L2 Divine Bot Download
Shanae Maerz
The foregoing may explain how it is conceivable without obviousincoherence that God and his nature and God and his existence beidentical, but how does it answer the second question? How does itexplain the conceivability without obvious incoherence of the identityof the divine attributes with each other? If each attribute isidentical to God, then each attribute is identical to each other bythe Transitivity of Identity. For example, if God = omniscience, andGod = omnipotence, then omniscience = omnipotence. But how could eachattribute be identical to God? If we can understand how each attributecan be identical to God, then we can understand how every attributecan be identical to every other one.
We have already seen how, if we embrace a constituent approach toontology, the divine nature can be coherently conceived as identicalto God. Being immaterial, there is nothing in God to distinguish himfrom his nature. So he is identical to his nature. The divine natureis, or can be thought of as, a property. So there is at least oneproperty that is self-instantiating: it has itself as its soleinstance, and indeed as its sole possible instance. If this iscoherently conceivable, then the same will be true of perfectknowledge, perfect power, and so on: if instantiated, these attributesare self-instantiated in every possible world and by the same thing inevery possible world (Vallicella 1992). Thus not only is the divinenature identical to an individual, each divine perfection is identicalto an individual, namely God, whence it follows that each perfectionis identical to every other one.
Thus there appears to be justification for the move from perfect power= God to perfect power = God. And similarly for perfect knowledge,etc. In this way one can render coherent the notion that theperfections constitutive of the divine nature are identical with oneanother. For if each is identical to God, then each is identical toevery other one.
So far we have explored how God can be (i) identical to his nature,(ii) identical to his existence, and (iii) such that hisomni-attributes are identical to one another. But a very seriousproblem remains, a problem that arises when we consider properties insome sense shared by God and creatures. It is obvious that the divineperfections cannot be shared with creatures: only God is perfectlypowerful, wise, good, and so on. Socrates is at best imperfectlypowerful, wise, good, and so on. But there must be some propertiesthat God and creatures share if God is not to be a wholly other thancreatures and out of all relation to them. These shared properties,however, pose a threat to DDS as we shall see in a moment. The problemin a nutshell is to reconcile the divine transcendence, of which DDSis an expression, with the need for some commensurability between Godand creatures. The problem, in other words, is to find a way ofpreserving transcendence while avoiding a self-vitiating negativetheology according to which nothing can be positively affirmed of God,not even that he exists.
At first glance, this may appear to be a senseless suggestion. Poweris an attribute that admits of degrees. Perfect power is thereforequite naturally viewed as the maximal degree of power. So viewed,perfect power is generically identical with any submaximal degree ofpower. According to Miller, however, there is an important distinctionbetween a limit simpliciter and a limit case. A limit simpliciterdiffers merely in degree from that of which it is the limitsimpliciter, whereas a limit case differs absolutely from that ofwhich it is the limit case. Thus the limit simpliciter of anF is an F, while the limit case of an F isnot an F. What Miller argues is that the divine perfectionsare limit cases, not limits simpliciter, of such properties as powerand knowledge. As such, they have nothing generically in common withthe corresponding attributes in creatures.
But to uphold the divine absoluteness, it is also necessary that Godbe libertarianly free in his production of creatures. He must be freeeither to create or not to create. For suppose that the divine natureis such that God must create. Then God would depend on the createdworld to be himself and to be fully actual. He would need what isother than himself to be himself. This entanglement with the relativewould compromise the divine absoluteness. God would need the world asmuch as the world needs God. Each would require the other to be whatit is. But then God would not be absolute (Dolezal, 210) Therefore,God must be free to either create or not create
Hasker takes the apparent contradiction to be real. But can he excludethe possibility that the contradiction is merely apparent? His viewcomports well with the notion that God is a being among beings. Butfor those who hold that the divine transcendence requires that Godtranscend beings in his mode of existence, his mode ofproperty-possession, his mode of necessity, and his mode ofuniqueness, it may seem more likely that the apparent contradictionsthat arise when we think about God reflect our structural inability tothink of him as anything other than a very special being amongbeings.
This final section elaborates a problem posed but not pursued in thepreceding section: the problem of reconciling the simplicity of Godwith the contingency of creatures and the states of affairs into whichthey enter. If the simple God knows that Tom files his income taxes onApril 14th, how do we avoid the conclusion that Tom and his filing aremodally necessary? In the last few years, numerous articles haveappeared pressing, and responding to, the claim that the commitmentsof DDS entail the collapse of modal distinctions. One way to presentthe problem of modal collapse is as a tension between two commitmentsof classical Christian theism. The one commitment is to DDS. The otheris to the contingency of creatures. Simplicity of God and contingencyof creatures form a dyad the logical consistency of which is inquestion. Call it the problematic dyad. The gist of the modal collapseargument (MCA) is that DDS entails the absolute metaphysical necessityof creatures. If God is simple, then he is of course also absolutelynecessary (not possibly nonexistent) and this for the reason that, onDDS, essence and existence in God are one. It also seems to followfrom the divine simplicity that any creative action that God performs,he necessarily performs, and this for the reason that the simple Godis pure act harboring no unrealized potentialities. (Indeed, heharbors no realized potentialities either since, as actuspurus, he harbors no potentialities at all.) Given that Godcreated our universe U, it follows that he could not have failed tocreate some universe and indeed the very one he did create, namely U.Bear in mind that the validity of the MCA requires the auxiliarypremise that, given divine omnipotence, divine creation cannot fail tosucceed. Thus there cannot be anything indeterministic about it: itcannot be that the divine creative act is absolutely necessary whilethe effect of that act, U, is modally contingent. (The truth of thisauxiliary premise is questioned by some, as we shall see.) Therefore,U cannot not exist given that God has created it, whence it followsthat U and everything in it exists of absolute metaphysical necessityjust as God does. But then the first classical commitment, DDS,collides with the second, the contingency of creatures, and thedistinction between necessity and contingency collapses. Both God andthe universe end up being absolutely necessary. If MCA succeeds, thenmodal collapse is upon us, the problematic dyad is inconsistent, andone of the classical commitments must be rejected, either thesimplicity of God or the contingency of creatures. If, on the otherhand, MCA fails, then the dyad is presumably consistent and bothcommitments may be upheld.
The classical theists who accept DDS but reject the modal contingencyof concrete creatures turn aside the MCA by rejecting the contingencylimb of the problematic dyad. Among them we find both Christian andnon-Christian classical theists. An Islamic Neoplatonisttheist is a classical theist who upholds DDS but does not uphold themodal contingency of concrete creatures. Such a non-Christianclassical theist takes an emanationist approach to divine creation. Onemanationism, as we find it in Ibn Sina (Avicenna), for example, Godeternally and necessarily brings into existence things wholly distinctfrom himself and in such a way that the things created share in themodal necessity of the Creator and his creative will despite theexistential dependence of the creatures upon the Creator. (Andani,2022, 11) More on the Islamic Neoplatonist view below. There are alsoChristian classical theists who accept DDS but reject the modalcontingency of concrete creatures, affirming instead theirhypothetical necessity. (Pedersen and Lilley 2022) Both types ofclassical theist who accept DDS but reject the modal contingency ofconcrete creatures exploit the putative distinction between absolute(unconditional) and hypothetical (conditional) necessity. God aloneexists of absolute metaphysical necessity in se; creaturesare necessary ab alio, from another, namely, from God. Thishypothetical necessity holds for both abstract and concretecreatures.
(1) Accept traditional theism but reject DDS. Many if not mostChristian theists, Protestants especially, will simply deny the divinesimplicity. Alvin Plantinga, for example, is a Christian theist whorejects DDS. (Plantinga, 1980) He is followed in this by many others(Moreland and Craig 2003, Hasker 2016).
Unfortunately, this understanding of creation is foreign to classicaltheism. On classical theism, creation is both originating andcontinuing. In addition, classical theism need not insist on thereality of the originating-continuing distinction. For even if theworld (the created realm) has an infinite past and always existed, itcould nonetheless have creaturely status. If that were the case, thenthere would be no real distinction between originating and continuingcreation. If, on the other hand, the world had a beginning in time,then, on classical theism, it still needs to be kept in being momentby moment. The stratagem proposed by Greeley above does not appear toallow the proponent of divine simplicity to evade the conclusion that,if the simple God creates, then the product of his creative actnecessarily exists.