Title: An Existential God New Perspectives in Philosophy of Religion
1 An Existential GodNew Perspectives in
Philosophy of Religion
- John Davenport
- November 17, 2007
2Two Fundamental Questions in Religion
- Does God (or the divine) exist?
- Transcendence Is there anything more to reality
than the material world (i.e. matter-energy,
space-time)? - Is the history of religiousness consciousness in
human culture evidence for a transcendent source,
or can even the earliest human concepts of the
sacred and the profane be explained
naturalistically? - Does the testimony of revealed religious
traditions give us evidence for the existence of
supreme being of the kind described in their
texts? - Is there good evidence against the existence of
God, e.g. moral and natural evil? - 2. What does God properly mean? (what is it
whose existence we are debating)? - The sacred or divine in primary human
socieities is directly associated with the
transcendent source of reality (cosmogonic power)
in the creation myths of all cultures. - (a) this includes the idea that the divine is
the ultimate origin of all things, but the later
idea of creation ex nihilo is a more radical
extension of the basic cosmogenic idea - (b) but it also includes the idea of the divine
power as the ultimate owner, possessor, and thus
destining power in reality all rightful
authority or sovereignty originates with the
divine. - These two features correspond to what Rudolph
Otto called the divine as mysterium tremendum,
the sacred as both absolute power and
awe-inspiring determiner of fate. - It is a later development of the axial turn in
human history (800 300 BCE) that the divine is
conceived as ethically good, or as The Good
(Plato), the origin of all value and model for
all justice in human affairs. - In western culture, this ethical turn is
cotemporal with the emergence of monotheism among
the Jews and Greeks.
3The Archaic Sacred as Wierd in northern
European Mythology
- The Wierd (which we find in Beowulf,
Anglo-Saxon poems such as the Wanderer, and in
norse mythology) means roughly fate or destiny. - It is the divine reality that stands behind the
gods, the because the source of reality is the
ultimate owner and controller of all things,
which is uncontrollable by human beings God is
the unappropriable appropriator of Being itself. - It is represented by mythic symbols such as
dragons, sacred trees, and three Fates (Norns)
(e.g. Shakespeares three weird sisters in
MacBeth). - It is the law that prevents misappropriation of
divine right from prevailing.
4The Archaic Conception of the Profane
- Likewise in archaic mythology, the profane is
the opposite of the sacred because it attempts to
misappropriate divine authority by owning or
dominating free beings and destroying the order
set up in creation. - Thus the profane is chaos that prevents the
order on which life depends - The profane is represented by images of death,
decay, rigid mechanism or iron necessity (e.g.
the Death Star in the Star Wars saga) - It is in northern European mythology, it is
represented by monsters such as the dragon and
the other monsters in Beowulf. - Will this original sense of the profane be
preserved in new film versions?
5The Axial Conception of Maximal Perfection
Plato, Augustine, and St. Anselm
- The archaic conception of norse mythology, and
the very different Lord of Hosts in the Torah,
both contrast with the God of Philosophers in
Greek and Christian thought. -
- Perfect Being Theology in the western traditions
(a brief summary) - God as maximally great, or perfect in the static
sense, having greatest consistent set of
properties that add to metaphysical value in a
being (including freedom?) - Necessary existence God exists necessarily
rather than contingently (Anselm) - Omnipotence (maximal power, e.g. in Gods role as
creator or cosmogonic divinity) - Omniscience (maximal knowledge, including
knowledge of the whole future) - Omnipresence (the divine is present everywhere,
at all times, keeping things in being) - Eternality (God is absolutely unchanging, and
hence above or outside of time) - Impassibility (God cannot be moved or desire,
since motivation implies change) - Simplicity (God has no parts, is absolutely
unified, since God is not generated) - First cause/First mover God is not only the
cause of the existence of all contingent beings,
but also their final end or natural goal (what
they really seek or desire) - Aseity God exists absolutely from Gods self
(absolute independence and originality) - Maximal goodness (omnibenevolence) God is the
ultimate standard of goodness, the source of all
value to be united with God is our ultimate
happiness or blessedness.
6Platos argument in Republic II
- God is perfect definition of divinity
- If God changes, he changes for the better or
worse change is assumed to be alteration in a
value-property - If God were to change for the worse, he would be
imperfect - If God changes for the better, then he improved
from the definition of improvement - If something X improves from state A to state B,
then X was imperfect in state A, or lacking a
valuable property intuitive truth? - Hence, if God changes for the better, he was not
always perfect from 4, 5, Hypothetical
syllogism - Hence, if God changes either way, he was
imperfect perfect before he changed from 2, 3,
and 6 by Disjunctive Syllogism - Hence God does not change 1, 7 by Modus Tollens
- In other words, since we start from the concept
of God as perfect, this concept implies that God
cannot change any change in him would imply
imperfection Obviously a perfect being cannot
get better. Nor can he get worse since Hed be
corruptible now if He could.God cannot gain a
new property or perform a new action without that
property or action adding to His goodness as a
being or agent (Katherine Rogers, Anselmian
Eternalism, Faith and Philosophy 24 no. 1
(January, 2007) 2-27, p.10)
7Difficulties with the Standard Anselmian Model of
divine attributes in natural theology
- Divine agape or creative love if God is
impassible, how can God love his/her creation, or
feel and compassion or benevolence towards us? - Motivation more generally, strong divine
impassibility seems to follow from Platos idea
that all motivation is erosiac in form, a lack
seeking completion. Since God is complete and
needs nothing, God cannot be motivated to act at
all. - Creativity but if he/she is without motives,
then why would God create a universe of
contingent beings? (Note that we do not have to
think that we can guess Gods plans or reasons
for creating the world to judge that a being who
could not be motivated to create, or to love
his/her creation, is not perfect not God
after all). - Biblical portrayal of God western monotheistic
religions (Judiasm, Christianity, and Islam)
portray God as reacting to the created order and
even as passionate. - Free will If the freedom that created mortal
persons (e.g. human beings) require to be
responsible for their character and actions
involves the liberty to make alternate choices,
this seems to be incompatible with divine
foreknowledge of our future choices, and with
total divine predetermination or providential
control. - Soteriology and Eschatological Hope the standard
Anselmian model does not seem to include the most
distinctive attribute of God according to
monotheistic religions after the axial turn,
namely Gods power to save created persons from
spiritual lostness, or to bring about an
ethically perfect state of being in the
hereafter.
8Sources for an alternative existential conception
of God (or divine attributes)
Søren Kierkegaard Martin Buber
Emmanuel Levinas Mircea Eliade
Danish existentialist Jewish
existentialist Jewish alterity ethicist
German mythographer
Charles Hartshore, Process Theologian
William Hasker, Philosopher of Religion, defender
of open theism
9The Process Concept of Perfection
- From the Process Theology of Hartshorne
(inspired by Whitehead) the existential model
takes a basic alternative to the static
conception of perfection that is the keystone of
the standard Anselmian model. - Perfection is maximal, endless, infinite
development, qualitative enrichment, growth in
richness (unity within diversity) through
relationship - Superabundance the most perfect being creates
out of pure generosity, not to satisfy any need
or lack in itself, but thereby grows richer
through relationship with lower orders of being
(contingent, created reality) - Panentheism the perfect being transcends its
creation (is not identical with it) but is also
immanent within it. - Higher Time this kind of perfection implies a
series of successive stages, with an asymmetry
that is something like the difference between
past and future as we know it. This is not
created (physical) time, but an uncreated
temporal series that is part of the divine being
itself (compare Heidegger).
10God as Personal Being Agapic Love
- The process concept of perfection fits well with
the idea emphasized by the biblical traditions
and religious existentialists that God is the
Ultimate Person, rather than an abstract
principle like Platos Form of the Good or a
maximal combination of value-properties. - Agape. Kierkegaard follows several church fathers
in emphasizing the idea that faith is a relation
with a personal God, a being of perfect love who
in turn commands and makes possible agapic love
between human beings. - Ultimate Thou (Du) In his famous book, I and
Thou, Buber argues that persons can be directly
present to one another in their uniqueness and
independence as persons (which he calls the
I-Thou relationship, as opposed to the I-It
relation). For Buber, God is the person who makes
possible all interhuman I-Thou encounters, and
who is the ultimate Thou, always offering
encounter, direct mind-mind contact. - Alterity Emmanuel Levinas follows Buber but
argues that the relationship of moral obligation
is more aymmetrical we are called to
responsibility by the Face of the other person,
or what he calls their alterity (otherness,
independence). He relates alterity in this sense
to creation ex nihilo.
11Gods Relation to Human Persons the World
- The Levinasian idea of Alterity and Open
Theisms emphasis on divine personhood provide a
way of applying the process conception of
perfection to the relation between God, created
persons, and the natural world. - Alterogenesis A crucial divine attribute
suppressed in the Anselmian model is that God is
the only being capable of creating alterity our
fabrications remain our possessions, but God is
capable of creating beings with an independence
or aseity like Gods own free human beings can
face, choose relation with God, or even reject
God to the end. - Imago dei human alterity involves our free will
and is a reflection of divine freedom,
personhood, and capacity for agapic going out of
oneself towards alterity like God, we grow
through relationship with alterity though what
is strange to us, uncontrolled by us. - Subcreation (Tolkiens term) human beings are
like God in being capable of free creativity,
which is the essence of authentic artwork that
is, creating beauty and value for its own sake,
for its pure wonder, rather than for material
gain or self-completion. (Consider chidrens art) - No absolute human autonomy But unlike God, we do
not create primary reality or alterity itself
our works are made possible by the powers and the
materials we have been given. Thus we cannot
claim absolute ownership over our works, or
absolute sovereignty over ourselves God is the
being from whom our ethical authority derives
(see God as Wierd) - Natural Law perhaps a universe run by natural
law that cannot be constantly violated without
destroying its order (on which the moral
significance of human choices depends), has its
own kind of alterity.
12Kierkegaard on Eschatological Faith
- Finally, in his most famous book, titled Fear
and Trembling, Kierkegaard (though a pseudonym)
argues that the distinguishing mark of religious
faith is found in Abrahams trust that God will
ensure the promised ethical outcome that Isaac
live to father a great nation despite the
obstacle constituted by the demand to sacrifice
him (or by virtue of the absurd). - Using this case as a model, we may generalize
that eschatological possibilities are final
realizations of a promised or revealed ethical
ideal that cannot be achieved by human striving
it is only by divine power or miracle. - God or the divine, as the object of religious
faith, is then properly understood as the
personal source of eschatological promises and
eschatological possibilities. God is not only
creator, but finisher, Alpha and Omega.
13Open Theism and limited divine foreknowledge
- The Risk-Taker version of the Free Will Defense
for Moral Evil (and perhaps natural evil too) - 1. Divine foreknowledge of future choices
(simple foreknowledge) are incompatible with
leeway libertarian freedom and thus with moral
responsibility. - (A) Omniscient foreknowledge that I will vote
for the democratic candidate in 2008 makes it
temporally impossible that I will choose to vote
for the republican candidate instead (this is
like the necessity of the past, which not even
God can change on standard western theism). - (b) Omniscient divine knowledge of what (to us)
are choices still to be made in the future make
these choices inevitable in a similar fashion,
removing human freedom. - Divine preordination of future choices (through
directive contrastive influence to choose option
D over R, or through pre-selection of possible
persons by knowledge of so-called Molinist
counterfactuals (about what they would choose to
do if created) is incompatible with real human
power to choose otherwise. - But human moral agency (responsibility for ones
self, character, and actions) is a crucial value
in the world according to the alterity thesis,
it is one of Gods central purposes for creating
the universe that it include agents with a
freedom that is an image of His/Her own. - Therefore God is incapable of being both
maximally good, omniscient about the future, and
governing by total providential predesign
rather, it is part of divine perfection to take
the risk that free mortal persons will use their
moral freedom to sin or make evil choices, thus
leading to moral evil. - If human moral freedom requires a law-governed
universe that nevertheless includes
indeterminism, then to create moral agents, God
must also take the risk involved in creating such
a universe, making natural evils of various kinds
possible.
14Conclusion Should we believe in God, as
conceived on the new existential model
- Results of our Analysis
- The new existential picture synthesizes what was
most insightful in the older archaic models
emphasizing cosmogonic power and the divine as
absolute unappropriable appropriator - Through the process conception of perfection, it
shows that other elements of the existential
model cohere well together God as absolute
person and perfect love is not impassible but
capable of self-motivation in creating persons
and worlds, and Gods attributes include not only
Gods cosmogonic role as the beginning or source
of all things, but also Gods eschatological role
as the finisher and perfector of the world (which
is so vital for direct human relationship to God
as savior or source of self-transcendence). - These elements in turn fit with the notion of
Gods being as essentially temporal or
processive God is not the same before creating
the world, during the history of our universe,
and in the Hereafter (the new heaven and the new
earth). So we have at least three stages of
higher or divine time. - Finally, the new existential model makes possible
more believable answers to the problem of evil
(the hardest challenge to western monothestic
conceptions of God in any form).