig, then when the world changes God's intentional states change at least in this respect: God comes to know that things are now thus-and-so, whereas before he could only know that they would be thus and so, and afterwards he comes to know that they were thus and so. As for whether God must be spatial to relate to a spatial world, the answer is no. God, as Creator and sustainer of the world, is nonspatially omnipresent to his creation.
God bless.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Newcomb
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| Posted 10/4/2003 5:19 AM (GMT -6) | | Good line.
I would answer somewhat differently that Alan and say that, yes, God is spatial.
quote:
Also, if God must be temporal in order to relate to a temporal world, must God also be spacial to relate to a spacial world? Must God be finite to relate to a finite world?
Note that the third item here is categorically different that the first two. Being finite, that is, being limited, is different from how one interacts with dimensions which related to the other two issues. Finite is a measurement, spatiality is dimensional.
While I believe, like all OV people, that God can change, except for his essential nature which is unchanging, I think Craig was wrong about God becoming temporal. God has always[/] been temporal. I argued in the opening premise in the section on TIME:
quote:
1. Dimensions are fundamental things, and therefore, not created, and necessary for any quantity of any thing to exist. It is individuality, or the ability to describe something that is alone and that requires nothing else that is intrinsic to a primary dimension.
2. Common dimensions are length, width, height, time, magnitude, orientation, motion, and conscience (there are likely others).
. . .
4. A domain is necessary for something to exist. For instance, if you have two dimensions, then you can create on it a plane. A plane has no height, and therefore cannot be a mass which requires three dimensions.
. . .
8. Spiritual beings are “things” (not physical things) and therefore require dimensions and domains in which to exist.
9. Time is one of the dimensions that the spiritual domain (realm) shares with the physical universe.
Usually when we speak of the universe we mean the physical universe, however, the word means all, or everything there is. As Christians we don’t verbalize “heaven” as being included in the term “universe” because of a Platonic bent in our theology and the modern naturalism, but there is only one whole or entire set of existence which includes the spiritual and physical worlds.
Boyd states in Satan and the Problem of Evil that he things the two are not all that different. I agree.
I have argued before that God must be spatial, though we are given no clues to how large or what shape he might take other that anthropometric implications that we are created like him, but that is sketchy to say the least (that is, to imply from this that he might be close to the size range of the humans he created).
Look at Job 1:6-8 (KJV)
quote:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that [there is] none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?
From this we assume Satan is cogent, thoughtful, calculating, etc. because the text makes propositional statements about him, however, it also makes propositional statements about God and implies that he is in a certain location where beings were “before” him and that they come in and out of his presence.
This tells us that God is in a location. Locations can be measured by Cartesian coordinates along the dimensions mentioned earlier. Without these dimensions the statement is meaningless. Note here also that there was a “day” (Hebrew yowm) or a division of time set for this to happen. Time is another dimension required for the text to have meaning. We assume this happened in heaven.
If you take the text and remove all words that have a requisite of one or more dimensions, you end up with meaningless drivel. (I actually tried to do this just now and you only end up with a few words. It’s an interesting exercise.)
This is what I mean about dimensions being fundamental, as is true with reason or logic, without dimensions there is little meaning to anything written about God and we are back to Plato.
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aquinas
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| Posted 10/4/2003 10:12 AM (GMT -6) | | Alan,
You said,
"God's essential nature does not and cannot change. For Craig, God can change, and therefore enter into time, only with respect to his accidental attributes."
This presupposes that God is not simple. According to a classical view God does not have essential and non-essential attributes. How do you argue for the position that God is not simple? Or what do you think is wrong in the classical arguments for God's existence and simplicity?
Thanks.
If we allow pious feelings to decree what nature should be, we are bound to wrong nature, for how could we find in piety a principle of self-restriction? In theology, as in any other science, the main question is not to be pious, but to be right. For there is nothing pious in being wrong about God! --Etienne Gilson | | Back to Top | | |
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GregBoyd
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| Posted 10/4/2003 10:39 AM (GMT -6) | | Aquinas: Where have you argued that "ONLY Open Theist consistently believe that God is infinite (without limits) in his INTELLIGENCE (wisdom)." What is the drift of that argument?
I argued this in two forthcoming articles: one will be published in Philosophi Christi (I was told it was going to be out in July, but haven't seen it yet). The other in a book coming out in October on issues related to progressives evangelicals. Here's an exert from this later article. IN this exert I am interacting with Pinnock's way of reconciling omniscience with an open future.
Omniscience and Might-Counterfactuals. ... as I shall now show, there is absolutely no incompatibility between affirming that God is all knowing in the strongest sense of the term, on the one hand, and affirming that God knows some of the future as what "might" happen rather than what "will" happen, on the other. Indeed, I shall argue that affirming omniscience logically requires us to affirm that he knows the truth value of all propositions expressing what may and may not take place.
The problem Pinnock wants to resolve can be most succinctly stated as follows:
PI: If God is omniscient, he must know the truth value of all propositions.
P2: Propositions about future free acts are either true or false.
P3: God knows the truth value of propositions about future free acts.
Conclusion: God possesses exhaustive definite foreknowledge of all future free acts.
As we have seen, Pinnock attempts to avoid this conclusion by qualifying God’s omniscience, thus rejecting P1. A better approach, I submit, is to accept the formal validity of this argument but show how it doesn’t entail that God possesses exhaustively definite foreknowledge of all that shall come to pass. The reason it is usually assumed that the argument demonstrates exhaustive definite foreknowledge, I shall argue, is that we have neglected a set of propositions that should be included in P2.
To begin, it is usually assumed that that propositions of the form "x will do y" or "x will not do y" cover the whole of future. But this is the case only if we assume the classical view that the whole of the future is eternally and exhaustively definite. In this case future events either will (definitely) or will not (definitely) happen. Hence, propositions are either true or false in relation to these eternally definite realities. And the omniscient God of course knows them as such.
But if we don’t make this metaphysical assumption – an assumption, note, which is strictly about the nature of the world God created, not about the scope of God’s knowledge – then we immediately see that there’s no reason to assume that everything about the future can be expressed in this "will" or "will not" form. The future could include things that that "may" or "may not" happen. And propositions that express these "maybes" must be included as among the propositions in P2 that an omniscient God would know.
In my estimation, one of most significant omissions in the classical tradition’s reflections on the nature of omniscience was that it never considered the distinctive set of what we might call "might-counterfactual" propositions. To be sure, Molinists consider the set of "would-counterfactual" propositions and thus held that God not only knows what will and will not happen, but also what would and would not happen in every alternative possible world (God’s "middle knowledge"). Would-counterfactuals in this schema are essentially "will" and "will-not" propositions applied to counterfactual worlds. What classical Molinists failed to see, however, was that the set of would-counterfactual propositions logically requires the logically distinct category of might-counterfactual propositions. For on the square of oppositions, the negation of a would-counterfactual is not a would-not counterfactual, but a might-not counterfactual.
To illustrate, if God knows that it is false that "George would eat a cookie if offered," God knows that "George might not eat a cookie if offered," not that "George would not eat a cookie if offered." God may of course also know that, as a matter of fact, George would not eat a cookie if offered. But this piece of information is distinct from his simply knowing the falsity of the proposition "George would eat a cookie if offered." The only thing God knows by virtue of his knowing this proposition as false is that "George might not eat a cookie if offered."
The ramifications of this insight are significant. For it means that there is a set of counterfactual propositions the truth value of which an omniscient God must know but which have not been given serious consideration in the church’s theological tradition. If God knows the truth value of would counterfactuals, he must by logical necessity know the truth value of might-counterfactuals.
Now, one might argue that God knows the true value of all might-counterfactuals simply by knowing the truth value of all would-counterfactuals. The argument fails, however, for one cannot reduce might-counterfactuals to a logical subset of would-counterfactuals any more than one can reduce would-counterfactuals to a subset of might-counterfactuals.
To illustrate, if God knows George would eat a cookie if offered, God by logical necessity knows George might eat a cookie if offered. But merely by virtue of knowing George might eat a cookie if offered, God does not thereby know that George would eat a cookie if offered. The might-counterfactual can be true while the corresponding would-counterfactual is false. This demonstrates that might-counterfactuals constitute a distinct class of propositions the truth value of which an omniscient God must know.
The distinctness of might-counterfactuals is also demonstrated by noting that while the sub-contraries of would-counterfactuals cannot both be true – viz. it cannot be the case that "George would and would not eat a cookie if offered: – the sub-contraries of might-counterfactuals can both be true –"George might and might not eat a cookie if offered." If all might-counterfactuals were logically entailed by would-counterfactuals, by logical necessity it could never be the case that an agent might and might not do something, which seems patently absurd. If we grant that it is not a logical contradiction to affirm the truth of the proposition, "George might and might not eat a cookie," then we must grant that might-counterfactuals form a distinct class of propositions the truth value of which an omniscient God must know.
This demonstrates that there is no logical incompatibility between affirming that God is omniscient, on the one hand, while affirming that he knows some of the future as what might and might not happen, on the other. Indeed, it demonstrates that there is an incompatibility between affirming that God is omniscient, on the one hand, while denying that he could know some of the future as what might and might not happen, on the other.
It was, I believe, a metaphysical assumption about the eternally and exhaustively definite nature of reality on the part of classical theologians that led them to assume that "will" and "will not" ( and, by extension to possible worlds, "would" and "would-not") propositions exhaust the set of propositions in P2 that an omniscient God would know. Jettison this assumption – which again, is an assumption about the nature of the world God created, not an assumption about the scope of omniscience – and one sees that P2 must include propositions about what "might" and "might not" happen.
What "Will" and "Might" Be True. In the alternative framework I am proposing, God is omniscient in the strongest (and really only) sense of the term. God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods.
Propositions of the form "x will "or "x will not occur" are true if and only if the occurrence or non-occurrence of x is a definite feature of reality. If in reality x may and may not occur, it is, strictly speaking, false to say "x will occur" or "x will not occur," or even that "x would occur" or "x would not occur," even if x ends up occurring. For at the time the proposition was uttered, the occurrence of x was not a definite aspect of the future – something that will or will not happen – but merely a possible occurrence (or possible non-occurrence) of the future. The propositions "x will occur" or "x will not occur" thus did not correspond to reality at the time the proposition was considered. If and when the occurrence of x becomes a definite aspect of the future, then it will be true to say "x will occur" or that "x would occur" in such and such a situation.
This proposal will undoubtedly strike some as paradoxical, for we are not accustomed to distinguishing between "will" and "will not" propositions and "might" and "might not" propositions in this fashion. Conventional language rarely requires us to, on the one hand, and we in the western tradition are accustomed to assuming an exhaustively definite view of reality and speaking about it in this fashion, on the other. We thus tend to assume that something either will or will not take place and that our talk of "maybe’s" is merely due to our ignorance of whether something will or will not take place. I suspect it was this assumption that explains why Pinnock inadvertently slipped into speaking about future free acts as unknowable realities – as though the facticity of these future acts in some sense already existed, but was unknowable.
Yet, if we grant that philosophy often has to make distinctions that conventional language isn’t accustomed to making, and if we see that the assumption that reality is exhaustively and eternally definite is simply an assumption, not entailed by the omniscience of God, we will see that the distinction between events that "will" or "will not" happen and events that "might" and "might not" happen is valid and that it addresses ontology, not just epistemology. God is not bound by logical or metaphysical necessity to create a world the facticity of which is tenselessly given. The omniscient God could create a world in which some of the future is a "maybe" if he so chose. The uniqueness of the openness position lays in its claim that we have compelling grounds for believing that God created just such a world.
One may reject the openness position Pinnock has come to defend in his on-going endeavor to work out the implications of affirming a God of unbounded love. But despite his own occasional ill-advised expressions to the contrary, they cannot do so on the grounds that this view is incompatible with omniscience.
[i[God’s Infallible Anticipation. The second shortcoming of Pinnock’s defense of the open view I wish to address view may be considered more briefly. Pinnock has at times spoken of God in ways that give the impression that God can be caught off guard. For example, he refers to God as "an ‘ad hoc’ God…who responds and adapts to surprises and to the unexpected." He argues that since the "future does not yet exist" it "cannot be infallibly anticipated, even by God." Hence, for example, Pinnock maintains that "God had not anticipated" Israel’s rebellion.
Now, I again am convinced my disagreement with Pinnock is more over phraseology than substance. But it must be said that such ways of speaking only reinforce the impression expressed by Pinnock’s critics that he does not really believe in the omniscience of God. They also play into the hands of the opponents such as Bruce Ware who argues that the God of open theism is an anthropomorphic deity who "can only guess what much of the future will bring" and who thus wrings his hands while he passively hopes for the best. Such caricatures of the open view hit a strong cord with the masses whose belief systems are significantly fueled by a need for security.
This way of construing God’s relationship to the open future is unnecessary and misleading. For if we grant that God possesses unlimited intelligence, as Scripture and the Christian tradition maintain, it becomes apparent that God can anticipate and prepare for possibilities as perfectly as he can future definite facts.
Consider that humans anticipate future definite facts we are certain of better than we do possibilities we are uncertain of only because our intelligence is limited. Having only so much intelligence to go around, we have to spread it thin in proportion to the number of possibilities we have to anticipate. The more possibilities we have to simultaneously consider, the less adept we are at anticipating them. This is why playing chess is much more stressful for us than (say) working on a perfectly predictable assembly line.
If we are not careful to avoid limiting God by making him in our own image, we end up ascribing the same difficulty to God. If God faces a multitude of possibilities as he moves into the future, some worry, he must only be capable of guessing at the future while anxiously wringing his hands ! But this conclusion is premised on a complete denial of the infinite intelligence of God.
If God is truly unlimited in his intelligence, he doesn’t have to divide it up, as it were, to cover any number of possibilities he might face. Indeed, a God of unlimited intelligence can consider each and every possibility within a virtually infinite set of possibilities as though each one were the only possibility he had to consider. We might say that for God to play any opponent in chess would be no more intellectually stressful than working on a perfectly predictable assembly line. Whatever possible game of chess his opponent might play, it would be from God’s perspective as though it were the only possible game his opponent could play. Though there are millions of possible moves his opponent might make, whatever combination of moves he ends up making was perfectly anticipated by God before the game ever started!
This means that even if God faces a future partly composed of possibilities, he can never be caught off guard and is never fallible in his anticipation. True, when improbable events occur, a God who knows all probabilities with perfect accuracy and who wisely correlates his expectations with these probabilities would be in a limited sense surprised. He would be unwise if he expected the improbable. But being infinitely intelligent, he would be no less prepared for the unlikely than he is for the very likely or even the absolutely certain. Whatever transpires, however unlikely, God has been anticipating it as though it was certain from the foundation of the world.
This demonstrates that the open view of God can ascribe to God at least the same level of providential control over the world as any view that ascribes exhaustive definite foreknowledge to God while ascribing libertarian freedom to agents. This also demonstrates that the main emotive objection to open theism – viz. that it presents an anthropomorphic god who cannot be trusted – is altogether unfounded. Though the criticism accuses the open view of being anthropomorphic, in truth the criticism itself presupposes an anthropomorphic god. Only a god limited in intelligence as we are would be reduced to guessing at the future, hoping for the best and wringing his hands in worry simply because he created a world in which he plays chess with free agents rather than works on a perfectly predictable assembly line.
Whatever transpires, the open theist can affirm along with the classical theists that "God had anticipated this and was preparing a response to this from the foundation of the world." The uniqueness of the open view lies in its additional belief that God is so smart he didn’t need to be certain the event was going to take place in order for this to be true. If something else had taken place instead, we’d be saying the exact same thing!
--------end of exert ----------------
Doc
"The responsibility is with the chooser -- God is blameless." Plato, Republic, 10. | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 10/5/2003 2:59 AM (GMT -6) | | Doc-
Very nice stuff. Since it’s already printed, I guess responses won’t make a difference, but it does seem to me that the following comments are confusing. You wrote:
“The distinctness of might-counterfactuals is also demonstrated by noting that while the sub-contraries of would-counterfactuals cannot both be true – viz. it cannot be the case that "George would and would not eat a cookie if offered…”
This is a mistake. The sub-contraries OF would-counterfactuals are not “would’s” at all, they’re “might’s” (“might” and “might not” are the sub-contraries OF would’s). “Would” and “would not” are contraries, NOT sub-contraries, and it is contraries which cannot both be true. Hope you can fix this before it goes to print!
Sounds like you wanted to say, “The distinctness of might-counterfactuals is also demonstrated by noting that while contrary would-counterfactuals cannot both be true…” or perhaps “…by noting that while contraries ‘would’ and ‘would not’ cannot both be true.”
And…
“…the sub-contraries of might-counterfactuals can both be true –"George might and might not eat a cookie if offered."
Right. But calling these the “sub-contraries OF might-counterfactuals” is incorrect at worst and really confusing at best, because subcontraries are the only thing might-counterfactuals can be, period. Sounds like you wanted to say something like “…[removing "the"] sub-contrary might-counterfactuals can both be true” or perhaps “…the sub-contraries ‘might’ and ‘might not’….” But “sub-contrary” is what all might’s are. That is, might-counterfactuals don’t have sub-contraries, they ARE sub-contraries. This is why saying “…the sub-contraries OF might-counterfactuals” is confusing.
See it?
Tom  | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
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| Posted 10/9/2003 10:57 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Ochuk
One of the arguments that Geisler tries to use to refute OV theism is the Kalam argument; You cannot have an infinite being age with time. It is like adding one to infinity and is therefore nonsensical.
That's a bizarre criticism by Geisler, which suggests that he doesn't understand the Kalam argument.
The Kalam argument shows that the temporal sequence must have had a beginning. The two main arguments for this are (1) one cannot complete an accutually infinite set by successive addition, as would have been done if the temporal sequence had no beginning, (2) it is impossible for actually infinite sets to exist (i.e., to be concretely instantiated) because it would lead to all sorts of absurdities. Both of these arguments seem correct to me.
If correct, what the Kalam argument shows is not that an infinite being cannot age with time, but that no being (infinite or otherwise) could always have aged with time, since time must have a beginning.
Furthermore, for an infinite being to age is not like adding one to infinity because God is not infinite in a quantitative sense. In other words, when we say that God is infinite, we do not been that he is composed of an actually infinite number of parts, or that his infinite goodness consists in an actually infinite number of quanta of goodness, or that his infinite knowledge consists in simultaneously knowledge an actually infinite number of discrete propositions, etc. God is infinite in a qualitative, not a quantitative sense. Geisler's contention conflates these two senses of infinity.
As far as I can see, the Kalam argument poses no difficulty at all for the open theist.
God bless,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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aquinas
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| Posted 10/9/2003 3:19 PM (GMT -6) | | Dr. Boyd,
Thanks for posting your article on "might counterfactuals". I will read it a few more times.
Ochuk
"One of the arguments that Geisler tries to use to refute OV theism is the Kalam argument; You cannot have an infinite being age with time. It is like adding one to infinity and is therefore nonsensical."
To the best of my knowledge, Geisler does not try to use the Kalam argument to refute every tenant of the OV. The Kalam is used to support the claim that God was eternal before creation. Other arguments are offered in support of God being eternal after creation.
Alan
"Furthermore, for an infinite being to age is not like adding one to infinity because God is not infinite in a quantitative sense. In other words, when we say that God is infinite, we do not been that he is composed of an actually infinite number of parts, or that his infinite goodness consists in an actually infinite number of quanta of goodness, or that his infinite knowledge consists in simultaneously knowledge an actually infinite number of discrete propositions, etc. God is infinite in a qualitative, not a quantitative sense. Geisler's contention conflates these two senses of infinity."
It would be difficult to be more incorrect about Geislers view. Geislers main contention is that God is simple. Simple means "not made of parts". For Geisler, and the classical view, God does not have any parts. He is not material or changing. Things with parts change.
In fact, he is most passionate about Gods simplicity. According to him, if one denies simplicity, one ends up with all sorts of difficulties. One of which would be, God can be eternal and then "become" temporal.
If we allow pious feelings to decree what nature should be, we are bound to wrong nature, for how could we find in piety a principle of self-restriction? In theology, as in any other science, the main question is not to be pious, but to be right. For there is nothing pious in being wrong about God! --Etienne Gilson | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
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| Posted 10/9/2003 8:47 PM (GMT -6) | | aquinas: To the best of my knowledge, Geisler does not try to use the Kalam argument to refute every tenant of the OV. The Kalam is used to support the claim that God was eternal before creation. Other arguments are offered in support of God being eternal after creation.
Tom: The Kalam may very well validly show that God cannot have been temporally eternal prior to creation, but this does nothing to disprove the open view. An open theist can believe this and still be an open theist.
aquinas: Geislers main contention is that God is simple. Simple means "not made of parts". For Geisler, and the classical view, God does not have any parts. He is not material or changing. Things with parts change.
Tom: There are very few people left, I would think, who still hang on to divine simplicity. More people than just open theists give that up. In reading Geisler's online article it seemed to me that Geisler feels everybody who doesn't agree with him on divine simplicity is a neotheist. That would boil down true theists like Geisler to a tiny percentage of Christians and make neotheists into the majority of us.
Tom | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
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| Posted 10/10/2003 5:50 AM (GMT -6) | | Aquinas: It would be difficult to be more incorrect about Geislers view. Geislers main contention is that God is simple. Simple means "not made of parts". For Geisler, and the classical view, God does not have any parts. He is not material or changing. Things with parts change.
Alan: For the record, I was simply commenting on Geisler's argument as relayed by Ochuk. If all Geisler uses the Kalam argument for is to show that God was eternal before creation, then I agree with him.
Aquinas: In fact, he is most passionate about Gods simplicity. According to him, if one denies simplicity, one ends up with all sorts of difficulties. One of which would be, God can be eternal and then "become" temporal.
Alan: I agree that God is, in some sense, simple, though a better term would be "noncomposite". In other words, I agree that God does not have "parts" in the way that physical things do, but I do not think it plausible to maintain with Aquinas that there is no real distinction between (some of) God's attributes and his essence. For example, God has the attribute of having created this world, but this is not essential to God, for he might not have created or he might have created a different world. God also has the attribute of having become incarnate in Jesus. This is also not essential, for God need not have done so. In the eyes of most Christian philosophers, divine simplicity as developed by Aquinas leads to all sorts of difficulties and is very problematic as regards the Trinity and the Incarnation. For such reasons most have given up on the doctrine. It seems to create more difficulties than it solves. In sum, I agree that God is, in some senses, noncomposite, but I do not think it plausible to go as far as Aquinas tried to go with the doctrine of divine simplicity. A recent book which addresses these issues and defends a weakened form of simplicity is Jay Wesley Richard's "The Untamed God".
As for the claim that God's being eternal sans creation and becoming temporal (with respect to some of his accidental characteristics) with creation is a "difficulty", I don't see how. William Craig has persuaded me that this is a perfectly coherent thing to say of God. It does require us to reject the idea that God is essentially unchanging in all respects, as someone holding to a Thomistic version of divine simplicity would maintain. But I don't see any compelling reason to agree with Thomas on that point.
God bless,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
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| Posted 10/10/2003 11:16 AM (GMT -6) | | Does anyone know where I can look at Geisler's online article responding to Boyd?
Thanks,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
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| Posted 10/10/2003 1:43 PM (GMT -6) | | I found an online article by Geisler in which he critiques "neotheism", his name for open theism. The article is at www.equip.org/free/DG035.htm. What follows is a section of the article in which he argues that open theism is philosophically incoherent. I then critically examine his arguments.
quote:
Creation Ex Nihilo Entails Theism, Not Neotheism
Neotheism affirms with Theism that God created the universe out of nothing (ex nihilo). God is ontologically independent of His creation. That is, if there were no world, there would still be God. Yet at the same time, they claim to reject God’s traditional attributes of aseity and eternality (nontemporality). Logically, they cannot have it both ways.
God’s Eternality Follows from Creation Ex Nihilo. If God created the entire spatiotemporal universe, then time is part of the essence of the cosmos. In short, God created time. Moreover, if time is something that is of the essence of creation, then it cannot be an attribute of the uncreated — that is, of God.
If on reconsideration a neotheist opts to hold that time existed before creation, then logical problems emerge. Was time "inside" of God — that is, part of His nature — or outside of Him? If inside, then how can God be without a beginning, since an infinite number of temporal moments appears to be incoherent (as proponents of the kalam argument for God’s existence have affirmed).
If, on the other hand, time is "outside" of God, then some sort of dualism emerges. Moreover, if time is outside God, then we must ask whether it had a beginning or not. If it did not, then it could be argued that there is something outside God that He did not create, since time is as eternal as He is. This is no longer theism in either the classical or neotheistic sense. Yet if time is outside of God and had a beginning, then God must have created it (since everything with a beginning has a cause). In this event we are right back to the theistic position that God created time, and that God as the Creator of time is not temporal.
God’s Transcendence Implies His Nontemporality. According to neotheism, God is beyond creation. He is more than and other than the entire spatiotemporal world. Again, however, if God is beyond time, then He cannot be temporal. The neotheist might reply that God is also immanent in the temporal world, and whatever is immanent in the temporal is temporal. Yet a proper understanding of God’s immanence does not make Him part of the world (as in panentheism) but only present in the world (as in theism). God is in the world in accordance with His being, and His being is nontemporal. He is in it in a nontemporal way.
For example, God is a necessary being. As such He is immanent in the contingent world, but this does not make Him contingent. Rather, God the necessary Being is immanent in the contingent being in accordance with His being, which is necessary. As Creator He is immanent in His creation. This does not mean He is part of creation just because He is present in it. Therefore, immanence of a nontemporal God in a temporal world does not demand that God is temporal.
God’s Uncausality and Necessity Imply His Pure Actuality. The new theists also believe God is not caused by any other being, and is Himself the cause of all other beings. But if God is uncaused in His being, then He must be Pure Actuality. For whatever is not caused never came to be; and whatever never came to be has no potentiality in its being. But if it has no potentiality, then it must be Pure Actuality.
To put it another way, if God is uncaused, then He has no potential. For to be caused means to have one’s potential actualized. But what has no actualized potential had no potential to be actualized. Hence, God must have been pure Actuality. Thus the neotheists’ belief that God is an uncaused Being logically entails what they say they reject, namely that God is a Being of Pure Actuality with no potentiality in His being.
The classical theistic view of God also follows from the neotheist belief that God is a Necessary Being; for if God is a Necessary Being then He cannot not be — that is, God has no potential in His being not to be. Once again, if God does not have potentiality in His being, then He is Pure Actuality. Therefore, the classical theistic view of God follows from what neotheists admit about God. Nevertheless, neotheism rejects the attribute of Pure Actuality. Thus neotheism is inconsistent and incoherent.
With all due respect to Geisler for his many fine contributions to Christian apologetics, his arguments here are rather poor. He commits several non sequiturs, largely due to his failure to distinguish between essential and nonessential attributes.
For example, he writes, "If time is something that is of the essence of creation, then it cannot be an attribute of the uncreated — that is, of God." This is a non sequitur. What follows is only that God cannot be essentially temporal, not that he cannot be temporal in any sense (essentially or nonessentially).
Another non sequitur is this contention: "God is a necessary being. As such He is immanent in the contingent world." How does this follow? God's immanence in the created world may plausibly be said to follow from his being its Creator, as Geisler points out a couple sentences later, but it does not follow simply from God's being a necessary being, or at any rate it is far from obvious how this follows. At the very least, Geisler needs to flesh out his argument.
Perhaps the most egregious non sequitur occurs when he says, "if God is uncaused in His being, then He must be Pure Actuality. For whatever is not caused never came to be; and whatever never came to be has no potentiality in its being." If God is uncaused in his being, then he cannot be in potency with respect to his being and his essential attributes, but that is not sufficient to show that he must be Pure Actuality, having no unactualized potentialities at all. If God is free with respect to creation, as Christian orthodoxy maintains, then his creating is not an essential attribute and in creating God is actualizing his own potency to be a Creator. In other words, the doctrine of Pure Actuality is incompatible with divine freedom. If God is Pure Act, then he has, so to speak, always already done and been all that he will ever do and be. The results may not have fully manifested themselves in time, but from God's eternal perspective everything is always already settled. This the open view rejects. But Geisler's argument fails to engage the open view because he doesn't show that God's being uncaused in his being requires Pure Actuality.
Anyone know any better arguments for Thomistic classical theism?
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/13/2003 6:06 AM (GMT -6) | | Thanks, Ochuk. Let me know if you discover that his (Geisler's) site is back up.
Regarding Geisler's work in general, from what I've seen of it over the past decade or so, it seems to me that the quality of his work has declined from what is arguably his best philosophical work, Christian Apologetics. While he has certainly been a pioneer in the field of Christian philosophy and apologetics, his work seems decidely second-rate when compared to that of Craig, Moreland, or Plantinga.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 10/13/2003 8:11 AM (GMT -6) | | | In my view, Geisler simply makes assumptions and doesn't back them up with sound arguments. I did find it interesting that in the article posted he links with neo-theism with possess theology (this he does to know end in his first book about open theism). If a person cannot understand the fundamental differences between these two enough to know that they are not the same belief system, one should not be discussing them. | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 10/13/2003 2:59 PM (GMT -6) | | To Laika: Thanks for the link.
To Honorman: You hit on a major weakness of Geisler's paper. He seems to think that there are only two fundamental positions on the nature of God: Thomistic classical theism and Whiteheadian process theism. Open theists reject this. In fact, most evangelical theists would qualify as "unorthodox" on his construal, since most reject the Thomistic position on divine immutability and simplicity. Geisler seems to be so steeped in Thomism that he can't think charitably outside the box.
Here's another spot where Geisler's argument falls short:
quote:
What is more, if God is in time, then Boyd's protest to the contrary (Boyd, 133), God cannot think faster than the speed of light which is the fastest movement in the space-time world. If God's nature is in time, then He is temporal. And if He is temporal by nature, then He is also spacial and material. For time, space, and matter are correlative in the contemporary view of physics which Boyd seems to accept.
What is more, if God is spacial-temporal-material, then, according to contemporary astro-physics, He must have come into existence with the Big Bang. That is, He must have had a beginning, since, as the Kalam argument demonstrates, an infinite number of actual moments before today is impossible. In infinite number of actual moments (as opposed to an abstract infinite number) could not have occurred before today, since today is the end of the series of all moments before it. But an infinite number of moments has no end. Hence, there can only be a finite number of actual moments before today. In short, Boyd's view of God's nature would not be God at all but a finite creature created by God!
Boyd's attempt to avoid this conclusion is in vain. He says, "Of course God is `above time,' for our concept of time is simply the way we measure change" (Boyd, 131). But he goes on to speak of a "God who experiences things, thinks things, and responds to things sequentially." But he cannot have it both ways, if God is really beyond time and change, then he does no experience temporal change. And if He experiences temporal change, then He is in time. Boyd simply cannot have it both ways, unless he posits two natures in God, one that is non-temporal and unchanging as classical theists do and another that is changing.
Geisler sets up a straw man here. While Boyd does accept contemporary physics, he does not commit himself to the view that "time" must mean what contemporary physics takes it to mean. The point of the quote on p. 131 is to distinguish between physical time and the metaphysical time in which God participates post-creation. Geisler is very uncharitable here. He assumes that if God is temporal then he must be physically in time and therefore spatial and material as well. This is the very sort of move that Boyd is obviously trying to avoid by saying that God is "above time".
What's more, how is Geisler to account for the fact that angels can undergo change (case in point: Lucifer's fall) and are thus in time, yet are not physical? If he is right that temporality implies spatiality implies materiality, then it seems he would have to admit that angels are material.
Finally, Geisler claims that Boyd's view commits him to the existence of "two natures in God". This is simply false. Boyd, along with many other evangelical scholars, distinguishes between God's essential properties and his nonessential properties. Why can't we say, with Craig, that God is neither temporal nor atemporal by nature, i.e., neither is an essential property of God? Or maybe we could say that God is atemporal by nature in some respects and not atemporal by nature in other respects? Neither move seems obviously incoherent, and neither posits two natures in God. Again, Geisler offers a straw man by cashing Boyd's ideas out so that they look absurd, without considering reasonable modifications to his interpretations that are not so obviously absurd.
God bless,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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