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Assess the view that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy enables us to speak significantly about God (40)

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Aquinas doctrine of analogy was intended to reconcile a philosophically credible concept of God, a God who is wholly “other”, with the human ability to speak about Him in meaningful terms.  Aquinas, who based his worldview on that of Aristotle, saw that God’s existence is best demonstrated a posteriori, from experience.  Four of his famous five ways show that God is what Aristotle called the “Prime Mover”, the originating and sustaining cause of everything which also defines the final cause of the universe and explains its teleological character.  This suggests that for Aquinas’ God, like Aristotle’s prime mover, is eternal outside time and space, impersonal and transcendent.  As Maimonides pointed out, this means that claims about God should not be understood univocally, because the edge of time and space – and thus possible experience – is like a “veil and partition” between God and us.  What it means for God to be good cannot be the same as what it means for a human being to be good… There is no time or choice for God, after all.  Nevertheless, Aquinas disagreed with Maimonides about the apophatic way being the only way to speak concerning God.  Aquinas saw that religion cannot be well supported by negative language, also pointing out that one has to have a clear concept of what God is to be able to decide what God is not.  Therefore, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy attempted to define what can be said about God in positive terms, steering people away from univocicity whilst preventing claims from being seen as equivocal either.  Nevertheless, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God.

Firstly, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is too limited to support the meaningfulness of morality.  For Aquinas, I can say that God is good meaningfully.  Through analogy of proportion, by saying that God is good I know that God is 100% actual and has no potential, because the meaning of goodness is that something fulfils its nature and God, being atemporal, can do nothing other than 100% fulfil his nature.  Further, through analogy of attribution, I know that God’s goodness is unlike human goodness and yet it has a causative relationship with human goodness in the way that the goodness of the baker or the bull has a causative relationship with the goodness of the bread or the urine.  Relatedly though more broadly, through Aquinas’ analogy of being, I know that the being of created contingent things is secondary to the primary being of God.  In the way that the healthiness of a yoghurt is secondary and the healthiness of the person who eats the yogurt is primary, so the being of God is primary and supports the being of all other things, although what it means for God to be and created things to be is not the same.  Nevertheless, knowing that God is 100% whatever God is and that his goodness and being enables things in the world to be good and be does not really tell me anything significant about God’s nature, other than perhaps that he intends things to fulfil their various natures as He fulfils His timelessly.  Aquinas built his theory of natural law on this analogical understanding of God’s nature and tried to extrapolate moral norms from it, suggesting that it is God’s will that human beings fulfil their common nature and that actions which contribute to this end are good.  Yet Natural Law struggles because there is no clear and consistent account of what the common human nature, that God wants us to fulfil in order to be good, is.  For one example, while Aquinas saw procreation as a necessary part of this human nature and thus essential to human goodness, Chappell and originally Finnis disagreed, not seeing procreation as a necessary part of human nature or essential to goodness at all.  Their position is strengthened by Aquinas own argument that some goods pertain to certain men more than others, hence a priest may be celibate because he is pursuing the good of praising God which conflicts with the good of having children in practice.  The fact that people can’t agree on what a common human nature entails, despite being able to experience and observe this, emphasizes how little content there can be within the claim “god is good” – or any other claim about God’s nature – when understood analogically. Further, having so little idea of what God’s goodness entails forces us to rely heavily on a contested definition of human nature, meaning that an analogical approach to religious language fails to support morality.  This shows that Aquinas doctrine of analogy does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God, because it only serves to emphasis how little we can know about God’s goodness and fails to support morality. 

Secondly, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy does not support the meaningfulness of the Bible or central documents such as the Nicene Creed.  From the Bible we know that God spoke on numerous occasions, appeared in visions and had relationships with Prophets and with Jesus, and yet again, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy emphasizes the “otherness” of God, which undermines these essentially Christian beliefs.  At least Maimonides admitted that Scripture should be read as myths and legends, yet Aquinas never went this far. According to Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy, we can only speak analogically of God because God is outside time and space and what Tillich later called “the ground of our being”, yet this is not the impression that (most of) the Bible gives.  As Nelson Pike pointed out, the Bible’s God acts in a way that is “unavoidably tensed” and apparently at odds with an analogical interpretation of religious language.  For example, Aquinas would suggest that a claim that “God created the heavens and the earth” should not be understood univocally.  God’s creative act cannot be like a creative act of say a potter.  Rather, God’s creative act must be simple and single, as befits his timeless-eternal nature.  This means that all parts of God’s creative action are concurrent, just as all God’s various attributes are different ways of understanding God’s wholly simple nature.  There can be no division between parts of God’s act in creation, just as there can be no division between God’s goodness and power, his power and knowledge for examples.  How then can we make sense of the Biblical salvation narrative?  Analogically, Aquinas would have us believe that God’s act in creation is not like a human act, having no time before, during or after and no alternative possibilities.  How though can the creation be concurrent with the fall and with the incarnation and final judgement?  This makes no sense of central Christian doctrines.  Also, the doctrine of the Trinity is problematic, because it suggests that God is best understood through the three distinct persons of God.  Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy suggests otherwise… indeed we must focus on the very oneness of God to make sense of what we can say and mean analogically through proportion, attribution and being more generally.  This inability to support claims made in the Bible and creeds also shows that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is too limited to enable Christians to speak significantly of God. 

Of course, Aquinas’ theory of analogy has its supporters and indeed enables us to speak more significantly about God than does the via negativa.  Aquinas’ theory of analogy is highly influential within modern Roman Catholicism and has been developed by thinkers ranging from Ian Ramsey to Austin Farrar and Gerard Hughes.  Even John Hick praised Aquinas analogical approach to religious language.  Ramsey noted how people naturally see claims made about God as “logically odd.” When we use words like power or love in relation to God, we know that we don’t intend people to interpret them in the same way as they would in ordinary language.  Words are in a sense “models” of what we mean about God; just as a model of an atom in a science lab isn’t adequate to express the structure of the atom or the concept of the light-wave to express how light works, so the word “power” isn’t entirely adequate to express that attribute of God, but it is the best means of expression that we have.  Further, Ramsey noted that we use “qualifiers” such as “Holy” to indicate that we are using a “model”, that our claim is “logically odd” and that our intended meaning relative to God is not the same as the common meaning of words such as power or knowledge.  Hick praised this aspect of analogy noting that it allows us to speak significantly about God while also preserving the essential mystery and ineffability of the divine. Hughes suggested that the qualifier “timeless” is most appropriate to signify that words are being used analogically, drawing the mind to that part of a common meaning that makes sense in relation to the timeless nature of God.  Thus for the Thomist, when I say “God is good” I should say “God is timelessly good”, ruling out a moral interpretation of the claim which would be incompatible with God’s eternal nature.  This shows that an analogical approach to language fits in with modern Roman Catholic beliefs and usage, supporting the significance of some important things that Catholics say about God.  Yet Aquinas’ analogical approach to religious language still fails to enable us to speak significantly about God for two reasons. 

  • Firstly because some Roman Catholic writers were critical of Aquinas’ analogical theory of religious language straight away.  For example, John Duns Scotus preferred the Cataphatic approach of St Anselm and St Bonaventure.  An analogical approach to language is, for Scotus, too limited to support significant religious beliefs and utterances.  Instead, Scotus argued that we should be able to speak univocally of God since the very concepts we use to describe and affirm his characteristics were created by God as part of his simple, single act of creation.  His approach owes more to Plato than it does to Aristotle, suggesting that God is more like the Form of the Good, giving definition to the concepts through which we experience reality and so knowable through reason and describable in ordinary language.
  • Secondly, because while analogy does seem intuitive to those whose worldview includes a timeless-eternal God, it is less so for those whose worldview includes a personal, immanent God.  How is the claim that God is timelessly wise, as Hughes might have it, compatible with the claim that God knows “the inmost secrets of our hearts” as the Psalmist affirms, let alone with the claim that God hears and answers prayers?  God’s wisdom should not be understood univocally, and should only be taken to mean that God has 100% of the knowledge appropriate to God, being timeless, and that God’s knowledge and our knowledge have a causative relationship of some sort, God’s wisdom being primary and ours secondary in the way that the health of a person is primary and of a yoghurt is secondary.  Neither of those understandings support the significance of my belief that God knows what is in my heart right now, or is capable of understanding and answering me personally.   

Of course, Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is still better than Maimonides via negativa.  The via negativa wouldn’t let me say anything positive about God’s wisdom or knowledge at all, supporting only the claim that “God is not ignorant” for example.  Yet in practice the content supported by the doctrine of analogy is only a little more significant than that supported by the via negativa, and as has already been argued, is certainly not sufficient to do justice to the range of Christian beliefs or documents such as the Bible or the Creed.  This shows that Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God.

In conclusion, while Aquinas doctrine of analogy supports us in speaking more significantly than does the via negativa, it still does not enable us to speak significantly enough about God to support Christian faith.  Being Christian demands that God is and can be said to be personal, immanent, active through the Bible and in the world today, not to mention incarnate in Jesus who was fully God as well as fully man.  Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy is far too limited to enable Christians to articulate these significant beliefs.  Better understandings of religious language from this point of view include symbol and metaphor, both of which allow a greater variety of things to be said meaningfully than does analogy.

Marx does not offer a satisfactory solution to the problem of the exploitation of the poor. Discuss. [40]

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Karl Marx’ proposed solution to the problem of the poor proletariat being exploited by the bourgeoisie within a Capitalist economic system is to abolish that system – as well as the superstructure that perpetuates it including religion – through a violent revolution.  By contrast, Liberation Theology has proposed that the first and second act of praxis offer a better solution, which obvious avoids the pitfalls of violent revolution while still achieving change, and mainstream Christian teaching has proposed that charitable work, combined with spiritual formation and prayer, is the best solution because it combines efforts to improve conditions for the poor with spiritual preparation for the afterlife, in which the only lasting equality can be attained. In theory, Marx offers a satisfactory solution, however in practice and largely because of political opposition to Marxism from the entrenched vested interests of the bourgeoisie, mainstream Christian teaching provides the most satisfactory solution.

Marx’s solution of revolution is theoretically at least the most satisfactory solution to the problem of the exploitation of the poor.  Only by dispelling the false class consciousness that capitalism depends on, through education and the weakening of religious influence, will the proletariat recognise their own exploitation and become resolved to stop it.  As Marx observed, capitalism is inherently unstable because it consists of a vast and growing majority of people being oppressed and cheated by a small and shrinking minority.  Capitalism cannot continue without the acquiescence of the poor, which the bourgeoisie achieve by keeping the poor divided and in ignorance.  Marx was right that religious teaching serves to keep the poor acquiescent, encouraging them to believe that those in power rule with God’s authority, that resistance is sinful and will be punished eternally after death and that they should focus on being peaceful and compliant.  As such religion forms part of the superstructure or what Althusser later called the “Ideological State Apparatus”, which creates and perpetuates the false class consciousness that capitalism needs the poor to believe in order to permit their own exploitation.  Abolishing the superstructure, including religion, is both the precondition for and aim of the revolution, which will liberate the poor from oppression.  Examples of countries which have gone through a Marxist revolution include Russia and more recently Cuba… in both cases capitalism and religion were overthrown and inequality between rich and poor was reduced.  Of course, neither example is wholly positive.  The Russian revolution quickly descended into Stalinism and the Cuban revolution led to decades of poverty for all Cubans, but arguably this was due to political opposition from entrenched capitalist interests overseas.  For example, the Cuban revolution struggled with poverty because the USA enforced trade embargoes in order to destabilise the Marxist government.  This shows that while in theory Marxism offers the most satisfactory solution to the problem of the exploitation of the poor, in practice Marxist revolutions struggle because they encounter powerful opposition which increases and prolongs bloodshed and creates greater poverty across society. 

It follows that mainstream Christian teaching offers a more satisfactory solution to the problem of the exploitation of the poor in practice.  The Church has been committed to giving the poor a “preferential option” since the late 1960s, recognising the need to address the growing inequality and exploitation caused by free market capitalism in practical as well as spiritual ways.  Gaudiem et Spes (1965), the last document emerging from the Second Vatican Council, clearly identifies the exploitation of the poor as a major problem inherent in capitalist societies and recognises the impatience of Christians to change this.  Pope Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio (1967) cries out against the “less than human conditions” endured by the poor, recognising that efficiency should not come at the expense of workers’ humanity and reminding Christians that “the earth belongs to everyone, not just the rich.”  Following on from these teachings, through the Puebla Document (1979) CELAM called for every Catholic to give the poor a “preferential option,” using a phrase coined by Fr Pedro Arrupe in 1968.   Nevertheless, by a “preferential option” the Vatican and CELAM meant that Christians should “be the evangeliser of the poor and one with them, a witness to the value of the riches of the Kingdom and the humble servant of all our people. [Puebla Document]” This suggests that while Christians should stand in solidarity with the poor and serve the poor, as Jesus did, their focus should be spiritual in spreading the Gospel and helping those who are exploited to recognise that there is hope in God’s Kingdom.  In practice, in the absence of a practical prospect of achieving liberation for the poor through a Marxist revolution, focusing on improving their immediate conditions through sustainable development projects and helping them retain hope and avoid alienation must be the most satisfactory solution. 

On the other hand, Marx and many other secularists have argued that Christianity’s focus on the Kingdom of God and on heavenly justice encourages the poor to put up with the status quo, however unjust it might be, and so serves the interests of capitalism.  Inspired by Gaudiem et Spes, Populorum Progressio and the Medillin Document of CELAM, Liberation Theologians went further than the mainstream Church, interpreting the “preferential option for the poor” in more political terms and advocating structural change.  In his “A Theology of Liberation” (1971) Gustavo Gutierrez prioritised orthopraxy over orthodoxy and described how Christians should live with the poor, not only stand in solidarity with them (first act praxis), and from that perspective re-read scripture with a “hermeneutic of suspicion”, being awake to the possibility that traditional interpretations of it have encouraged the poor to acquiesce in their exploitation (second act praxis).  From the perspective of the poor, Jesus seems like a political liberator, determined to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth through a revolution of some sort.  While Gutierrez focused on a social revolution, Leonardo Boff recognised the need for more decisive action to overthrow unjust regimes.  He recognised the good achieved by socialist revolutions and that this had been achieved without help from religion, noting that Jesus recognised and promised reward to those who had served God by showing love to their neighbours without realising it.  Of course, this led to Liberation Theology being condemned by the Vatican in 1984 and 1986. In the context of priests being targeted by both right wing and left wing military factions across South America because the line between religion and politics had been blurred, the Papacy criticised those, like Boff, who engaged with Marxism too much and too uncritically.  This is why it is mainstream Christianity and not Liberation Theology which offers the more satisfactory solution to the problem of the exploitation of the poor.  While Liberation Theology tries to combine Marxism and Christian Teaching, this only serves to undermine the ability of Christianity to address the effects of exploitation while doing nothing to make a lasting Marxist revolution more realistic and failing to recognise the threat that Marxism itself presents to religion in all forms.  While Liberation Theology might seem to offer a more holistic solution to the problems of the poor than Marxism does, recognising the need to address the spiritual poverty caused by exploitation and alienation in a way that classical Marxism does not, in practice it struggles to deliver any solution because it attracts hostility from secular and religious authorities alike in short order, compounding the problems of the poor rather than solving them.

In conclusion, mainstream Christian teaching offers the most practical solution to the problem of the exploitation of the poor.  It encourages all Christians to advocate for reforms to the Capitalist system and to give time and money towards sustainable development projects, while also giving hope to the oppressed poor, albeit hope mainly focused on the next world rather than this one.   Mainstream Christian teaching recognises the wisdom of Jesus’ words “those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” The fate of so many Marxists and Marxist sympathising Liberation Theologians only serves to demonstrate this, along with the deaths of mainstream Christians such as Oscar Romero who died because Liberation Theology had blurred the line between religion and politics. In focusing on peaceful solutions, mainly in an afterlife, and by disavowing Liberation Theology and other political allegiances, Christianity is able to offer a more satisfactory solution to the poor in practice than more ambitious but unrealistic alternatives. 

Secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.  Evaluate this statement. [40]

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Philosophical secularists such as Sigmund Freud and Richard Dawkins have often criticised Christianity for causing unhappiness.  Freud saw all religion as a “universal obsessional neurosis” which supported irrational beliefs and behaviour and created taboos which are often harmful to individuals.  While Freud admitted the usefulness of religion in “keeping down the masses” in his “Civilisation and its Discontents” (1927), Dawkins went further, claiming that religion is the “root of all evil” and the cause of multiple personal and social problems because it is anti-intellectual and as a meme corrosive to the critical faculties, particularly of the young.  Christianity, Dawkins suggests, may seem benign… but really indoctrinates people into a backward ideology which provides questionable moral guidance.  While these arguments seem persuasive and certainly highlight personal and social problems that religion in general, sometimes Christianity, might contribute towards, overall, they don’t demonstrate that Christianity causes unhappiness.  This is because people may well be happier with the crutch of an “obsessional neurosis” than without one, because the good the Church still outweighs the bad and because confronting the truth and being a critical thinker is rarely conducive to happiness!  For these reasons, secularists such as Freud and Dawkins are wrong when they say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness. 

Firstly, Freud argued that religion causes unhappiness because it is a “universal obsessional neurosis”.  In the same way as an individual might deal with unresolved childhood trauma by channelling tension into ritualistic behaviours such as obsessional handwashing or superstitions such as saluting magpies or not treading on cracks, societies deal with trauma by channelling it into religion.  For example, in Totem and Taboo (1913) Freud claimed that the Judaeo-Christian tradition emerged as a response to an original act of patricide, a claim which he later elaborated in Moses and Monotheism (1939).  Nevertheless, Freud’s critique of religion does not claim that Christianity is always a source of unhappiness.  People may find it easier to cope when they have a ritual which they believe influences feelings and situations which they cannot otherwise control.  Societies might well function better when they are able to process their collective guilt and grief through religious myth and ritual than they would without such an opportunity.  Just because a belief or practice is irrational and/or not based on a scientific or historical truth does not mean that it necessarily makes people unhappy.  Further, influenced by Feuerbach, Freud suggested that God is subconsciously created by human beings in an act of wish-fulfilment, rather than the other way around.  Feuerbach wrote “Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge” and Freud would certainly have agreed, judging by his “The Future of an Illusion” (1927) Nevertheless, since when did self-knowledge cause people unhappiness, especially when it results in beliefs that comfort and compensate for deficits as in this case?  Also, as Swinburne, Plantinga and Hick have pointed out, Freud can’t exclude the possibility that God might have designed us to subconsciously project God in this way.  As Alston pointed out in 1967 “Freudian theory is not logically incompatible with the truth, justifiability and value of traditional religion…”  and also, projecting God fulfils wishes and so makes people happy, not unhappy suggesting that as a secularist Freud was wrong that Christianity is a cause of unhappiness.

Secondly, Dawkins argued that religion causes unhappiness because it is “anti-intellectual” and -acting as a meme – attacks the critical faculties, particularly of young people.  Nevertheless, Dawkins has no scientific evidence for the existence of memes in the way that he describes them, and further if they do exist in this way, by Dawkins own logic they must do so because they confer an evolutionary advantage of some sort.  The fact is that more people are affected by the religious “meme” than are not – and those who are affected seem much more likely to breed! – so there must be an evolutionary justification for religion.  Of course, Dawkins would reject the claim that human beings should follow evolutionary pressures, writing “we should not live by Darwinian principles… I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free-will…” and yet he fails to explain why people should believe the free-will to do this, when there is no evidence other than a feeling to support it, or why we should try to behave in ways that make our individual and human genes more generally less likely to be reproduced.  Further, Dawkins rejects religious belief because “how can you take someone seriously who likes to believe something because he finds it comforting?” yet this line of argument shows that religion – including Christianity – makes people happy, while also admitting that secularism does not.  It is what Dawkins calls “bracing truth” that makes people unhappy, not Christian beliefs, even if they are false.  As Dawkins himself wrote “the universe doesn’t owe is condolence or consolation; it doesn’t owe you a nice warm feeling inside…” yet for many people this is precisely what they get from religion.  While Dawkins claims that “I care passionately about the truth because it is a beautiful thing and enables us to live a better life…” he fails to justify these claims.  What is beautiful about the truth of evolution through natural selection and what helps us to live a better life about confronting our own insignificance in the meaningless infinity of the universe? This shows that the secularist Richard Dawkins was wrong in claiming that Christianity makes people unhappy. 

Of course, Freud and Dawkins make sensible points when they argue that religion and particularly Christian beliefs make some individuals and some societies unhappy.  Freud is right that the guilt engendered by faith can be corrosive, leading to the state of “soul sickness” identified by both St Augustine and much later by William James.  Yet, religious faith, an ineffable sense of happiness and peace, hope and a second chance at purposeful living can sometimes be precipitated by such a state of despair, when it triggers a conversion experience.  St Augustine describes how he was saved by such an experience and James documented many other cases where religion – most usually Christianity – made somebody happy when no dosage of antidepressants were ever likely to work. Further, while Christianity can make individuals unhappy, social surveys have shown that on average religion makes people happier, more socially engaged, healthier and more long-lived.  As the Heritage Foundation Report (2006) states “a steadily growing body of evidence from the social sciences demonstrates that religious practice benefits individuals, families and communities, and thus the nation as a whole.”  Of course, Dawkins is right that religions can and have caused bitter wars and can and have fostered appalling abuse.  Christopher Hitchens powerfully enumerated the instances when the Roman Catholic Church alone has caused conflict and suffering.  Yet religion is also a force for good in societies, encouraging people to care for the weak and vulnerable, educate children, improve prison conditions and be more inclusive.  While it is difficult to do an objective cost-benefit analysis, Jurgen Habermas is right in highlighting that secular societies develop what he called “an awareness of what is missing” as they enter a “moral wasteland” in which society becomes “normatively mute” and where individuals lack any sense that their actions matter one way or another, as well as any hope beyond death.  Charles Taylor is right that secularism makes death into a taboo in a way that creates mental health issues, and that societies are forced to replace religious values and mores with secular equivalents – which lack the advantages of relative transparency and transcending human borders.  It follows that notwithstanding the unhappiness that religion undoubtedly causes some individuals and societies, on balance the effect of religion is to make people more rather than less happy.  As regards Christianity – given the scale of abuse and conflict that it has caused – the scales might be more even than in the case of other religions, yet the scale might well be proportionate given that Christianity is the largest world religion. Also, it is probably fair to say that if religion did not cause the abuse and the conflict, then something else would have.  Atheistic societies such as the USSR and Communist China were not marked for being inclusive and peaceful!   Human beings tend to cause abuse, conflict and unhappiness… and need little encouragement from religion to do so. 

In conclusion, Secularists who say that Christianity is a source of unhappiness are wrong.  While Christianity and other religions undoubtedly cause some individuals unhappiness, as well as giving cover to abuse and conflict on multiple occasions, the net effect of religions is to promote human happiness, even if this might well be the result of promoting comforting delusions.  The continuing dominance of religious worldviews suggests that they offer societies an evolutionary advantage, perhaps in helping people to be satisfied with not knowing the answers to the “big questions,” and this confirms that societies are happier and function better with religions than without them.

‘Critically discuss the theodicy presented by John Hick” [40]

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John Hick presented his “Theodicy for Today” through “Evil and the God of Love” (1966).  Here, Hick explored the history of the so-called Irenaean Theodicy in the work of Origen and Schleiermacher as well as Irenaeus, then crafting a new version of this theodicy which he felt more suited as a response to the logical problem of evil and suffering than the traditional Augustinian Theodicy given the atrocities of the mid 20th Century.  While Hick’s theodicy is persuasive, it does not provide a complete defence of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence. 

Firstly, Hick adapted Origen’s idea that human beings were created in God’s image but with the potential to grow into His likeness through a life that is a “schoolroom for the soul”.  While he rejected the “exegetically dubious” distinction between image and likeness in the Hebrew – as this is more probably designed for emphasis in the original poetry than intended to make two separate points – he argued that there is truth in the claim that human beings exist on two levels, as BIOS – sophisticated animals – and as ZOE – morally and spiritually unique beings.  Hick took Keats’ phrase to argue that our lives are a “vale of soul-making”, through suffering we grow and develop from BIOS towards ZOE, meaning that suffering (and Hick includes others’ suffering as well as our own) has a purpose and is spiritually good for us, so plausibly part of the Best Possible World that an Omnipotent, Omnibenevolent God would have created.  Later, Richard Swinburne agreed with Hick, presenting his own Irenaean Theodicy which also contended that we learn from suffering, becoming better people and more able to use the freedom that God has given us.  Swinburne likened God to a parent, allowing his children to suffer in order that they might learn to make decisions independently.  This aspect of Hick’s Irenaean Theodicy seems persuasive, because there is no doubt that people do become stronger and more spiritual as a result of the suffering which is an inescapable part of life, however Hick fails to account for the extent of suffering, which most people would agree is gratuitous.  For example, William Rowe identified suffering which could and should have been eliminated by an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, suggesting that innocent child suffering (such as in Rowe’s example of Sue) disproves the existence of such a God.  Ivan Karamazov would surely have agreed that the degree to which young children suffer is far beyond anything that could be proportionate to the ends of helping us develop spiritually.  While Hick appealed to the “epistemic distance” between God and human beings and while Swinburne agreed that we are in no position to know that God could have prevented such suffering without causing or permitting something worse, retreating into mystery at the first sign of difficulty is not an adequate philosophical response.  Because of this, Hick’s theodicy fails to defend God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence in the light of his allowing gratuitous, innocent, child suffering.

Secondly, Hick reasoned that God might be justified in allowing some people to suffer more than others – even if some people were broken and afflicted and so unable to develop spiritually as a result – if he provided eternal recompense for unjust suffering after death.  For example, God could be both omnipotent and omnibenevolent, even if some children die embittered and afflicted after suffering years of bone cancer if God made up for it in heaven.  Nevertheless, this is unconvincing because there is no adequate theory of what heaven could be like in order to justify God in this way.  In “Death and the Afterlife” 1978 Hick recognised the problems with standard Christian doctrine in that it relies on future physical resurrection, which is neither scientifically plausible nor fair to those whose bodies are either extremely young, extremely old or dispersed/destroyed.  Instead, Hick chose to focus on St Paul’s teaching, which suggests that resurrection is spiritual before the soul is re-clothed in a spiritual body, which is then rewarded or punished appropriately.  St Paul wrote that “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable… it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1 Corinthians 15:42, 44 Nevertheless, as Hick later realised, this account of life after death is problematic because it relies on the soul being separable from the body, albeit temporarily, when there is almost no evidence supporting substance dualism.  It also relies on all our human identity residing in an immaterial “soul”, so that “I” could be re-created into a new body and what happened to that body would still serve as just reward and punishment, incentive and disincentive.  Hick developed his famous Replica Theory to defend the possibility that a person could still be a person despite a break in the spatio-temporal-continuity that philosophers like Derek Parfit rely on to determine identity. Yet so much of human identity relates to our body that even if we accept that a replica could still be me (and ignore the possibilities of multiple replicas etc) this is difficult to accept.  Would our spiritual body be male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, old or young, Black or Asian?  If no, then how can a reward applied to some idealised and unrecognisable form really recompense for my unjust suffering… but if yes, then the spiritual body theory has few advantages over physical resurrection theory because inequalities and injustices would persist after death and heaven would not be an eternal or perfect reward but rather an endurance test which would do little but prolong the memories of suffering in this life in another location.  In the end, Hick abandoned replica theory and belief in spiritual bodies and came to believe in a form of reincarnation, showing that he didn’t believe that this aspect of his own theodicy was convincing.  It follows that because Hick’s theodicy fails to explain how an omnipotent, omnibenevolent God could make up for unjust suffering after death, it fails to provide a complete defence against the logical problem of evil.

On the other hand, Hick’s theodicy is more persuasive than the classical Augustinian Theodicy.  It does not rely on a literal interpretation of Genesis 2-3, avoids focusing on Original Sin and allows for evil to be real and not only “privation boni”, all of which make Hick’s approach more palatable in the 20th Century.  Further, Hick draws on modern science in his account of how we develop from BIOS into ZOE and in his beliefs about life after death and the impossibility of standard physical resurrection, which makes his theodicy more acceptable to a broader audience than standard Christian doctrine.  Nevertheless, a big weakness of Hick’s approach is that it fails to account for the suffering of animals.  As Rowe pointed out, the suffering of animals like the fawn he used in his example is endemic in nature.  The whole evolutionary process, which Hick accepts as characterising creation, depends upon the intense and gratuitous suffering of life-forms who have no possibility of growing or developing spiritually as a result, or of experiencing a heavenly recompense.  Hick seems to ignore and then sidestepped this question completely.  While Swinburne confronted the issue of animal suffering and included it in his version of the Irenaean Theodicy, he did no more than to speculate that animals might suffer less intensely and/or learn something from suffering, showing the inadequacy of this type of theodicy with respect to animal suffering.  Another weakness of Hick’s approach is that it defends a very limited version of omnipotence in God if he had to use suffering – and such intense suffering – as the means for human beings to grow from BIOS into ZOE.  As JL Mackie had already pointed out in “Evil and Omnipotence” (1955) theodicies which suggest that we learn from suffering assume that God could not have designed a better and more efficient way for humans to learn or created human beings with no need to learn in the first place. A God with such limitations would not reasonably be described as omnipotent.  While Hick is far from being alone in limiting God’s omnipotence to being able to do what is logically possible, Mackie’s objection to his theodicy is reasonable. 

In conclusion, Hick’s theodicy is more persuasive than many older theodicies, but does not provide such a complete defence of God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence as even St Augustine did.  Hick’s God may be benevolent, but He is extremely limited in power.  Further, while Hick’s theodicy gains strength from avoiding Biblical literalism, in moving away from the Bible and Christian doctrine in some respects, it is also weakened by not being acceptable to the mainstream Church.  Also, Hick fails to explain the extent and unfair distribution of suffering or provide an account of the afterlife that would serve as “eschatological justification”, making up for unfairness in this life, both of which leave this theodicy open to criticism. 

Gaunilo successfully defeats Anselm’s Ontological Argument. Discuss. [40]

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St Anselm presented his ontological argument in Proslogion books 2 and 3.  He began with a quotation from Psalm 14:1 “the fool says in his heart there is no God”, reasoning that existence is part of the definition of God, so that anybody who denies God’s existence is asserting a contradiction and so a fool.  Gaunilo, a contemporary of St Anselm, responded in his wittily titled “on behalf of the fool”, rejecting Anselm’s reasoning systematically and concluding that atheists are not necessarily fools.  Although St Anselm and Gaunilo were operating within different worldviews and with difference concepts of what existence entails, on balance and because Gaunilo’s more modern worldview dominates today, Gaunilo successfully defeats St Anselm’s ontological argument. 

Firstly, Gaunilo is successful in pointing out that the atheist can recognise the word “God” without necessarily holding the entire concept of God in intellectu. He wrote “this being is said to be in my understanding already, only because I understand what is said.”  Whereas St Anselm asserts that the atheist, in recognising the word God understands that God is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and – because existence is a perfection – necessarily exists in re while simultaneously denying God’s existence, Gaunilo suggests that people often recognise a word without fully understanding what it refers to, as may be the case with God. Gaunilo later elaborates, explaining that as Anselm admits that God is unlike any other thing, it must be impossible for any person to understand what “God” is, because our understanding of new objects is usually built out of like objects. This is persuasive, as Aquinas would later agree [Summa Theologica 1,2,1] because God’s nature is to be mysterious and ineffable, so resisting all attempts to define him, let alone analyse that definition to determine whether necessary existence is part of it. Gaunilo continues by writing “I have in my understanding all manner of unreal objects, having absolutely no existence in themselves” – examples of such could be Gruffalos or unicorns – and he suggests that it would be possible to hold an idea of God who doesn’t exist in intellectu.  This also is persuasive because, as Kant later wrote, “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence…”  Existential statements must be synthetic and capable of verification through the senses; it is not possible to analyse something, even God, into existence.  While it is clear that Gaunilo (and later Kant) assume existence to refer to existence in the phenomenal world of time and space rather than to a non-contradictory concept or “clear and distinct idea” as Anselm (and later Descartes) did, it is Gaunilo’s worldview which dominates today and this supports the success of Gaunilo’s argument in defeating Anselm’s ontological argument.

Secondly, Gaunilo is successful in pointing out that the idea of God in intellectu exists prior to the existence of God in re being realised.  He used St Anselm’s (and St Augustine’s) example of a painter and painting to make this point, reasoning that the idea of the painting exists in the mind of the painter before paint is applied to canvas. He wrote “The picture, before it is made, is contained in the artificer’s art itself; and any such thing, existing in the art of an artificer, is nothing but a part of his understanding itself.”  In the same way, for Gaunilo the idea of God exists in the mind primarily and before the reality of God is admitted.  This suggests that the atheist could have the idea of God in their mind separately from the necessary reality of God, leaving the possibility that God could only be the idea of a necessarily existing being and not a necessarily existing being.  This links to Aristotle’s concept of the formal cause; the sculptor may have the form of the sculpture in his mind, but until he acts as an efficient cause on the material cause of the stone, the sculpture can’t be said to be real.  Similarly, the soul as the formal cause of the body can’t be understood to exist independently of a body, in the way that a wax seal can’t exist without wax.  Of course, Plato would disagree, arguing that forms are more real than material objects which reflect them, because they are complete and unchanging. However, Anselm’s platonic worldview has been replaced by the more Aristotelian worldview of Gaunilo today.  Few would accept that ideas are more real than material objects, so that most would agree with Kant when he wrote “If then, I try to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is wanting in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be possible a posteriori also…” The painting is only an idea until paint meets canvas in the real world… and however perfect it may be in concept won’t change that fact. Therefore, Gaunilo is successful in defeating Anselm’s ontological argument, because he identifies Anselm’s failure to establish God’s existence a posteriori as well as a priori. 

Of course, Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s criticisms one by one in his “Responsio” reasoning that Gaunilo must be a fool if he believed that somebody could recognise the word God without appreciating that it refers to a supremely perfect being which – logically – must have the property of necessary existence.  A person saying that a triangle has four sides could only be an idiot; Anselm cannot accept that an atheist is anything other than a fool.  Further, Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s (mis)use of his analogy of the painter and painting, pointing out that while the idea of any normal object may well exist separately from and prior to its reality, this cannot apply to God who exists necessarily.  In God’s case and God’s case only, the idea and the reality must be simultaneous and identical.  However, Gaunilo’s reduction of St Anselm’s ontological argument to absurdity through the perfect island remains more persuasive than St Anselm’s indignant ripostes in the Responsio.  This is because Gaunilo appeals to common sense when he wrote that “If a man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists, and that its existence should no longer be doubted, either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself, supposing that I should allow this proof; or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainty the existence of this island.”  In the same way Kant is persuasive when he appeals to common sense, writing “a man might as well imagine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere ideas, as a merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his position, he were to add a few noughts to his cash account.”  We all know that we can’t analyse or think anything into existence, whether holiday islands or money! 

In conclusion, Gaunilo’s criticisms of St Anselm’s ontological argument successfully defeat this attempt to prove God’s existence from reason alone… that is, for those who share Gaunilo’s modern worldview.  Of course, those with a Platonist worldview – like Anselm himself and Rene Descartes – would disagree.  As Norman Malcolm wrote “in those complex systems of thought, those ‘language games’, God has the status of a necessary being. Who can doubt that?” and yet claiming that God exist surely refers to more than a rule of one language-game?  As Gaunilo rightly pointed out, rooting our concept of what exists in mere ideas is more likely to be foolish than rooting existence in shared experience. 

Kantian Ethics is too abstract to be used in practical moral decision making. Discuss [40]

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Immanuel Kant proposed his system of ethics in “The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals” (1785) and subsequently refined his thinking in “The Critique of Practical Reason” (1788) and “The Metaphysics of Morals” (1791).  For Kant, reason demands that we follow the Categorical Imperative whenever we are faced by a moral situation, involving human wellbeing.  He explained what the Categorical Imperative using six different forms of words in the Groundwork, variations of three principles; universalisation, ends and means and kingdom of ends. He was clear that these principles are not laws, to be followed unquestioningly, but rather descriptions of how a rational person (good will) will choose to act, freely, in a moral situation.  Further, that the different formulations were not intended to be applied separately, as they all describe the single moral demand of reason.  While Kantian Ethics does begin with an abstract principle, the Categorical Imperative, it is intensely practical and is in fact the best guide to moral decision making in the real world. 

Firstly, the Categorical Imperative does not seek to be a rule to follow unquestioningly.  Despite the common charge that Kantian Ethics is “harsh and inflexible” as Allen Wood put it, in reality Kant demands that we act autonomously, applying the demands of reason to each specific moral challenge.  In this way, Kantian Ethics – although it expresses the abstract demands of reason – is also intensely practical.  It recognises the complexity of moral situations and supports individuals to make their own decisions, rather than attempting to simplify things to a set of secondary precepts or rules as Roman Catholic Natural Law or Rule Utilitarianism do.  Natural Law produces sweeping rules that often seem to clash, and offers little practical help in resolving these dilemmas, resulting in a diversity of interpretations ranging from Grisez to Hoose.  On the other hand, Kantian Ethics is more practical in explicitly prioritising negative duties over positive duties, helping people to navigate a way through the clashing duties that dominate practical moral decision making.  Rule Utilitarianism ranges between harsh inflexible versions that try to reduce the complexity of moral decision making to a few absolute edicts and impractical versions that generate huge numbers of highly specific rules which still struggle to support practical decision making. On the other hand, Kantian Ethics is more practical, avoiding rules altogether and simply supporting people to be fully human, making decisions rationally and freely on the basis of the specific situation.  Kantian Ethics also recognises the existence of moral absolutes and handles these much better than Situation Ethics, which (at least in Fletcher’s formulation) implies that even dropping a nuclear bomb, murder or rape might be justified in some situations in a way that most people feel deeply uncomfortable about.  It also avoids the problem of prediction, which blights situation ethics and act utilitarianism, and does not demand that people predict and weigh up consequences with insufficient information to do this accurately. Of course, the support Kantian Ethics offers to individuals facing dilemmas can’t make their decisions easy.  Being reminded by conscience – which Kant defined as “practical reason holding the human being’s duty [i.e. the Categorical Imperative] before him” – that my action in helping my dying grandmother to die quickly rather than suffering on for days enacts the same maxim as a murderer is deeply uncomfortable.  Yet this reminder is an important one.  It is impractical to pretend – as Fletcher’s Situation Ethics seems to do – that the situation justifies one in taking a life, when this denies inevitable feelings of guilt and possible implications for how we relate to human life after we have crossed the line of taking it.  Kantian Ethics cannot make practical decisions easy, but it clarifies those decisions in a way that is practical and helpful if not pleasant to experience.  It follows that – despite being abstract – Kantian Ethics is the best approach to real-life moral decision making.

Secondly, Kantian Ethics is practical because it is rooted in human experience. Kant argued that when faced with another human being, reason demands that we treat them as we would wish to be treated.  While reason is abstract, the feeling of empathy and agape-love that it supports is not and is part of human experience every day.  In the “Critique of Practical Reason” he called the formulation of the Categorical Imperative “always treat humanity, whether in the person of yourself or another, always as an end and never as a means to an end” the “Practical Imperative” because it is what we instinctively do in any case.  Kant presupposed that we all have a conscience, which he defined as “practical reason holding the human being’s duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under the law.” As he pointed out, human beings are “pathologically loving”; it is human nature to treat others as we would wish to be treated and so not to use people as a means to an end.  Of course, Bernard Williams accused Kantian Ethics of being “atomistic” and encouraging people to focus on their own moral characters, ignoring the demand to help others in a positive way if it would mean breaking a negative duty.  For example, Kantian Ethics encourages people not to pull the lever in the Trolley Problem, which feels selfish.  Yet the fat-man version of the same problem shows that Kant was right and that what we might feel comfortable with in theory we shrink from doing in practice.  For another example, as Onora O’Neill has shown, Kantian Ethics prioritises our duty to those we have promised to protect (i.e. the duty not to lie or break a promise) over our duty to help famine-stricken countries overseas (i.e. the duty to save life).  Nevertheless, Kantian Ethics does this because a decision to break a negative duty, whether killing a person as a means to an end in the trolley problem or breaking a promise to the electorate, doesn’t just affect that person or that situation, but sets an example which erodes the principles of the sanctity of human life or trust in government, making it more difficult for all other people to hear and follow the demand of reason and the Categorical Imperative in the future.  Kant’s principle of the Kingdom of Ends shows that it is irrational to act inconsistently, because we each set an example to everybody else, so any inconsistency prevents society developing towards the summum bonum. He appeals to reason which shows the consequences of prioritising consequences to be much worse consequentially, then the consequences of making a few tough decisions in order to uphold a principle.  Even Utilitarians John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick and Peter Singer recognise this, suggesting that rules such as “do not murder” should be enforced more or less strictly for the sake of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number”.  Mill even campaigned to keep the death penalty for murder, against his fellow Utilitarian Bentham’s followers, partly because he believed in the importance of vindicating the law protecting the sanctity of human life as well as in the deterrent example that death represents.  It follows that, while Kantian Ethics does not make individual moral decision-making easy, it is practical and consistent with what most people recognise to be the most effective way to behave and run a society. 

Of course, the existence of people who are apparently without conscience and claim not to feel a duty to treat others as ends does seem to undermine Kant’s case, suggesting that the Categorical Imperative does not appeal directly to everybody through reason.  For example, mass murderers like Ian Brady and Myra Hindley or Levi Bellfield seem to be without a conscience and describing them as “pathologically loving” seems ridiculous.  Nevertheless, in “Religion within the boundaries of reason alone” (1794) Kant explained that the reason why some people appear to be without a conscience and why they don’t recognise the demand of the Categorical Imperative is because of Radical Evil.  Once a person has acted irrationally, out of deference to authority, fear or habit once, it becomes easier and easier to do the same again to the point whereby we feel powerless to change and become a “good will”. Like St Augustine, Kant saw the Human condition as one whereby we don’t do what we actively want to do and feel unable to change. For Kant, this is because rationally we appreciate that in order to deserve the heavenly reward (that Kant postulated to make sense of his moral system) we would have to have a good will, which in practice none of us have because we have all fallen short of acting on one at some point, not least in childhood.  Without any reasonable hope of reward, it becomes irrational to follow the demands of reason.  It is not rational to do what will make us miserable forever and can never result in any happiness.  In effect, we are trapped between the demands of reason with respect of moral action and following the categorical imperative and the demands of reason with respect of not doing what will only make us miserable.  Kant’s solution to this and way of making it possible to change and be good despite feeling trapped was controversial.  Again, Kant depended on St Augustine’s theology.  That is, to trust in the order and fairness of the universe, to believe in the possibility of moral regeneration, to assert our freedom to do what is right.  Jesus’ example is important; He showed that it is possible to have a “good will” making it rational to trust and believe.  While Goethe accused Kant of “smearing his philosopher’s cloak with the shameful stain of original sin” and recent writers have speculated that Kant was losing his reason by the time he developed this part of his theory. In fact, Kant makes rational sense of Augustinian teachings about the human condition and why it is difficult to do what we know we ought. While it is true that Kantian Ethics is extremely demanding and sets an impossibly high standard, it is the fact that it is demanding and not its abstract nature which is the reason why many people are reluctant to use it in moral decision making.  This shows that despite being abstract, Kantian Ethics is also practical, because it is rooted in real human experience.

In conclusion, Kantian Ethics is practical and can be used in moral decision making, despite being rooted in abstract concepts such as reason and duty.  This is because Kantian Ethics is more practical than Natural Law, Situation Ethics and Utilitarianism, being focused on helping people to make decisions autonomously, rather than forcing people to follow absolute rules that take no account of complexity or forcing people to predict and weigh up consequences with insufficient information to do so accurately.  Also, because Kantian Ethics is rooted in the practical experience of being human and provides a rational explanation of why people feel unable to do what they know they should do.  Kantian Ethics may be harsh and demanding, but so is the world and so are the dilemmas we face.  Rather than letting us hide behind rules or forcing us to play God, Kantian Ethics supports us to recognise and have the strength to follow our consciences and the demands of reason, which Kant called the Categorical Imperative.  Act fairly and consistently, honour and don’t use people, set an example and act as though you were being watched… these are moral guidelines we all recognise from childhood and practical experience. They are not too abstract to be practical and should always determine how we make moral decisions.

Assess Boethius’ view that divine eternity does not limit free will. [40 marks]

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Boethius discusses the relationship between God’s eternity and human free will in his “consolations of philosophy” Book V.  Here, in dialogue with “Lady Philosophy” Boethius confronts the apparent problem caused by God’s omniscience, namely that it limits human free will.  He wrote: “if God foresees everything, and can in no wise be deceived, that which providence foresees to be about to happen must necessarily come to pass.”  It seems that if God knows what I will do and there are no alternate possibilities, then I am determined by God’s knowledge and cannot justly be held responsible for my actions.  This undermines God’s goodness, as Christians believe that human beings will be judged and rewarded or punished by God based on their free choices.  Boethius wrote, if God knows what we will do before we do it then “Vainly are rewards and punishments proposed for the good and bad, since no free and voluntary motion of the will has deserved either one or the other; nay, the punishment of the wicked and the reward of the righteous, which is now esteemed the perfection of justice, will seem the most flagrant injustice…” Nevertheless, Boethius argues – through Lady Philosophy’s responses – that God’s eternal omniscience is compatible with human free will, meaning that God’s omniscience does not undermine God’s omnibenevolence and justice.  Unfortunately, Boethius’ argument is unsuccessful in this respect.

Firstly, Boethius argues that because God is outside time and space, his knowledge of our choices is contingent and does not make what we choose necessary.  Boethius uses the analogy of a chariot; my knowledge that it passed me at a particular time does not make it travel faster or slower or take that route… my knowledge of its motion is contingent on its motion and does not make its motion logically or naturally necessary.  Similarly, God’s knowledge of my choices is contingent and does not determine what I choose.  St Anselm later developed Boethius’ argument, again emphasising that God’s knowledge of what I do does not make me do what I do.  However, despite Boethius’ attempt to “play the mystery card” and muddle the issue, writing “the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity of the Divine foreknowledge”, his argument is unconvincing because if God is outside space and time then He must be wholly simple and His knowledge of creation cannot be separate from his single act of creation.  The things that God knows contingently, can’t be contingent on human choices or events in time – Boethius acknowledges that  “it is preposterous to speak of the occurrence of events in time as the cause of eternal foreknowledge” – so God knows what he knows about human choices contingently because he created us to act this way and because our choices are contingent on Him.  As St Thomas Aquinas reasoned, and more recently Gerry Hughes sj. explained, God’s knowledge is not like our knowledge… If God is wholly simple, as a timeless-eternal God must be, then God’s knowledge can only be causative and not reflective.  Boethius emphasises the difference between God’s knowledge, which comes from pure rational intuition and not from limited observation, but seemingly fails to appreciate that there can be no separation in God’s timelessly simple nature between God’s knowledge of what he creates and his action in creating it. If God’s knowledge of what we do depends on how He created us to act, then clearly Boethius view that divine eternity does not limit free will must be mistaken.

Secondly, Boethius argues that because God is outside time and space, his knowledge of events in no way precedes those events, so the use of the word “foreknowledge” to describe God’s knowledge of what is future to us is a misleading analogy.  If God’s knowledge is not really foreknowledge, but knowledge of what happens in an eternal present, then there is less sense that God’s knowledge determines choices and events.  Boethius was what Brian Leftow calls a Universal Presentist, seeing that past and future exist because they are eternally present to God.  St Anselm later developed Boethius’ argument, suggesting a four-dimensional view of time, whereby God’s knowledge of the time in which each event occurs is theoretical and part of the eternal present through which God sees creation.  Nevertheless, neither Boethius’ nor Anselm’s view of God’s eternity is compatible with human free will.  Just because every event is simultaneously present to God, there are no alternate possibilities, which is the very definition of determinism.  Further, Boethius’ view of God relating to creation in an “eternal present” only emphasises how Boethius’ Classical Theist God is incompatible with the Bible and thus Christian Theology and faith.  If God’s creation of the world, the fall, the incarnation and atonement, as well as the eschaton and final judgement occur concurrently to God then there can have been no other option for humanity but to have sinned and been saved… their choices were immaterial, and what God punished them for and then saved them from through Grace was always part of God’s design.  As Nelson Pike pointed out, the God of the Bible is “unavoidably tensed”, suggesting that Boethius’ view of divine eternity must be mistaken.  Further, as Anthony Kenny pointed out, the timeless-eternal view of God is “radically incoherent” and leads the divine attributes to be empty… a timeless-eternal God is incapable of acting in time, being morally good or responding to prayer or events.  What, then does it mean to call this being God, who is apparently impotent, amoral and unresponsive?  William Lane Craig likens the timeless eternal God to a granite block and rightly asks what the point of worshipping that would be!  Again, Boethius’ view that divine eternity does not limit human free will is mistaken because it contradicts its own claim that God’s knowledge must be the same as God’s creative action within God’s wholly simple nature, and because this whole concept of God is not compatible with Christian theology or faith. 

Of course, Boethius’ view has its defenders.  EL Mascall used string theory to suggest that God’s knowledge might have a temporal pole and an atemporal pole, yet while this is a helpful analogy in terms of understanding how God’s eternity might coexist with time and space, it does little to explain how God’s knowledge does not determine our actions.  On the contrary, if God’s knowledge of what I will do at any point in time depends on knowledge that is fixed at its other eternal pole there seems if anything less opportunity for me to act spontaneously.  Further, as already explained, St Anselm saw in Boethius’ view a way to reconcile God’s eternal omniscience with free will, and – according to Katherin A. Rogers in “Anselm and Freedom” (2009) his development of Boethius’ argument “offers a definition of freewill which involves a hierarchy of choice, prefiguring that recently proposed by Harry Frankfurt” p. 60  Like St Augustine, Frankfurt defines freedom as the ability to do what one wants to do.  Remember, St Augustine defines God’s omnipotence as His being able to do whatever He wants to do.  Similarly, for Frankfurt and – if Rogers is correct in her analysis – for Anselm, and perhaps for Boethius also, a person is free if they can do what they want to do. As Rogers reads him, Anselm argues that the human will is created by God with the twin desires for benefit and for justice… the will is created to want both, but able to decide which to pursue and how.  The will, created in the image of God, has aseity and decides freely and not because of preceding natural causes.  Here, Anselm was perhaps anticipated by Boethius, who wrote “that which hath the natural use of reason has the faculty of discriminative judgment, and of itself distinguishes what is to be shunned or desired…” [Consolation Book V.I] Which suggests that human freedom resides in the ability of the will to decide which desire to pursue.  This analysis suggests that Boethius and Anselm were at the least compatibilists on the issue of free will, and that their reasoning may have allowed for a greater measure of freedom. Nevertheless, Rogers’ analysis focuses on the work of St Anselm, which goes well beyond Boethius’ argument, so just because St Anselm’s view of divine eternity might be compatible with some very limited free will does not mean that Boethius view alone can do this.

In conclusion, Boethius’ view that divine eternity does not limit human free will is mistaken.  Boethius’ view of divine eternity is self-contradictory – reasoning that God’s knowledge can’t be prior knowledge because of God’s eternity, but then relying on God’s knowledge being separate from God’s action in creating what he knows.  Further, Boethius’ view of divine eternity only emphasizes the lack of any alternate possibilities, which shows that his view is inconsistent with Christian theology and faith.  While Boethius’ failure to reconcile divine eternity and human free will does not mean that Classical Theism will always lead to hard determinism, as Rogers’ argument regarding St Anselm’s development of Boethius’ position has shown, the possible success of later developments of his argument does not mean that Boethius’ own view was persuasive. 

GCSE Christianity Beliefs: “Suffering shows that God does not exist.” Evaluate this statement (12)

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Suffering does not show that God does not exist. This is because God could have a good reason for allowing suffering. The Bible in Genesis 3 suggests that suffering was caused by human sin at the Fall. God intended us to exist immortally in Eden, but Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and God, in His justice, gave them what they chose; mortality and moral responsibility, which cause us to suffer and die. God could not make human beings free and in His own image (Genesis 1:27) while also preventing them from choosing or ensuring that their choices don’t have consequences. St Augustine used the story of the Fall to develop a theodicy, suggesting that God is justified in allowing suffering because it is the price of free-will, which is part of the best possible world. St Irenaeus was also inspired by Genesis 1-3 in developing his theodicy, which suggests that the world containing suffering is better than a world without, because suffering gives us the opportunity to learn and grow more God-like. As Christian writer John Hick suggested “life is a vale of soul-making”… it can be painful, but through suffering we grow closer to God.

Of course atheists like Stephen Fry would disagree with these arguments, and many Christians find them unsatisfactory when confronted with the extreme suffering that this world contains. They might remember that even Jesus cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” on the cross… why would a loving and all-powerful God allow human beings – and even his sinless son – to endure such agony? Yet Christians could respond by referring to the Book of Job in the Bible, which suggests that we can’t reasonably expect to understand God’s reasons for allowing good people to suffer. In Job 38 God says “where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth… tell me if you understand!” This suggests that we should have faith in God when we are tempted to question why we suffer, and we will be rewarded in the end. After all, Job was restored to his property and reunited with his daughters, when all seemed lost and even after he dared to question God.

In conclusion, suffering does not show that God does not exist, although it causes many Christians to question God and to struggle with their faith. Hebrews 11:1 states” faith is confidence in what we do not see”, which suggests that for faith to be genuine it must endure beyond the evidence and survive when it is tested, such as by suffering.

‘Anselm’s four-dimensionalist approach successfully explains God’s action in time.’ Discuss. [40]

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St Anselm developed his understanding of how God relates to and acts in time on the basis of work already done by Boethius and before that by St Augustine. All these Classical Theists understood that God exists eternally, outside time and space. This means that Aristotle’s arguments for a Prime Mover, as well as Plato’s arguments for a Form of the Good, lend rational support for faith in God. Nevertheless, placing God outside time and space raises significant questions concerning if and how God can act within time, as well as what God’s knowledge of events within time is like and what God’s goodness can entail. If God is outside time and space then all of God’s actions – including every word that God says – must be concurrent within one simple, single act of creation. St Augustine, Boethius and St Anselm all attempted to resolve the particular problem of how God’s eternal foreknowledge seems to nullify human free will, and yet even St Anselm’s sophisticated understanding fails to explain for this, let alone how God could act in time, successfully.

Firstly, what Katherin A. Rogers claims to be St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism represents no real improvement over Boethius’ Universal Presentism in resolving the question of God’s relationship with time, whether regarding God’s knowledge or God’s actions. Whereas Presentism usually entails the belief that only the present moment really exists, the past and the future being illusory, in Boethius’ understanding because every moment is present to God, the future and past are as real as what we perceive to be the present. As Brian Leftow (in PRESENTISM, ATEMPORALITY, AND TIME’S WAY) explains, “Boethius is a temporal presentist… consider his classic simile: an atemporal God is as if on a mountain top, looking out on an entire future those lower down cannot see. It is part of the image that all the future is really there at once to be seen.” (p176) Yet this causes a problem for Boethius when it comes to God’s foreknowledge. If God sees the “future” in the same eternal moment as the “present”, how can any being be free? Because God knows what every being will do there are no alternate possibilities. Boethius argues that this problem results from out imperfect understanding of God’s eternal nature… “the reason of this obscurity is that the movement of human reasoning cannot cope with the simplicity of the Divine foreknowledge” Book V. Further, Boethius suggests that God’s knowledge does not make the outcomes of free actions logically necessary because God’s knowledge of them is contingent and dependent on those choices and outcomes occurring. “Boethius’s solution to the freedom-foreknowledge problem hinges on the claim that God’s knowledge is of all time at once and observational...” (Leftow, p176) Yet how can God’s knowledge of an event truly be conditional on that event taking place, such as to avoid making that event necessary, when God’s knowledge is eternal and identical with God’s power and goodness in God’s simple, single act of creation? Boethius’ analogy of the Chariot does nothing to help, because by his own admission, God’s knowledge is completely different to any knowledge we could have and because, as Boethius himself reminds us, there is no way that God could learn from us… as it seems He would have to if his knowledge of what we do depends on us. Further, St Anselm’s more developed position does little to resolve the problem. Like Boethius he contends that God’s knowledge, being of an eternal present, is not prior to events and so does not necessitate them. Whereas Boethius is what Leftow calls a “Universal Presentist”, St Anselm contends “but simply, you are, outside all time. For yesterday and to-day and to-morrow have no existence, except in time; but you, although nothing exists without you, nevertheless do not exist in space or time, but all things exist in you. For nothing contains you, but you contain all.” Proslogium XIX This suggests that every moment, whether we perceive it to be past, present or future, exist not only in God’s sight, but within God’s eternal being. Reflecting on what this might mean, St Anselm wrote in De Concordia 1.5 “although within eternity there is only a present, nonetheless it is not the temporal present, as is ours, but is an eternal present in which the whole of time is contained.” explaining that… “Eternity has its own simultaneity, in which exist all things that occur at the same time . . . and . . . at different times.” While Boethius position is so similar as to be identical in places, Katherin A. Rogers argues that this makes St Anselm the first true Four-Dimensionalist. She writes “Anselm, in a very clear and conscious way, adopts what I will call the “four-dimensionalist” theory of time, sometimes also called the “tenseless” theory. He is, to my knowledge, the first philosopher in history to do so.” She claims that St Anselm’s understanding of God’s relationship with time “does succeed in solving the dilemma of freedom and foreknowledge,” which might imply that it would also resolve the question of God’s eternal action. Nevertheless, Rogers’ detailed argument concerning the differences between St Anselm, Boethius and St Augustine does little to advance St Anselm’s position. While it is true that when it comes to St Augustine and Boethius, “neither elaborates his views clearly enough to rule out other interpretations” (than four dimensionalism) it is fair to say that both philosophers positions suggest that every moment is present to God, and that God’s knowledge of events is not prior to those events occurring so can’t be understood to cause those events. Given this specific overlap between Boethius and Anselm, the technicalities of their positions as regards God and time seem largely irrelevant. Rogers ends by simply restating Anselm’s argument, that God’s knowledge of the outcomes of “free” actions does not make them happen, because although God’s knowledge of those outcomes removes any alternate possibilities God’s knowledge of what we perceive to be future events is knowledge of eternally present events to God. Yet, in all practically, this is the point already made by Boethius, that God’s knowledge of “future” events is conditional like our knowledge of a chariot passing, so not such as would influence or determine such events. Whether made by Anselm or Boethius, this argument is unsuccessful in resolving the problem of freedom and foreknowledge because by these Classical Theists’ own arguments, God’s knowledge is not like ours, being simple and identical with God’s power and being. My knowing that a chariot passes by does not make the chariot speed up or slow down, but God’s knowing is the same as his doing and his being… and his knowing, doing and being in what seems to be this moment to us is concurrent with his total knowledge, action and being because His nature is to be eternal and so wholly simple. It is difficult to accept that actions can be anything other than determined when they are part of God’s eternal necessity in this way. This shows that St Anselm’s four dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time, successfully.

Secondly, St Anselm’s so-called Four Dimensionalism is just as inadequate as Boethius’ or Augustine’s Universal Presentism in accounting for God’s actions in time. For example, the Bible’s Salvation Narrative is, as Nelson Pike once observed, “unavoidably tensed”. St Anselm’s four dimensionalist account of God’s relationship with time suggests that every moment is present in God, suggesting that the creation is a simple, single act. However, if the creation happened at the same moment as the Fall, if Moses received the Law from God at the same moment as the same Law was fulfilled in Jesus, if the incarnation, the resurrection and the second coming all really happened at once, then there seems precious little point in Christianity. Human free will and moral responsibility are null and God’s justice a joke. As St Augustine recognized in Book XII of his Confessions, if God is timeless-eternal and wholly simple, as rationally it seems that He must be, “what was spoken was not spoken successively, one thing concluded that the next might be spoken, but all things together and eternally. Else have we time and change; and not a true eternity nor true immortality…” When God said “let there be light” – as if in the same breath he said “I am what I am” and “this is my Son; listen to Him”… meaning either that all apparent “revelations” of God’s words which imply time and a sequence of events are effective fakes… or that God intended to deceive us into thinking his words and actions responded to events and individuals. Either interpretation is gravely problematic for Christians. So much of the Bible depends on God’s actions and words being sequential that accepting a timeless-eternal view of God could only result in abandoning the Bible as a meaningful source of authority. Further, suggesting that God intended to deceive us when he seemed to speak with and respond to the Prophets, or when he seems to respond to our prayers, is both incompatible with St Anselm’s own account of God’s omnipotence – which expressly excludes God’s ability to act from impotence, such as by lying or deceiving people (“Therefore, O Lord, our God, the more truly are you omnipotent, since you are capable of nothing through impotence” Proslogion Book VII) – and a fundamental assault on the Christian faith. What would Christianity be if God’s personal response to prayer and events can only be understood as the equivalent of an AI chatbot response, pre-programmed to give the appearance of personal service by some cynical cost-saving consultant! Again, it seems that St Anselm’s four dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time, successfully.

Of course, St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism would be defended by Katherin A. Rogers, who would suggest that it is successful in explaining how God can know all events without removing the possibility of free actions or the justice of holding free agents responsible for what they choose to do. She points out how St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism is an improvement over the work of other classical theists who suggest that God’s eternal knowledge is so different and abstract that God’s omniscience might entail him not knowing what day it is! Nevertheless, in making God’s knowledge of ever present knowledge a function of God’s perfect self-knowledge, St Anselm comes very close to suggesting that all of creation exists within God. This striking view implies that God’s knowledge is contingent and depends on events, rather than causing them. While this is useful in facilitating free will, because being eternal God’s knowledge is identical with God’s action and God’s being, it also implies that God’s being contains time and space, whose nature is dynamic and the precise opposite to how God’s necessary being is usually understood. How can God be immutable if God’s knowledge depends on contingent events and God’s being contains all contingencies? St Anselm can’t pick and choose, maintaining that God’s knowledge is of contingencies but God’s being is necessary and immutable… if God is eternal, He is wholly simple and, as St Anselm himself explains in Proslogium XVIII all His attributes are really one attribute. Again, it seems that St Anselm’s four dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time, successfully.

Further, the alternative explanations of the relationship between God’s eternity and his action offered by Richard Swinburne is scarcely more successful than that offered by St Anselm. Swinburne suggests that an everlasting-in-time God could do anything which is compatible with His own previous actions and his attributes of omnibenevolence and omniscience. As in, God’s omnipotence consists in His being able to do anything that He wills (as St Augustine originally contended), bearing in mind that an omniscient being would not will anything contrary to what He has previously willed or which does not bring about the best possible world. This is a coherent explanation of God’s omnipotence which is better than St Anselm’s explanation in making sense of the Bible, and in making sense of God’s tendency to act in some situations and not in others. If God, from his omniscient (although temporal) perspective, could see that X action would bring about a worse outcome than doing nothing, then He would do nothing. Nevertheless, God’s omniscience could not entail His ability to know the outcomes of free actions, because He in His omnipotence made them free, so God’s assessment of the situation must needs be dynamic and ever-changing. Despite this, Swinburne’s account of God’s relationship with time is unsuccessful in explaining how God’s actions could be omnipotent in an absolute sense… God cannot break the laws of logic (as JL Mackie demanded that an omnipotent being should be able to do) because those same laws depend on God’s previous actions in creating said laws. In this regard, Anselm’s four-dimensionalism is more persuasive than Swinburne’s understanding, because being in-time Swinburne’s God is constrained in the present moment by His own past actions, which seems more of a constraint than actions which appear to be at different times to us having to be consistent with each other within God’s single, timeless creative act. Further, while Swinburne’s God can’t know the outcomes of free actions, and while this facilitates libertarian free will and genuine moral responsibility, this also radically limits God’s knowledge of the future, as human actions affect so much, given climate-change even the existence of the Earth. In supporting God’s knowledge of how events would seem to us from any given point in time as well as maintaining God’s knowledge of every moment as present, Anselm’s four-dimensionalism makes more sense of God’s knowledge than traditional Presentism, which holds that God knows every moment as present, but not which moment is present to us. It also makes more sense than Swinburne’s account of God’s knowledge, whereby God’s knowledge is radically limited by His decision to self-limit when it comes to the outcomes of free actions. Overall, while Swinburne’s account of God’s eternity is much more useful for Christianity than St Anselm’s, it offers interpretations of God’s attributes which turn out to be almost as empty as those of the Classical Theists. It seems that while St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time successfully, so also other thinkers fail to resolve this problem.

In conclusion, St Anselm’s four-dimensionalism fails to explain how God could act in time successfully. Yet, this problem remains without a resolution. Classical theism renders God’s attributes empty words and faith in His existence pointless and yet Theistic Personalism, such as presented by Richard Swinburne, renders God’s attributes almost equally empty and surrenders the classical arguments as direct support for their God’s existence along the way. Much as Theistic Personalists like to co-opt the classical arguments for God’s existence to serve in cumulative arguments for God’s existence, or to defend the “reasonableness” of faith… they ignore or evade the fact that these same arguments support a God who is timeless-eternal and not a God who is everlasting-in-time. In the end, they like St Anselm must make a choice… either accept all of the implications of a rationally defensible faith-position and abandon Christianity, or stop appealing to reason at all and accept that faith in an everlasting God with meaningful attributes can only be based on experience.

GCSE Islam Beliefs: If Allah is All-Powerful, He must be responsible for suffering. Evaluate this statement.

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If Allah is all-powerful He must be responsible for suffering. Muslims believe that Allah is the all-powerful creator (Qur’an 6:102-3), so He could have created any world He wanted to. This world contains suffering, so it must be part of His plan. The Qur’an seems to support predestination in places, such as “Misfortunes can only happen with God’s permission” 64:11 and Sunni Muslims see Qadr (predestination) as one of their 6 articles of faith. This suggests that Allah must be responsible for suffering in the world as much as He is responsible for the good things in this world. If Allah is all-powerful, there is no other explanation. Further, many Muslims would not see suffering as inconsistent with the nature of Allah. The Ash’arites (and today most Sunni Muslims) accepted that Allah’s supreme power meant that he determines the outcomes of peoples’ lives, even the suffering that they experience; human beings cannot know the mind of God, but must trust that Allah is just (Al Adl) and that He must have a good reason for allowing suffering, even if we don’t understand what it is.

Yet, as the Mu’tazilites argued in the 8th-10th centuries, unless human beings are really free, there is no way that they can be held responsible for their actions or justly punished. As Muslims believe that God holds people accountable for what they do, in this life and the next and that Allah is just, they must also believe that human beings have free will. Qur’an 13:11 “God does not change the condition of human beings unless they change what is in themselves” supports the belief that human beings are free and responsible, which suggests that suffering is the result of free human actions – either directly or indirectly as just punishment from Allah. Yet, while this Mu’tazilite position (which many Shia Muslims share through their belief in Bada’ and Adalat/divine justice) seems to make more sense of the belief in judgement, heaven and hell than the Ash’arite position (which many Sunni Muslims share through their belief in Qadr) the idea that Allah created human beings free in the sense that He is not responsible for the results of their actions is problematic. Leaving aside the multiple references in the Qur’an to predestination already explained, Muslims believe that Allah is Omniscient and knows the outcomes of peoples’ lives before they are born, which suggests that human freedom is an illusion. There is a contradiction here: If Allah is Omnipotent and Beneficent (wanting “ease and not hardship” for human beings, as the Qur’an confirms) then He cannot have chosen to create such extreme suffering… and yet suffering exists, which suggests that Allah must have created suffering as part of His divine plan.

In conclusion, an all-powerful Allah must be responsible for suffering.