Western Concepts of God
- Unity ========
Monotheism maintains that there is one God.
To this Christianity adds that there is a threefold distinction within one God.
Stated roughly, God is one substance in three persons.
Aquinas argued that there cannot be two gods because neither would be absolutely perfect since one would have a quality that the other lacked (Summa Theologica Ia, 11, 3). Richard Swinburne says that theism is a simpler hypothesis than polytheism, the latter positing more beings with various capabilities and relations.
Theism is therefore more likely since simpler hypotheses turn out to be true more often.
Moreover, the universe exhibits a unity, in its universal natural laws for example.
This unity argues for one deity as its originator (The Existence of God, 1991, pp. 141-2).
4. Eternity
Biblical authors spoke of God remembering the past, knowing the future, and acting in the present.
According to early Christian thought, God exists forever, without beginning or end.
For him events are past, present, and future.
Later Christian thought, under the influence of Platonism it is said, held that God exists not inside time, but outside it.
God is atemporal in that for him everything is simultaneous, there being no past, present, or future.
This later view was held by Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas; and classically expressed by Boethius, "Eternity is the complete and total possession of unending life all at once" (Consolation of Philosophy, V, vi). Boethius regarded a timeless being as superior because it does not lack a past and future; its entire existence is in a timeless present.
In modern times the timeless view has been defended by E. L.
Mascall, Norman Kretzmann, Eleanor Stump, Paul Helm, and Brian Leftow.
Arguments in favor include: it makes God more transcendent, it simplifies foreknowledge, it proposes the same divine relationship to time as to space--God is outside it; furthermore it allows for the creation of time along with matter.
Arguments for the earlier view, that God is eternal but exists within time, include: personhood requires existence in time because only in time can there be intending, acting, knowing, remembering, and the like; it is difficult to explain how a timeless God can know or respond to events; and the notion of timeless eternity is incoherent.
5. Immutability
Those who accept the view that God is outside time are able to argue that God cannot change because any change would have to take place inside time.
The view that God is an absolutely perfect being can also lead to the conclusion that he cannot change: if he is perfect he could change neither for the better nor for the worse.
Simplicity can be grounds for accepting divine immutability since the only things subject to change are things with parts.
Immutability has been taken in a strong sense to mean that if a predicate p applies to God at any time then it must apply at every time.
But this is so broad that it brings into the discussion of immutability things that, while changing, are in no way changing within God.
For example, "Smith believes in God" could be false yesterday and true today, yet nothing within God has changed.
God is immutable in a weaker and less problematic sense if it is required only that he does not change in his character and purpose.
The weaker sense fits well with the view that God exists in time, since he could be considered immutable yet begin an action, forgive a person, and so on.
Thus, predicates like, "God is protecting r from harm" could be the case at one time but not another and God would still be immutable.
The stronger sense of immutability fits well with a God outside of time.
6. Omnipotence
The claim that God can do anything has been the subject of a number of qualifications.
First, many affirm the biblical view that God cannot do what is morally contrary to his nature.
Similar to Anselm (Proslogion 7), Aquinas says that God cannot sin because he is omnipotent, since sin is a falling short of perfection (Summa Theologica, Ia.
25.3). Nelson Pike says that it is logically possible for God to sin but he would not do what is against his nature.
Aquinas also says that God cannot do other things that corporeal beings can do.
And, he cannot do what is logically impossible, such as make a square circle.
Descartes is one of the few to hold the contrary view, that the laws of mathematics and logic are subject to the will of God (Descartes' Conversation with Burman, 22, 90). Perhaps the most significant challenge to omnipotence involves the existence of evil.
It seems evil would not exist if God is both good and omnipotent.
Process theology denies omnipotence, Christian Science denies the ultimate reality of evil, and some post-Holocaust thinking seems to question the goodness of God.
Augustine defends the orthodox Christian concept of God on grounds that he did what was good in creating free beings yet they used their freedom to do evil.
Some suffering is the just consequence of sin.
Furthermore, where evil is a lack of good we cannot ask why God created it since it is merely the absence of something.
Aquinas, Leibniz and others recognize that some good things exist only in the presence of certain types of evil.
For example, forgiveness exists only where there is sin.
In the light of these secondary goods, Leibniz argues that out of all the possible worlds God created the one with the best possible balance of good and evil.
Some thinkers appeal to a future life to settle apparent discrepancies in the balance of good over evil.
God's future blessing, it is said, can more than make up for suffering in this world.
William Alston develops the idea that as limited beings we are incapable of discerning-and therefore questioning-whether God has sufficient reasons for allowing the evil that exists.
7. Omniscience
While a few like Avicenna and Averroes seem to have held that a God who lacks certain types of knowledge would be more perfect, most have claimed that God knows everything.
This is sometimes refined, for example, to the claim that God knows everything that is logically possible to know.
An area of concern going back to Aristotle (On Interpretation 9) is the claim that propositions about future contingent events (i. e. , those whose causes are not determined by past events) have no truth value.
If so they are unknowable, even by an omniscient being (a view held in modern times by so called Open Theism). Some have claimed that even if future events have a truth value, they are logically unknowable.
Of special concern is the relationship between omniscience and human free will: if yesterday God knew infallibly that I would do x today, it seems I have no alternative but to do x today--a conclusion that seems to violate free will.
To solve this, Boethius and Aquinas appealed to the concept of God's timelessness, which entails that none of God's knowledge is past or future.
Aquinas also said that God determines all events and determines that they will be done freely.
De Molina objected that this amounts to removing free will.
He constructed his own view, which said that God's knowledge is logically prior to his decree of what will be.
God knows what an individual will do in all possible circumstances (a capacity called middle knowledge), and he decrees those circumstances in which a person freely cooperates with the divine plan.
Thus foreknowledge is compatible with free will.
Others have conceded that foreknowledge is incompatible with free will but claim that God voluntarily limits his knowledge of future events so that there can still be freedom.
This makes omniscience a matter of having an ability to know rather than having specific knowledge.
Another solution to the problem of omniscience and freedom challenges the idea that God's knowledge limits future free actions in any way.
While God knows necessarily that I will do x tomorrow that does not entail that it is necessary I do x.
What God knows is what I will freely choose to do.
So God knows today that I will do x tomorrow because tomorrow I will freely choose to do x.
But if tomorrow I choose to do y, then today God knows that tomorrow I will do y.
This view is consistent with what we know about less than infallible knowledge of future events.
I may know that a person will choose steak over bologna though I in no way influenced their choice.
8. Impassibility
Various views have been held as to whether God can be affected by outside influences.
Because Aristotle regarded change as inconsistent with perfection, he concluded that God could not be affected by anything outside himself.
Furthermore, God engages not in feeling, but thinking, and he himself is the object of his contemplation.
God is thus unaffected by the world in any way.
The Stoics ruled out divine passibility because they regarded imperturbability as a virtue, and God must be the supreme example of it.
John of Damascus agreed that God is imperturbable, but stressed it is because he is sovereign, not because he is uncaring.
Aquinas accepted Aristotle's view that God cannot change and is impassible.
He can act, but nothing can act upon him.
So emotions that proceed from God, such as love and joy, are in God; but other emotions such as anger and sadness can be ascribed to him only metaphorically.
Early, medieval, and Reformation Christianity generally affirmed that because God could not suffer, Christ suffered in his humanity but not in his divine nature.
However, the idea that God is unaffected by the world is being rethought in modern times.
Moltmann, who was for a time a German prisoner of war, and Kitamori, a Japanese thinker, both witnessed World War II and its aftermath.
They concluded that God must be moved by suffering.
Richard Creel defends impassibility as being uncontrolled by outside influences.
He says, among other things, that: God has emotions but they are not controlled by anything outside himself, he takes into account the ultimate good that will come from suffering, suffering does not make love more admirable, a God who suffers would be more appropriately an object of pity than of worship, justice does not require passibility because it need not be based on emotion; and omniscience does not require passibility because God need know only that a person has an emotion, he does not need to experience it.
A mediating position would allow emotion in God but not control of him in any way by creatures.
God would be affected by the world but only in the way and to the extent he allows.
9. Goodness
Whereas classical Greek religion ascribed to the gods very human foibles, theism from Plato onward has affirmed that God is purely good and could not be the author of anything evil (Republic). In Judaism divine goodness is thought to be manifested especially in the giving of the law (Torah). In Islam it is thought to be manifested in divine revelation of truth through the prophets, especially as revealed in the Qur'an.
And in Christianity it is manifested in the gracious granting of Christ as the way of salvation.
While goodness encompasses all moral perfection (e.g., truth telling, justice), benevolence is that particular aspect of goodness that wills the benefit of another.
The Reformers, and Protestantism generally, stressed that God's desire for the benefit of creatures is dependent not on their merits but purely on divine love.
Divine love is not only irrespective of merit but it is shown most clearly where it is entirely unmerited, as in grace shown to fallen humanity.
Therefore divine forgiveness and redemption are taken as the highest expressions of benevolence.
Benevolence intersects with omnipotence in providence, wherein God orders events for good ends.
It also raises the possibility of a clash between the divine and human wills, as when a person spurns God's action in the world.
Divine goodness raises the question of whether God wills x because it is good, or x is good because God wills it.
The former seems to weaken divine sovereignty, but the latter seems to make goodness arbitrary.
The arbitrariness may be somewhat relieved if God's will is understood as bounded by his unchanging character.
God would not, for example, decide to make torturing for enjoyment right since his nature forever condemns it.
The issue has implications for divine command ethics, according to which acts are right or wrong because God commands or forbids them (as opposed to, for example, a competing view that acts are right or wrong according to whether they promote the greatest happiness).
As to our knowledge of divine goodness, Aquinas separates the order of being from the order of knowing: all goodness derives from God but we understand divine goodness by extrapolating from the goodness of creatures.
For Aquinas, this requires an analogical (as opposed to an equivocal) relationship between divine and human goodness.
For Kant, divine goodness is known as a postulate of pure practical reason: God must be there to reward virtue and punish evil.
The greatest challenge to belief in divine goodness has been the fact that evil exists, or more recently, the amount and type of evil rather than the mere fact of it.
The problem is lessened if it is acknowledged that divine goodness does not require that each creature always be made to experience as much happiness as it is capable of experiencing.
Reasons may include, for example, that: it is impossible that all creatures collectively experience maximal happiness (e.g., because the maximal happiness of one precludes the maximal happiness of another), or that there is some higher good than the happiness of all creatures (e.g., John Hick's view that maturity is that higher good, and acquiring it may entail some displeasure), or that some forms of good are manifested only when certain types of evil exist (for example, forgiveness requires wrongdoing; mentioned in "6," above); or because God's favor is undeserved and not given in response to merit, it cannot be owed and God cannot be faulted for not giving it.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Davis, Stephen T.
, Logic and the Nature of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983). (Deals with challenges to the logical consistency of theism).
Fiddes, Paul S.
, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford, 1988). (In-depth treatment of impassibility).
Hasker, W.
, God, Time and Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989).
Hick, John, Evil and the God of Love, rev.
ed (San Francisco, CA: Harper &Row, 1978). (Overview of major historical views on evil; concludes that the world is a place of soul-making).
Kelly, Joseph F.
, The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition: From the Book of Job to Modern Genetics (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2002). (Comprehensive and accessible survey of western thought on the subject).
Kenny, A.
The God of the Philosophers (Oxford, 1979).
Morris, Thomas V.
, Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1991). (Basic introduction to issues such as perfect being theology; God's goodness, power, and knowledge).
Quinn, Philip and Charles Taliaferro eds.
A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1997). (Contains 620 pages of articles by authorities; many of them introduce various aspects of theism, including attributes of God, pluralism, theism and modern science, and the problem of evil).
Swinburne, Richard, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, 1977; rev. 1993). (Discusses many aspects of theism to show its logical consistency).