The material below is just a sketch of some things I've contemplated previously about divine immutability and simplicity.
Relational mutability refers to the change that a relation (R1) might undergo with respect to another relation (R2). For instance person A might be shorter or taller than person B at one time or another (T1 or T2); alternatively, A might be unknown at one time to B and vice versa, but at a later time, this relation could undergo alteration (Stephen T. Davis, Logic and the Nature of God, pages 42-43). Such changes are relational: they do not necessarily involve ontological alterations.
Do changes in knowledge entail changes in being? If someone does not know Jehovah at T1, but then acquires knowledge of him at T2, could we justly claim that this epistemological change implies a change in ontology? What if God comes to know that Abraham is a righteous and God-fearing person? (Genesis 22:12) Would such changes bring about alterations in the very being of God? I would submit that these changes would not bring it about that God was no longer God. Maybe it could be said that changes occur in God without such changes being ontological--it is possible that they are simply relational. Could the same point be made about prayer? If God answers a prayer after someone utters it, would the response be purely relational or could it affect God's ontology? These are merely things to consider.
18 comments:
Thanks for those thoughts, I agree completely, i.e. cambridge changes do not threaten (a reasonable) notion of immutability. So perhaps we could say that Jehovah's response to prayer X in Y circumstances will be Z ... immutably, however, whether nor not prayer X in Y circumstances is actualized depends on the free choice of a human agent to pray (along with the free choices of many agents to create Y circumstances), which God knows as possibilities immutably, but knows as the actual state of affairs contingently. So God's new knowledge does not change his ontology, or his perfection, it's just that his knowledge of a possible state of affairs is shifted to his knowledge of an actual state of affairs, (such that the knowledge is not completely novel). So God immutably knows that Z is the response to prayer X in Y circumstances, but that knowledge can be a mere possibility or an actuality based on prior factors (which themselves are known by God immutably as possibilities).
So the change in relation is determined by man, but that determination doesn't add to God's perfection or knowledge.
In the case of Abraham, the new knowledge was (I would submit) not one of an unknown(for God) actuality to a known(to God) actuality, but from a known possibility (among a set of known possibilities) to a known actuality, which prior to Abrahams act of faith was known actualized.
As this relates to simplicity ... to be honest, I don't know, the subject is not at all simply (I feel like a lot of these categories are only useful when carefully defined by the user: I mean Thomas Aquinas's simplicity is not the same as Irenaeus's simplicity, so one must qualify terms).
As always, I appreciate your interaction, Roman. I like the possible and actual distinction: it reminds me of the way that Duns Scotus treats divine foreknowledge. William of Ockham similarly writes that God knows future contingents contingently. One point I was trying to address was thinkers like Edward Wierenga, who argue that God technically does not respond to prayers because that would mean that changes occur in the divine being or it would diminish God's immutability. Furthermore, a divine response to prayers after they're uttered would seem to locate God in time. These things are all problematic for traditional philosophers of religion. I must add that changes in the actual being of God don't bother me. Lactantius suggests that God experiences changes of emotions in his very being and so does Origen. Hardly any classic philosopher of religion agrees with either theologian.
I must admit that God's coming to know things has always puzzled me: it's not that I don't believe it but exactly how does this process work? I've come up with possible world scenarios to explain God choosing not to know something but I don't fully understand it. I don't think we want to suggest that anything supplements God's perfection. Also, how can an omniscient God add to his knowledge?
I would encourage you to read all of Summa Theologica/Theologiae I.3, but Thomas' answer there is that God has no de re potentiality whatsoever:
ST I.3.7: “I answer that, The absolute simplicity of God may be shown in many ways. First, from the previous articles of this question. For there is neither composition of quantitative parts in God, since He is not a body; nor composition of matter and form; nor does His nature differ from His 'suppositum'; nor His essence from His existence; neither is there in Him composition of genus and difference, nor of subject and accident. Therefore, it is clear that God is nowise composite, but is altogether simple.”
Another good place to read about divine simplicity is Augustine's De Trinitate 5. The concept of divine simplicity underwent development from ANF times onward.
See Douglas C. Langston, God's Willing Knowledge: The Influence of Scotus’ Analysis of Omniscience (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986).
William Lane Craig, The Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents from Aristotle to Suarez (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History).
About the difficulty with God learning things, I'd like to share a quote from Sergei Bulgakov's "Bride of the Lamb" (Borrowed from the 'An Open Orthodoxy' blog):
All this brings us to the central question of God’s omniscience in relation to creaturely freedom and its works. Does God know the works of our freedom “before” they are accomplished on the basis of His omniscience? The question is answered in the affirmative by predestinationism in its various forms…But to say that God knows in advance the works of freedom is a de facto annulment of freedom, its transformation into a subjective illusion. The acceptance of this supposition therefore places all the difficulties of predestination before us…
If God created man in freedom, in His own image, as a son of God and a friend of God, a god according to grace, then the reality of this creation includes his freedom as creative self-determination not only in relation to the world but also in relation to God. To admit the contrary would be to introduce a contradiction in God, who would then be considered as having posited only a fictitious, illusory freedom. And then one would inevitably have to accept Calvin’s conclusion that man fell not freely but because God desired it, for only God’s will and freedom exist. In other words, God could not or did not wish to create creaturely freedom or, more precisely, its subjects or bearers who presuppose it. Therefore, to unite creaturely freedom with divine omniscience, one must say not that God foresaw and therefore predestined the fall of man (a statement that is something encountered in handbooks of dogma) but that God, knowing His creation with all the possibilities contained therein, knows also the possibility of the fall, which, however, did not have to occur and can occur only by human freedom. Otherwise, the contrary assertion of Calvinism would be right…
Let us repeat, all the possibilities of creaturely being, having their roots in the Creator’s knowledge, are open to this knowledge, since they belong to the world created by Him and are included in this world’s composition, not only in the form of “integral wisdom” but also in the form of a distributed multiplicity. In this sense, creation – in both the spiritual and the human world – cannot bring anything ontologically new into this world; it cannot surprise or enrich the Creator Himself. But the very choice and creative actualization of these possibilities, that is, the domain of modal freedom, remain entrusted to creation and to this extent are its creative contribution. Although creation cannot be absolutely unexpected and new for God in the ontological sense, nevertheless in empirical (“contingent”) being, it represents a new manifestation for God Himself, who is waiting to see whether man will open or not open the doors of his heart. God Himself will know this only when it happens.
The synergism here is a mutual self-determination that has an element of novelty, actualized in different modes for the two sides in the interaction. The ways of the world are therefore not predetermined as a single causal connection in which there is no place for contingent causes…On the contrary, the determination of creaturely freedom must be understood according to a series of infinite variations, actually as non determinatum ad unum, but with these variations remaining subordinate to one plan, to one ontological possibility, multiply actualized. To creaturely freedom it is given to participate in the destinies of all of creation and, first of all, in the proper ways of man. If, in God’s eternity, the world’s being is uniquely and totally determined, on the contrary, we have the incompleteness, the under-determinedness, the still-continuing self-determination of the world. Veiling His face, God remains ignorant of the actions of human freedom. Otherwise, these actions would not have their own reality, but would only be a function of a certain divine mechanism of things. (Bold emphasis mine.)
I love reading Bulgakov: he's never afraid to challenge the status quo although he tries to stay within orthodox parameters. However, Boethius and Aquinas would say that God does not foresee anything (technically speaking) because he's eternal/timeless and thus sees everything from his eternally present viewpoint. They seem to argue that "foreknowledge" describes how things appear to us or its language used for our sake.
I don't believe that Jehovah foreknew the fall in an actualized sense, but some prophecies in the Bible apparently depict God knowing what's actually going to happen before it occurs. For example, Peter denying Jesus three times but Christ being faithful unto death. These examples don't necessarily require exhaustive foreknowledge, but indicate God may know at least some things happening before they occur (from our standpoint).
However, one could challenge the eternal present view, which some have done.
One of my professors used to contend that God eternally and infallibly knows what each of us will do freely. Augustine wrote that God included human freedom in the world's chain of causes. According to him, God knows the entire chain and all links therein.
Roman, see also https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2014/05/ronald-nash-onomniscience-and-divine.html
Edward Wierenga-Is the Future Open? See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxIw5K2x-KM&list=WL&index=38
"God has knowledge of what we'll freely do"
I haven't actually read a whole Bulgakov volume, I've read essays here and there, but I want to read the Bride of the Lamb, mainly because theologians who I respect view him as a towering theologian of the 20th century, David Hart thinks he is miles ahead of any other 20th century theologian.
The way I've thought through Jehovah's foreknowledge has been two ways:
1. He knows his own future actions, and some of those are set in stone and not contingent on anything outside of his purpose (for example, the 'great day of Jehovah').
2. Human nature is such that human beings can 'damn' themselves, i.e. develop their personality to the point to where they have gone on a course such that their heart has hardened, this can go both ways, i.e. one person can hate violence to the point that he is physically unable to brutalize someone, there is no ability for him to choose otherwise because of how he has formed himself; or someone can have chosen evil so often that some wicked act (perhaps lying to get something you want) becomes inevitable).
3. That being said, Jehovah is also shown as being suprised, he said that the Assyrians would be destroyed and did not foresee that they might repent, he also declared Hezekiah would die, but then acted to prevent it (at that time).
As to what one of your professor's used to say (which is the classical view, and Augustine's view) I don't think it works, my experience of free will is that the outcome of my choices depend on my temporally making those choices in time and contingently on my will ... if the outcome of that choice exists in another reality which is itself not contingent on my temporal making of that choice I can't see how my will is really free.
I sometimes hear that spacial metaphor, the problem is though that choices are a bringing into being of a new reality (at least in how we conceive of free choices), if it is brought into being by us, then it must be brought into being temporally, and thus not knowable prior to it's being brought into being. If it's knowable prior than it's determination is not substantially our temporal free choice but something else.
I just think Augustine is wrong here, I don't think positing our free choices as secondary causes preserves our free will.
I'm willing to be wrong though, and it would make things easier if I was :P.
The problem with that interview (great show btw, I like watching their videos), is that the assumption is that what we "will" or "will not" or even the probabilities are mere facts to be known at all times ... I don't think they are, I think they are possibilities, ontological possibilities (not just epistemologial).
Thanks for interacting with my post. I've gone back and forth over free will and how it might work: the fathers affirm that we're free and that's something which continues through the middle ages with Ockham and Scotus. However, Aquinas appears to say we're free, but Brian Davies argues that Aquinas opts for free choice rather than free will. One problem is how one harmonizes human choice/free will/voluntary action with divine foreordination and maneuvering of events. There are other things to consider when formulating or thinking through a theory of free will, but to me, this comes down to a problem of epistemology. Free will is just beyond our intellects as Peter van Inwagen argues.
On the Closer to Truth interview, it leaves much to be desired (I love the show as well) but I do think we need to distinguish probabilities from possibilities. As you indicate, possibilities come in many different varieties (epistemological, ontological, logical).
There are very few places one can engage in these kinds of discussions, so it's my pleasure to interact with your posts. I think the free will Augustinian's (including Aquinas) argue for is something like combatibalism, which I don't find robust enough for a proper theodicy. Of course, it could just be my inability to think outside of a modern framework that's holding me back.
Perhaps Free will is beyond our intellects, but then again, as Hume points out, so is determinate causation: we only know it inductively :).
I've always hated compatibilism and hard determinism like one finds in Spinoza and the Bible along with Christian tradition affirms that we most certainly have freedom in some sense of the word. Along with Kant, it's hard for me to see how moral responsibility can exist without some type of robust free will and I agree with you that a proper theodicy needs a robust notion of freedom. It's just difficult to reconcile divine foreknowledge and causation with libertarian free will. I'm not saying that some kind of libertarian freedom is 100% wrong, but on the macrolevel, the world (including us) manifests numerous deterministic features. On the subatomic level, however, reality seems indeterminate, and neuroscience constantly moves toward determinism although there has been some pushback in recent years.
Yes, Hume wants to reduce causation (the law of cause and effect) to a psychological phenomenon (make it a result of habit). But keep in mind that Kant responded by arguing cause and effect is not synthetic a posteriori but synthetic a priori: it is transcendental. Three philosophers who critique Hume include Edward Feser, John Searle, and Elizabeth Anscombe. The Critique of Pure Reason is also the classical response to Humean thought.
I suppose this hangs on what one thinks science actually tells us. I agree with Statistician George Box who said "All models are approximations. Assumptions, whether implied or clearly stated, are never exactly true. All models are wrong, but some models are useful. So, the question you need to ask is not “is the model true?” (it never is) but “Is the model good enough for this particular application."
So the way I see deterministic and indeterministic ways of viewing the world (science) is that they just describe what can be described in those terms in the world, and they describe those things in a limited way (i.e. aspects of those things which can be described deterministically).
So take as an analogy economics (specifically mainstream economics), it describes a certain type of human behavior given certain circumstances, and only those behaviors within a certain model, thus you can make near deterministic predictions, but to pretend that one understands human behavior, or even economic behavior through those models is just fanciful.
This is kind of how I view the physical sciences. I think Kant's critique fits with my argument, i.e. it's transcendental, it cannot be further reduced, this is causation but also agency.
Again, you're correct that the task of science and how it should be defined is an open subject. There is a field known as philosophy of science that debates such matters. And to be clear, I'm in favor of agent causation. How it occurs for embodied beings in a world governed by an omniscient and prescient God is the sticking point for me. Maybe it is transcendental.
In my opinion, economics and psychology are different from cosmology or physics.
I agree that economics and psychology are far different than cosmology and physics (the latter being hard sciences that are, for the most part, objectively measured and testable); I was just using economics as an example of how a method of modeling can be mistaken for a metaphysical system of what something just IS, rather than a way of describing something.
Point taken and I totally agree that economic theory widely differs from its praxis :-)
I used to watch the financial channels a lot and quickly learned not to trust economic predictions. That's my opinion anyway.
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