Atonement and Union with Christ

A little while ago I wrote a critique of Anselm’s commercial theory of the Atonement. Since then, I have thought of another objection against a strict commercial understanding the Atonement. The objection is that if Christ’s death on the cross is just a literal payment of debt - the balancing of scales, then not only is repentance made redundant, as I said in my original blog, but we are also lead the position whereby union with Christ can play no part in Christ’s atoning work; for why do we need to be unified with Christ for Him to pay our debt? After all, I don’t need to be unified with a person if I am paying his debt or he is paying mine. 

Of course, one might deny that union with Christ has got anything to do with the Atonement. However, for many this is an unacceptable solution. Edwards, for instance, saw union with Christ as essential to how Christ’s atoning work is applied to us. He writes:

What is real is the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal; that is, it is something really in them, and between them, uniting them, that is the ground of the suitableness of their being accounted as one by the Judge: and if there is any act, or qualification in believers, that is of that uniting nature, that it is meet on that account that the Judge should look upon ‘em, an accept ‘em as one, no wonder that upon the account of the same act or qualification, he should accept the satisfaction and merits of the one, for the other, as if it were their satisfaction and merits: it necessarily follows, or rather is implied. ('Justification by Faith', in Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738, 158)

So, if we are persuaded, along with Edwards, that union with Christ plays an essential part in the Atonement, a commercial theory of it will need to be rejected. 

Is Feser Correct in Calling Hume's Fork Self-Contradictory?

In his blog post on the problem of induction, Feser accuses Hume’s argument against induction as being self-contradictory. However, I have heard a recent rebuttal that claims Hume's argument is not self-contradictory, like Feser claims. To see if Feser was correct in his analysis, let us turn to examine Hume and Feser's accusation of contradiction. 

Hume argued that induction can never be justified, since there are only two means by which something can be justified, neither of which works for justifying induction. The first way in which induction could be justified is via what Hume terms ‘relation of ideas’, and the second way is what he terms as ‘matters of fact.’

An example of a proposition that is justified as a ‘relation of ideas’ would be ‘all bachelors are unmarried’. What makes this proposition justified in terms of the ‘relation of ideas’ is that it is necessarily true by virtue of the fact that the term ‘bachelor’ logically entails the idea of ‘unmarried man’. Justifying induction in this way would require showing that there is a similar relation between the idea of x happening multiple times and an event y that always follows x. However, as Feser notes, there is no such connection; this because it is at least conceivable that an effect does not follow a cause, bread failing to nourish us for example, in a way that it is not conceivable to imagine a married bachelor. 

An example of a proposition known as a matter of fact would be ‘the British drink tea’. For the fact that this is true is not because of the idea that being British logically entails that one drinks tea (although it may seem like it), but rather because it is a contingent empirical fact that the British drink tea. To argue that induction is justified by matters of fact would mean that it is a contingent empirical fact that induction has been reliable and therefore should be justified. But, this is equally, if not more, problematic. This is because to infer from the fact that induction has been reliable in the past to the belief that induction is now reliable is to rely on induction and therefore argue in a circle, as it presupposes the reliability that is trying to be proved. Hume hence concludes that our belief in induction is unjustified.  

Feser argues that Hume’s fork is notoriously self-refuting, as the principle itself is neither known as a matter of fact nor is it true in virtue of its constituent ideas and known in terms of the relation of ideas. So, Feser says that Hume’s fork ‘is as metaphysical a principle as any Hume was trying to undermine with it, and its very promulgation presupposes that there is a third epistemic point of view additional to the two Hume was willing to recognize.’ He further argues that any attempt by Hume to salvage the fork from this criticism would also salvage induction.

As stated above, some have asserted that Feser has erred in thinking that Hume’s fork is self-refuting. The proponents of this criticism argue that Hume’s fork is actually justified in terms of the relation of ideas. They argue this due to their reading of Hume’s Fork as stating the truism that all propositions are either known a priori or a posterior, and their belief that this truism is justified in terms of the relation of ideas. 

Is this rebuttal any good? I don’t think so. For such a criticism has missed how justification in terms of the relation of ideas is understood by Hume, and as such has let the very point of Feser’s response slip under its nose. We can see this when we expand upon what Hume meant by the relation of ideas. In Hume’s thought, the kind of truths that are justified in terms of the relation of ideas are analytical truths. An analytical proposition is one where it is the definition of the antecedent that makes the consequence true; thus, ‘all bachelors are unmarried men.’ is true because the definition of ‘bachelor’ is ‘unmarried man’. It is for this reason that it can be known a priori. Feser’s point is that Hume’s fork is clearly not known because of any of its definitions that constitute it; and because of this implicitly assumes that there is a third way by which things can be justifiably known, and is hence self-contradictory. 

It is through this implicit third way of how we might justifiably believe something that induction could be justified. Other propositions that fall under this third definition could possibly include moral truths, truths about the external world, whether other minds exist or not, etc. etc. To argue, therefore, that all Feser is attacking is the self-evident truth that all propositions are justified either a priori or a posterior is to misunderstand Hume and to concede the very point Feser was trying to make. 

Anselm's Commercial Atonement - An Outstanding Theory?

There have been quite a few theories to explain the Biblical doctrine of the Atonement in church history. In this blog post, we will examine Anselm’s theory and see why it ought to be rejected.

Anselm argued that because of our sin we have brought great dishonour to God. Because of this, man had to either restore to God His honour that he had besmirched and offer compensation; or God would show that He was still Lord over man, and thus protect His honour by subjecting man to punishment. However, there was a problem. What could man offer to God as compensation? Anselm argued that man could only offer as compensation something that is not already owed by the person compensation is being paid to. But there is nothing man has that is not owed by God. He cannot offer obedience, as this is demanded by God. Nor could he offer repentance, as this too is demanded by God. What man could have offered was his life; however, Anselm says that man has forfeited his life through sin. 

This is where the need for the Atonement comes in. Because Christ was sinless, He did not owe His life to God as a debt and therefore could freely offer it to God as satisfaction. Moreover, because of the worth of a divine life, it was more than adequate compensation to cover the sins of the whole world.

There are many objections that can pitted against Anselm’s theory. There, is, however a common one that is no good. We will examine this first. It is said by some that Anselm is portraying God as a feudal monarch whose wounded ego demands some sort of satisfaction before he can forgive those that have offended His honour. The critics argue that it would be far greater if God magnanimously forgave the insult without demanding satisfaction. After all, are we not encouraged in the Bible to forgive those who have harmed us, even without reparations? 

However, this criticism will not work for two reasons. First, as has been noted by William Lane Craig (See his Cambridge Elements book on the Atonement), the fundamental concern of Anselm is not with God’s honour but with God’s justice and its moral demands. Indeed, sin is something that brings dishonour to God; yet, the reason why God cannot just overlook the offence is because it would be unjust to do so. Anselm says that if sin goes passed unpunished ‘there will be no difference between the guilty and the not guilty; and this is unbecoming to God.’ (I.12) It would make ‘injustice like God.’ The reason, therefore, why God cannot just compassionately forgive sin is because ‘such compassion on the part of God is wholly contrary to the divine justice, which allows nothing but the punishment as the recompense of sin’ (I.24). But how is it that justice determines what God does? Why does God, who is all powerful, not just ignore justice and forgive the injury done to Him? In response to this question, Anselm says that ‘There is nothing more just than supreme justice, which... is nothing else but God Himself.’ In other words, Anselm declares God to be justice itself, and God cannot be inconsistent with Himself. (I.12) 

Second, even if we grant the critics the possibility of God forgoing justice that He may forgive, this would not deal with the problem of shame. Now, there are some (See Stump’s work on the Atonement) that would claim that Anselm’s theory is not concerned with shame. I disagree. There are certainly implicit references to shame in his Cur Deus Homo (see Ch. XIV), and more explicit references in his other work: Anselm’s Meditations and Prayers make mention to shame. And this would make sense given the honour-shame culture Anselm was writing in. 

If God were to just forgive us without exacting punishment, then we would still feel ashamed. We would know that we had wronged God and His honour and had not done anything to make reparations. This would make it unbearable to dwell in God’s presence. The sacrifice of Christ allows us to offer to God something as a reparation for our sin and thus deal with the shame that we feel for having wronged God. And this is something that cannot be dealt with if God just forgives us without reparation, unless we adopt some counterintuitive position, such as God wiping our memories etc.

  

There are, however, real concerns with Anselm’s theory of the Atonement. To begin, Anselm's theory is viewed in entirely a commercial framework. What is unjust on Anselm’s theory is that there is a debt to be paid to God; God has been deprived of something that was His and justice demands that this is restored: ‘and this (what is just) is the sole and complete debt of honour which we owe to God’ (I.11 - Parenthesis Mine). This can be illustrated via the following analogy. Suppose that I steal £50 from Timothy. Now, on the restorative theory of justice advocated by Anselm, justice demands that I pay back Timothy the £50 that I stole and offer a bit more to make amends for the losses to him that were caused by my theft of the £50; as long as I restore and fix the damages caused, justice as been served.

Anselm is not without Biblical support for this ‘commercial view’ of the Atonement. Various Biblical passages liken the substitutionary atonement of Christ to debt or pecuniary payment. The Bible speaks of man being ransomed by Christ (1 Tim. 2.6), that man was bought with a price (1 Cor. 6.20), and that God removed the ordinances [which some interpret as debts] that stood against us (Col. 2.16). The question is how far are we to push this language? For pecuniary language can be used metaphorically, as when we speak of a criminal sentenced to gaol ‘paying for his crime’. So, are these verses to be taken literally, or metaphorically referring to some penalty or punishment that Christ had to pay? The issue with taking these verses literally, as Anselm does, is that God’s justice is then just concerned with the payment of debt — the balancing of scales — and not with condemnation being expressed against the act of the crime itself. In other words, Anselm’s theory fails to take into account the need for punishment for sin. Yet, there are many places in the Bible that portray the retributivist nature of God, and God’s displeasure at the act of sinning: ‘And I will punish the world for their evil, and the wicked for their iniquity’. (Isaiah 13.11; c.f. Psalm 5.5) 

A further consequence of Anselm’s lack of emphasis on punishment is that it does not adequately take into account the need of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Anselm does attempt to offer a reason for why the suffering of Christ was necessary. Anselm’s reason is that because man fell so easily, it is only fitting that Christ suffer and pay compensation with difficulty. Although, it is not immediately clear how this follows. On the commercial view that has been presented by Anselm, it seems that what matters is that God’s honour is restored with compensation, and that this is done by offering something up of great value voluntarily - a divine life in the case of Christ. But how this is done should be irrelevant. Going back to our previous example, if I owe Timothy £50, plus compensation, what matters is whether or not the sum is paid, not how it is paid. (We will assume I am not breaking the law, like robbing a bank etc. in order to pay Timothy.)

Now, it might be said that it brings more honour to God if Christ offers up something with difficulty than not with difficulty. Indeed, it is a greater honour to me if a low value gift is given to me by someone who had to spend a great part of his income to provide for it, than if it was given to me by someone with great wealth for whom the gift was a mere drop in the ocean of his income. The problem with this, however, is that Christ is worth such an infinite value that the offering of His death alone would be enough to satisfy the honour of God, without the need for the death to be difficult and painful. To argue that Christ’s life is not enough unless He suffers with pain and difficulty undermines His infinite value. Moreover, close reflection reveals that the reason why we value those who do things for us that are difficult is because they chose to still do that thing for us despite the fact that the act was difficult, and not because the act was difficult per se. It brings me no greater honour if my friend decides to do me a favour and makes it purposely difficult for himself than if he just took an easier option available to him. If I ask my friend to buy milk for my fridge — because I am too busy writing an essay to go myself — I will not be more thankful to him if he chose to walk to the grocers three miles away when he could have gone to the grocers half a mile away. Similarly, if it was possible for Christ to offer His life up in a simpler, easier way, it is not more honourable if He chooses to offer His life with great difficulty.

Another problem with Anselm’s "debt" theory of the Atonement is that it falls prey to Socinian objections. Faustus Socinus, the leader of this movement and from whom it derives its name, forwarded the following two objections against a commercial view of the Atonement, in his work On Jesus Christ Our Saviour (1578). 

First, he argued that if we view the Atonement as a debt, then it becomes difficult to see why anything is demanded of us once Christ has paid it. If Christ’s death was the payment for sin, then why do we need to repent and profess faith in Christ? The debt has already been paid and I should be free to go to heaven without God requiring repentance. (Gnomes 1990, III.9) Going back to our analogy, if Daniel pays Timothy my debt of £50, then Timothy has no right to demand any more money in relation to this debt from me. 

Second, he objected that a purely commercial view of the Atonement weakens the love and forgiveness of God: if all the Atonement does is pay my debt, then there is no forgiveness on God’s behalf - it is just a balancing of the scales. When I pay a creditor my debt, he does not forgive me. (Gnomes 1990, III.9) Yet, the Bible speaks of God as forgiving our debts: in the parable of the two debtors, the debt is not paid but forgiven by the master. (Lk. 7.36-50) 

It is likely that it is because of these problems that Anselm moved away from pressing his commercial view of the Atonement too hard and instead, inconsistently, moved to argue that what Christ paid was not literally our debt and the compensation required; but rather that we are to view Christ as offering something to God that was not demanded of Him, and because of this, He gains a reward for His service, and that because Christ as part of the Triune Godhead is in need of nothing, wishes that God gives this reward to mankind in the form of absolving him of his guilt.

This understanding, however, does not fit in with the rest of Anselm’s system, viz. Christ became man to pay off man’s debt and restore honour to God. If Christ’s death is not a payment of our literal debt but an earning of a reward that can be applied to anyone, then it becomes irrelevant whether Christ was man or not. Why did God have to become a man for the reward to be passed onto man? We could also ask why this reward could not have been given to the fallen angels. Anselm argues that this reward cannot be passed onto angels because Christ did not take the nature of an angel. (Ch. II.19) But how does this follow? If I earn a reward for a service I do, surely I should be able to bestow it upon whom I like whether it be a fellow human being or my pet cat, Miaow. Of course, it may be the case that the reward is specific to a particular class. A reward of a new book is not going to be much use to Miaow - at least not in the sense it is intended to be. However, it is difficult to see how the reward of having one’s debt canceled is specific to any particular class. An angel can make use of this reward just as much as I can. 

Additionally, it is unjust that a debt that justice dictates must be paid can be forgiven because of an action, which is not the paying of this debt, performed by another person. Again returning to our analogy, if justice dictates that I should pay Timothy back my £50 I owe him, then it would be unjust for him to wipe this debt as a reward for something his loyal servant decided to do. 

As we have seen, then, while Anselm’s theory might have prima-facie Biblical support, for the Bible does speak of the Atonement in pecuniary terms, it has serious problems when examined at a deeper level. These problems mean that Anselm’s theory of the Atonement, as presented in Cur Deus Homo, is inadequate. There may be amendments that can be made to his theory to mitigate these problems, but it is beyond this blog post to discuss such attempts here or other theories of the Atonement that might be offered as an alternative.

God, Conceivability, and Necessary Goodness

It is a basic principle of logic that if S entails B and necessarily S, then necessarily B. So, if it is true that God, an omnipotent and omniscient being, is necessarily good, and a good God would not allow a world to exist where there is more evil than good, then necessarily there cannot exist a world where more evil exists than good. Theodore Guleserian has a problem with this. He argues that we can easily conceive of a world where more evil than good exists. He says:

Think of a world, we will call it 'B' in which the only sentient beings whose existence is contingent are non-rational animals of various sorts or are sentient beings a good deal like the higher non-rational animals in our world - all of which suffer long spontaneous bouts of excruciating pain, and spend the few hours between bouts barely doing what is necessary to survive. We can draw the picture as detailed as we like: in this world, mutations do not take place, so the species to which these animals belong do not evolve. Perhaps they exist for an infinite stretch of time. And during this eternity they never experience anything we would call pleasure - only relief from pain. Pain-avoidance and other innate drives would be the only factors motivating their behaviour. (God and Possible Worlds: The Modal Problem of Evil, Nous, 1983)

Guleserian argues that given we can easily conceive of this world, it would appear that it is possible; there is, after all, nothing logically inconsistent about it. But this leaves us with the following options. Either (1) we say that an omniscient, omnipotent, and good (OOG) being would allow for a world where more evil than good exists, which entails that there is not one world that an OOG being would prevent, or (2) we say that a world with more evil than good is impossible, or (3) we deny that God is necessarily good.

To hold (1), he says, would go against our most fundamental moral intuitions and therefore should be rejected. We ought to reject (2) because we can conceive of a world where more evil exists than good, and it is in our basic intuition that what is conceivable is possible, at least in this case. We should accept (3) for it is the option that requires the least sacrifice on our basic intuitions: for even if we are convinced in the existence of God, and even that God is a OOG being, to reject that God has any of these attributes necessarily is not to reject that he has them at all, say contingently. 

I agree with Guleserian that (1) ought to be rejected. However, there are serious problems with his rejection of (2). Here is why.

First, Guleserian’s argument is founded upon the controversial idea that conceivability is a guide to possibility. This principle is popular amongst Cartesians who believe that the mind is separate from the body because one can conceive of thinking without a body - see Swinburne. But as pointed out by opponents of Cartesian dualism, how does the Cartesian know that he does not think this only because he poorly understands the mind? Like how someone with a poor grasp of a Euclidean triangles might think it possible for such a triangle to have angles that add up to something other than 180 degrees. Similarly, perhaps a greater understanding of God and good and evil would show that it is actually impossible. For this reason, I am of yet unsure if conceivability is a good guide to possibility.  

Second, the idea that God's existence makes a world with more evil than good impossible is not as counterintuitive as Guleserian claims. For contrary to Guleserian’s claims, many theists rely on the idea that an OOG being could not create a world with more evil than good to justify the very existence of evil, by appealing to sceptical theism. The sceptical theist response to evil argues that the reasons for why God allows suffering are beyond our ken. We are not in the epistemic position to judge the reasons that God might have for allowing the evil that he does. Nevertheless, we know that since He is good, and necessarily so, there must necessarily be good reasons for why He allows evil.

Third, if we believe that it is a great making property to be good rather than evil, then we have good reason to believe that God is necessarily good, despite what intuition may say otherwise. This reasoning being that the Ontological Argument proves that a maximally great being - a being that has all great making properties and no lesser making properties - exists necessarily. Guleserian anticipates this objection and argues that it is a weak argument as there are few supporters of the Ontological argument. However, this is just incorrect. The Ontological Argument is a well established and accepted argument within philosophical theology and has many supporters today, such as Plantinga and Craig, to mention a few. It is therefore not something that can be dismissed out of hand easily.

For these reasons, Guleserian’s argument is to be rejected. 

Hoffman on Why God Cannot be Contingently Omnibenevolent

In his paper ‘Can God do Evil?’ Joshua Hoffman puts forward a simple argument for why God must be necessarily omnibenevolent rather than contingently omnibenevolent. Hoffman begins his paper by noting that many philosophers and theologians have argued that God must be necessarily omnipotent. The reason for this being that if God was contingently omnipotent, then it is a mere contingency that He was able to create the universe, and it might have been the case that no universe at all was created. But, Hoffman argues, this would entail that there is no ultimate explanation of the universe or sufficient reason for the universe. Thus, the position that God is contingently omnipotent is incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) and should be rejected; this is if we grant, as Hoffman does, that God must be omnipotent to create ex nihilo, and we accept the PSR.

Hoffman believes that a parallel can be forwarded to demonstrate that God must be necessarily omnibenevolent. His argument is that an omnibenevolent being seeks to bring about an optimal world - this being a world that is at least as good as any other possible world. Hence, if God was necessarily omnibenevolent, God necessarily creates an optimal world. However, if God is only contingently omnibenevolent, then it is only a ‘cosmic accident’ that God is ‘so well intentioned.’ And this again conflicts with the PSR and should hence be rejected. 

Hoffman’s account, however, is flawed. For any argument that attempts to apply PSR reasoning to God ought to be viewed with some suspicion. For suppose we say that God must be necessarily omnibenevolent in order to provide an explanation for why God must have created an optimal world; we are still left with unanswered questions as to why God chose to create a certain world over that of another. Even if an omnibenevolent God must create an optimal world, why, we can ask, does God create this particular optimal world over that of another? Why has he chosen to create a world where all things are as good as they can be and a leaf falls at t1 instead of an equally good world where a leaf falls at t2? There are a few options that can be proposed to answer this. (1) There is only one unsurpassable optimal world that has no rival. Therefore, there needs to be no explanation beyond God’s omnibenevolence why He created this one. (2) There is an explanation, but we cannot or do not yet know what it is. (3) There is no reason for why God chose for the leaf to fall at t1 instead of t2.

(1) seems highly implausible. It is difficult to see how a world where leaf falls a second later than a leaf in another world ceteris paribus can be less or more optimal. Any appeal to chaos theory (the idea that small things can effect massive change, like the flapping of a butterflies wings causing perturbations in the atmosphere that can cause a tornado across the globe) is negated by the fact that God had to choose between the world ending at t1 or a millisecond later at t2; in this case there is no time for chaos theory to have effect. However, if either (2) or (3) are accepted, then a problem arises for Hoffman’s theory. If (2) is correct, then the person who believes that God is only contingently omnibenevolent can argue that there is a reason for why God is ‘so well intentioned’, it is just that we do not or cannot know what this reason is. If (3) is correct, then he can likewise say that there is no reason for why God is so well intentioned. 

Given that (1) is implausible and it would be inconsistent to hold to (2) or (3) in the case of God choosing between optimal worlds but not in the case of why He chooses an optimal world, Hoffman’s argument is to be rejected.  

Why We Need Act and Potency

It is no longer common to explain the nature of change in terms of act and potency. However, the philosophers of antiquity, such as Aristotle, saw the act-potency distinction as being essential to explain change. Indeed, Aristotle saw the distinction as necessary to respond to the challenge of Parmenides, who denied the reality of change.  

Parmenides’ argument is that being can only change if made to do so by something other than it. But the only thing other than being is non-being. Hence, change would require being to arise out of non-being. However, since nothing can arise from non-being (nothingness), change is therefore illusionary. For suppose that we have a toy plastic car and I put a match to it; it will ultimately melt and turn into mushy goo. But what metaphysical explanation can we provide to explain what has given rise to this goo? The explanation cannot reside completely in the fire because not everything fire touches turns to goo. The explanation cannot be that the goo is a combination of the fire and toy car, for any combination of things can be separated back into their separate parts, even if just theoretically; yet, we do not find fire or a toy car as parts within the goo. And the goo obviously was not hiding somewhere within the car, so the only explanation left, argues Parmenides, is that the goo has come from nothing, which is to say that it has not come at all but is just illusionary.

It might seem that the best way to respond to a challenge like Parmenides would be to disregard his position as absurd and inconsistent. If change did not occur, then I could not have typed this blog post on the nature of act and potency, nor could Parmenides have gone through the necessary reasoning in his brain to arrive at the conclusion that change is illusionary. That change occurs is just self-evident. 

However, this way of responding is inadequate; for it tells us that something has gone wrong, but it does not tell us what has gone wrong. It is only once we appeal to Aristotle’s act-potency distinction that we can see where Parmenides has erred. Aristotle argued that the error in Parmenides reasoning is to think that he has exhausted all possibilities as to an explanation for the rise of change. Aristotle maintained that there is another available analysis of change, on which change does not arise out of non-being but rather out of being of another kind; namely, being-in-potency - the way a thing could potentially be. To illustrate being-in-potency, a bar of gold is an example of being-in-act, but it can potentially be melted down and become a puddle, or be painted to be a different colour, such as pink, or be smelted into a ring, etc. All these things exist as being-in-potency alongside the being-in-act. This being-in-potency is a real feature of the thing in question and accords with its nature. Hence, it is within the nature of a gold bar to potentially be melted down and be a puddle, but the bar does not have the potentiality to grow legs and do the can-can. While it might be conceived that this could happen in one possible world, Aristotle’s talk of act-potency is not what modern philosophers today think about when discussing possible worlds. What a thing could do in any possible world is not to be equated with her potentialities; rather, a thing’s potentiality is related to a thing’s nature - something we will discuss in a future post. 

Aristotle argued that potency of a thing gives rise to act when something external interacts with the actual part of that thing. So, the external fire interacting with the actual car gives rise to the potentiality of goo. The potentiality of a thing itself cannot give rise to itself, otherwise it would be inexplicable why it has arisen to act at this time and not at another time, and this is true of things composed of parts that appear to move themselves, for it is the parts moving other parts rather than one part moving itself.

Now, it might be asked what exactly is being-in-potency. It is clear what being-in-act is - it is the actual stuff that we can measure. One possible answer is that we cannot know exactly what being-in-potency is but nevertheless can deduce that it is a necessary feature of the world to explain change. Alternatively, we could appeal to the mind of God and argue an occasionalist position, which says that the potency of a thing is what God has determined He will cause a thing to become when acted upon by certain other things. So, one might say that God has determined in His mind that plastic toy cars turn to goo when interacted upon by fire. 

Is God Greater if He is Only Contingently Good?

Avak A. Howsepian, in his paper 'Is God Necessarily Good?', argues that it is greater for God to be contingently good than necessarily good. The reason given for this by Howsepian is that a contingently good being is able to do more good acts than a necessarily good being. To demonstrate this, Howsepian defines two ways that one can do a good action: first, one can do a good action by directly performing that action, and second, one can do a good action by choosing to refrain from doing evil. So, to give the example provided by Howsepian, Fiske may do a good action by choosing to feed the hungry but may also do a good act by choosing to refrain from gluttony. Howbeit, Howsepian argues that we can only refrain from doing a good action if there is a possibility to do otherwise and we know that there is a possibility to do otherwise: I cannot intend to square a circle because I know that a square circle is impossible. A necessarily good being, therefore, cannot intend to refrain from evil because he would know that it is impossible for him; whereas a being who is only contingently good can, having the ability to be able to directly do a good action and do the good act of refraining from an evil. Howsepian says that the latter is clearly not as great as the former. Hence, God, should be conceived as a contingently good being rather than a necessary good being.

Howsepian’s analysis is faulty. Here is why. First, Howsepian’s argument is first predicated upon the idea that what makes God good is His possibility of doing good actions. But how does this make one any more good than a being who has not got the possibility of doing these good actions? For instance, it is possible that I be as good as the Apostle Paul, or John Wesley, or some other great saint. But this does not make me as good as them: the mere possibility of being as good as these saints does not entail that I am as good as them. Similarly, for a being to have the possibility to do more good actions than x does not show Him to be any more good than x. What it does show is that the being has the ability to do more things and is thus more omnipotent. We have already dealt with whether God’s goodness threatens his omnipotence here. 

Howsepian concedes this point and reformulates his argument. Howsepian writes: 

Of course, one could ask, why might one think that an appeal to a proper subset of possible good action types could be helpful in adjudicating the question of whether or not a necessarily omnipotent, necessarily omniscient, and contingently good being is more benevolent than a necessarily omniscient, and necessarily good being? The answer to this question can be most readily appreciated by further considering the truth of the following proposition: If G* is wholly good and G* can refrain from evil actions, then G* will refrain from evil actions.

We are now entering dangerous waters. We are no longer saying that God is good because He has the possibility to do good actions but because He does good actions. But this would make God’s goodness dependent upon creation (perish the thought!) as God can do more good actions in a universe where He chooses to create than in a universe where He does not choose to create. But it seems evident that a God who needs to depend upon His creation in order to be good is not maximally great. Howsepian has evidently made an error in his reasoning somewhere along the way.

Part of the problem is that Howsepian seems to think that God is to be called good in exactly the same way that we are to be called good. But this obviously cannot be the case. We are subject to moral commands and duties that we have to obey, and we call people good when they choose to follow these commands and duties. But on traditional theism, God is not under any moral commands or duties; for it is God who issues the commands and duties of morality, and it would be absurd to say that God commands Himself. If God is going to be called good in an identical manner to us, then the commands and duties of morality must come from something external to God, which He then becomes subject to. But not only does this sacrifice God on the altar of the Euthyphro Dilemma, it also seriously weakens the aseity of God. Whatever reason, then, we have for calling God good, it is not because He follows the commands and duties of morality. And it is here where Howsepian first errs. (I will address in a later blog post by what we mean when we call God good.)

But let us grant Howsepian his definition of what it means for God to be good. Because even if we do this, it is by no means clear that refraining from an action is a morally good action. It is true that we attach a certain praiseworthiness to when we refrain from an evil action; however, we only intend not do an evil act when weakness is involved: the drug abuser intends not to do the evil action of taking drugs because he is tempted towards that evil. I do not intend to refrain from drug taking. The thought does not cross my mind. I aim to live a healthy life, etc. and it follows from this that I do not take drugs. But for Howsepian this is not enough to count as actively refraining in a way that is praiseworthy. Howsepian argues that if I am absorbed in a game of chess, I might not be doing evil but I am not refraining from it. I need to be actively refraining for it to count. But this entails the absurd conclusion that the drug abuser who needs to be constantly refraining from taking drugs is more good than myself who does not need to refrain from drug taking, because I am not a drug abuser. Where Howsepian has gone wrong is that he has equivocated the praise that we give for achievement with moral praise. The reason we praise the drug abuser who has resisted the temptation to take drugs is because it was a difficult thing for him to do and not because he is to be morally praiseworthy. We can therefore deny that resisting evil is a morally praiseworthy act. 

Howsepain has thus not demonstrated that it is better for God to be contingently good than necessarily good.

Nelson Pike on Thomas Aquinas and an Omnipotent Being’s Ability to do Evil

In his paper 'Omnipotence And God's Ability To Sin', Nelson Pike criticises Thomas Aquinas on his defence of how God’s impossibility to do evil can be reconciled with His omnipotence. Quoted below is Thomas' defence.

To sin is to fall short of a perfect action; hence to be able to sin is to be able to fall short in action, which is repugnant to omnipotence. Therefore, it is that God cannot sin, because of his omnipotence. Now, it is true that the philosopher says that God can deliberately do what is evil. But this must understood either on condition, the antecedent of which is impossible - as, for instance, if we were to say that God can do evil things if He will. For there is no reason why a conditional propositional should not be true, though both the antecedent and the consequent are impossible; as if one were to say: if a man is an ass, he has four feet. (ST 1.25.3)

As we can see, Thomas argues that we can make sense of how we can say that God is incapable of evil and yet omnipotent by claiming that if God were to will to do an evil action, He could do it, even if the antecedent and the consequent are both false. 

Pike has a problem with this. He attempts to show that Thomas’ defence is problematic by demonstrating through the use of similar statements that Thomas’ conditional statement is insufficient to defend God’s omnipotence and inability to do evil. Pike asks us to consider the following two statements:

(1) Jones has an ace in his hand if he wants to play it. 

and,

(2) Jones can wiggle his ear if he wants to.

Pike notes that while on the surface these statements seem like conditionals, they are in fact not, for the items mentioned in the if… clauses do not contain the item contained in the rest of the statements. If Jones has an ace in his hand, he has an ace in his hand whether or not he wants to play it. Similarly, Jones has the ability to wiggle his ear whether or not he wants to. The question of whether Jones wants to wiggle his ear does not determine whether or not he has the ability. So, the if clause here does not serve as a conditional on whether he has the ability or not; rather, it is there to indicate the indeterminacy of whether or not he will exercise this power. 

However, in such statements the relation between truth values of the antecedent and the consequent is such that if the antecedent is false, so is the consequent; so, if Jones does not have the ability to wiggle his ear, then he cannot wiggle his ear if he wants to. Pike maintains that Thomas’s ‘conditional’ statement is the same sort of statement as (1) and (2); this means that if the antecedent is false, so is the consequent, entailing that if it is false that ‘God can do evil things’ it is also false that ‘God can do evil things if He wants to’. Given Thomas does argue that God cannot do evil, he must maintain that He cannot do it even if He wants to. 

I think that Pike has made an error. Pike is quite right that in statements such as ‘Jones can wiggle his ear if he wants to’ and ‘Jones has an ace in his hand if he wants to play it’, the consequent is dependent upon the antecedent and does not determine it. But is this the same with the claim that God can do evil if He wants to? No. This is because in Thomas’ thought God’s ability to do evil is dependent upon whether he wills it; and this is clear from the preceding claim in Thomas’ quote that to sin is to fall short of a perfect action. This is why doing evil is a hinderance to omnipotence. 

Earlier in his paper, Pike dismisses the idea that to do evil is to fall short of a perfect action. Pike argues that we need to distinguish between one being morally weak and one being weak in power; he says that he sees no reason why a being who could bring about any consistent state of affairs could not be morally weak: to quote, ‘I see no conceptual difficulty in the idea of a diabolical omnipotent being. Creative-power and moral strength are readily discernible concepts’.

What Pike has failed to acknowledge is how Thomas’ statement here relates to his wider metaphysics and the other divine attributes. For Thomas held that we all aim for what is good and that we sin by failing to properly realise what is really good. Hence, the drug abuser thinks that stealing and taking drugs will be good for him even if he thinks that it is morally wrong; he deicides that it will be better to do morally wrong (he will usually justify his wrongdoing to himself) and get the drugs than not to steal the drugs. Yet, as we all know, taking drugs will not be good for the drug abuser. God, however, as an omnipotent being is also omniscient. God will therefore know the good to aim for. And, for Thomas as well as other classical theists, this can only be God Himself. God is His own end. And given that the ends and highest ideals of all created things exists in the mind of God, this will lead God to be making these things His ends too, in aiming for Himself. And this is why God is necessarily good, as demonstrated here.

Now, God could only fail to properly aim at Himself if He was either (1) not omniscient, and hence not omnipotent, or (2) not omnipotent and therefore lacked the power to do it. This is why Thomas says ‘Therefore, it is that God cannot sin, because of His omnipotence.’

Since it is God's will towards himself that prohibits Him from committing evil, it is true that ‘God can do evil things if He were to will it’. That is to say that God would have the power and ability to do it if He willed it - something that Pike actually attempts to defend later on, albeit differently to how we have done so here. But unlike humans who can err in what they think is good because of lack of omniscience, God cannot do this and therefore will only will what is good, although He would have the power to will otherwise were He to do so.

Denying The Second Premiss of The Moral Argument Does Not Save You From Theism: The Moral Argument And Idealism

I wonder if the following argument could be used to counteract atheistic rejections of the second premiss of The Moral Argument.

Usually, the moral argument is formulated as follows:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.

2. Objective moral values do exist.

3. Therefore, God exists.

Premiss 2 relies heavily upon intuition. We all have a strong sense that some things are just wrong: it is wrong to abuse children; it is wrong to enslave other people, and so on. Nevertheless, there are some who bite the bullet and reject that objective moral values exist, holding that we cannot trust our intuition. 

But, if we cannot trust our intuition in regards to moral values, why should we trust our moral intuition regarding other things we normally intuitively believe? Would it not be more coherent to say that we cannot intuitively believe anything, rather than be selective about it? And if this is so, we cannot intuitively believe that there is an external world behind our own sense-data. Intuition tells us there is, but all we have acquaintance with is the ideas represented to us. 

However, this would lead us to accept idealism. And as demonstrated by Berkley, ideas are passive and can thus exercise no casual power; thus, on an idealist model, in order to explain change, one needs to adopt occasionalism, whereby God is a primary cause of all change (there being no secondary causes). 

Since this requires God, denying intuitionism in order to reject the second premiss of The Moral Argument cannot save one from theism. 

An Analysis of Causation

The ancients understood causation in terms of causal powers. The reason for this is because of how they understood change. Change for the ancients was just the reduction of potency into act - see analysis on act and potency here. Hence, the change of water from cold to hot is the potentiality of hotness in the cold water to become actual (and the actuality of the coldness in the water to become potential). But what brings about this actuality had to be something external to the thing undergoing change, otherwise there would be no explanation as to why the thing has not already undergone the change in question; however, the ancients clearly understood that not any old thing could bring about a change in something: ice can bring about change in water in a way that smoke cannot; a magnet can bring about change in metal in a way that it cannot with wood, &c. There are limits to the effects that efficient causes can produce. The ancients understood these limits by referring to the causal powers that efficient causes have. So ice cools water because it has the power to cool objects it touches. Smoke does not cool water because it does not have this power to cool. 

Now, this understanding of causation has been mocked as trivial and vacuous. French playwright Molière says that to say ‘opium causes sleep because it has the power to cause sleep’ is to say a mere tautology, and hence explains nothing. But as pointed out by Ed Feser, this is not a tautology: a tautology would be to say that ‘opium causes sleep because it causes sleep’ rather than ‘opium causes sleep because it has the power to cause sleep’. To say that opium has the power to cause sleep is to say that falling to sleep after taking opium is not some mere accidental feature of taking opium, but belongs to the nature of opium itself. The fact that this is not a tautology is evidenced by the fact that critics of causal powers don’t say to this statement, ‘yes, we know, and this is too trivial to be worth mentioning.’ Rather, they say that ‘No, Opium does not have the power to cause sleep as things do not have causal powers.’

It would also be wrong to imagine the idea of causal powers as going against what science tells us. So, in the case of opium, the idea of powers does not contradict the chemist who tells us that opium causes sleep because it is composed of a such and such chemical compound that reacts with the body when digested. As noted by Anthony Kenny, we need to distinguish the possessor of power, the power itself, the vehicle of power, and the actual exercise of power. In the case of opium, it is the specific chemical properties that are the vehicle by which its casual power is exercised; other substances will have other vehicles by which their powers are exercised. The difference, thus, between the chemist and the metaphysician is that the former is concerned with vehicles while the latter is concerned with powers. 

David Hume questioned this way of analysing of causality. In his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume writes that the ‘constant conjunction of two objects’ in our experience is what leads us to regard these two objects as casually related, but that objectively ‘all events seem entirely loose and separate’ rather than being necessarily connected. In principle, any effect or none might follow from any cause. The efficacy we think we perceive in things is really just a projection of our expectations onto the world. So, a cause is analysed by Hume as follows: ‘We may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second.’ (Section VIII). What Hume is espousing here is a regularity theory of causation. Regularity theories of causation argue that causation can be captured entirely in terms of the regular correlation that exists between two events - say, A, and B. No reference is required to explain the relationship between A and its effect B, such as the power A has over B. The relation between them are loose and separate. 

However, there are several objections that face regularity theories. First, regularity theories have difficulty in accounting for the asymmetry between causes and effects. A regular correlation between A and B does not entail that A is the cause of B rather than B the cause of A. Adding a condition that a cause must precede its effect B will not help since, as proved by Kant, causes can be simultaneous with their effects, such as a ball on a cushion making an indent. A second problem is that there are cases of regularity that are not cases of causation. This is illustrated by the following example adapted from Ed Feser. Suppose that I drop a cube of sugar into my tea; this is followed by a splashing sound, and then ripples, which move a floating tea leaf to the side of the cup. Events like the moving of the tea leaf are regularly preceded by events such as ripples and the splashing sound. So, on the regularity analysis, the splashing sound and the ripples are equal candidates for being the cause of the leaf’s motion. But, of course, it is only the ripples, and not the sound, that is the cause. A third difficulty can be seen if we add the example of someone else trying, before the splash is made by the first cube, to add a second cube of sugar to my tea but say it is caught before it can make contact (I have already put enough in my tea). The regularity theory would seem to entail that the dropping of the second cube of sugar is the cause of the splash in the tea. But, of course, it is only the dropping of the first cube of sugar. 

There is a second definition of causation that Hume offers. Well, Hume did see this as a further explanation of the first, but it is really a second definition. According to this second definition, we can say that an object caused another object ‘if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.’ Here Hume is developing a counterfactual definition of causation. We can formalise it as follows. To say A caused B means that the following is fulfilled:

1) If A had not occurred, B would not have occurred.

2) If A had occurred, B would have occurred.

3) A and B both occurred.

This is a better analysis of causation as B depends counterfactually on A in a way that A does not depend on B; hence, a solution to the asymmetry problem. Neither does the account seem to be threatened by examples involving the sugar cube: the leaf would not have moved had the ripples by the sugar cube not been made, through it would have still moved had the splashing sound somehow been prevented. The counterfactual account therefore captures the fact that it was the ripples and not the sound that moved the leaf. It also captures the fact that it was the first cube of sugar and not the second that moved it. 

Nevertheless, this account of causality is still Humean in that it views causes and their effects as loose and separate, in that they have no intrinsic or necessary connection to one another. The causes under this view cannot be said to have an active tendency to bring about their effects. This leads to problems, which have been well noted; particularly influential has been C.B Martin’s ‘electro-fink’ example. Consider a live wire, which if touched by a conductor, will cause electricity to flow into it. If the counterfactual analysis is correct, anything we might want to say about the causal relation in question here would be captured in a conditional such as the following:

c) If the live wire is touched by a conductor, then the electrical current flows form the wire to the conductor. 

But now imagine that we connect to this wire an electro-fink, which is a device that renders a live wire dead when touched by a conductor and dead wire live when touched by a conductor. The conditional above will now no longer be true. If a live wire is touched while the electro-fink is attached, current will not flow to the conductor, because it will be prevented from doing so by the electro-fink; hence the conditional fails to give the necessary conditions for the wire’s being live, since a wire could be live even when it is not true that it will transmit current to a conductor. And when the wire is dead, current will still flow from it to the conductor, because it will be made live by the electro-fink; hence the conditional fails to give sufficient reasons for the wire being live, since a wire could be dead and yet still transmit current to a conductor. The proper way to characterise the wire, in Martin’s view, is to say that it has power when live which is hindered by the electro-fink, and lacks power when dead but is given power by the electro-fink when touched. 

Additionally, the counterfactual analysis has trouble in adequately accounting for masks and antidotes. So, in the tale of King Midas, King Midas had the power to nourish himself, but this power was masked by his power to turn everything he touched into gold. And we can imagine a case where someone takes a poison that has the power to kill that person, but the poison is hindered by an antidote that changes the immune system of the person so that he can resist the poison. 

One could try and reformulate the counterfactual definition as follows. A causes B if:

1*) If A had not occurred, B would not have occurred.

2*) If A had occurred and C did not occur, B would have occurred.

3*) A and B both occurred and C did not occur.

The trouble with this new definition is that we can easily think up examples where A and C both occur and yet B does occur. For instance, someone takes poison and is given an antidote to stop the effects of the poison but is then given another poison to counteract the antidote to allow for the original poison to take effect. And similar revisions and counter-examples can kept being made on the counterfactual definition. It seems, then, that talk of powers is a much better way of analysing causation. 

Indeed, talk of powers fits well with how we describe events involving change. To again appeal to Feser, let us consider a case of a boat being pulled at an angle by two horses, one each side of the canal. The combined pulling of these horses causes the boat to head northwards up the canal. What we see here is a combination of powers at work. The power exercised by horse A and the power exercised by horse B leads to the boat moving down the canal, but these powers would result in the boat moving in a different direction when exercised in a different context. Moreover, we would not describe what is going on here as a set of loose and separate events but just one event that is the exercise of multiple powers; an effect can be the result of a polygeny of powers.    

The talk of powers, therefore, seems to be a good way to analyse causation. The very nature of these powers and how they relate to philosophy of science will be discussed in a later blog post.