An Existential God New Perspectives in Philosophy of Religion - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 14
About This Presentation
Title:

An Existential God New Perspectives in Philosophy of Religion

Description:

Two Fundamental Questions in Religion. Does God (or the divine) exist? ... William Hasker, Philosopher of Religion, defender of 'open theism' ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:344
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 15
Provided by: ford4
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: An Existential God New Perspectives in Philosophy of Religion


1
An Existential GodNew Perspectives in
Philosophy of Religion
  • John Davenport
  • November 17, 2007

2
Two 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.

3
The 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.

4
The 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?

5
The 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.

6
Platos 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)

7
Difficulties 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.

8
Sources 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
9
The 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).

10
God 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.

11
Gods 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.

12
Kierkegaard 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.

13
Open 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.

14
Conclusion 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).
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com