I continue my Sunday theology posts. You can see a map to the whole concept here. I'm figuring out the order and precise content of this series as I go.
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God has the power to do anything he wants. He is "all-powerful." In theology, we say he is "omnipotent."
The idea that God is all-powerful flows directly from the idea that he created the universe out of nothing or "ex nihilo," as the Latin goes. When we say God created the universe out of nothing, we are saying something different from what ancient creation stories typically said. In those creation stories, creation is the organization of matter that already exists in a chaotic state. When Christians say that God created the universe out of nothing, we are saying he not only ordered the creation but that he created the matter of the creation itself. [1]
The creation is thus distinct from God. The creation is not part of God, let alone all of God. [2] As a previous article said, God does not need the creation, although the creation needs God. The creation is not self-sufficient, although God is.
With the discovery of relativity in the twentieth century, we are now in a better position than ever to recognize that God not only created the matter of the universe but the very space in which that matter exists. That is to say, God not only created the universe, but he created the emptiness in which the universe exists. He created space and time. This realization may help clarify aspects of God's relationship to the creation that no Christians before the 1900s would have fully understood.
If God created the world out of nothing, then it follows logically that he must have enough power to create the universe. You cannot lift a rock if you do not have enough strength to lift the rock. In the same way, God must have enough power to create a universe out of nothing, meaning that he must have all power in relation to the creation.
So God has the power to do anything in the creation that the creation can do and more. Miracles are when God does more than the creation can do. God created the universe to follow certain natural laws. On its own, the universe follows these rules. But as God, God sometimes interrupts the normal cause-effect chain of reality and breaks the rules. This is what a true miracle is, when God does something in the creation that is outside the normal cause and effect chain of events.
Indeed, one argument for the existence of a Creator is the "cosmological argument," which suggests that the existence of God makes sense in the light of cause and effect. Although we should not consider the determinations of science final or necessary for theology, science currently suggests that the universe had a beginning. But if the universe had a beginning, it makes sense to ask why it began or what caused it. The notion that God was the "first mover" or the initial cause of the universe certainly makes sense, even if it is not an absolute proof. [3]
The common response, "Then where did God come from?" misunderstands the argument as presented above. The idea that it makes sense for the universe to have a cause is a comment on the universe, not on its cause. Indeed, this argument directly suggests that God's essence is "outside" or "beyond" the universe. Things inside this universe seem to need causes. We have no point of reference to say whether things outside this universe do.
An even more foolish question is whether God can create a rock so big that he cannot lift it, as if the notion of all power is incoherent in itself. The word "can" in this question is used in two different ways and we might reword it to ask, "Is it possible for God to create a rock so big that he cannot lift it?" The answer is no, because God can can lift any rock. In fact, God would not be omnipotent if there were a rock he couldn't lift. It is a trick question which more or less asks whether it is possible for God not to be omnipotent. The answer is "no."
Basically, to say God is all powerful does not mean that everything is possible for God to do. Is it possible for God to fail? No. God could only fail if he chose to fail, and in that case he would have succeeded.
God has the power to do anything, because he created the universe out of nothing. So God has absolute power over every aspect of the world. He can make the universe do anything the universe can do, and he can even make the universe do things it can't do.
Next week. G4. God can do whatever he wants.
[1] It is not clear that the Bible itself yet understood creation out of nothing. Genesis 1:1-2 can be read grammatically and contextually as the ordering of chaotic waters and creation out of materials that were already there. Similarly, it is not agreed whether Hebrews 11:3 pictures creation out of nothing. Nevertheless, it is agreed that by the end of the second century AD, the Gnostic controversy had solidified Christian belief in creation out of nothing, and it has been part of common Christian belief ever since.
The Gnostics believed that matter was evil. An early Christian named Marcion (ca. 150) even believed that the creator God of the Old Testament was an evil being. In response to Gnosticism, Christians asserted strongly not only that the God of the Old Testament was the same God as in the New Testament but that he had created the universe out of nothing, not from pre-existing materials. Non-Christian Jews seem to have solidified their belief in creation out of nothing at the same time for the same reasons.
[2] The view that the world is God is called "pantheism." The view that the world is part of God is sometimes called "panentheism" today. As early as the 100s and 200s, Christians generally rejected the idea that the world was an emanation from God.
[3] Another argument for the existence of God is the so called "ontological argument." In its classical form, it probably doesn't make sense. Anselm in the 1000s suggested in effect that, since we can conceive of the greatest possible being, he must actually exist (in a work called Proslogion). Although the way he formulated this argument probably doesn't work, some in modern times have attempted to rehabilitate it in a different form, chiefly Alvin Plantinga, The Ontological Argument from St. Anselm to Contemporary Philosophers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965). However, it is not clear that they succeeded.
Showing posts with label Alvin Plantinga. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alvin Plantinga. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Worthen: Presuppositionalists and the End Times (10)
It neareth the end: Chapter 10 of Molly Worthen's, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism.
Reviews of previous chapters include:
Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Chapter 8 (Democrat Evangelicals)
Chapter 9 (A Form of Intellectualism)
And now, chapter 10, "God's Idea Men."
The final sentences of this chapter are worthy to start with: "Schaeffer, Falwell, and other self-appointed spokesmen of the Christian Right appeared, to casual observers, to reflect some kind of consensus. One must not underestimate the power in this illusion of solidarity--but one should not take it for reality either" (240).
1. This statement comes at the end of a section called "history is written by the victors," which tells the story of the conservative take-over of the Southern Baptist Convention. Prior to the 80s and 90s, the Baptists tended to be Arminians, were largely opposed to any kind of credal statement, and put a strong emphasis on "soul competency," the idea that each individual is only accountable before God.
But by the end of the century, the Southern Baptists were controlled by 5 point Reformed Calvinists and had added credal requirements like inerrancy to their core statements. Clear roles for men and women were added to their statements to prevent women in ministry. When I was at Asbury in the late 80s, there were still ordinations of women even in Kentucky, before Al Mohler's notorious purge of the faculty at Louisville Southern Baptist Seminary.
There is an important point here. It can feel like the Bible has an obvious meaning and that all contemporary evangelicals see it. This sets up evangelicalism to be the true elect, those who are truly following the Bible. What isn't remembered is that there was a thirty year political struggle through which a particular ideology consolidated its power. The current "clarity" of Scripture within contemporary evangelicalism is an example of history told by the winners.
2. The chapter begins with the influence of "Reformed presuppositionalism," such as that espoused by Schaeffer, on the American church. Schaeffer wrote, "People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize" (221). His mistake is that he is talking about large ideological systems. He is right that people have underlying values that they live by, but to equate them with overarching philosophical systems is to skew the discussion.
And people are inconsistent. We operate by different paradigms depending on what the area of life is. More primary are our drives and urges, not our thoughts--which often are rationalizations that aim to justify what we want to do. And to the extent to which we might operate by presuppositions, they tend to be micro-presuppositions rather than grand recits.
But we have the "high end" presuppositionalists of Alvin Plantinga and Nicolas Wolterstorff. They argued that belief in God is "properly basic." That is to say, belief in God is something that does not need proof but can be assumed like an axiom of geometry.
They could be right although obviously it is obviously a matter of dispute. I have not read Plantinga's tome where he sets this out (Warranted Christian Belief), but I suspect his claim connects with the ontological argument in some way. If it is impossible to conceive of existence itself without a necessary Being, then the existence of God might be considered properly basic.
I suspect this sort of presuppositionalism is compatible with Wesleyanism, although I consider it a foreign body within our theology. I believe pragmatism is more at home within Wesley-Arminianism, and I hope there will always be room for the more natural breed. By contrast, a whole army of IWU students was indoctrinated in presuppositionalism by one of IWU's best known twentieth century professors.
Rushdoony is another presuppositionist, so radical in his thinking that he wanted to bring back stoning disobedient children. He influenced conservative American thinking with a stark capitalist ideology that he fused with biblical interpretation, sanctifying a particular economic approach as the Christian approach.
John Whitcomb and Henry Morris gave rise to the creationist movement. It's easy to forget some of the diversity that used to exist on evolution in earlier times. They effectively squashed options like the "gap theory" and gave form to the current assumed consensus within fundamentalism. Again, we live at a time when the positions of fundamentalism seem obvious and seem a straightforward reading of the Bible to many, but this consensus was won over a half-century of American religious politics.
3. The final element in this chapter to mention are the envoys of the end times, Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. "Like Schaeffer's offhand references to Locke and Jung, Late Great Planet Earth made the reader feel smart, in the know, and personally involved in history's climax" (229). It is worthwhile noting how often the revealed antichrist has changed over the years. Lindsey was sure that the USSR was going to attack Israel and that the European Common Market reflected the ten horns of Daniel. Who is the antichrist of the day now? It seems to change with the decade.
One more chapter...
Reviews of previous chapters include:
Introduction
Chapter 1 (Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism)
Chapter 2 (Evangelicals on the Edges)
Chapter 3 (The Strivings of Christianity Today)
Chapter 4 (Mennonites and Nazarenes in the 50s)
Chapter 5 (The Drive to Accreditation)
Chapter 6 (The Church Growth Movement)
Chapter 7 (The Canterbury Trail)
Chapter 8 (Democrat Evangelicals)
Chapter 9 (A Form of Intellectualism)
And now, chapter 10, "God's Idea Men."
The final sentences of this chapter are worthy to start with: "Schaeffer, Falwell, and other self-appointed spokesmen of the Christian Right appeared, to casual observers, to reflect some kind of consensus. One must not underestimate the power in this illusion of solidarity--but one should not take it for reality either" (240).
1. This statement comes at the end of a section called "history is written by the victors," which tells the story of the conservative take-over of the Southern Baptist Convention. Prior to the 80s and 90s, the Baptists tended to be Arminians, were largely opposed to any kind of credal statement, and put a strong emphasis on "soul competency," the idea that each individual is only accountable before God.
But by the end of the century, the Southern Baptists were controlled by 5 point Reformed Calvinists and had added credal requirements like inerrancy to their core statements. Clear roles for men and women were added to their statements to prevent women in ministry. When I was at Asbury in the late 80s, there were still ordinations of women even in Kentucky, before Al Mohler's notorious purge of the faculty at Louisville Southern Baptist Seminary.
There is an important point here. It can feel like the Bible has an obvious meaning and that all contemporary evangelicals see it. This sets up evangelicalism to be the true elect, those who are truly following the Bible. What isn't remembered is that there was a thirty year political struggle through which a particular ideology consolidated its power. The current "clarity" of Scripture within contemporary evangelicalism is an example of history told by the winners.
2. The chapter begins with the influence of "Reformed presuppositionalism," such as that espoused by Schaeffer, on the American church. Schaeffer wrote, "People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize" (221). His mistake is that he is talking about large ideological systems. He is right that people have underlying values that they live by, but to equate them with overarching philosophical systems is to skew the discussion.
And people are inconsistent. We operate by different paradigms depending on what the area of life is. More primary are our drives and urges, not our thoughts--which often are rationalizations that aim to justify what we want to do. And to the extent to which we might operate by presuppositions, they tend to be micro-presuppositions rather than grand recits.
But we have the "high end" presuppositionalists of Alvin Plantinga and Nicolas Wolterstorff. They argued that belief in God is "properly basic." That is to say, belief in God is something that does not need proof but can be assumed like an axiom of geometry.
They could be right although obviously it is obviously a matter of dispute. I have not read Plantinga's tome where he sets this out (Warranted Christian Belief), but I suspect his claim connects with the ontological argument in some way. If it is impossible to conceive of existence itself without a necessary Being, then the existence of God might be considered properly basic.
I suspect this sort of presuppositionalism is compatible with Wesleyanism, although I consider it a foreign body within our theology. I believe pragmatism is more at home within Wesley-Arminianism, and I hope there will always be room for the more natural breed. By contrast, a whole army of IWU students was indoctrinated in presuppositionalism by one of IWU's best known twentieth century professors.
Rushdoony is another presuppositionist, so radical in his thinking that he wanted to bring back stoning disobedient children. He influenced conservative American thinking with a stark capitalist ideology that he fused with biblical interpretation, sanctifying a particular economic approach as the Christian approach.
John Whitcomb and Henry Morris gave rise to the creationist movement. It's easy to forget some of the diversity that used to exist on evolution in earlier times. They effectively squashed options like the "gap theory" and gave form to the current assumed consensus within fundamentalism. Again, we live at a time when the positions of fundamentalism seem obvious and seem a straightforward reading of the Bible to many, but this consensus was won over a half-century of American religious politics.
3. The final element in this chapter to mention are the envoys of the end times, Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye. "Like Schaeffer's offhand references to Locke and Jung, Late Great Planet Earth made the reader feel smart, in the know, and personally involved in history's climax" (229). It is worthwhile noting how often the revealed antichrist has changed over the years. Lindsey was sure that the USSR was going to attack Israel and that the European Common Market reflected the ten horns of Daniel. Who is the antichrist of the day now? It seems to change with the decade.
One more chapter...
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Plantinga and the Ontological Argument
I've finally finished a chapter on arguments for the existence of God that I started over a year ago. Ouch. I started to end the chapter by revisiting a version of the ontological argument by Alvin Plantinga. I remember hearing in seminary that it had made some atheists nervous... and I remembered having great difficulty wrapping my head around it.
When I first encountered Anselm's version of the argument, I remember thinking, "Man, I just don't understand it." But I've since concluded it doesn't make sense. Just because we believe in God doesn't mean that every argument for the existence of God makes sense. I used always to assume that I was stupid when I couldn't wrap my head around such things. That of course is still sometimes the case.
But I've also come to realize that sometimes the reason a philosopher or theologian or Bible scholar doesn't make sense to me is because, well, they just don't make sense :-) (P.S. Feel free to invoke this principle when reading my thoughts :-)
Just to remind you of Anselm's argument, it goes something like this:
1. I can conceive of the Greatest Possible Being--the Greatest Possible Being exists in my mind.
2. A Being that exists outside my mind would be greater than one that exists in my mind.
3. Therefore, the Greatest Possible Being must exist outside my mind as well as inside my mind.
This argument doesn't work on more than one level for me. The most significant reason it doesn't work is because it confuses ideas with things, like mixing apples and oranges. For this reason, premises 1 and 2 don't connect. They are like ships passing in the night.
I decided to leave Plantinga mostly out of the chapter because I think his argument is tautologous. His first premise is, in my opinion, exactly what we are trying to prove in the first place.
His argument goes as follows:[1]
1. There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated.
2. Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world (and thus has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every world).
3. If premise 1 is true, then it would be impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world.
4. But if it were impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world, it would be impossible for that being to exist in any world.
5. Therefore, that being must exist in all possible worlds.
I have several problems with this argument.
For one, I don't like thinking of God as the greatest possible being because the hidden premise is that we are talking about this universe, inevitably the argument limits God to the limits of to this universe, the greatest possible in this universe, since our conception here is unavoidably limited to our frame of reference. Such a scenario says nothing about the parameters outside this universe and the cosmological argument in any case places God outside of this universe. The entire line of thought is thus ill conceived as a premise for further argument.
It does seem true that if God exists, then God must exist in all possible worlds, understood from our point of reference. We cannot conceive or argue about possibilities beyond our point of reference. Arguments of possible worlds are thus only drawing pads for talking about our world and worlds that might be like ours. This immediately undermines the entire argument as well.
My hunch is that, if we pushed the ontological argument in the right direction, and maybe a nuclear physicist could help out here, we would find that the ontological argument and the argument from necessity turn out to be the same thing as the cosmological argument.
[1] God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). My apologies to Plantinga for leaving out some of the subtleties of his actual argument, but since I consider his argument tautologous, it doesn't really matter.
When I first encountered Anselm's version of the argument, I remember thinking, "Man, I just don't understand it." But I've since concluded it doesn't make sense. Just because we believe in God doesn't mean that every argument for the existence of God makes sense. I used always to assume that I was stupid when I couldn't wrap my head around such things. That of course is still sometimes the case.
But I've also come to realize that sometimes the reason a philosopher or theologian or Bible scholar doesn't make sense to me is because, well, they just don't make sense :-) (P.S. Feel free to invoke this principle when reading my thoughts :-)
Just to remind you of Anselm's argument, it goes something like this:
1. I can conceive of the Greatest Possible Being--the Greatest Possible Being exists in my mind.
2. A Being that exists outside my mind would be greater than one that exists in my mind.
3. Therefore, the Greatest Possible Being must exist outside my mind as well as inside my mind.
This argument doesn't work on more than one level for me. The most significant reason it doesn't work is because it confuses ideas with things, like mixing apples and oranges. For this reason, premises 1 and 2 don't connect. They are like ships passing in the night.
I decided to leave Plantinga mostly out of the chapter because I think his argument is tautologous. His first premise is, in my opinion, exactly what we are trying to prove in the first place.
His argument goes as follows:[1]
1. There is a possible world in which maximal greatness is instantiated.
2. Necessarily, a being is maximally great only if it has maximal excellence in every world (and thus has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in every world).
3. If premise 1 is true, then it would be impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world.
4. But if it were impossible for that being not to exist in that possible world, it would be impossible for that being to exist in any world.
5. Therefore, that being must exist in all possible worlds.
I have several problems with this argument.
For one, I don't like thinking of God as the greatest possible being because the hidden premise is that we are talking about this universe, inevitably the argument limits God to the limits of to this universe, the greatest possible in this universe, since our conception here is unavoidably limited to our frame of reference. Such a scenario says nothing about the parameters outside this universe and the cosmological argument in any case places God outside of this universe. The entire line of thought is thus ill conceived as a premise for further argument.
It does seem true that if God exists, then God must exist in all possible worlds, understood from our point of reference. We cannot conceive or argue about possibilities beyond our point of reference. Arguments of possible worlds are thus only drawing pads for talking about our world and worlds that might be like ours. This immediately undermines the entire argument as well.
My hunch is that, if we pushed the ontological argument in the right direction, and maybe a nuclear physicist could help out here, we would find that the ontological argument and the argument from necessity turn out to be the same thing as the cosmological argument.
[1] God, Freedom, and Evil (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). My apologies to Plantinga for leaving out some of the subtleties of his actual argument, but since I consider his argument tautologous, it doesn't really matter.
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