Anselm

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. 

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. 

‘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.

Assess the view that the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.

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The Ontological Argument was first proposed by St Anselm in 1078. In the Proslogion he tried to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone, first by defining God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”… as existence “in re” rather than only “in intellectu” makes something greater, God must therefore exist, and then by claiming that necessary existence is greater than contingent existence and so must be a property of God. The Ontological Argument soon attracted criticism, first from Gaunilo of Marmoutiers whose “on behalf of the fool” suggested that it seems like a joke to suggest that something must exist just because it is perfect, and then from Aquinas, who pointed out that “because we do not know the nature of God, His existence is not self-evident to us.” Nevertheless, while most people are sceptical of Anselm’s argument, as Bertrand Russell pointed out “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” As it happens, the argument – while containing some logical fallacies – does not depend on these so that they cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument… the question of its soundness depends on one’s worldview.

Firstly, it could be said that both versions of Anselm’s argument depend upon the logical fallacy of bare assertion, as in they assert that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” without proper argument. Nevertheless, all a priori arguments start with a priori premises, definitions which depend on a priori knowledge (reason alone) and often cannot be argued for using evidence. For example, if I argued that as bachelors are unmarried men and Simon is unmarried, that Simon must be a bachelor, it is not reasonable for you to demand that I demonstrate that bachelors are unmarried men from observations before proceeding. Similarly, if I argued that 2+2 = 4, I must begin with a priori knowledge of the numbers 2 and 4 and the concept of addition. It is not reasonable to ask for an argument that 2=2 and 4=4 before accepting that 2+2 = 4… because any sane person knows what 2 and 4 refer to and what the concept of addition entails. Anselm pointed out that anyone who claims that God is not “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” must be a fool. How can anyone think that there could be something greater than God… if they do, then they have fundamentally misunderstood the concept of God. In this way, while Anselm does assert his premises, he is justified in doing so and this “logical fallacy” is not a serious criticism of the ontological argument. Similarly, Anselm’s argument could be accused of begging the question, meaning that his conclusion of God’s necessary existence is contained within the premises. Yet surely this is the whole point of a deductive argument! Nobody criticises the argument 2+2 = 4 because the concept of 4 contains the concept of 2 twice. What Anselm is trying to do is to clarify that our concept of God includes His necessary existence, so it is unreasonable to expect Anselm’s conclusion not to contain his premises. In both these ways, Anselm’s Ontological Argument does not depend on any logical fallacies that cannot be overcome.

Secondly, it could be said that Anselm’s argument is guilty of being ad hominem and of appealing to authority. Anselm certainly attacks atheists as fools and quotes from Psalm 14:1 as part of his argument. Nevertheless, neither Anselm’s colourful language nor his Biblical allusion are part of his reasoning, so his argument could be stated without either quite easily. More seriously, addition, Anselm could be accused of asking a loaded question of atheists. Is God “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”? The atheist is railroaded into answering yes, in which case they have already admitted the conclusion, or no, in which case they are a fool… Yet as Bertrand Russell pointed out, asking a question about the properties of a non-existent object is meaningless. If I asked you “is the present King of France bald?” I feel bound to give a yes or no answer, when in fact I can’t give either because there is no present King of France. Similarly, in asking atheists to answer the question “is God that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”, Anselm could be bamboozling the atheist into answering yes or no, when either option would mean that they cede their point. This seems a lot like the either-or fallacy as well, with Anselm excluding options other than yes or no. However, it is clear that everybody, atheists included, have a concept of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” in their minds, meaning that He undoubtedly exists “in intellectu” in a way that the present King of France, perfect islands etc. do not. As Anselm pointed out in his “Responsio” to Gaunilo, there is a difference between islands and God, in that islands can only exist contingently whereas God exists, if he exists at all, necessarily. This means that Russell’s point about the present King of France is not relevant to the Ontological Argument, as when Anselm asks “is God greater than that which can be conceived of”, he is justified in assuming that the knowledge of God exists a priori in intellectu, when the knowledge of contingent things – whether Kings or Islands – can only be a posteriori and synthetic. Kant is right to say “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence…” when it comes to any and all contingently existing things, but as Anselm pointed out, God is not like other things, so the ontological argument could only ever apply to God. It seems that Anselm’s argument survives the accusation of depending on these logical fallacies as well.

On the other hand, Kant argued that Anselm creates the whole category of “necessary existence” to get around Gaunilo’s obvious criticism that what applies to perfect Gods should apply equally to perfect islands, unicorns and such. In this way, Anselm’s argument would depend on special pleading. Kant argued that existence involves having the potential to be and not be, so necessary existence is a contradictory concept like a square circle and so impossible. He reasoned that because existence must include having the potential to be and not be, existence cannot be used as an essential predicate of anything. Later in 1948 JN Findlay went further, claiming that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.” For Findlay, if there are three options – God is impossible, God may or may not exist or God necessarily exists, then the Ontological Argument serves to show that God must be impossible and necessarily not exist, because if God may or may not exist He wouldn’t be God and necessary existence is impossible. Nevertheless, Hartshorne rejected this, arguing that if Findlay says that necessary existence is impossible, so must be necessary non-existence. Further, Kant’s definition of existence applies to contingent existence only, as does his claim that existence cannot be an essential predicate, necessary existence does not include the potential to exist and not exist by definition and so it could be an essential predicate of God. For Hartshorne, there is nothing impossible about necessary existence. We can conceive of God necessarily existing in much the same way as we can conceive of a three-sided triangle, when we cannot conceive of a square circle. As Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig have pointed out, if God’s necessary existence is even possible – in the way that a unicorn or a Gruffalo is possible but a five-sided triangle is not – then God exists necessarily in every possible world. Of course, Kant would reject this, pointing out that we have no experience of “necessary existence”, making it a “cupola of judgement”, being outside our possible existence and entirely speculative. Nevertheless, although Kant’s criticisms are coherent with and conclusively destroy the Ontological Argument within his worldview, Kant’s worldview has been criticised by Quine for depending on dogmas and is not shared by everybody. As Norman Malcolm pointed out, it is clear that “necessary existence” is possible and not contradictory within some “forms of life” and their language games. This suggests that at least within these forms of life, necessary existence is not an impossible or invented category of existence, so Anselm’s argument does not depend on special pleading.

Further, other critics suggest that Anselm’s argument takes advantage of the useful ambiguity in the word “necessary”, thus depending on the fallacy of equivocation. The word necessary can mean de re necessary, in the sense it is used in Aquinas’ third way, meaning that God is self-explaining, doesn’t depend on anything, fully actual. The word necessary can also mean de dicto necessary, in the sense that it means that God’s existence is part of the concept of God so God’s non-existence cannot be asserted without contradiction. For example, saying “this triangle has five angles” would be to assert a contradiction, because the word tri-angle necessarily and by definition entails having only three angles. Could it be that the word “necessary” means two different things and that Anselm shifts from one meaning to the other to bamboozle us with a what Schopenhauer called a “sleight of hand trick?” While the concept of necessary existence is confusing and while the word “necessary” is used in both senses in the argument, the argument does not depend on ambiguity or equivocation because there is what Hegel called a “unity of thought and of existence in the infinite.” While there are two meanings to the word “necessary” these are related in that de dicto necessity refers to concepts and the rules of logic that originate in and depend on God’s de re necessity. Of course, Aquinas’ criticism of the attempt to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone is apt here. Given that most – if not all – people struggle to “conceive of” God’s nature, how can we analyse that nature to find necessary existence – another almost inconceivable idea – within it? Aquinas as right that while God’s existence may be self-evident, it is not self-evident to us, and therefore that it is better to demonstrate His existence from what is known, observations. Nevertheless, the question asks whether the Ontological Argument depends on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome and the answer to that must be that it does not. There is no equivocation or fundamental ambiguity on which the argument depends.

In conclusion, Russell was right to say that “it is easier to feel convinced that it must be fallacious than it is to find out precisely where the fallacy lies.” The Ontological Argument does not depend on logical fallacies that cannot be overcome. It is a valid argument, but depends for its soundness on the particular worldview or form of life within which it is advanced.

“Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools!” Discuss

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In his Proslogium Chapter II St Anselm quoted Psalm 14:1 “the fool says in his heart there is no God” and then attempted to demonstrate that atheists are indeed fools in asserting a straight contradiction – that God (who necessarily exists by definition) does not exist.  Gaunilo responded in his wittily titled “On behalf of the Fool”, using his famous “perfect island” analogy to reduce St Anselm’s argument to absurdity as part of a more sophisticated multi-pronged attack.  Despite the fact that St Anselm attempted to refute Gaunilo’s points in his Responsio, Gaunilo succeeded in showing that Atheists are not in fact fools. 

Firstly, Gaunilo reduced Anselm’s argument in Proslogium II to absurdity, pointing out that “if a man should try to prove to me by such reasoning that this island truly exists… either I should believe that he was jesting, or I know not which I ought to regard as the greater fool: myself supposing I should allow him this proof or him, if he should suppose that he had established with any certainly the existence of this island…”  Anselm was right to object, noting how God is not like an island or any other thing in time and space, so that while God is capable of necessarily existing, the island is not.  “I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality of in concept alone (except that than which nothing greater can be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his island, not to be lost again…” However, in practice Gaunilo’s point still stands because asserting God’s necessary existence cannot take us beyond the world of words and ideas. As Kant (in his Critique of Pure Reason 1787) and later Russell pointed out, existence is not a predicate and adds nothing to the concept of an object to make it more perfect and therefore a necessary property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”.  Kant wrote “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment.” Further, to exist means to exist within – or at least to have an effect within – time and space.  As Kant later pointed out, contingency is of the essence of existence – having the capability to exist or not exist, to exist here and not there or now and not then.  To use Kant’s words, all existential claims must be synthetic; 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…”  While Kant’s criticism has been rejected by both Hegel and Quine for being “dogmatic” and based on assertion rather than proper argument, and while Norman Malcolm also rejected Kant’s claim writing  “In those complex systems of thought, those “language games”, God has the status of a necessary being.  Who can doubt that?  I believe that we can rightly take the existence of those religious systems of thought in which God features as a necessary being as disproof of the dogma affirmed by Hume (and Kant of course) that no existential proposition may be necessary…”, in practice Kant’s criticism appeals to common sense, as Gaunilo’s did.  It is unreasonable to claim that something exists when there is no way to see hear, touch, smell or taste it and when its effects are not observable on things that we can hear, touch, see, smell or taste either.  It may be true that the meaning of words depends on how they are used rather than on what they refer to in some cases, but not when it comes to existence!  Whatever people understand by the word gravity within a form of life will not change the fact that if you jump off a cliff you will fall to your death.  Similarly, you can’t define something into existence; as Gaunilo rightly pointed out, to suggest otherwise can only be construed as “a charming joke” (Schopenhauer dismissed the Ontological argument for being such) or plain foolish.  In this way, Gaunilo succeeded in showing that atheists are not in fact fools, but that advocates of the Ontological Argument might well be.  

Secondly, Gaunilo is right to point out that Anselm’s claim that Atheists are fools because they hold a contradictory idea in their minds is mistaken.  While Anselm suggests that the atheist conceives of God – who necessarily exists – not existing in much the same way as a fool might conceive of a five-sided triangle, through simply not understanding anything, Gaunilo points out that people can conceive of lots of non-existing things without being in the slightest foolish.  Take the Gruffalo for one example… many people have an idea of this frightening creature in their mind, while also knowing that there is no such creature outside the pages of a storybook.  He wrote “in my understanding, as I still think, could be all sorts of things whose existence is uncertain, or which do not exist at all…”  Aquinas agreed with Gaunilo, writing “the opposite of the proposition “God exists” can be mentally admitted.” Summa Theologica 1:2:1 and much later, Kant also agreed that it is perfectly possible to conceive of God while rejecting any claim that God exists, writing “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…” Anselm tries in this as well to distinguish between God and other things, writing “if that thing can be conceived at all, it must exist” because God alone, as that than which nothing greater can be conceived of, must necessarily exist.  Later, Charles Hartshorne agreed with Anselm, pointing out that either God is impossible, or that he exists contingently or that he exists necessarily.  The Ontological Argument shows that God cannot exist contingently – or He would not be worthy of worship or “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and Hartshorne argues that God’s existence is not impossible, leaving only the possibility that God exists necessarily.  Nevertheless, Gaunilo points out that Anselm is mistaken in claiming that because we can only conceive of God necessarily existing, he necessarily exists.  This is not how we conceive of things; the artist conceives of an object before they put brush to canvas, so the idea exists “in intellectu” before and prior it it being “in re” – the idea of an object and the object are two separate and separable things in all cases, including God.  I could conceive of God as a necessarily existing being, but my conception of him would be something separate from his actual existence as what I have conceived of, leaving open the possibility that He could be only an idea in the mind, however apparently contradictory that might be. Again, as Kant wrote, “Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may contain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute to it existence..” In this way as well, therefore, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools.  

Thirdly, Gaunilo argues that some atheists could recognise the word “God” without having an idea of what God is sufficiently for it to contain a contradiction, which is convincing.  I might recognize the word “squircle” – and even begin to appreciate what concept it might refer to – while still unable to conceive of a square-circle properly.  The squircle is therefore not “in intellectu”, let alone “in re” despite my accepting the definition of a squircle as a square circle.  As Russell later pointed out, if I say “the present King of France is bald” it seems like I am making a sensible proposition that is capable of being true or false, but actually because there is no present King of France, the proposition is not capable of being either true or false and is therefore meaningless.  Is it not possible that when the Atheist accepts that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” they do no more than you might in momentarily wondering if the present King of France is bald? On reflection they then conclude that there is no present King of France, so the question is meaningless.  In relation to Anselm’s argument, the Atheist then reflects on the concept of necessary existence and concludes that it is impossible, so the concept of God is impossible and the Ontological argument meaningless.  Here as well, Gaunilo showed that the Atheist is not a fool, but rather a person too sophisticated to be taken in by what Schopenhauer called Anselm’s “sleight of hand trick“.  

Finally, Gaunilo points out that nobody can have a complete conception of the nature of God, because God’s nature is to be mysterious, unlike any other thing and greater than that which can be conceived of. It follows that – Atheist or not – without a clear idea of God it is impossible to analyse that idea and find existence or necessary existence within it.  He explained “I do not know that reality itself which God is, nor can I form a conjecture of that reality from some other like reality.  For you yourself assert that reality is such that there can be nothing else like it…” Later, Aquinas agreed, writing “because we do not know the nature of God, the existence of God is not self-evident” Summa 1.2.1 Although Anselm defends against this criticism vigorously, writing “It is evident to any rational mind, that by ascending from the lesser good to the greater, we can form a considerable notion of a being than which a greater is inconceivable” and “If he denies that a notion may be formed from other objects of a being than which a greater is inconceivable… let him remember that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen…” Gaunilo’s point stands because Anselm’s reasoning reduces God to being the greatest of things, rather than that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.  By Anselm’s own reasoning in Proslogion III God’s nature is not like the nature of other things and God’s greatness is not like the greatness of other things.  While other things exist contingently, God exists necessarily, so it is not possible to “ascend from the lesser good to the greater” or to build an understanding of God’s nature from an understanding of created things.  Further, in 1948 JN Findlay argued that “it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof.  For on that day, he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence.”  If Anselm is serious in Proslogion III that necessary existence is a necessary property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then in addition to making it impossible for anybody to have sufficient grasp of the concept of God to analyse it and find existence within it, it also makes God’s existence impossible.  As Findlay reasoned, a contingent being would not deserve worship & wouldn’t really be God, but a necessary being is a logical absurdity, meaning that Anselm’s argument proves that God’s existence is impossible.  In this way as well, therefore, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools… but JN Findlay showed that Anselm was! 

In conclusion, Gaunilo shows that atheists are not fools.  While Anselm easily heads off his “perfect island” criticism by pointing towards the more developed version of the argument he already presented in Proslogium III in his Responsio, Gaunilo’s full critique demonstrates that Anselm’s reasoning is unsound.  While Anselm’s a priori definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is reasonable, Gaunilo showed that he is wrong to assume that accepting this definition entails having a clear enough idea of God to analyse and find necessary existence within.  Gaunilo also showed that Anselm was wrong to ignore the existence of two separate stages in conceiving of any object, that of having an idea “in intellectu” and that of appreciating that the idea exists “in re.”  As Kant later agreed, it is perfectly possible to have an idea of a necessarily-existing being (God) while appreciating that there is no instance of such a being, however contradictory that might seem, because the world of ideas and the world of existence are separate and separable and it is not possible to define something into existence or prove God’s necessary existence from reason alone.   

Human freedom is not compatible with divine omniscience. Discuss [40]

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The tension between divine omniscience and free-will matters because without free-will God becomes responsible for the consequences of human actions and cannot justly use evil and suffering to punish “sinful” choices, to deter people from sinning or to teach them to make better choices in future, falsifying the both the theodicies of St Irenaeus and St Augustine and making the logical problem of evil seemingly insurmountable.  Both Boethius and St Anselm acknowledged the apparent contradiction between believing that God has omniscience and that humans have free will, at least sufficient to make them morally responsible for the consequences of their actions.  In Book V Part III of The Consolations of Philosophy, Boethius wrote “if from eternity He foreknows not only what men will do, but also their designs and purposes, there can be no freedom of the will”.  In De Concordia 1.1 St. Anselm wrote “for it is necessary that the things foreknown by God be going to occur, whereas the things done by free choice occur without any necessity.”  Nevertheless, both Boethius and St. Anselm believed that they had succeeded in reconciling divine omniscience and human free will and in showing that there is no contradiction between them.  As St. Anselm wrote “the foreknowledge from which necessity follows and the freedom of choice from which necessity is absent are here seen (for one who rightly understands it) to be not at all incompatible.” Nevertheless, while Boethius and Anselm succeed in showing that there is no necessary contradiction between God’s omniscience and human freedom, they do so only by highlighting the limited meaning that words like omniscience have when applied to God to such an extent that by attempting to solve one challenge to religious belief, they open up another. 

Boethius approached the task of reconciling divine omniscience and human freedom by arguing that God’s knowledge is timeless and therefore while God knows what free beings do, this in no way causes their actions because there is no sense of temporal progression or causation within in God’s knowledge.  Boethius wrote “[God’s] eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment… since God abides for ever in an eternal present, His knowledge, also transcending all movement of time, dwells in the simplicity of its own changeless present, and, embracing the whole infinite sweep of the past and of the future, contemplates all that falls within its simple cognition as if it were now taking place.“ (Book 5, Part VI) For God therefore, knowledge of what (for us in time) precedes a free choice, of the choice itself and of its consequences are all concurrent and there is no sense of process, of one thing leading to or causing another.  Further, God’s knowledge does not in itself precede what God knows, since God exists timelessly and the whole creation exists in the simple, changeless present to God.  Because God’s knowledge doesn’t in fact exist before what happens, God’s knowledge can’t be said to make what happens logically necessary.  As Boethius explains, God’s knowledge of what happens is not simply necessary, but rather conditionally necessary.  Just as my sight of the bus arriving at its stop at 3.14pm does not make the bus arrive at that time, so God’s sight of what happens in His eternal present depends on what happens and does not necessitate what happens or take away from the freedom of those people who make it happen.  Boethius’ attempt to reconcile human freedom with divine omniscience casts some doubt on the assumption that God’s knowledge of what, to us, is in the future causes what happens and so dilutes human freedom.  Nevertheless, in practice the difference between it being logically necessary that something will happen and being only contingently necessary that something will happen is more of a technical and less of a pastorally satisfying argument.  Christians believe that God is omnipotent as well as omniscient, so the fact that God knows that suffering happens and does nothing to stop it is the heart of the matter.  For the free-will defense to work as a defense of God’s goodness and justice in allowing suffering, God’s creation of free-beings must be justified by this being part of the best possible world and yet Boethius’ argument only serves to make this more difficult to believe.  If God created the world containing free-beings simultaneously with knowing all the suffering this action would cause, there is no way that human freedom can justify God in creating at all.  There was never a possibility that human freedom could exist without the holocaust or the sorts of gratuitous innocent child or animal suffering outlined in papers by William Rowe and Gregory S. Paul, so the idea that God is justly punishing human beings for misusing free-will seems void and the Christian salvation narrative falls flat.  While Schleiermacher, drawing on St. Paul’s argument in Romans 5, argued that God would be justified in causing us to fall into sin, evil and suffering because this facilitates and enlarges God’s gift of grace in saving us, as John Hick pointed out in Evil and the God of Love (1966), a doctor would not be so justified by causing injuries to patients because this facilitates and enlarges their actions in healing these same injuries.  In this way it seems that Boethius’ attempt to reconcile human freedom with divine omniscience, while interesting on a technical level, only serves to open Christian belief to further challenges. 

Secondly, as William Lane Craig explains in his article “St. Anselm on Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingency” (1986) St Anselm began by agreeing with Boethius, arguing that the proposition “If God foreknows something, necessarily this thing will occur” is logically equivalent to the proposition “If this thing will occur, necessarily it will occur.” Because the proposition contains an “if” the event is conditionally, not simply, necessary.  However, in his “De Concordia” St. Anselm went beyond Boethius with the result that he argued that God foreknowing that something will happen contingently (i.e. as a result of a free choice) actually ensures that human beings have a free choice rather than taking human freedom away.  As St Anselm wrote “Now, on the assumption that some action is going to occur without necessity, God foreknows this, since He foreknows all future events. And that which is foreknown by God is, necessarily, going to occur, as is foreknown. Therefore, it is necessary that something is going to occur without necessity. Hence, the foreknowledge from which necessity follows and the freedom of choice from which necessity is absent are here seen (for one who rightly understands it) to be not at all incompatible.”  Nevertheless, this argument is unconvincing because God’s timeless knowledge must be both of the fact that something happens contingently and of what actually happens.  To be meaningful, most people would demand that human freedom consists of being able to effect different outcomes – known as the Principle of Alternate Possibilities – but if God knows the outcome of a choice (whether or not that he also knows that that outcome is only contingently necessary) there is no alternate possibility, no freedom and no moral responsibility for that outcome.  Because God knows the outcome, that outcome will happen, whether or not it results from a choice that felt free.  Take an example; a person is offered a range of identical boxes and they are told that each contains something different.  They “freely” choose one box… but it then turns out that all the boxes contained the same thing, so the outcome of their action was in fact pre-determined.  Was the choice really a free choice?  Compatibilists like Harry Frankfurt try to argue that human freedom and moral responsibility do not in fact depend on the ability to effect different outcomes (the Principle of Alternate Possibilities).  Frankfurt uses the example of Jones, Smith and Black to show that Jones could still be free and morally responsible for shooting Smith even if Black had decided to make sure Smith died if Jones chickens out.  Nevertheless, there is a crucial difference between Frankfurt’s example and the case of human freedom and moral responsibility in relation to an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent God; Black is not omnipotent, omniscient or omnibenevolent!  Black does not know what Jones will do or whether he will have to step in and shoot Smith… or even whether he will miss.  God, on the other hand, knows what Jones will do and what He will do and what will happen simultaneously as part of his timelessly simple knowledge of creation.  God is omnipotent and omniscient and needs to be omnibenevolent as well if freedom is going to work as a theodicy but because God, unlike Black, knows what Jones will “freely” choose, that Smith will die and what He will or won’t have to do to square those facts. Because there really are no alternate possibilities in God’s case (where there still are some in the case of Jones, Smith and Black) Human beings cannot be said to be morally responsible for what they do, leaving God’s goodness compromised.  It follows then that St. Anselm’s attempt to reconcile human freedom with divine omniscience, however sophisticated it is, gets us no closer to a resolution to this problem than did Boethius’. 

Nevertheless, using God’s eternity to reconcile omniscience and human freedom demands that God’s eternity is understood in the sense of God existing wholly simply, outside time, rather than eternally and aware of the passage of time as Theistic Personalists like Richard Swinburne would prefer.  As both Swinburne and Wolterstorff have argued, this model of God’s eternity is problematic because it renders God’s knowledge so different from human knowledge that it ceases to be recognizable as knowledge at all.  As Anthony Kenny observed, for a timeless eternal God, “my typing of this paper is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Again, on this view, the great fire of Rome is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Therefore, while I type these very words, Nero fiddles heartlessly on.” (Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford, Clarendon Press) 1979, 38–9) If God really has no sense of progression or causation, then in what sense does he really know or better understand anything at all?  Swinburne points out that God can still have omniscience provided his knowledge extends to his knowing everything that it is logically possible that God can know.  If God exists timelessly-eternally, then what is logically possible for God to know is extremely limited, given that all sense of time as well as space must be removed.  Perhaps the best way to imagine it is that God’s knowledge of the universe can only extend to being aware of the singularity that gave rise to the Big Bang – within this infinitely small, infinitely dense particle the whole universe, all time and all space, all matter and all energy was contained, but in itself it would be far, far removed from the universe as it has ever existed since the beginning of time.  To use another analogy; a person’s genome is contained within the nucleus of a single cell, but knowing the genome is far removed from knowing the person (or people) the genetic instructions could give rise to.   If God’s attributes are so limited by his timeless-eternal nature, then the meaningfulness of religious language and of any religious claim about God is called into question.  Consequently, while Boethius and Anselm succeed in showing that there is no necessary contradiction between God’s omniscience and human freedom, they do so only by highlighting the limited meaning that words like omniscience have when applied to God to such an extent that by attempting to solve one challenge to religious belief, they open up another. 

Clearly, Classical Theists from Boethius through Anselm to Aquinas and later Thomists would disagree, arguing that seeing God’s eternity in terms of His existing timelessly and wholly simply is the only possible model of God.  A God who exists eternally in the sense of being everlasting and aware of the passage of the present moment cannot be said to be immutable, because even if God knows past present and future, if God’s knowledge is changed from being knowledge of the future into being knowledge of the present and then into being knowledge of the past by the passage of the present moment, then God’s knowledge is changed by and must depend on time to some extent.  While Classical Theists would accept that the content of religious claims such as “God is omniscient” is limited and certainly that the word knowledge cannot be used univocally, they deny that there is no content such claims.  St Thomas Aquinas’ doctrine of analogy attempted to demonstrate how claims about God contain meaning because concepts take their primary meaning in the being of God and only their secondary, analogical meaning from things in the world. For Classical Theists like Boethius and St Anselm then, using God’s timeless-eternity to reconcile divine omniscience and human freedom is rational and presents no insurmountable problems to religious believers.  Nevertheless, God’s immutability is hardly the most important attribute of God for Christians.  Immutability is in itself difficult to reconcile with Christian beliefs about the Fall, the Incarnation, the action of the Holy Spirit in the world and life after death.  As Nelson Pike pointed out, the scriptures are “unavoidably tensed” and so it is difficult to conceive of how they could retain the meaning and authority that Christian doctrines imbue them with while making so many claims about God that cannot be true if God is timelessly-eternal.  As Oscar Cullman observed in 1950 “in the biblical picture, God’s eternity is not qualitatively different from our temporality.” For Theistic Personalists like Richard Swinburne and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Scripture and the Good News that it contains must be the starting point for and not a potential embarrassment to Christian faith in an eternal, omniscient God.  It follows then that the attempt to use God’s eternity to reconcile God’s omniscience with human freedom comes at too high a price… and yet there is no other satisfactory way to reconcile God’s omniscience with human freedom.  Putting God as everlasting-in-time preserves God’s goodness – as well as essential Christian doctrines – but doing this in effect limits what God knows, compromising His omniscience and through that His omnipotence as well.  The passage of the present moment would at the very least change what God knows from future to present and present to past, making God’s knowledge depend on time, changable and not immutable or perfect. Arguing that God’s knowledge in time is further limited by logic, so that God can’t know the future insofar it is effected by free-choices compromises God’s knowledge even further. Realistically, what could God know about the future if all the ways in which free choices might effect that future are removed? In the nuclear age, God’s knowledge of the future couldn’t extend to knowing the world will exist tomorrow, and a God who doesn’t know whether tomorrow come is hardly more omniscient than I am! In the end it comes down to a choice – preserve God’s omniscience (and omnipotence) at the expense of human freedom, God’s goodness and essential Christian doctrines or preserve God’s goodness and essential Christian doctrines at the expense of his omniscience (and omnipotence).  There is no way to make logical sense of the “inconsistent triad” of Christian beliefs about God or to make human freedom compatible with God’s omniscience.

In conclusion, human freedom is not compatible with divine omniscience… unless freedom isn’t really freedom or omniscience isn’t really omniscience.  Indeed, there is no way to reconcile real freedom to effect alternate possibilities with timeless-eternal-omniscience, while everlasting-in-time omniscience is not really omniscience, because time at the very least changes what is known.  The implications of this are significant and show that there is no way to really resolve the logical problem of evil and that classical theodicies yield nothing.  Christians are left with an inconsistent set of beliefs about God, which they may well be willing to live with on an individual level… but which inconsistency can only cast doubt on the role of reason and philosophy in faith. 

Critically assess the belief that God is omnipotent. (40)

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Omnipotence is a central attribute of the Christian God; as the Nicene Creed affirms

“we believe in One God, the Father, the Almighty…”

Nevertheless, Christians struggle to agree on precisely what it means.  Broadly, there are two approaches to understanding God’s omnipotence.  Classical Theists, including many Roman Catholic scholars, argue that God exists eternally in the sense of being outside time and space and so wholly simple.  By this definition, God’s omnipotence means that he caused everything, even time and space, to exist but it does not necessarily mean that God can act directly in time, such as by performing a miracle in response to prayer.  By contrast, Theistic Personalists reject the timeless-eternal model of God because it makes God too remote for most Christian doctrines and practices to make sense.  If God is wholly simple, how can he also exist in three persons?  If God is beyond time and space, how can he know when He is being worshipped or understand the contents of peoples’ hearts, let alone speak to or appear to people through mystical experiences?  As Nelson Pike observed, the actions of the God of the Bible are “unavoidably tensed”. For Theistic Personalists, including many Protestant Christians, God must be everlasting but within time.  This means that God has the power to act responsively and directly to change aspects of creation, but this comes at the price of making God’s understanding of the world and his actions depend on time and space and events within them, seemingly making him less than supremely powerful.  It is clear, therefore, that both approaches to understanding God’s omnipotence entail God’s power being limited in some way.  Either God’s power to act responsively in time is limited by God’s timeless nature, or God’s power is not supreme because his actions are bounded by time and dependent on events outside of God.  In this way the belief that God is omnipotent is incoherent.

Controversially, Rene Descartes argued that God’s supreme perfection entails omnipotence to the point whereby God could make 2+2=5 if He so wished, suggesting that God can do the logically impossible, such as by creating a stone too heavy for him to lift… and then lifting it anyway.  Descartes wrote, “God could have brought it about … that it was not true that twice four make eight” (Descartes 1984-1991: 2:294).  Nevertheless, even Descartes had to accept that God’s power is limited in the respect that God cannot lie or will his own non-existence.  Tacitly accepting St Anselm’s argument, He wrote to a correspondent “God does not have the faculty of taking away from himself his own existence.”  Later proponents of the Ontological Argument Leibniz and Ross both developed this point, arguing that God exists necessarily in any possible world.  Further, as well as not supporting God’s omnipotence entailing unlimited power, Descartes position suggests that the laws of logic and nature are arbitrary, raising questions about God’s goodness.  As Plato pointed out in Euthyphro and as Bertrand Russell later argued, a God who decides what is good and bad arbitrarily, going on to reward and punish people eternally for jumping or failing to jump through a meaningless moral hoop, is no better than a tyrant and certainly not worthy of worship.  In this way, believing that God’s omnipotence means that he can do the logically impossible is both incompatible with the Christian belief that God is all-good and incompatible with God’s supreme perfection.  This demonstrates that the belief that God is omnipotence is incoherent when defined in this timeless-eternal sense.

St Thomas Aquinas argued that God is eternal in the sense of being wholly simple and outside time.  In this way, God’s creative action must be single, limiting God’s power to what is actually possible, logically possible and compatible with God’s timeless nature.   Much as Descartes later did, Aquinas argued that God could not act in a way that conflicts with his God-like nature, such as by doing what is evil.  For Aquinas, God’s actions are also limited by what is possible in this world, so it is not possible for God to create a square circle or make 2+2=5 within this world. Because his creative act is timeless and so single and simple, God cannot do x and not x in the same timeless act of creation.  Nevertheless, Of course, Thomist scholars like Gerry Hughes SJ have reasoned that God’s omnipotence means that He could have created another world in which different logical rules apply, but only if such a world was consistent with what Richard Swinburne has called the Best Possible World Type. It would not be actually possible (consistent with God’s nature) to create a substandard world, so God’s power to create a world with different logical laws in which 2+2 could =5 depends on that world being equivalent to this in terms of fulfilling God’s purpose for it.  Aquinas’ argument is problematic in this respect.  How could God create more than one world if He is indeed timeless and spaceless?  Multiple acts of creation imply a separation in time and space that is inconsistent with God’s timeless nature, making it not actually possible for God to have created any other world.  In the end, Aquinas’ argument is no better than Descartes when it comes to defending God’s unlimited power.  For both Descartes and Aquinas then, God’s power is significantly constrained by His own nature, making the belief in omnipotence, when understood to mean having timeless-eternally unlimited power, uncoherent. 

Theistic Personalists such as Richard Swinburne and William Lane Craig have sought to make sense of the belief that God is omnipotent by arguing that God is everlasting in time.  They reject the Classical Theist argument that God can be timelessly eternal on the basis that such a God is inconsistent with the Bible and tenets of Christian doctrine like God existing in three persons or becoming incarnate and because, as Sir Anthony Kenny argued, the idea of God existing or acting in a timeless way is “radically incoherent” given that the matrix which makes existence and action possible is time.  The idea that God is everlasting in time is supported by the Bible, in verses such as

“The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary” Isaiah 40:28

In this case, God’s omnipotence entails being able to do everything that it is logically possible to do from a point in time.  As Swinburne wrote in 1973

“[God] is omnipotent at time t = if  [God] is able at t to bring about any state of affairs p such that it is consistent with the facts about what happened before t that, after t, [God] should bring about p…”

By this analysis, given the facts the go before the present moment t, in this moment God could not create a square circle or create a rock too heavy for him to lift and nor could God do something evil or act so as to bring about a worse result.  Also, God cannot change the past or, arguably, know the future outcome of free actions. Despite this, both Swinburne and Leftow argue that God is omnipotent.  They reject the claim that not being able to do something logically impossible or inconsistent with one’s nature is a real limitation on power.  Nobody thinks Donald Trump is not powerful because he cannot fly, give birth or make square circles!  By this definition, God being omnipotent entails him having power in much the same way as human beings have power, only to a much greater degree.  Nevertheless, surely this univocal interpretation of God’s omnipotence is unsatisfactory.  Not only does it seem to anthropomorphise God and sell short the belief that he is supremely powerful, but it is also inconsistent with the Bible, as in Isaiah 55:8

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.

In this way as well, believing in an everlastingly omnipotent God is incoherent. 

Further, when it comes to an everlasting God in time, what evidence is there to support belief in the existence of a God who exists and acts like an invisible superman?  The arguments for God’s existence do nothing to support the existence of such a God and, if William James’ analysis of genuine mystical experience is to believed, neither do Religious Experiences.  It is true that the everlasting God of the Theistic Personalists makes far more sense of God’s actions as recorded in the Bible (if not all of God’s words) than does the eternal God of the Classical Theist tradition, but what is the rational basis for accepting the Bible as the primary, in fact almost the only, authority for the existence of such a God?   Given the insights of Biblical Criticism, it seems that having faith that God exists – and is omnipotent – on the basis of scripture alone (Sola Scriptura) cannot be rational.  Further, even if faith is “assurance about what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1, the Bible is inconsistent in what it suggests about God’s omnipotence.  In Genesis 2 God searches for a helper for Adam, trying out each animal before settling on making woman out of Adam’s rib… not even very competent!  Yet, in Matthew 19:26 Jesus affirms that “with God all things are possible.”  It seems that believing that God exists and is omnipotent in a way that is everlasting in time on the strength of the Bible is incoherent. 

In conclusion, believing that God is omnipotent remains a central part of Christian doctrine and yet is it an incoherent belief.  This demonstrates the extent to which faith is not a rational position to hold.  Of course, this makes little difference to those believers who understand faith to be non-propositional, constituting…

“confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Hebrews 11:1

Yet, for those looking for propositional faith, faith that is well supported by evidence and argument, the incoherence of omnipotence as a key attribute of God and its lack of compatibility with either God’s goodness or the Bible will make it difficult to remain a Christian. 

St. Anselm succeeded in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone. Discuss [40]

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Most of the arguments for God’s existence start with observations of the natural world, concluding a posteriori, after the fact, that God’s existence is the most probable explanation of those observations.  As such, most arguments for God’s existence are inductive and so are subject to the problem of induction; even when these arguments are strong, they do not provide proof but only a high degree of probability. Their conclusions are always falsifiable if and when observations are found to be flawed or incomplete (and the premises of the argument thus shown to be untrue), as well as if and when a more probable explanation of these observations is suggested.  Because of the limitations of arguments for God’s existence that start with observations, St Anselm sought to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.  In his Monologion (1075-6) he proposed a deductive argument based on the grades of perfection in things, arguing that the existence of God as supreme perfection is contained within claims that other things are more or less perfect.  Nevertheless, Anselm’s argument was criticized by his predecessor as abbot of Bec, Lanfranc.  Lanfranc argued that Anselm had not succeeded in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone, because the premises in his argument depended on observations, even though they did contain his conclusion.  Because of Lanfranc’s criticism, Anselm determined to try to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone in the Prosologion (1078).  Anselm developed two novel a priori arguments in this work and he remained confident of his own success, despite criticisms leveled during his lifetime, writing…

“I BELIEVE that I have shown by an argument which is not weak, but sufficiently cogent, that in my former book I proved the real existence of a being than which a greater cannot be conceived; and I believe that this argument cannot be invalidated by the validity of any objection. For so great force does the signification of this reasoning contain in itself, that this being which is the subject of discussion, is of necessity, from the very fact that it is understood or conceived, proved also to exist in reality, and to be whatever we should believe of the divine substance.” Concluding words of Anselm’s “Responsio” to Gaunilo

Nevertheless, history has shown that St Anselm did not succeed in demonstrating God’s existence from reason alone. 

In the Prosologion Book II St Anselm presents a simple version of what Kant later termed an Ontological Argument from God’s existence.  He started by quoting Psalm 14:1 and claiming that atheists are fools because they accept that God is “that than which nothing greater conceived of” and claim that there is nothing by that definition that exists in reality, when existence is a perfection and so my definition a property of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of”.  For St. Anselm, if God only existed in the mind, it would always be possible to conceive of something greater, namely something that existed in reality, so existence in reality must be a property of God.  This argument was criticised by Gaunilo of Marmoutiers in his wittily titled “On behalf of the fool.” Gaunilo objected to St. Anselm’s claim that Atheists accept his definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.” He argued that people can recognise a word without forming an idea of what it refers to in their minds and that is particularly likely in the case of God, because it is a word which refers to something that is unlike any other thing and which is beyond most peoples’ experience.  Further, Gaunilo argued that it is possible to have in one’s minds all sorts of ideas of things which do not exist in reality.  He then used St Anselm’s own example of a painter and a painting to reason that the idea of something in the mind must always precede understanding that that idea also exists in reality.   St Anselm rejected Gaunilo’s points in his Responsio, arguing that if Atheists do indeed recognise the word God but not have any idea what it refers to then so much more are they fools!  Later, Descartes’ examples of triangles and valleys support St Anselm’s reasoning here – how could somebody claim to recognise the word triangle without understanding its essential predicate of three-sidedness?  St Anselm then reasoned that God is not like the idea of a unicorn or a Gruffalo, because unlike any other imaginary thing, the idea of God is of a being whose supreme nature logically contains existence in reality.  He hit back at Gaunilo, claiming he never intended his example of the painter and painting to be used in the way that Gaunilo used it.  Nevertheless and despite these responses, Gaunilo’s criticisms are effective.  Having ideas “in intellectu” for words to refer to depends on experience, on having ideas about similar things to draw on.  When an artist paints, they form an idea of what they want to paint in their minds that usually draws on experience before they then apply paint to the canvas and come to understand their painting as an object that now exists in reality as well as in the mind.  When an artist paints a triangle, they have experience of three-sided shapes to draw on and if not that, then some experience of shapes full stop.  However, if an Artist tried to paint God, they would have no comparable experience to draw on at all, so the idea of God in the artist’s mind would always be prior to and separate from the idea of God existing in reality.  Atheists have no experience of God and so the word “God” is just a sound, a sign without anything to point towards.  Later, St Thomas Aquinas agreed with Gaunilo.  While he accepted that God’s existence can be said to be self-evident and known through reason alone to somebody who really understands all that can possibly be known about the nature of God, Aquinas noted that in practice most people have little concept of what God is.  In Summa 1,2,1 Aquinas wrote: “Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us…— namely, by effects.”  In this way, St Anselm failed to demonstrate that Atheists are fools because God’s existence can be known from reason alone.

Further, a version of St Anselm’s argument in Proslogion II presented by Descartes was later criticised by Immanuel Kant and Bertrand Russell.  Persuasively, Kant pointed out that St Anselm and Descartes are wrong to claim that existence is a perfection.  Taking the example of a job interview, a candidate who exists is not more perfect than a candidate who does not, rather the application of the non-existent candidate is meaningless.  Superficially, it might seem that Kant is nitpicking.  A real chocolate cake, any real chocolate cake, will always be greater, more perfect, more tasty etc. than any imaginary chocolate cake, even an imaginary one with zero calories.  No less authorities than St Anselm and Descartes saw this as a matter of common sense.  Despite this, Kant’s point deserves deeper consideration.  In logic, following Aristotle, there are two kinds of predicates – accidental predicates and essential predicates.  Accidental predicates are properties that an object may or may not have – like cherries or cream in the case of a chocolate cake.  Essential predicates are properties that an object must have or not be that object – like chocolate-flavour in the case of a chocolate cake.  In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) Kant argues that existence is neither an essential predicate of anything, nor really an accidental predicate.  Focusing for the moment on existence as an accidental predicate, existence cannot be seen as a quality that an object might or might not have in the same way that cherries or cream are qualities that a chocolate cake might or not have.  To explain this point, Bertrand Russell used the example of a claim such as “the present King of France is bald” – it seems like a meaningful claim and capable of being true or false, but in fact because there is no present king of France the claim is meaningless.  St Anselm implies that there is a scale of perfection, the idea of an imaginary God appearing lower down the scale, with Gods having more or less perfect attributes appearing alongside, with the real God at the top of the scale.  In fact real existence is a precondition of appearing on the scale and being capable of comparison.  Russell points out that when St Anselm defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” he begs the question and smuggles the existence of God as the object into the premises of his argument, reasoning that existence must de dicto be an accidental predicate of God.  If there is no “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” then predicating anything of it is meaningless.  St Anselm needs to establish the existence of God before his demonstration of God’s existence will work, so the argument could only ever succeed for a person who had reason to believe already, on other grounds.  For these reasons as well, St Anselm failed to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.

Perhaps aware of the shortcomings of his argument in Proslogion Book II, in the Proslogion Book III St Anselm had already presented a different type of Ontological Argument, reasoning that it is greater to exist necessarily than only contingently, so necessary existence is a property of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of.”  Here, St Anselm is arguing that existence is not just an accidental predicate of “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” but is actually an essential predicate of God, to use Descartes’ later example as three-sidedness is an essential predicate of being a triangle.  In his “On behalf of the fool” Gaunilo criticised this argument as well, trying to reduce it to absurdity by using the analogy of a perfect island.  Nobody but a fool would believe that an island exists simply because somebody says that it is a perfect island, so existence (necessary or otherwise) must be predicated of it.  In this last criticism, at least as applied to the argument presented in Proslogion III, Gaunilo fails to show that Anselm’s argument is flawed.  As St Anselm wrote in the Responsio:

“I promise confidently that if any man shall devise anything existing either in reality or in concept alone (except that than which a greater be conceived) to which he can adapt the sequence of my reasoning, I will discover that thing, and will give him his lost island, not to be lost again.”

St Anselm is right to remind Gaunilo that necessary existence cannot logically be said to be a property of islands, unicorns or gruffalos for that matter.  Such things exist within time and space, contingently.  No contingent existence can necessarily exist.  Only God, who is “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” has and must by definition have the unique property of necessary existence.  Despite this, however, St Anselm assumes that the idea of necessary existence is possible.  Persuasively, Immanuel Kant argued that because all our possible knowledge is of contingently existing things, any claims about necessary existence are like a “cupola of judgement”.  For Kant, all existential claims must be synthetic, capable of being verified through sense-observations.  We simply cannot claim to know that anything necessarily exists, so St Anselm’s argument is speculative and must fail to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone.  Further, Kant argues that existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything.  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…”

Kant is effectively agreeing with Gaunilo, although supporting his argument rather better, in reasoning that existence is “out there” in the world of the senses and so incapable of being demonstrated analytically, through reason alone, and without reference to the senses.  Today, the vast majority of people would side with Kant and Gaunilo in their understanding of what it means to exist, and for this reason St Anselm failed to demonstrate God’s necessary existence from reason alone.

Nevertheless, after WWII Kant’s world-view started to be questioned and along with it his claims that all existential statements have to be synthetic and that existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything.  Perhaps drawing on those like Hegel who drew attention to cracks in the foundations of Kant’s critical philosophy early in the 19th Century, scholars such as Hartshorne and Quine pointed out how dogmatic Kant’s understanding of existence and meaning was.  For Hartshorne, Kant’s criticism of seeing existence as an accidental predicate is fair, but ignores the possibility that necessary existence could be an essential predicate of God and only God.  Hartshorne reasoned that either God’s existence is contingent (which it cannot be, by definition), or God’s existence is necessary and necessary existence is impossible or God’s existence is necessary and possible, in which case God exists.  Rejecting Kant’s limited world-view, Hartshorne argued that God’s necessary existence is not impossible, so God necessarily exists.  Of course, Hartshorne’s argument depends on his ability to reject the claim that necessary existence is an impossible concept.  JN Findlay strongly disagreed with Hartshorne on this point, arguing that by showing that God’s existence can’t be contingent and can only be necessary when necessary existence is impossible,

“it was indeed an ill day for Anselm when he hit upon his famous proof. For on that day he not only laid bare something that is of the essence of an adequate religious object, but also something that entails its necessary non-existence…’ [First published in Mind, April 1948] 

While others have agreed with and built on Hartshorne’s reasoning, including Norman Malcolm and later Alvin Plantinga, those who side with Hartshorne tend to be those who believe in God on other grounds.  Again, attempts to revive the Ontological Argument serve to show that Anselm failed to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone to anybody who doesn’t already believe in God on other grounds.

In conclusion, St. Anselm’s arguments in the Proslogion fail to demonstrate the existence of God from reason alone.  Gaunilo, Kant and Russell among many other critics have shown how St. Anselm’s reasoning is problematic, firstly by showing how Atheists need not accept the first premise of the argument, that “God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” and by undermining the whole attempt to demonstrate existence by analysing the concept of anything, and then by showing that existence is not a perfection or quality that can properly be accidentally predicated of anything and that necessary existence is impossible, because existence cannot be an essential predicate of anything.  That is not to say that St Anselm’s arguments have no value.  While they fail to demonstrate God’s existence from reason alone, for those who already believe in God – or at least for those who already reject Kant’s critical world view with its limitation on possible knowledge and meaningful claims – the arguments remain an important part of articulating their faith and revealing the nature of God.

Can God act in the world? [40]

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This question is of huge significance for religious faith and goes to the heart of issues arising from the concept of God. If God can act in the world, this implies that He is in time, which raises questions about his perfection because acting in time suggests that God depends on the passage of time to frame His action. Further, if God can act in time and chooses not to, then can He be all good… and if God can and does act in time, can He justly hold people responsible for moral evil? On the other hand, if God cannot act in the world (either because He is outside time or because he is limited in His powers, by His own nature or by his decision to allow human free-will) then can God be understood to be omnipotent? Also, can a God who cannot act in time be the God of the Bible or the object of Christian worship? How could an inactive God answer prayers, be addressed by Jesus as “Abba”, care if people attend Church-services or be understood to work miracles and Religious Experiences? It seems that either answer to this question will cause problems for believers. Further, there is no way to know the answer definitively. Nevertheless, the claim that God cannot act directly in the world is easier to sustain philosophically than the claim that God can act in the world as this claim would usually be understood.

The rational arguments for God’s existence from observation – the cosmological and teleological arguments – point to a God who is eternal in the sense of being outside the space-time universe we inhabit. As St Thomas Aquinas argued, a God who is the Prime Mover, uncaused cause and necessary sustaining cause of the universe is “neither something nor nothing.” The God of Classical Theism is not a person or object and has no physical presence within space and time, yet God is the necessary creator and effects everything. If God is timeless and space-less, then God must be wholly simple and unchanging. This supports the idea that God is perfect and all-good in the sense that He must be 100% whatever it is to be God and containing no evil (understood as potential, falling short). If God is timeless and space-less, God cannot be other than He is. Yet if God is the wholly simple, timeless being that Aquinas’ arguments suggest and support, there are natural questions about His ability to act. Action implies time – a time before the action, a time during it and a time after it. Action might also imply some choice to act or not to act, or to act in different ways. Clearly, if God is timeless and unchanging, the degree to which “action” is compatible with the concept of God, God’s nature, is unclear. St Thomas Aquinas argued that the word “action”, when applied to God can only be understood analogically. What it means for God to act is not the same as what it means for a person to act. Certainly when a person acts, it implies time and choice, but these cannot be part of God’s action because they are excluded by God’s necessarily timeless, wholly simple nature. For Aquinas, God’s timeless action can be understood to mean only that God is the original cause of everything in the universe. As in the Cosmological Argument, God is the Prime Mover, the uncaused cause and the necessary sustainer of the universe and everything in it. For Aquinas, God can act in the world only by causing it through his single, simple creative act, and not by responding to events as they happen in time. Aquinas’ understanding of God’s action being timeless and limited to a single, simple creative act is consistent with his definition of God as eternal and wholly simple. This God, in turn, is relatively well-supported by rational arguments, in a way that an everlasting God-in-time – who might more reasonably be said to act in time – is not. It follows that strictly limiting God’s action in the world to his general providence in creation is easier to sustain philosophically than a claim that God can act in the world.

In addition, Aquinas argued that God can – and as the Scriptures reveal, did – create beings who can act directly in the world on God’s behalf. Firstly, God created angels, who repeatedly deliver God’s message to Prophets. In addition, God ordained that Saints can also work miracles and later respond to petitionary prayers. Further, as is affirmed in the Nicene Creed, Christians uphold that God became incarnate in the Virgin Mary and was made man. The Incarnation was part of God’s general creative action but made it possible for God to act very directly in the world for a time by self-limiting. John Macquarrie and later Peter Vardy argue that God’s omnipotence must include His ability to enter time and act in the world, even though that appears to compromise God’s perfection by making him and his actions depend on the passage of time. Remember, an eternal, timeless God created all natural laws, including the laws of logic. Our understanding of natural laws and logic depends on partial, subjective experience and can never be complete or 100% certain. It is, therefore, possible that God’s single, simple creative act included some occurrences “not commonly seen in nature” which appear to break the laws of nature and logic to us, but which are within these laws when seen from God’s point of view. One such unusual occurrence could have been the Incarnation, where God took temporary human form to act in the world, making sure to limit His own powers so that they did not cause too much disruption to the usual operation of nature and logic. Other such occurrences could include miracles, religious experiences and even instances of extreme beauty, all of which could have been built-in to God’s single, creative act with the intention that these would point people back towards the existence of God. In this way, maintaining a belief that God acts in the world only through general providence and not directly by “breaking” the laws of nature or logic, is consistent both with Christian precepts and with the concept of God as eternal and wholly simple. St Thomas Aquinas was careful NOT to argue (as Hume later did) that a miracle must breaks the rules of nature by particular volition of the deity. Not only did Hume’s definition of miracles block the possibility that any event could legitimately be called a miracle – because nobody has certain knowledge of the laws of nature and nobody can know of or observe God’s particular volition – but it also pushes believers to choose between believing that the existence of God is supported by the existence of natural laws and believing that God can act in the world. Aquinas’ definition allows for extremely uncommon events to be called miracles and does not demand that they result from a special act of God. Through Aquinas’ argument God can “act in the world” without responding to events in time or doing anything other than the simple, single original act of creation, so God can both be eternal and wholly simple – and so well supported by arguments – and be the object of Christian faith – able to act in the world. Aquinas showed that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It follows, therefore, that Aquinas’ position in limiting God’s direct actions to those ordained as part of the single, simple, creative act is easier to sustain philosophically than the claim that God acts directly in the world in a more spontaneous and responsive way.

Of course, Aquinas’ understanding of God as wholly-simple and eternal, limited to timeless action, is not without problems. As Nelson Pike observed, the Bible refers to God in language which is “unavoidably tensed”, so claiming that God cannot act in the world makes it impossible to use the Bible as evidence for his existence and nature and undermines using the Bible as the basis for other aspects of Religious faith and practice. Further, if God is eternally wholly simple and his actions – including the Incarnation, miracles and religious experiences – are limited to the single, simple act of creation, then the course of the world and of human lives seems determined and there can be little room for free will. Aquinas recognised this and sought other explanations for the existence of suffering than that it resulted from free human actions. He argued that evil is only a lack of goodness and that creation benefits from it, in the way that “the silent pause adds sweetness to the chant.” In addition, Aquinas saw no necessary contradiction between God’s goodness and his creating a world that included suffering, because God’s goodness is not moral goodness but only that goodness compatible with His wholly simple nature, the goodness that comes from God being eternally simple and unchanging, being 100% whatever it is to be God and not falling short in any way, and from God being the source of all good things in the universe, remembering that as evil is a lack and not a substance, a function of how we experience God’s creation through time and space and not a property necessary to the universe as seen from God’s timeless perspective, then God cannot reasonably be held to be the source of it. Nevertheless, Aquinas’ explanation of evil and suffering and the lack of room for genuine human freedom within his philosophical system is problematic. It leaves God choosing to send miracles and religious experiences to affect some people and situations but not others and God sending some people to hell for choices that were largely determined. Aquinas’ understanding of God’s goodness is a very long way from the understanding held by most Christians, so although his position might be easier to sustain philosophically than the position that God is everlasting in time and more directly active in the world, it is far from being the easiest position to sustain theologically, let alone pastorally. The sheer length of the Summa Theologica, which tries to reconcile Aquinas’ concept of God with the precepts of Christian Theology, is a good demonstration of this.

Nevertheless, even if God is not seen to be timeless and unchanging, but is understood to be everlasting in time in the way that Theistic Personalists such as Richard Swinburne have argued, there could be problems with claiming that God can act in the world.

Firstly, in the absence of sufficient rational arguments for the existence of an everlasting God in time, a lot depends on taking the Bible as evidence for both the existence and nature of an everlasting God. The Bible undeniably claims that God acts in the world but offers no clear or conclusive explanation of why God sometimes does not act and how God holds people eternally responsible for actions he could ultimately have prevented. Baruch Spinoza pointed out that if God CAN act, but CHOOSES NOT TO prevent the worst suffering, then it seems that God cannot be omnibenevolent. Surely it would be better for a Christian to believe that God is constrained and cannot act in the world than to believe that He chooses not to and consciously allowed the Holocaust to happen. Maurice Wiles, a leading Anglican Theologian, certainly thought so, along with many Protestant thinkers who have preferred to see God as limited in power than limited in goodness. Jurgen Moltmann is a classic example of this approach, arguing that God can act sometimes but cannot always do anything to stop suffering. Moltmann’s God expresses His perfect knowledge and love by suffering with people, although this raises fair questions about whether such a God, if also held to be the creator, would be worthy of worship. Would a teacher be praised for suffering along with her students even if she organised the trip down the mine which led to their suffering?

Secondly, if God CAN act and DOES act, then again the extent to which human beings are free and can justly be held responsible for moral evil must be in question. It is not a simple choice between Aquinas’ eternal God and determinism on one side and Augustine’s everlasting God and Free Will on the other; whether God is in time or outside it, it is impossible to reconcile God’s ability to act in the world – whether just through general providence or through direct interventions – with genuine human freedom and so with moral responsibility. St Augustine places God in time, if observing it from a great distance – as though from a mountaintop – and still struggles to explain how genuine human freedom is compatible with God’s absolute power and creative action and has to resort to calling how this works a mystery. Placing God in time and claiming that He can act directly in the world is incompatible with any idea of human free will or divine justice, so it remains easier to sustain Aquinas’ timeless God and very limited understanding of divine action.

Further, if God can act because he is in time and has the sort of knowledge that enables him to respond directly to events, then God’s detailed knowledge of events, even if God does not interfere in them, makes believing in human free will and the justice of human beings being held morally responsible difficult. Through the “Consolations of Philosophy” Book 5 Boethius attempted to dissolve the tension between God’s knowledge and human free will, suggesting that God’s knowledge of events is conditional on those events taking place, that God’s knowledge does not necessitate events happening as they do. However, suggesting that God is not only in time, but that his knowledge depends on events and thus changes continually is a long way from any idea of divine perfection or immutability. Is the object of Christian worship any more comfortably said to be contingent and ever-changing than He is said to be wholly simple and impassive? It seems that defining God as everlasting and placing Him in time fails to resolve either the philosophical or the theological problems raised with claiming that He acts in the world, so although Aquinas’ wholly simple eternal concept of God and limitation of God’s action to what can be considered timeless and part of His single, simple act of creation comes with significant theological problems, it is still easier to sustain than the claim that God is everlasting in time and able to act directly in the world.

In conclusion, the claim that God cannot act directly in the world is easier to sustain philosophically than the claim that God can act in the world, at least as this claim would usually be understood. Nevertheless, limiting God’s action to what is timeless and part of a single, simple, general act of creation is difficult to reconcile with the Bible and precepts of Christian faith as outlined in the Nicene Creed, let alone with apparent acts of special revelation like miracles and religious experiences. St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica is a masterful attempt at such a reconciliation and was rightly hailed as being every bit as good as a miracle at his beatification, however his explanation of how God can be both eternal timeless and have been Incarnate and Immanent through history remains contentious. Perhaps, in the end, Christians need to accept that both God’s nature and how God acts in the world must remain a mystery, however unsatisfactory this is for Philosophers of Religion.

 

 

The best approach to understanding Religious Language is through the Cataphatic Way. [40]

/ vardycharlotte / Leave a comment

The word “cataphatic” comes from the Greek “kataphasis” meaning affirmation.  To take the Cataphatic Way is to affirm things positively of God and to assume a univocal understanding of words and claims.  By this approach, if somebody says “God is good”, they mean much the same as if they said “St Anselm is good”.  The Cataphatic Way is sometimes called the Via Positiva; it uses language confidently and positively to describe God, as a painter might use paints confidently and positively to represent what is in front of them.

There is no doubt that the Cataphatic Way supports people in understanding what is said about God.  Insofar as people understand what is said generally, people can understand what is said about God through the Cataphatic Way.  For those believers and theologians working with an everlasting, personal model of God supported by religious experience and/or a priori faith in the revealed status of the Bible – arguably mostly for Protestants – the Cataphatic Way is the natural and therefore the best way to understand religious language.  In the same way as I might affirm things about any other thing that I experience or read about, I can affirm things about God.  Nevertheless, this model of God is philosophically unsatisfying.

  • Firstly, many believers have no personal experience of God to support their affirmations, and those who do often suggest that their experience was ineffable (James) and resisted normal description in any case.  It is difficult to confirm religious experiences as genuine, so there is no quality control when it comes to things affirmed of God on the basis of them.
  • Secondly, Biblical criticism makes believing in the revealed status of the whole Bible very difficult, both because it seems to have been compiled by multiple authors and editors over a very long period of time – before even considering the late and politically influenced development of the Canon – and because it seems to reflect several different models of God rather than one unified model.  The God of Genesis 2-3 walks in the Garden of Eden and has to look for Adam and Eve, whereas the God of Job 38 – who asks “where were you when I set the foundations of the earth” – seems beyond such anthropomorphic descriptions.

It seems fair to conclude that saying that the Cataphatic Way is the best way to understand Religious Language may be limited to Theistic Personalists.  It might be the best way of understanding what somebody already knows about God and/or religion on some other basis, but it might not be the best way of coming to understand something new about God and/or religion.

Certainly, for believers and theologians who are Classical Theists and believe in an eternal, timeless God, the Cataphatic Way raises questions about the meaning of what is said, whether what is said and understood about God refers credibly to actual attributes of God and whether a theologian taking the Cataphatic Way can mean what they say and so be understood.  For many Roman Catholics, but also for others whose faith relates to if not depends on reason, God cannot be a thing that we can experience and observe in any normal way.  Religious experiences, if any are genuine, are best understood to be non-sensuous (Stace) and noumenal (James), an experience of ultimate reality that goes well beyond normal sensory experience and normal description.  It is certainly fair to suggest that the Cataphatic theologian is not like a painter representing a normal subject on canvas; what is affirmed of God is much further removed from what it could mean than the 2D canvas is removed from the 3D subject.  For most theologians, God’s nature cannot properly or fully be conceived or understood.  As God said to Moses in Exodus 3 “I am what I am” and as He said through the Prophet Isaiah

“my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways.” Isaiah 55:8-9

When the cataphatic theologian affirms attributes of God univocally they seem to be going beyond possible experience and beyond what the human mind can possibly comprehend.  In this way, using language confidently and univocally to describe God seems like trying to represent a singularity in paint… it wouldn’t do to rely on the artists’ impression because in many ways the nature of what is being represented is beyond and even the opposite to the medium being used.  Because it is highly likely to lead to misunderstandings about God, it seems that the Cataphatic Way is not the best way to understand Religious Language.

Further, as Pseudo-Dionysus argued, affirming things positively of God seems to limit Him.  To say that God is good in the same way as Anselm is good implies that God’s goodness is changeable, moral, relative to other things, because goodness when referring to things in this world implies such conditions and limitations.  For Classical Theists, God’s nature cannot be understood in the way that we understand other things because God is necessarily unlimited, timelessly perfect.  Words cannot, therefore, be applied univocally to God and the Cataphatic Way fails to support any true understanding of God’s actual nature and attributes.  Because of this, in the 11th Century Moses Maimonides argued that the only credible approach to religious language was the very reverse of the cataphatic way, the apophatic way.  For Maimonides, human words refer to human experience and are inescapably tied to the spatio-temporal framework that encompasses human experience.  Applying human words to God can only lead to misunderstanding.  The changeable, contingent nature of things in the world which leads people to recognize God’s necessary existence and to understand that whatever we can experience, understand and say then God is not that.  For Maimonides, this leaves open the possibility of using language in a negative sense to leave an impression of what God is.  Like a sculptor chipping away what is unnecessary and leaving an impression of what they are trying to represent, Apophatic theology takes away what it is not possible to affirm of God.  For example, God cannot be evil, because to be evil is to fall short, something which a changeless, timeless, perfect God cannot do.  For another example, God cannot swim because to swim requires a body to move through water from position a to position b.  God is changeless, timeless and perfect, which precludes his acting or moving in time and space in any way, aquatic or otherwise.    For some Classical Theists, it is the Apophatic Way, not the Cataphatic Way, that is the best way to understand religious language.

Nevertheless, scholars such as St Anselm rejected this approach, arguing that God gave being to this world as it is, so it is reasonable to affirm of God attributes of the being He created.  In the Monologion St Anselm argued that we are able to understand the world through concepts that exist in our mind because our mind comprehends God as their ultimate form.  We judge things to be unjust, more or less just… and this suggests that we have something against which to measure justice in our minds.  God is that against which we grade perfections in other things that we encounter in the world that God created.  God is not a thing in the world, but God created those things and we understand their goodness, greatness, perfection in relation to God.  In a way, Anselm’s philosophy relates back to Plato’s.  For Anselm, the world of the forms – the metaphysical concepts of justice, beauty, truth – are more real than the partial, contingent world we experience through the senses.  For Anselm, human beings understand what they experience through the senses through the concepts that already exist in the mind.  Words are just signs, attached to concepts that are hard-wired into reason by God, our creator, so it follows that these signs can be traced back to and applied to God.  Anselm safeguards against the possibility that people affirm just anything of God by arguing that signs are in a sense controlled by what it is that they point towards, so it is not possible to say something about God which is not consistent with His nature.  Given that only “the fool says in his heart that there is no God” (Psalm 14:1, Proslogion 2) we all have the concept of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” in our minds (in intellectu) and would understand the impossibility of affirming attributes that are not consistent with God’s supremely perfect nature.  As Marcia Colish suggests, Anselm sees language like a mirror reflecting some of the being of God very precisely, but only when it is directed correctly.

Clearly, Anselm’s Cataphatic approach is much more sophisticated than the seemingly naive univocicity of believers who affirm things of God such as “God is so pleased to see you here this evening!”  Nevertheless, it assumes a world-view which is very much in the minority in the modern world.  Most people, and most Philosophers, tend towards the Aristotelian model of concepts being built out of experiences, which are primary, rather than experiences being understood through concepts which precede them as in the Platonic way. Although neuroscientists are now gathering in support of Chomsky’s nativist approach to language acquisition, which seems to support Plato’s world-view, the dominant framework remains empiricism and the idea that human beings start as tabula rasa (as Locke put it) and that concepts and reason itself is constructed out of experience and socialization.  In addition, Anselm’s argument makes the assumption that human beings have an idea of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived of” in intellectu, something which St Thomas Aquinas rejected.  Before moving on to his famous five ways, Aquinas dismissed the possibility of proving God’s existence a priori, as in Anselm’s Ontological Argument.  He wrote

“because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature — namely, by effects.” Summa Theologica 1, 2, 1

He continued, arguing that “univocal predication is impossible between God and creatures...” Summa Theologica 1, 13, 5 because the cause and effect relationship is too slight to support a single meaning for what is affirmed of the two.  For Aquinas, what can be affirmed of God and in what sense needs to be even more strictly controlled than Anselm suggests, to prevent the imprecision in the use of religious language that attends on Cataphatic theology and subsequent misunderstandings.  Aquinas was persuaded by Maimonides arguments for apophatic theology, saying

“The reason why God… is said to be above being named, is because His essence is above all that we understand about God, and signify in word… Because we know and name God from creatures, the names we attribute to God signify what belongs to material creatures… these kinds of names fail to express His mode of being, forasmuch as our intellect does not know Him in this life as He is.” Summa Theologica 1, 13, 1

For Aquinas, the most that can be affirmed of God is analogous, affirmed in a strictly limited “timeless” sense.  As John Milbank explains, words have primary and secondary usages which are connected but not the same.  A person is healthy in a primary sense and a yoghurt in a secondary sense… what it means for the two to be healthy is different but still linked.  Similarly, the primary sense of words like “good” belongs to God and only the secondary sense to things in this world.  The meaning of attributes affirmed of God is not to be understood univocally, although there is still some meaning.  For Aquinas, the Cataphatic way is not the best way to understand Religious Language because it depends on the flawed claim to know or understanding the nature of God and because it conflates the two distinct meanings of attributes affirmed of God into one misleading claim.  While Aquinas’ argument is compelling, it leaves religious believers with a very limited set of things that they can say about God which makes it difficult to hold on to the spirit of doctrines, if not the letter.   Analogy may be a philosophically better way to understand religious language than the Cataphatic way, but it is not in practice much more helpful to religion than the apophatic way.

In conclusion, religion demands a different approach to language, one which is neither cataphatic nor apophatic, nor yet as abstract and technical as analogy.  The Cataphatic Way, for all the possibilities that it seems to offer in terms of making religious language understandable, fails to support any true understanding of God’s actual nature and attributes and actually symbol offers a better balance between the need for religious people to affirm their beliefs about God and the need for theologians and philosophers to conduct quality control by testing the possible meaning of those affirmations.  Symbol has the advantage of requiring people to learn a new religious language rather than seeking to apply ordinary words positively, negatively or with the use of implied or stated qualifiers (Ramsey).  Symbolic language draws attention to its difference and its specific relation to theology and in both cases, what is affirmed of God invites discussion and interpretation and discourages people from taking things on face value.  Symbolic language has clear roots in the Bible and in how believers have sought to express their religious experiences, but it resists facile, superficial interpretations and the misunderstandings about the nature of God that attend upon Cataphatic univocicity.  As Tillich suggests, the symbol starts to participate in the meaning it refers to, so that in using it words become more than just pointers to meanings beyond themselves.  God becomes present in the use of symbols; symbols acknowledge the need to draw on as many means of communication as possible, indirect as well as direct, when trying to express ultimate reality.  As Randall argues, symbols also invite a response and so acknowledge that what people are doing when they affirm God’s attributes is not just inert description.  Religious language does not just describe a state of affairs more or less accurately, it calls people to action.  In these several ways symbol and not the Cataphatic way is the best way to understand religious language.