Authored by: Mitchell LeBlanc.

Much discussion in the Philosophy of Religion focuses on whether or not it is coherent to speak of such a being as God. Many theists have defended the coherence of theism (Richard Swinburne has a book on this very topic). With that said, however, the issue of whether or not the concept of God is a coherent idea does not seem wholly settled. In a recent paper entitled “The Divine Attributes,” philosopher Nicholas Everitt outlines the current state of discussion on these topics. In this article I acknowledge a debt to survey articles such as Everitt’s as they are unparalleled in aiding our understanding of where a certain field stands. I would like to briefly introduce some of the issues he surveys so that we may know what is still an issue in the philosophy of religion.

Who is this God character anyway?

The list of God’s proposed attributes is indeed a lengthy one. For discussion purposes the focus will be on Omnipotence, Creatorship, Omniscience, and Eternality.

Omnipotence

It is widely considered that Descartes position, that God can make contradictions true, is incoherent. Most philosophers have sided with Aquinas on the issue, taking the position that God can do only that which is logically possible. Now, certain strategies have been taken to show that this idea of omnipotence is incoherent. There are clearly some logically possible things which God cannot do, he cannot sin, commit suicide, or change the past.

In an attempt to answer these criticisms, people have proposed that God’s omnipotence require him only to be able to perform actions which are logically possible for God to perform (relativized omnipotence). Under this view, if some of God’s necessary characteristics make it logically impossible to do some action, this inability does not count against his omnipotence. One might say, then, that God’s inability to sin or to kill himself are as a result of some of his other attributes, such that it is irrelevant to the matter of omnipotence that he cannot do these things.

However, this notion of relativized omnipotence has problems. Consider Plantinga’s example of McEar, a person whose very nature entails that the only action he can perform is to scratch his ear. Since what McEar can do, and what is logically possible for McEar to do are co-extensive, McEar is omnipotent according to the definition of relativized omnipotence. This surely is absurd, for how can a being that can only scratch his ear be properly identified as omnipotent. Further, this definition seems to entail that all people are omnipotent, insofar as people can do what is logically possible for them to do, an obvious fact.

Another definition has said that omnipotence is not about performing actions, but the ability to bring about states of affairs (thinking of states of affairs as propositional entities). Under this view, omnipotence is the power to make propositions true. But this view seems troubled, for how does one make the proposition “Mitch is running” true without Mitch actually running?

Some philosophers have attempted to define such omnipotence that X’s omnipotence is the power of X to actualize any state of affairs which is possible for someone or other to actualize. Under this view, even if there are states of affairs which God cannot bring about, it will not follow that God is not omnipotent unless the inability stems from a lack of power in X. Under this view, God has the power to sin but is unable to sin because of his goodness. Initially, this view seems contradictory for how can some being X have the power to do Y even though his doing Y is metaphysically impossible?

Creatorship

Traditionally it is said that God creates and sustains the universe. This is often given in an analogous manner to a human’s creation of some object, but perhaps such a comparison is not warranted since there are severe differences (human beings do not create ex nihilo, their creation is temporal, etc). As such, it is proposed that talk of divine creation should focus on explanation rather than analogy. Such that to say that God created the universe would mean that God provides the ultimate explanation of why there is such a universe. Under this view, there is no absurdity in saying that God caused himself since it would merely mean that God is the explanation of himself. This view is not without its problems, however, as we then need an account of the sort of explanation that is being provided.

Assume that God is the creator and sustainer of time. This is to say that God serves as an explanation for why an object exists at time t1. Unless God is seen as the sustaining power of the universe, there would be no explanation under theism for why an object exists at t1+n where n is some value. Under theism, objects have an intrinsic tendency to cease to exist, that is, without God’s sustaining of things there would simply be nothing. This view is not without some problems of its own. Imagine, similarly to Everitt, that Bob decides to murder Tom by shooting him in the head. Bob picks up the gun, pulls the trigger, and the bullet is on route to Tom’s brain where it causes as a massive hemorrhage leading to Tom’s death. It seems that Bob has single handedly murdered Tom, but if we factor in God as the divine sustainer than after Bob’s decision to pull the trigger, every other member of the causal chain is brought about by God. It is not only that God permits this event, he actually actively brings them about. For if God were to cease in willing that the bullet enter Tom’s brain, the bullet would not do so.

Some have tried to avoid this problem by saying that God is the sustainer of everything other than human free choices. Some have attempted to invoke an idea of ‘secondary’ causation, but this does not relieve the theist of the fact that God, even if only a co-agent, must be a willing co-agent. The issue of Divine Creatorship, and Sustaining is one that has implications for both the problem of evil and the matter of Divine Goodness.

Omniscience

Generally defined, Omniscience entails that God knows of every truth that it is true and of every falsehood that it is false. Immediately, if it is possible that there are some truths which are not logically possible to know, then no Omniscient being exists (under this definition). Some examples of unknowable truths might include the outcome of the Big Bang singularity, future human free actions (there is debate on both of these issues).

When speaking of Divine Omniscience, there is also a problem of indexicals. An indexical is a statement whose truth value depends on the when, where or by whom it was uttered. With God’s general definition including eternal and omnipresent in a manner such that God is not located anywhere in space, nor anywhen in time this poses a significant problem. The indexical proposition “It is not raining today” expresses truth if asserted, for example, in Toronto on 17 January 2010 but might express falsehood if uttered tomorrow, or somewhere else today. The truth of the proposition is inextricably linked to the spatio-temporal reference included therein. For a non-spatiotemporal being there is no “today” nor “here”. So this indexical is an example of a proposition which God cannot possibly know. Might God be able to know some formulation, though?

One might propose that God can know ‘It did not rain (timelessly) in Toronto on 17 January 2010″ but an explanation is needed to explain how this might work. Consider:

(1) It is not raining here and now (said in Toronto on 17 January 2010)

(2) It is not raining (timelessly) in Toronto on 17 January 2010

These propositions have different epistemological content in that knowing (1) does not entail knowing (2). The person who knows (1) might not know where they are, or be wrong about what day they think it is. That is, if one knows (1) and then comes to know (2) they have learned something. The two propositions have different entailment, content, inductive implications and explanatory power. This is good reason to think that an atemporal and non-spatial being could not be omniscient, perhaps, then, God is spatial and temporal.

Further, there is an issue of personal indexicals. That is, in the same manner that such a being cannot know that today is Monday, such a being cannot know the truth which I know when I know that I am hot. That is, even if God can know that the only philosopher in a certain apartment in Toronto is hot, it is not what I know when I know that I am hot.

Additionally, an atemporal being’s ignorance of indexical truths renders truths about named individuals also unknowable. That is, naming requires demonstrative indexicals such as “this one” and “that one”. If God cannot know such indexicals and cannot distinguish between person A and person B he cannot intend to save one and damn the other.

Lastly, notions from the field of Set Theory can be brought in and be of some assistance. It is a truth of set theory that every non-empty set has more subsets than members. Consider a set, S, formed of all truths. It is necessarily true that S will have more subsets than its members, but corresponding to each subset there would be some truth in saying that the subset contains a particular truth. Thus, there are more truths correlated with subsets than there are members of S and this contradicts the initial assumptions that S was the set of all truths. As such, a set of all truths is an inherently self-contradictory idea. If omniscience then requires knowledge of all truths (even all knowable truths), no being can be omniscient.

Eternality

One view Divine Eternity is that God is a temporal being who has always and will always exist. Under this view, some times are past, some are future and he ages. According to another view, God is not temporal any more than numbers are temporal. As such, it would be a category mistake to use tensed verbs in connection with an atemporal God so the application of past, present or future is incoherent when applied to this definition. There seem to be problems with both views.

If God is temporal, he cannot be the cause of time and is subsequently not the cause of everything contingent. Given modern science, it also entails that God began to exist 15 billion years ago (though it is still true that he always existence, in that he existed at every past time).

Philosophers such as William Lane Craig have attempted to solve this problem by saying that God first existed as non-temporal, then creates a temporal universe and then has a temporal existence. But how might we make sense of the idea that a being had an atemporal existence before a temporal one.

In avoiding these problems, one might adopt the atemporal view of divine eternity, but there are difficulties here as well. It’s already been suggested that divine atemporality rules out divine omniscience, but can an atemporal God even be an agent? An atemporal God cannot form intentions and act on them, nor can he respond to the events in the world. He cannot hear prayers and respond accordingly. There cannot even be a causal relation between God and the world.

It might be said that to say that God created the universe is to say that the universe has a contingent existence such that it would not have existed unless God had timelessly will that it should. But how might we make sense of a timeless willing? This seems as incoherent as a timeless headache, or timeless reasoning. Of course, this atemporal definition of cause seems weak. As necessarily false propositions entail every proposition it is true that there would be no universe if 2+2 did not equal 4, but the mere fact that 2+2 does equal 4 does not suggest that this equation caused the universe. The same applies to any notion of timeless divine willing.

Conclusion

The above problems testify to the fact that the philosophy of religion is still alive and that the issues are not merely those of theism vs atheism, but that even once a side is chosen there are issues to be fleshed out.