(1) The Trajectory of All Ontological Arrows Part 1 https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-trajectory-of-all-ontological-arrows-1.html
(2) The Trajectory of All Ontological Arrows Part 2 https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-trajectory-of-all-ontological-arrows-2.html
(3) Comments WRT Realism vis-à-vis Meta-Narrative & Two Smart Guys https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2020/01/comments-wrt-realism-vis-vis-meta.html
TRINITY via The Masters Seminary Journal 2022 With 15 Essays On Trinity & Simplicity & More
This can be found at both https://tms.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/TMSJ-Volume-33-Number-1.pdf and also at https://tms.edu/educational-resources/journal/
Also here in this attached PDF: https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/trinity-via-the-masters-seminary-journal-spring-2022-vol-33-number-1-via-15-essays-post-pdf-copy.pdf
The Trinity As A Paradigm For Spiritual Transformation By LT Jeyachandran
[1] Version One Is Without Footnotes: The Trinity As A Paradigm For Spiritual Transformation by LT Jeyachandran the-trinity-as-a-paradigm-for-spiritual-transformation-by-lt-jeyachandran-version-one-without-footnotes
[2] Version Two Is With Footnotes: The Trinity As A Paradigm For Spiritual Transformation by LT Jeyachandran the-trinity-as-a-paradigm-for-spiritual-transformation-by-lt-jeyachandran-version-two-with-footnotes
Source: L.T. Jeyachandran in various places including http://www.apnts.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/A_Trinitarian_Paradigm_for_Apologetics_and_Character_Transformation.pdf
Trinity: God Was Manifest In The Flesh I Timothy 3:16 An Examination Of A Disputed Text
PDF: A short intro-version is at: https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/god-was-manifest-in-the-flesh-i-timothy-3-16-an-examination-of-a-disputed-text-intro-primer.pdf
Source: Trinitarian Bible Society https://www.tbsbibles.org/
Trinitarian semantic intent in the Prologue of John’s Gospel arrives in An Exemplary Case of the Untranslatable as per the premises in the following excerpt/quote from “The New Testament: A Translation” by David Bentley Hart ((…Amazon https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-David-Bentley-Hart-ebook/dp/B0767CPR6H/ …))
Begin Quote/Excerpt
A Note on the Prologue of John’s Gospel
An Exemplary Case of the Untranslatable
There may perhaps be no passage in the New Testament more resistant to simple translation into another tongue than the first eighteen verses—the prologue—of the Gospel of John. Whether it was written by the same author as most of the rest of the text (and there is cause for some slight doubt on that score), it very elegantly proposes a theology of the person of Christ that seems to subtend the entire book, and that perhaps reaches its most perfect expression in its twentieth chapter. But it also, intentionally in all likelihood, leaves certain aspects of that theology open to question, almost as if inviting the reader to venture ever deeper into the text in order to find the proper answers. Yet many of these fruitful ambiguities are simply invisible anywhere except in the Greek of the original, and even there are discernible in only the most elusive and tantalizing ways. Take, for example, the standard rendering of just the first three verses. In Greek, they read, 1Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος· 2οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν· 3πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἓν ὃ γέγονεν· (1En archēi ēn ho logos, kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon, kai theos ēn ho logos; 2houtos ēn en archēi pros ton theon; 3panta di’ avtou egeneto, kai chōris avtou egeneto oude hen ho gegonen.) I am aware of no respectable English translation in which these verses do not appear in more or less the same form they are given in the King James Version:
“1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
Read thus, the Gospel begins with an enigmatic name for Christ, asserts that he was “with God” in the beginning, and then unambiguously goes on to identify him both as “God” and as the creator of all things. Apart from that curiously bland and impenetrable designation “the Word,” the whole passage looks like a fairly straightforward statement of Trinitarian dogma (or at least two-thirds of it), of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan variety. The average reader would never guess that, in the fourth century, those same verses were employed by all parties in the Trinitarian debates in support of very disparate positions, or that Arians and Eunomians and other opponents of the Nicene settlement interpreted them as evidence against the coequality of God the Father and the divine Son. The truth is that, in Greek, and in the context of late antique Hellenistic metaphysics, the language of the Gospel’s prologue is nowhere near so lucid and unequivocal as the translations make it seem. For one thing, the term logos really had, by the time the Gospel was written, acquired a metaphysical significance that “Word” cannot possibly convey; and in places like Alexandria it had acquired a very particular religious significance as well. For the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, for instance, it referred to a kind of “secondary divinity,” a mediating principle standing between God the Most High and creation. In late antiquity it was assumed widely, in pagan, Jewish, and Christian circles, that God in his full transcendence did not come into direct contact with the world of limited and mutable things, and so had expressed himself in a subordinate and economically “reduced” form “through whom” (δι᾽ αὐτοῦ [di’ avtou]) he created and governed the world. It was this Logos that many Jews and Christians believed to be the subject of all the divine theophanies of Hebrew scripture. Many of the early Christian apologists thought of God’s Logos as having been generated just prior to creation, in order to act as God’s artisan of, and archregent in, the created order. Moreover, the Greek of John’s prologue may reflect what was, at the time of its composition, a standard semantic distinction between the articular and inarticular (or arthrous and anarthrous) forms of the word theos: the former, ὁ θεός (ho theos) (as in πρὸς τὸν θεόν [pros ton theon], where the accusative form of article and noun follow the preposition), was generally used to refer to God in the fullest and most proper sense: God Most High, the transcendent One; the latter, however, θεός (theos) (as in καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος [kai theos ēn ho logos]), could be used of any divine being, however finite: a god or a derivative divine agency, say, or even a divinized mortal. And so early theologians differed greatly in their interpretation of that very small but very significantly absent monosyllable.
Now it may be that the article is omitted in the latter case simply because the word theos functions as a predicate there, and typically in Greek the predicate would need no article. Yet the syntax is ambiguous as regards which substantive should be regarded as the subject and which the predicate; though Greek is an inflected language, and hence more syntactically malleable than modern Western tongues, the order of words is not a matter of complete indifference; and one might even translate καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος as “and [this] god was the Logos.” But the issue becomes at once both clearer and more inadjudicable at verse 18, where again the designation of the Son is theos without the article, and there the word is unquestionably the subject of the sentence. Mind you, in the first chapter of John there are also other instances of the inarticular form where it is not clear whether the reference is the Father, the Son, or somehow both at once in an intentionally indeterminate way (as though, perhaps, the distinction of articular from inarticular forms is necessary in regard to the inner divine life, but not when speaking of the relation of the divine to the created realm). But, in all subsequent verses and chapters, God in his full transcendence is always ho theos; and the crucial importance of the difference between this and the inarticular theos is especially evident at 10:34–36. Most important of all, this distinction imbues the conclusion of the twentieth chapter with a remarkable theological significance, for it is there that Christ, now risen from the dead, is explicitly addressed as ho theos (by the Apostle Thomas). Even this startling profession, admittedly, left considerable room for argument in the early centuries as to whether the fully divine designation was something conferred upon Christ only after the resurrection, and then perhaps only honorifically, or whether instead it was an eternal truth about Christ that had been made manifest by the resurrection. In the end, the Nicene settlement was reached only as a result of a long and difficult debate on the whole testimony of scripture and on the implications of the Christian understanding of salvation in Christ (not to mention a soupçon of imperial pressure).
Anyway, my point is not that there is anything amiss in the theology of Nicaea, or that the original Greek text calls it into question, but only that standard translations make it impossible for readers who know neither Greek nor the history of late antique metaphysics and theology to understand either what the original text says or what it does not say. Not that there is any perfectly satisfactory way of representing the text’s obscurities in English, since we do not distinguish between articular and inarticular forms in the same way; rather, we have to rely on orthography and typography, using the difference between an uppercase or lowercase g to indicate the distinction between God and [a] god. This, hesitantly, is how I deal with the distinction in my translation of the Gospel’s prologue, and I believe one must employ some such device: it seems to me that the withholding of the full revelation of Christ as ho theos, God in the fullest sense, until the Apostle Thomas confesses him as such in the light of Easter, must be seen as an intentional authorial tactic. Some other scholars have chosen to render the inarticular form of theos as “a divine being,” but this seems wrong to me on two counts: first, if that were all the evangelist were saying, he could have used the perfectly serviceable Greek word theios; and, second, the text of the Gospel clearly means to assert some kind of continuity of identity between God the Father and his Son the Logos, not merely some sort of association between “God proper” and “a god.” Here, I take it, one may regard chapter twenty as providing the ultimate interpretation of chapter one, and allow one’s translation to reflect that.
End Quote/Excerpt (…from “The New Testament: A Translation” by David Bentley Hart…)
Related Content:
John 1, Christology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bruce Metzger, Michael Marlowe, YHWH, and Theological Appraisals at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/john-1-christology-jehovahs-witnesses-bruce-metzger-michael-marlowe-yhwh-and-theological-appraisals-pdf.pdf
Joining The Eternal Conversation John’s Prologue And The Language Of Worship by Robert W Jensen at https://metachristianity.com/joining-the-eternal-conversation-johns-prologue-and-the-language-of-worship/
Also:
Two items looking at Trinity In The Gospels (…”God In The Flesh In The Gospels”…)
1 of 2: The following is from a comment section, specifically https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/our_existence_as_relational_beings_points_to_the_trinity/#comment-2980707845
2 of 2: The following are excerpts from a comment section, specifically https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/our_existence_as_relational_beings_points_to_the_trinity/#comment-2982785079
Those two items are included in the PDF listed earlier for easier reference: John 1, Christology, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bruce Metzger, Michael Marlowe, YHWH, and Theological Appraisals at https://metachristianity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/john-1-christology-jehovahs-witnesses-bruce-metzger-michael-marlowe-yhwh-and-theological-appraisals-pdf.pdf
Trinity: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Filioque for the Twenty First Century — Edited by Myk Habets
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ecumenical-Perspectives-Filioque-21st-Century/dp/0567666050
PDF Academia Online: https://www.academia.edu/44582063/Ecumenical_Perspectives_on_the_Filioque_for_the_Twenty_first_Century_Edited_by_Myk_Habets
PDF Here: ecumenical-perspectives-on-the-filioque-for-the-twenty-first-century–edited-by-myk-habets-copy
PLATONISM? Moral Facts Through All Counterfactuals? Can The Universe Be The Necessary Being?
If Abstract Objects exist how are we (as causal agents) obligated with respect to those (non-causal) Abstract Objects? If the Abstract Objects in question are only Immutable Self-Existing Abstract Objects but are Casually Inert such that they do NOT cause to “be” or “happen” various beings and various events ((and so on)) and/or they are NOT Intentional|Volitional, then again how are we as intentional|volitional causal agents obligated with respect to those (non-causal) Abstract Objects?
If the Objects ARE not ONLY Abstract but ALSO Causal, Intentional, Volitional, and so on such that they cause to “be”|“happen” various beings|events ((and so on)) then which Abstract Object is the Metaphysical Fountainhead of the other Abstract Objects? Also, and this is key, how would any of THAT state of affairs ((A)) end up as NON-Theism and/or ((B)) how is it NOT Polytheism?
Just as bad ((…discussed further down…)) is the problem of Casually Inert Immutable Self-Existing Abstract Objects juxtaposed to and/or amalgamated with the existence of all that is not “Them/That” such as Worlds and our own Contingent Minds and so on ((…discussed further down…)).
“[Erik] Wielenberg on Moral Realism and Theism” has 3 parts. In “Part 3 — Mysterious Floating Values” (linked below) it seems to end in Brute Fact. First of all, even IF we grant Platonism, the problems described earlier remain unaddressed. The linked essay on Wielenberg wrongly equates both Platonism and [God] to Brute Fact and leaves out the element of the Self-Explanatory vis-à-vis Being. Edward Feser and others are easily accessible and comment on what Brute Fact actually entails and why reality’s rock-bottom|self-explanatory terminus isn’t a Brute Fact vis-à-vis the Christian Metaphysic.
Additionally we find that [The Necessary Being] & [The Necessary Universe] are two radically different statements. Further, it seems that for Wielenberg it is the case that Abstract Objects v. Platonism DO in the end FAIL to rise above the level of Brute Facts. Here’s the link to part three: https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/05/wielenberg-on-moral-realism-and-theism_8454.html
A telling quote from Erik Wielenberg is from God vs. ‘Just Because’: Two Explanations for Objective Morality ((…see https://strangenotions.com/god-vs-just-because-two-explanations-for-objective-morality/ …))
Begin Quote:
Given that these laws exist, why do they exist? Steven quotes Erik Wielenberg, who treats these laws as an effect without a cause:
“Such facts are the foundation of (the rest of) objective morality and rest on no foundation themselves. To ask of such facts, “where do they come from?” or “on what foundation do they rest?” is misguided in much the way that, according to many theists, it is misguided to ask of God, “where does He come from?” or “on what foundation does He rest”? The answer is the same in both cases: They come from nowhere, and nothing external to themselves grounds their existence; rather, they are fundamental features of the universe that ground other truths.”
This is not an answer. It’s a shrug of the shoulders and a “Just because.”
That’s not the case in the Christian answer that God is uncaused. We argue that God must exist, since you cannot just have an infinite series of conditional and created beings. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Third Way proves the existence of a Being (who we call God) who must exist necessarily, and who relies only upon Himself for His Being. Without Him, there couldn’t be a universe. We don’t assume that God must exist: we show that He must.
Further, this conclusion makes sense. After all, God is Subsistent Being (ipsum esse subsistens). Being could no more not-be than non-being could be. Asking who caused the Uncaused Cause is contradictory, and it makes sense to say that a necessarily-existing Being necessarily exists.
That’s quite different when we’re dealing with moral principles: there’s no apparent reason or explanation why we would assume that they’re uncaused (other than the alternative requires God).
And asking who or what causes these truths isn’t contradictory. On the contrary, it’s a question that……”
End quote.
Platonism & Moral Fact & Rule-Setting?
As a segue into the problem of Moral Facts & Rule-Setting it will be helpful to delineate a few more concepts related to Platonism’s Problem of Causal Inertness. As per the following
Begin Quote/Excerpt:
On the basis of the examples thus far considered, one might be tempted to think that the distinction between the concrete and the abstract is the same as between the material and the immaterial. But a moment’s reflection shows that that cannot be correct. For if immaterial agents like souls or angels exist, they would indisputably fall in the class of concrete, not abstract, objects. Everyone recognizes that there is a world of difference between such causally active agents and things like numbers, propositions, and possible worlds. So even if, as it seems, all abstract objects are immaterial, not all immaterial objects are abstract. There could be objects which are both concrete and immaterial, so that the abstract/ concrete distinction cannot be equated with the immaterial/ material distinction.
One might then think that concrete objects, whether material or immaterial, are all spatiotemporal objects, while abstract objects are without exception non-spatiotemporal objects, that is, objects which transcend space and time. Is that how the distinction between abstract and concrete ought to be drawn? Again, the answer is, no. For God, if He exists, is plausibly thought to exist beyond space and time (at least sans the universe), being the free Creator of space and time. Yet, as a causal agent who has created the world, God would be a paradigmatic concrete object…..”
[…note that physics is converging here as the growing majority of physicists affirm Eternalism over Presentism, which is to say that Space-Time is emergent – as in Time and Space are not ontologically basic ((not ontologically irreducible)) and while neither Presentism nor Eternalism present a problem to the Christian Metaphysic, both put of stubborn walls for any Non-Theistic climbers…]
“…Perhaps here we have a clue as to how the distinction between abstract and concrete objects is best drawn. It is very widely held among philosophers that abstract objects, in contrast to concrete objects, are causally impotent and so are not related to other objects as causes to effects. Moreover, their causal impotence seems to be an essential feature of abstract objects. The number 2, for example, does not just happen to be causally effete. It seems inconceivable that 2 could possess causal powers. Abstract objects’ causal impotence entails that they are immaterial, for if they were material objects, they would exist in time and space and so could come into contact with other things, thereby affecting those things. No wonder, then, that some thinkers have too hastily concluded that the abstract/ concrete distinction just is the immaterial/ material distinction! Perhaps the reason abstract objects are causally effete is precisely because they are neither material objects nor personal agents. Be that as it may, the criterion of essential causal impotence seems to delineate effectively abstract from concrete objects…..
If asked to explain why the dog is brown, the anti-realist can offer a perfectly plausible and, I think, adequate scientific explanation in terms of the dog’s absorbing and reflecting various wavelengths of light, and so forth. By contrast, it does nothing at all to explain why the dog is brown to say that the dog has the property of brownness. Indeed, how does standing in a mysterious relation to a non-spatial, causally unconnected, abstract object make an otherwise colorless dog brown? It seems that Platonism has no explanatory advantage over anti-realism. It is therefore little wonder that, in the words of the philosopher of mathematics Mark Balaguer, ‘The One Over Many argument is now widely considered to be a bad argument.
End Quote/Excerpt ((…from “God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism”…))
Quote/Excerpt:
“….consider their response to the concern of many Nominalists that it is hard to see how we could have knowledge of all these abstracta beyond time and space, causally cut off from us. The Nominalist will want to know how we can have genuine knowledge of a realm of objects existing in such splendid isolation. Burgess and Rosen’s response is to compare mathematical knowledge with perceptual knowledge. We do not know how to show that our perceptual beliefs are true. Nevertheless, we take them for granted until we are given some sort of positive reason to doubt them. Similarly, the Platonist may simply reject the Nominalist demand that our basic mathematical assumptions require some sort of positive defense.
There are a number of problems with this analogy. First, as Plantinga has emphasized, beliefs which are properly basic need to be grounded in some way. Our perceptual beliefs are grounded in the appearances of things to us. But in the case of mathematical objects it is their causal inertness that precludes any experience of such objects. Any sort of appearance of such objects must be akin to a hallucination. The Platonist might say that while we have no appearances of such entities, nevertheless there is the appearance of self-evidence of the existence axioms of mathematics, which entails their existence… But the difficulty with this response is not merely that the existence axioms of set theory are generally regarded as not self-evident (one reason for the failure of Logicism), but more importantly — and this leads to the second problem — it is far from self-evident that the truth of the existence axioms implies the existence of mathematical objects. Burgess and Rosen respond to Yablo’s Figuralism by saying,
“Certainly in all clear cases of figurative language — and it is worth stressing that the boundary between figurative and literal is as fuzzy as can be — the non-literal character of the linguistic performance will be perfectly obvious as soon as the speaker is forced to turn attention to the question of whether the remark was meant literally. We further submit that mathematical discourse fails this test for non-literalness.”
One is tempted to ask….. if the self-evidence of existence axioms and their derivations is to ground the proper basicality of belief in mathematical objects, then it must be obvious that “There are infinitely many primes” is meant to be taken literally. Thirdly, in the case of belief in mathematical objects, we have what we do not in general have for perceptual beliefs, namely, a putative undercutting defeater of the belief. Were we given good reason to believe, say, that we have been dreaming or insane or hallucinating, then our previous perceptual beliefs would no longer be properly basic for us. Fortunately, we have in general no such defeater for our present perceptual judgements. But in the case of mathematical objects, it is precisely their causal isolation which does constitute a putative undercutting defeater of those beliefs. What is wanted now from the Platonist is a defeater-defeater; it is insufficient to re-assert the proper basicality of existence axioms. Finally, although Plantinga defends the proper basicality and a priori knowledge of mathematical truths, he does so only on the basis of a rejection of Platonism in favor of a thorough-going Conceptualism, according to which no abstract objects exist.
Whatever we make of the epistemological objection to Platonism, Burgess and Rosen have not shown that there is no philosophical (or theological) argument powerful enough to warrant skepticism about mathematical objects despite their putative acceptability on mathematical and scientific standards….”
End Quote/Excerpts ((…from https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-aseity/god-and-abstract-objects-2018/ …))
In short, we have warranted skepticism against Platonism. Hence Dr. Craig concludes with the following:
“I conclude that the challenge posed by Platonism to the doctrine of divine aseity can be met successfully. The doctrine that God is the sole ultimate reality is eminently reasonable. We may affirm without hesitation or mental reservation Paul’s doxology: ‘God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen’ (Rom. 9: 5).” ((…from “God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism”….))
Still more from W.L. Craig’s book “God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism” offers further insight. See the specific excerpts within the following comment. The link should land on the specific comment that starts off with “Logic, Platonism, Abstract Objects, and Being….” A few of the links within the comment go to STR’s older format and are not live but all of the excerpts are quoted in full so the internal links within the comment are not relevant to them: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/did_god_create_evil_video/#comment-3518528830
It seems Platonism forces all Contingent Minds into either another form of Eliminativism or else into a metaphysical armistice in which they too – along with Abstract Objects – are Uncreated Brute Facts – or something along that break-point vis-à-vis the Causally Inert Abstract Objects.
Let’s now continu with Platonism & Moral Fact & Rule-Setting?
Twitter’s @robertdryer makes the interesting observation about the logically prior ((…in the discussion he is simply offering possible Hypotheticals / What-If’s and is not arguing for Platonism…)). He states that Abstract Math ((Etc.)) in Platonism may exist ((he offers a hypothetical/question)) and so, well, OK let’s say we grant Platonism but in order for us to (verb) abstract any numbers one must FIRST be able to apply (verb) rules in order to then SECONDLY access (verb) any Platonic system of numbers. Something must apply the rules of mathematics and something must actually access the abstractions. Notice that neither the verb of APPLY nor the verb of ACCESS is logically or necessarily prior the other verb IF both are contingent & mutable. Why? Well because the rules of the Rule-Setter ((our own contingent minds)) and the Rule-Doer itself ((our own contingent minds)) can be forced onto the other by either side — by either mutable and contingent “terminus” – as neither is logically or necessarily prior to the other and each is contingent & mutable and each is therefore metaphysically free to Lead/Follow/Change. We reach a metaphysical armistice of ontological equals in Rule-Setting & Rule-Doing and seem to forfeit teleology despite Abstractions In The Sky. Axioms arrive and with it the Münchhausen Trilemma.
Axioms arrive and with it the Münchhausen Trilemma…
So IF Platonism is granted THEN the rules have a causally inert set of numbers in that the Abstract Objects “are” but they don’t “do” and all of that is just sitting there and — so — the Rule Setter||Rule-Doer is now // are now me and you — the mutable and contingent. There is no Setting nor Doing but that which is set by the mutable & contingent — the [we do] and — thereby — the irreducible nature of our actual Verb-ing/Reason-ing/Think-ing is now either Non-Causal or else some New/Other Brute-Fact ((in addition to the Abstract Objects)) for there was no Intentionality nor Volition logically & necessarily present anywhere ever — and — so — as we are ((supposedly)) Verb-ing/Reason-ing/Think-ing our way towards the Fountainhead|Source of our very Being we discover that said Do-Ing & said Intentional-Ing & said Volitional-Ing eventually collapses into incoherence or else the aforementioned New/Other Brute-Fact ((in addition to the Abstract Objects)).
Is this really nothing more than full-on Emergentism? Well perhaps not quite but if it does reduce to that then we’ve forced another narrative of full-on Eliminativism. An excerpt from a brief discussion alludes to that….
Begin Excerpt:
It seems Platonism forces all contingent minds into either another form of Eliminativism or else into a metaphysical armistice in which they too – along with Abstract Objects – are Uncreated Brute Facts – or something along that break-point vis-à-vis the Causally Inert Abstract Objects.
Question posed in thread: “Is the problem that Brute Facts have a lack of explanation i.e. Sufficient Reason?”
Brute Fact has several problems but one of the interesting metaphysical collapses which we traverse isn’t the forfeit of PSR ((there is that)) but something more along the lines of what we forfeit when we embrace the elimination of Mind. Eliminativism doesn’t collapse into Reductio specifically via the PSR — but because it can never retain Mind without horrific equivocation ((Etc.Etc.)). It is so catastrophic that even the term Illusion is gutted of all coherence — which it cannot *even *in *principle retain. So, keeping the PSR *out *of *the *picture for now & looking at Eliminativism, what comes into focus is the converging of 1. Eliminativism’s “Not Intelligible Even In Principle” and 2. Brute Fact’s “Not Intelligible Even In Principle”. The bulldog of the Law of Identity arrives.
The full on metaphysical collapse is [Identical] in both at the far end — where all [Metaphysical] [Products] converge and give the same [Metaphysical] [Yield/Content] — namely [Not Intelligible Even In Principal]. We tend to think of Eliminativism’s “set” of “problems” with respect to Intentionality//Mind vis-à-vis “i” vis-a-vis “i-am” vis-a-vis Intentionality vis-a-vis I-Reason vis-a-vis I-Think vis-a-vis I-Exist vis-a-vis the Contingent “i-am” forever in need of the Irreducible I-AM as somehow “only eliminativism’s collapse” but it becomes obvious that the Yield/Fruit of Eliminativism achieves Metaphysical Identity with the Yield/Fruit of Brue Fact. Then, from there, we can add the usual/other problems related to the PSR and other segues Etc. Etc.
End Excerpt.
Another problem: Not only can we have no coherent Do-Ing amid Be-Ing vis-à-vis Verb-ing but, also, and just as bad, it is the case that Meaning ((rule setting)) cannot flow FROM the contingent & mutable ((contingent minds)) INTO the Necessary ((Platonism’s Causally Inert Numbers)).
So now what?
Well so then the Absolute Mind vis-à-vis Absolute Consciousness forfeits nothing with respect to Do-Ing|Be-Ing, and retains all while that false direction of rule-setting||doing is left behind even as Do-Ing amid Be-Ing is rationally affirmed and is also found ontologically prior to and logically prior to our own Do-Ing//Be-Ing. How is everything retained? Well that becomes obvious now as conceptually all aforementioned semantic intent lands within the express topography of Pure Act as the only coherent Be-Ing((Setting))||Do-Ing((Procession/Logos/Communique)). The odd part of Platonism is that all such abstract objects are causally inert. They “exist” but are void of “Act” — whereas — Pure Act ((…Thomistic brands etc…)) provides the Whole-Show and does so seamlessly. David B. Hart speaks of the Divine Mind housing “The Infinitely Known & The Infinite Knower”. Uncanny.
Platonism fails in other ways too and when we come to specifically Moral Facts we find the following:
One’s own “motion in being” ((so to speak)) a. ultimately converges with or else b. ultimately runs against the Objective or Irreducible Grain of reality — whatever that is. If Reason as Truth-Finder is not obligated “there” with respect to love then Hume wins and Non-Theism fails to afford us an ontology for Moral Realism. All vectors short of love vis-à-vis Reciprocity vis-a-vis Being as Self-Giving vis-à-vis the meta-ontological question: “…what determines one’s ontological commitments…?” actually fail to obligate Reason in her role as Truth-Finder. This is one of the many reasons why the many capricious Greek gods/termini come up short.
Abstract Objects reach further – yes – but there’s a problem if one means to tell Reason that reality’s rock-bottom is — qua Truth — Love vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Being in totum. Reality’s “concrete furniture” as some physicists like to put it.
For another thing — Reason *as* Reason finds her obligation in seeking/chasing that Irreducible Grain ((whatever it is)). But Hume got it right and set Reason free because the term “morally un-reasonable” collapses once we realize that ((on Non-Theism)) Reason never can find said Concrete Furniture vis-à-vis Reality offering her Being *as* Irreducible Self-Giving.
There is only one Metanarrative infused into the consciousness of Mankind wherein Being Itself *as* Self-Giving just is Reason’s final satisfaction. All Progressions vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life arrive as “The-Always” & “The-Already” and no other Sub-Narrative, Narrative, or Meta-Narrative infuses the collective consciousness of Mankind with said transcendentals with more clarity than the uncanny Trinitarian Metaphysic.
In the Christian metanarrative we find the Trinitarian metaphysic and therein “….that eternal one-another…” and therein love’s timeless Self-Giving in and by and of nothing less than the irreducible diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum with respect to …being itself… and, thereby – once again – The Always & The Already, or that which is ceaselessly Beneath and Above – namely “Love & Necessity” as an ontic singularity.
It is there that we find in the Christian metaphysic the intellectual and moral grounds for affirming the term, “Love Himself” vis-à-vis the A and the Z of the Trinitarian Life / Trinity with respect to the Decree of the Imago Dei (…and all which comes with “that”…). That is to say, it is there that we find nothing less than the immutable love of the Necessary Being (…and all that comes with “that”…).
That is to say, it is there in nothing less than Being that we find The Always and The Already constituting love’s timeless reciprocity and Self-Giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum (…and all that comes with “that”…). It is *that* explanatory terminus which is reality’s rock-bottom, reality’s irreducible substratum – the A and the Z of every possible ontic, of every possible sentence.
That uncanny A — Z finds the immutable with respect to, not “only” Being Itself (as it were) but instead Being Itself as love’s timeless reciprocity and therein we find Ceaseless Self-Giving revealing the fundamental fabric of reality’s concrete furniture. See “Malleable Truth? The Christian Ethic Shifts With Culture?” at http://disq.us/p/1wq6j96 which is also linked to with https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-4155674874
[All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] & Moral Facts & The Moral Dilemma:
Here’s reality “as it is” given the landscape of the aforementioned Privation (…or instead that Incline Godward / Upward and so on…) vis-à-vis the proverbial moral dilemma:
“…in a hypothetical war we find a few hundred people hiding and the crying baby will give away the hiding place of the 100 adults, hence they’ll be found and killed. The options: we can kill the baby and save the 100 or we can let the baby cry and sacrifice (thereby) all the adults and the baby too in the end…..”
In the middle of war’s hell we find that killing the crying baby in said time of war to save the many isn’t “Morally Good”, but it might be justified given this or that horrific impact of doing otherwise – with the catch that there is no World-Contingent Metric which can satisfy “justified” in that syntax given that there is only One True Ideal. Just the same, sparing the baby and sacrificing the many in said time of war isn’t “Morally Good”, but it might be justified given this or that horrific outcome of doing otherwise – again with the catch that there is no World-Contingent Metric which can satisfy “justified” in that syntax given that there is only One True Ideal with respect to The-Good, or as some say The-Always & The-Already.
Regarding The Illusive World-Contingent Metric:
Before we shout Consequentialism one must push through to the End of any Contingent World and get beyond all possible Possibilities and Counterfactuals such that one lands in, not this or that Contingent Fact but, instead, in the Necessary vis-à-vis Ending Evil vis-à-vis The Good vis-à-vis Ending Privation (…..in short one must arrive at Closure irrespective of a. Privation or b. Incline Godward….).
It is only “there” where we find That-Which is not and cannot even in principle be the-consequence-of this or that World Contingent Vector or Metric.
Just the same it is logically unavoidable in all of this that there are no options which rise to the level of Moral Excellence in such a world. And in fact Scripture expressly defines the pains of Privation (…which is “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing“…) as that which constitutes – not just a few ingrained mindsets in a few cultures – but reality itself. Even further, we find that such a reality sums to that very same category of World unless/until/pending nothing less than the “ontic-fact” of the only logically possible dissolution of a Vacuum (….as in “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing”….) which is to In-Fill said Vacuum with nothing less than All Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring into, and through, and to the bitter ends of that category of reality / world. As another Christian once pointed out to our Non-Theist friends:
“….As a side note, I don’t think executing child-molesting cannibals is, in your words, morally good….”
Now, how in the world would that act not be “Morally Good”? Because there is a Moral Better – or – a Higher Moral which does *not* include the destruction of the Man (….all narratives in Scripture converge in the Cross, in Christ…) and as such the Non-Theist has no rational grasp on what is actually being discussed here with respect to any coherent ontic in and of The Good. It’s almost as if fictions really do matter to our Non-Theist friends rather than the bitter reality of the pains of Privation with respect to, not a few ingrained mindsets, but of reality itself. That seems to motivate the unfortunate posture behind our Non-Theist friends with respect to their odd habit of beginning and ending all related analytics with “But Sinai…. But Sinai …..But…but… BUT SINAI…!!”
The Christian reply to that fallacious “Sinai Is God’s Eternal Ideal & The Means To Moral Excellence” is straightforward:
“You’re struggling over a very simple fact, which is that you won’t find any Morally Excellent vector within Privation (..or “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing“…). Notice that if one posits that Incline Godward then the syntax does not change as, all over again the problem is that of “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing“. Hence either way we find the following simple fact: You just won’t find any Morally Excellent vector in any such Landscape. None. Zero. Every vector will, at some seam somewhere, come up as lacking good. That’s the whole show, and, so, though you suggest there is “parsing out” needed by the Christian, there is not and in fact cannot be any such need for any such “parsing-out.”
It’s not clear but it seems that our Non-Theist friends STILL want to claim that Scripture’s Metanarrative tells them and us to look to Sinai for the Means and the Ends of The Good – for the Means to the actualization of Moral Excellence in and through All-Things-Adamic. The reason that is the case is because they seem to have merely recast the entire question in this or that Non-Christian set of premises.
Unfortunately for such Straw-manning Scripture is quite clear about the means and the ends of [A] Laws in all/any time/place, including Sinai, with respect to all possible explanatory termini and also of [B] All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring as the only logically coherent explanatory terminus.
What men do – Christian or not – Theist or Atheist – never can be “enough” with respect to any ontology of the Immutable & Necessary. We have to be careful about stopping our unpacking at the metric of normative shifts, else this or that action (…say… slavery or whatever…) forces the logical absurdity of A. condoned and a slice of the Good rather than B. tolerated and a slice of Privation. Rather, our metric must both precede and outdistance all such normative shifts. The necessary and sufficient “Means” to the “Ends” of that which is “The Good” is not, and never can be, the hard fist of Law, which is why God meets us right where we live such that Sinai is, according to the OT and the NT, anything but God’s Ideal for mankind as He works and speaks with us beneath our own conceptual ceilings. Now, that mode of tolerance on God’s part is a means towards the restraint of death rather than a means into The-Good.
See Love, Reason, Reality, And The Golden Thread Of Reciprocity at https://metachristianity.com/reason-reality-golden-thread-reciprocity/
Can The Universe Be The Necessary Being?
The following is from Dr. W.L. Craig at https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/subtracting-infinite-coins-and-necessity-of-the-universe/
Quote:
“I give a couple of arguments as to why it seems to me that the universe is not metaphysically necessary. The first argument is based upon the composition of the universe. Just as a pair of socks would not be the same pair of socks if it were made of silk rather than made of wool, so it seems to me that a universe composed of a different collection of quarks wouldn’t be the same universe as a universe made up of a different collection of quarks or fundamental particles. Therefore, the person who thinks that the universe is metaphysically necessary has to say that just this collection of quarks exists with metaphysical necessity. And that just seems outrageous to me – to think that all of the quarks in the universe are metaphysically necessary beings and couldn’t have been replaced by other quarks. So I don’t have any argument beyond that other than the fact that that just seems modally obvious. The quarks and strings in the universe don’t exist with metaphysical necessity. I suppose one thing you could appeal to would be modern scientific theories in which the universe is not made up of quarks. Say it is made up of strings instead. In other words, it is very easy to craft alternative physical models that are different. So the proponent of the view that the universe is metaphysically necessary would have to say that these other physical models are, in fact, metaphysical impossibilities. That just seems wrong. They do seem perfectly possible, not only metaphysically but physically. So I think that the person who is taking this line is taking a really radical line in thinking that all these fundamental particles exist with metaphysical necessity. That is probably why nobody adopts this view.”
End quote.
The following is helpful: “5 Reasons Why the Universe Can’t Be Merely a Brute Fact” – at https://strangenotions.com/5-reasons-why-the-universe-cant-be-merely-a-brute-fact/
From David Oderberg:
The Impossibility Of Natural Necessity — That is the title of his chapter in “Ontology, Modality, and Mind” (Edited by Carruth, Gibb, and Heil) as per https://www.amazon.com/Ontology-Modality-Mind-Themes-Metaphysics-ebook/dp/B07J128YN4/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1 and also as per https://global.oup.com/academic/product/ontology-modality-and-mind-9780198796299?cc=us&lang=en&
From Dr. Craig:
Similar content with segues from E. Feser:
From Sam Harper is the following:
“….I think what he means is that the earth is a contingent thing. It’s possible for it to not exist. This is evident in the fact that there was a time when it didn’t exist. If it once didn’t exist but now does exist, then it’s a thing that can be made. In other words, it’s a thing that can be caused to come into existence. That is unlike anything that is either impossible or necessary. If something is impossible, then it can’t be made. If something is necessary, then it also can’t be made because it can’t fail to exist…” (Sam Harper / http://philochristos.blogspot.com/ )
A few excerpts from the comment section of https://strangenotions.com/how-cosmic-existence-reveals-gods-reality/ beginning with http://disq.us/p/1qobtik and ending with http://disq.us/p/1r4hilb from J.Hillclimber is helpful:
Begin Excerpts/Quotes:
Jim’s comment: “I think Sean Carroll’s wording kind of gives it away. Even if it is true that “the universe can simply exist”, that only acknowledges the logical possibility of the universe “simply existing”. The nature of possibility is that there is always a context in which the possible thing could occur or not occur. Unless one believes that the universe must logically exist, one should acknowledge that there seems to be a universe-transcending context in which the universe might or might not exist……. Let’s please leave aside the word “supernatural”, unless you can propose a definition for that. (And please, no suggestions along the lines of, “something that is not natural”, unless you have an approximate definition of “nature”.) All I am saying is that:
For my part, I can only say that the existing universe seems logically unnecessary. That seems sufficient for me to me to infer that we are in scenario 1, i.e. that there is an absolutely necessary, universe-transcending context.
….if you saying that you don’t know what it means to speak of a context of possibility [then] I think I am just using normal English here. If you are asking me to get more precise about it, I suppose we could formalize it mathematically. If we agree that possibility means the same thing as “probability greater than zero”, we can use the standard formalization of probability as a measure on a sigma algebra. The measure space (i.e. the underlying set and the sigma algebra defined on it) provide the context wherein we can speak of certain events as being possible or not possible. Absent a context, I don’t know how you can possibly define probability or possibility. What do those words even mean, without a context in which to operate? [You say it] seems possible that the universe might not exist, then what is the context of that possibility of non-existence?”
Doug’s comment: “My apologies. In a moment of carelessness I misread your comment. Where you wrote “might or might not exist” I saw “might or might not have existed.” That the universe might, in actual fact, not exist is a notion I can make no sense of. Even taking solipsism to its extreme, if I am all that exists, then I am the universe, and I can’t deny my own existence.”
Jim’s comment: “No worries, the verb tenses are confusing here. You interpreted me correctly the first time. I mean, essentially, “the universe might never have existed” (in which case it also would not exist now). I am not talking about what is, in actual fact, the case. I am talking about what is possible. ETA: To belabor it even more: obviously, if we condition on the known fact that the universe exists, then it is conditionally impossible for the universe not to exist. So when we acknowledge the possibility of the non-existence of the universe, we obviously are talking about “marginal” possibility that hasn’t conditioned on the universe’s existence.”
End quotes/excerpts.
Another line of sight of possible interest is four essays on “Platonism and The Trinity by Alexander Earl – at the following: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/03/29/platonism-and-the-trinity/ and then https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/04/01/platonism-and-the-trinity-hierarchy-and-participation/ and then https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/04/06/platonism-and-the-trinity-apophaticism-and-pure-relationality/ and then https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/04/08/platonism-and-the-trinity-plotinian-triad/
— One would have to at least address the question of whether or not that merges into Pantheism and address distinctions regarding the Un-Created/Un-Derived ((on the one hand)) and the Created/Derived ((on the other hand)) and also the notion of Causally Inert and then converge/diverge with actual premises — and so on — but it is offered here as a matter of segue/interesting context.
Where in the four fundamental Forces/Interactions is/are reality’s concrete furniture or “fundamental nature” that is the “objective fact” of Good? Of Reciprocity? Of Self? Of Self-Giving? If we agree on Naturalism’s insufficient Ontic Termini in those items and move to Platonism then the question we face is this: where over there within the Causally-Inert Non-Self or Non-I-Am ((Platonism)) do we find the Irreducible or Fundamental Nature of Good? Of Reciprocity? Of Self? Of Self-Giving? On the question of Identity we move instead to the Irreducible Trinitarian Life vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving.
Segues:
“Logic Itself Is Being Itself Contra The Fallacy of Presuppositionalism” at https://metachristianity.com/logic-itself-is-being-itself-contra-the-fallacy-of-presuppositionalism/
The following is primarily a series of quotes which speak to several questions which naturally come up in topics dealing with Divine Freedom and “Can God Create X / Not Create X?” and “Does God Change If He Creates?” and also with “Cambridge Properties” in God. While most are from Dr. D. Bonnette who is Thomistic in his approach one quote is from E. Feser (also Thomistic) and one quote is from Dr. W.L. Craig, and three are from Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP The Trinity and God the Creator.
Quote 1:
“My reply is based on the idea that moral perfection is a uniquely divine property. To be morally perfect is to embody goodness itself, to be maximally good. If you agree… that being the Supreme Good makes a being worthy of worship, then it immediately follows that that being is God. For by definition God is a being worthy of worship. Nothing else but God is worthy of worship (as opposed to just admiration). So if a being is morally perfect and therefore God, it must have all the essential properties of God, including omniscience, omnipotence, eternity, necessity, and so on. My answer implies that a human person cannot be a morally perfect being, or he would be God. Dave asks, What about Adam? In Christian theology, Adam is not morally perfect. He is morally innocent prior to the Fall but not morally perfect. Even in heaven, free from sin, our righteousness will be finite, not like the infinite goodness of God. So I suspect that people’s reservations about my claim were based on a different understanding of “morally perfect.” Perhaps they interpreted it to mean something like “sinless.” In that case God can (and did) create a sinless human being. But sinlessness should not be equated with moral perfection, which is a positive quality of infinite magnitude.” ((W.L. Craig))
End Quote 1.
Quote 2: “With respect to goods less than his own being and goodness, God is completely free to create or not create. Is there a particular problem? The whole point of divine freedom is that it is not necessitated! It was the Neo-Platonists that got involved in God having to create by some sort of necessary emanation. As you know, that logically entails forms of pantheism, since you cannot then define God without reference to creatures on whose creation his very nature depends.” ((Dr. D. Bonnette / https://strangenotions.com/how-cosmic-existence-reveals-gods-reality/#comment-4510255558 …))
Quote 3: “By “prior,” do you mean ontologically or temporally prior? My suspicion is that you mean temporally prior, which is the standard understanding of causation among those who follow physics, rather than metaphysics. For the metaphysician, the only true causality must be such that the influence of the cause on the effect is immediate, which means that anything happening at a time prior to the effect cannot actually be the cause. Generally speaking, the cause is said to have to be simultaneous with its effect. If that is the case, then prior efficient and material causes are not true causes of the effect needing explanation.”((from https://strangenotions.com/how-cosmic-existence-reveals-gods-reality/#comment-4512590847 ))
Quote 4:
“This is the same error we had on this site some months back — and the refutation of it remains the same. This view assumes that whatever God wills he wills of necessity because he is the Necessary Being. But God’s necessity pertains solely to the necessity of his existence and certain essential properties, since his essence and his existence are identical. This view also arises from the belief that God’s unchangeable eternity is identified with his own will and will act, such that if his will were otherwise he would be a different God.
But, as I said above and as St. Thomas also says, God’s necessity pertains solely to those things that are essential to his nature, such as his own goodness. Thus, God wills his own goodness of necessity, while lesser goods are the object of his free choice, such as to create this world or some other world or no finite world at all. It is true that God is eternal and unchangeable. But what the critics miss is that he is identical with his own eternal free choice, including the choice to create this world and no other. I find Christians have little trouble understanding this simple truth, while atheists find it a mortal stumbling block.
While it is true that God cannot change his will to create this specific world, it is, as St. Thomas points out, a suppositional necessity. That is to say, given that God chose to make this particular world, it is true that he must make this particular world. But nothing makes him have to have chosen as he did. (Note here the misunderstandings that can arise from our need to speak in tensed predication, while God is entirely outside of time in his eternal now in which all his activity is timeless.)
Suppositional necessity means no more than something like the fact that I have chosen to rob a bank means that I now necessarily am choosing to rob this bank — but nothing makes me rob the bank in the first place. So, too, once God in timeless fashion chooses to create this world, it is true that he must choose to create this world — simply a matter of the principle of identity.
Still, Christians easily grasp that God is his own eternal absolutely free choice and that whatever he chooses less than his own goodness can be chosen freely by him. God remains absolutely free with respect to his having created and continuing to create this world.” ((Dr. Bonnette at https://strangenotions.com/how-cosmic-existence-reveals-gods-reality/#comment-3796910069 …)).
End Quote 4.
Quote 5:
“I had determined not to add further comments to this thread, but will make one last attempt to address what I see for some of you is a serious question: How can God’s free creation avoid flatly contradicting the principle of sufficient reason? Then I will leave further comments to others. I think I grasp the essence of the objections several have raised. Simply put, the argument is that, if God freely wills to create the world, either:
1— This is a brute fact, having no sufficient reason, and therefore shows that the PSR is not universally true.
—OR—
2— There is a sufficient reason for this choice and God is not actually free, but rather this “choice” flows from his nature necessarily.
St. Thomas argues that God being a necessary being does not entail that his choices flow from his nature necessarily :
“Although God necessarily wills His own goodness, He does not necessarily will things willed on account of His goodness; for his goodness can exist without other things.” Summa Theologiae I, q. 19, a. 3, ad. 2.
The key objecting insight seems to be that, if the free choice has a sufficient reason, then it cannot be really free. While St. Thomas shows that such a free choice need not flow necessarily from the divine nature, one still wonders then from what it does flow, unless there is some sufficient reason for this choice rather than that one, and then the “freedom” appears to be illusory.
The answer lies in the fact that God is truly the First Cause and that his eternal free choice is not moved to act at all. It is never not in act. So, there is no problem of reduction from potency to act. There is no unfolding “decision process” to be gone through.
God exists necessarily because his essence is one with his act of existence. He is his own sufficient reason for being. In light of the divine simplicity, God’s nature is one with its acts. This perfect unity entails, as St. Thomas says, both necessary and non-necessary aspects. Therefore, his non-necessary act to create is no more lacking a sufficient reason than is God himself. Since a brute fact is defined as something that has no sufficient reason, there are no brute facts here.
What flows from that eternal Pure Act flows necessarily with respect to necessary things and non-necessarily with respect to non-necessary things, which latter aspect of the divine being means the same thing as being free and acting freely. The sufficient reason for both necessary and non-necessary aspects is the same divine nature. God’s will flows necessarily from his nature in that he has a will. By definition a will is free with respect to what it can choose, and God can freely choose non-necessary goods.
God’s choice to create this unique world is not random or without reason, since good reasons for this particular world can be posited and God would certainly know them. But why are these reasons selected as the basis for this actual creation as opposed to other possible ones – or even the choice never to have created anything at all? The sufficient reason for that selection is the free choice that necessarily flows from God’s non-necessary relation to goods that are inferior to his own necessarily willed divine goodness.
The demand for a God A vs. God B explanation is not legitimate, since it assumes that all that is in God must flow necessarily from his nature. This misses the non- necessary choice of lesser goods. To demand to know whether God acts necessarily or not is to demand a yes or no answer to a question requiring a complex answer. God acts necessarily with respect to those things that he wills necessarily, such as the divine goodness, but he acts non-necessarily with respect to those things that are not necessary, such as goods less than the divine goodness — including creation of the world.
As St. Thomas points out, the only necessity respecting God’s free creative act is a suppositional necessity. If God has freely chosen to create this unique world, then it is necessary that he has made this choice as opposed to any other. But that does not mean that he had to make this choice, since from all eternity, he has freely chosen this particular creation in a non-necessary manner.
There is but one true God. Any hypothetical “God B” may sound like a logical possibility, but it is not a real possibility. You cannot prove any conclusion against God if one of your premises entails the hypothesis (God B) of something that does not and cannot actually exist, and is in fact metaphysically impossible — given that the one true God can be proven already to have existed from all eternity and that his free will choice to create this unique world is already manifest. You can only have one God at a time — and eternity had no “time” at which this unique God did not exist! No other “God” was ever even an hypothetical possibility in fact.
God necessarily exists and necessarily is free with respect to creating lesser goods than his own goodness. We now know what choice he makes, since we are among the creatures he has elected from all eternity to make and we now see his creation in act.
But this in no way affects the fact that his choice to create this world of lesser goods is both perfectly free and perfectly in conformity with the principle of sufficient reason.
I was taught always to give the best possible reading to any text. I can understand how hard that must be in this case for those who think the Christian God is absurd to begin with. Still, a careful reading of the above depiction of how God can freely create this world without any violation of the principle of sufficient reason should find it coherent, unless it is misread.” ((Dr. Bonnette at https://strangenotions.com/are-metaphysical-first-principles-universally-true/#comment-3490150487 …))
End Quote 5.
Quote 6:
“…a thing might be its own reason for being. But that is not to say that it lacks any reason for being. If a thing is not fully self-explained, then it needs something else to complete its explanation. That is the classical meaning of “cause,” not to be confused with the ignorant errors of David Hume. That every being must have a reason for being or becoming does not say whether the reason must be intrinsic or extrinsic to that being. If it is extrinsic, it is called a “cause.” But that in no way rules out the possibility that the reason for being is intrinsic to the being itself. Metaphysicians advance a concept of God in which his essence or nature is identical with his own act of existence, making him the Necessary Being. But a brute fact has no reason at all, which is entirely other than for something to be its own reason…” End quote ((~by Dr. Dennis Bonnette))
End Quote 6.
Quote 7: See “Divine Necessity And Created Contingence In Aquinas” by Peter Laughlin – at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2265.2009.00476.x
Quote 8: “…God can know and cause to be a kind of creation in which there is a beginning and an end, and in which reality progresses through the passage of time in such fashion that at every moment of that passage, the past no longer exists and the future does not yet exist. If such a reality itself is possible, then God can create it and know it as such….” ((Dr. Bonnette))
Quote 9:
“Once again, despite my intention not to re-argue the metaphysical first principles, you have raised the claim that somehow the “logical possibility” that God could have made some other choice for creation than he did as a proof that a brute fact exists, since there is no reason why he would have made this choice rather than that one. And, since the divine simplicity implies that God’s very essence is identical to his own choice, this would be tantamount to allowing that we would have a God B as opposed to a God A with no reason why one existed rather than the other. Hence a brute fact exists.
A single brute fact undoes the universal validity of the principle of sufficient reason. Or else, you argue, if there was a necessity that forces that there be only God A with his choice to create this particular world, then God’s creation would be necessary, which contradicts the Christian dogma of free creation.
Your whole argument is based on pseudo-logic. Notice, it starts with “logical possibility,” not a real or ontological possibility. Logical possibility is the weakest form of possibility, ruling out nothing but self-contradictory claims. As long as the terms of the hypothesis are not evidently self-contradictory, something is claimed to be “logically possible.”
By this standard the following claim is “logically possible:” The Ringling Brothers Circus will hold an encore performance in the atmosphere of Jupiter on next Christmas Eve.” Nothing in the terms appears evidently self-contradictory, but would you really think any of it is possible? No, because the reality implications are clearly impossible and contradictory – not the terms themselves. The standard of real possibility is not playing with words, but presenting an hypothesis that is metaphysically possible, that is, it could really happen.
You try to spin a web of seemingly logical terms, like “necessary” and “contingent,” as if they had the same signification and referents in each and every case, ignoring ontological complexities, such as how God is necessary with respect to his existence, but not necessary with respect to the choice of lesser goods than his own goodness. Reality is not just a game of logic, but must conform to the real being of the world and of God as they actually exist.
If you look back at my article on Metaphysical First Principles as well as the first of my comments in the newest order, you will see that the traditional concept of God is entirely coherent. You use the term, “necessary,” in a logically sloppy manner, trying to conflate God’s necessity of existing with an exclusion of freedom, but this was fully explained by me on the First Principles web page in terms of him being necessary with respect to existence and the divine names, but not necessary with respect to creation of goods lesser than his own infinite goodness. The distinction between necessary and non-necessary objects of his will pertains solely to a diversity in the objects of his will, not to a composition or contradiction in his own essence. Hence, God is properly conceived as eternally identical to his unchanging free choice to have created this particular world.
As an eternal free choice to create this world, it becomes suppositionally necessary that he has eternally made this choice and no other, but that supposition in no way inhibits his true freedom. It is merely a matter of noting that, since he did in fact make this choice, it is necessary that this choice is made.
Since there is one and only one true God whose eternal act of free will is factually identical with his eternal being, it is metaphysically impossible that God could ever have existed in any other manner. That is, the so-called “God B, C, D, or whatever” is not a metaphysical possibility at all – even less so than the Ringling Brothers Circus on Jupiter I described earlier. In fact, to suggest that such an “alternative God” or “alternative choice for God” is a logical possibility is, in fact, a logical impossibility – given the factual existence of the one and only true God with his one and only free act of will – since the supposition of another God contradicts the factual existence of only one possible God, the one who exists in actual fact. His existence as the only true God is not a mere assertion, since it is the product of careful demonstration in the science of metaphysics. I postulate its validity for purposes of this argument.
You claim, “Since multiple wills are logically possible, multiple gods are logically possible.”
This is a perfect example of the logical sloppiness of treating God like a logic lesson for beginners. Multiple wills sound “logically possible,” but they are not ontologically possible, since God has de facto and eternally exercised his will in a specific way with respect to the willing of lesser goods than his own goodness. It is a done deal. So, the fact that the “wills” do not contradict each other does not make them all equally related to actual existence. Solely the one that actually exists is real, and therefore, possible. No other act of will is ontologically possible. Since no other will is really possible, the same applies to your “multiple gods.” One will, one true God. No other “Gods” are actually possible. Remove them from your assumptions.
Moreover, there is no need for a reason why God A exists as opposed to God B, since God B was never possible at all, and you don’t need a special reason to be different than something that does not exist. God is his own reason for existing, and his free will is its own reason for his free choice.
God being his own sufficient reason for existing does not violate the principle of sufficient reason. The principle merely affirms that there must be a reason, not where it must exist. Metaphysically, God is his own reason for existing because he is the only being in which essence is identical to existence. Hence, he exists necessarily. Again, this is the classical concept of God that you are attacking as allegedly “logically” incoherent.
Incidentally, how do we know God exists? That is not the proper topic of this web page, but it is the product of the entire subject of metaphysics applying the principle of sufficient reason, among other principles and truths, to the evidence presented by the world in which we live. I strongly suspect that the reason why atheists so vehemently wish to reject the principle of sufficient reason is simply because they realize that, once you grant its validity, it becomes much more difficult to prevent the human mind from being led from the evidence of this world back to the existence of an Ultimate Sufficient Reason for all that exists, namely, the traditional God.
And it is perfectly kosher to use the PSR to prove God’s existence and properties, since your argument against him here fails if we can use reason to prove that he can exist as is proposed by classical metaphysics. I have shown that his existence is not a brute fact, since it is your logic that has proven false as show above. Hence there was no exception to the PSR and it can be used freely to prove God’s existence.
Moreover, in intellectual honesty, you should face the fact that once you destroy the principle of sufficient reason in any single instance — as you falsely claim you have, you can never be sure that it applies anywhere or at any time. You don’t get to pick and choose. The entire order of science and common sense and human thought becomes Alice in Wonderland, since you can never know when anything has a reason or not. No convenient assumptions that it works for just science when you think you need it. It can never be trusted again.
I made the case for this in my previous OP on first principles, but it needs to be faced squarely by those who would deny it. Never again can the mind ask “why” of anything and be confident that a reason exists. The logic of all mental inferences becomes useless, since reasons need never be given or even expected. And if the real world does not conform to the way the mind works, then we have a name for that: psychosis.
The price for abandoning the principle of sufficient reason is to abandon reason itself, since the human mind reasons by giving reasons for all its truth claims. No reasons given, no reason to take any claims seriously. No reasons needed, no need or ability to reason. Atheists are literally willing to abandon reason to get rid of God.
See my original article on the Metaphysical First Principles and first comment as ordered by “newest” mentioned above.” ((…Dr. Bonnette at https://strangenotions.com/what-is-the-true-understanding-of-causality/#comment-3505746293 …))
End Quote 9.
Quote 10:
“I will respond for now only to the first two arguments given above. I am sure many more are to be forthcoming anyway – but I would point out that a careful reading of my entire paper above should answer most of them. The claim that everything must be either necessary or contingent respecting God has been refuted by me several times before and with sufficient distinctions needed to clarify the matter.
God is the Necessary Being, but that means solely that his existence is necessary. It does not mean that everything he does he must do of necessity. Yes, his essence is identical with his act of existence which is why he must exist. And yes, he necessarily must will his own infinite goodness. But, with respect to lesser goods, such as the creation of a finite universe, he is perfectly free, as St. Thomas Aquinas points out, since none of these lesser goods add to or detract from his infinite perfection and goodness. And it is the finite creation that is contingent with respect to its existence, not God.
While there are other aspects which I have explained at length previously, the only thing one needs to know here is that the distinction between what he wills necessarily and what he wills eternally and freely lies in that these acts of divine will are specified as to different objects. As long as God does not will necessarily the same objects as he wills contingently, there is no contradiction involved. So what on earth is the problem?
The real problem appears to be that some simply cannot admit the clear distinction made above and therefore reject the Christian God because he does not fit perfectly into a preconceived logical trap designed to preclude his existence.
The claim that the only two possible choices are either an infinite regress of contingent explanations or a brute fact is simply a false dilemma. There is a third choice, namely, a being who is his own reason for being and is therefore (1) not contingent, but necessary, and (2) not a brute fact either, since a brute fact has no reason at all.
Again, this is simply a matter of trying to force a false logic on the Christian God who is his own reason for being. For some reason, the logic being used appears blind to the possibility of a thing or being being its own reason for being (and for choosing freely) – otherwise why isn’t this logical possibility included in the choices? After all, “sufficient reasons” are logically divided into intrinsic or extrinsic. As I said in the OP, if a being’s reason is extrinsic, the extrinsic reason is called a cause. The Uncaused First Cause is not his own cause, but rather is his own reason for being.” ((…see https://strangenotions.com/brute-facts-vs-sufficient-reasons/#comment-3588243879 …))
End Quote 10.
Quote 11:
J.N. said,
“You cannot believe all three of the following at once:
1. God is necessary.
2. God is identical to his free choices.
3. God didn’t have to make the choices that he did.”
Dr. Bonnette replied:
“You see, you are imposing certain preconceived notions to your understanding of what it means for God to be necessary. He is the Necessary Being, meaning he cannot no exist. But this does not mean that he is lacking free will and free choice.
Yes, his free choice is eternally identical with his nature or being. From your conflating “necessity” with “determinism,” you have imposed a false notion of what “necessary” means in God.
God is necessary in that he must exist. But it is also necessary that he exist with freedom of choice. What you cannot understand is that, being Eternal, God does not sit there, and then later on, decide to do something — so that his later “choice” is somehow determined by his prior state of existence. It is hard for atheists or agnostics to “get” this, but God is an eternal substantial act of free choice, so that while his existence is necessary, he is also eternally freely determining the things that he chooses to create or not create.
Once again, you are imposing your very faulty metaphysical assumptions into your “flawless” logic about God so as to come up with your desired conclusion — which happens to be totally invalid.” ((…from https://strangenotions.com/existential-inertia-vs-almighty-god/#comment-4981973447 …)) [….bold mine….]
End quote 11
Quote 12:
“….It seems to me that Davies’ point about negative theology here is correct as far as it goes, though incomplete. (In general, it seems to me that Davies’ work perhaps overemphasizes negative theology a bit – as I argue in Aquinas, I think this is true, for example, of his reading of Aquinas’s doctrine that God’s essence and existence are identical.) More could be said in response to the claim that divine simplicity and freedom and incompatible. For example, as I explained in the earlier post on divine simplicity, God’s creating the universe (or just Socrates for that matter) is what Barry Miller (following the lead of Peter Geach) calls a “Cambridge Property” of God, and the doctrine of divine simplicity does not rule out God’s having accidental Cambridge properties. (In fairness to Davies, though, he does make similar points in his other writings on this subject.) There is also to be considered the Scholastic distinction between that which is necessary absolutely and that which is necessary only by supposition. For example, it is not absolutely necessary that I write this blog post – I could have decided to do something else instead – but on the supposition that I am in fact writing it, it is necessary that I am. Similarly, it is not absolutely necessary that God wills to create just the world He has in fact created, but on the supposition that He has willed to create it, it is necessary that He does. There is this crucial difference between my will and God’s, though: Whereas I, being changeable, might in the course of writing this post change my mind and will to do something else instead, God is immutable, and thus cannot change what He has willed from all eternity to create. In short, since by supposition He has willed to create this world, being immutable He cannot do otherwise; but since absolutely He could have willed to create another world or no world at all […no Good is added to / subtracted from God…] He is nevertheless free…..”
End quote 12 ((……from http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/05/davies-on-divine-simplicity-and-freedom.html || [brackets mine] || bold mine……))
Quote 13
The first reason is found in St. Thomas: “The knowledge of the divine persons was necessary for right thinking about the creation of things. For when we say that God made all things by His Word we avoid the error of those who say that God made all things necessarily because of His nature. But when we discover in God the procession of love we see that God produced creatures not because of any need, nor because of any extrinsic cause, but because of the love of His goodness.”
This is to say, as Scheeben points out, that the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity perfects and confirms our natural knowledge of God the Creator and of creation as an entirely free act of God < ad extra >. This will be all the more apparent when we remember that many philosophers denied the freedom of creation because of the Platonic and Neoplatonic principle that the good is essentially diffusive of itself. But God is the highest good. Therefore God is essentially and to the greatest degree diffusive of Himself even as the sun radiates its light and heat everywhere by its very nature.
Reply: That good is diffusive of itself according to its particular aptitude, I concede; that it is always so because of its actuality, I deny. On this principle St. Thomas showed that creation was fitting and proper, but in his following article he went on to say that, although creation is fitting it is entirely free because “the goodness of God is perfect and is able to be without other beings since nothing of perfection accrues to it from other beings.” Some obscurity remains, however; for if God had created nothing, how would the principle that good is diffusive of itself be verified in God? In the first place how could there be an end eliciting the action of creation, and secondly how would creation be effected? Here Leibnitz erred by saying that creation is not physically but morally necessary, and that God would not be perfectly wise and good if He had not created, and moreover if He had not created the best of all possible worlds. Such was also the teaching of Malebranche. This obscurity is clarified by the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity, for, even if God had created nothing, there would still be in Him the infinite fecundity of the generation of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Ghost.
Thus the principle that good is diffusive of itself is perfectly verified in God. Indeed the highest good is necessarily diffusive of itself within itself but not by causality; by a communication which is not only a participation in its nature but a communication of His entire indivisible nature, of His entire intimate life in the generation of His Son, who was not made, and in the spiration of the Holy Ghost. Thus from a higher plane comes confirmation that creation is an entirely free act by which God communicates without Himself a participation of His being, His life, and His knowledge. Thus also it is more evident that God is not the intrinsic cause but the extrinsic cause of the universe, the end for which it was created, the being that created, conserves, and keeps it in motion. If, therefore, God created actually, it was through love, to show in an entirely free act His goodness, and not in any way by a necessity of His nature, as St. Thomas taught in the passage cited above against the pantheists and against that absolute optimism which is found in the teaching of Leibnitz and Malebranche.
Garrigou-Lagrange OP, Reginald. The Trinity and God the Creator.
End Quote 13.
Quote 14:
State of the question. The question is proposed in the form of three difficulties. 1. It appears that there are no processions in God because a procession implies motion without; but in God there is no motion, since He is the prime immovable mover and pure act. 2. He who proceeds differs from Him from whom He proceeds, but in God there can be no such difference. 3. To proceed from another is to depend upon another, but this is repugnant to the idea of a first principle. If the Son depends upon the Father, He is not God. Such are the principal difficulties.
Reply. In God the processions are not by local motion, nor by transitive action, but by the intellectual emanation of an intelligible word from Him who enunciates. At the end of the body of the article, St. Thomas says, “And thus Catholic faith holds that there is a procession in God.” From this last line it is evident that we are concerned here with an explanation of faith and not with a deduction of a theological conclusion. Proof. It is clear from the Scriptures that it is of faith that there are processions in God. In his argument St. Thomas quotes the words of our Lord,” or from God I proceeded” (John 8: 42). In the < Contra Gentes > St. Thomas quotes other texts: Jesus said, “The Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father” (John 15: 26). Besides this, in the Scriptures the Son of God is called “His own Son, ” that is, of God the Father (Rom. 8: 32), and “the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father” (John 1: 18). It is the Son who is truly “His own” who proceeds from the Father and not the son who is only adopted. Again we read, “The Father loveth the Son: and He hath given all things into His hands” (John 3: 35), and the only-begotten Son of the Father is called “the Word, ” by whom “all things were made,… and without Him was made nothing that was made” (John 1: 3; Heb. 1: 1).
From this it is clear that the Son proceeds from the Father from all eternity. This truth is explicitly contained in the creeds. In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed we read: “Begotten of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God”; and of the Holy Ghost: “who proceeds from the Father.” In the Athanasian Creed: “The Son is from the Father alone, not made, not created, but begotten; the Holy Ghost is from the Father and the Son, not made, not created, not begotten, but proceeding.”
Procession (< ekporeusis, probole >) is the origin of one from another, as light proceeds from the sun and a son from his father. St. Athanasius and St. Augustine explained that the imperfections inherent in human generation are not found in the divine processions.
In the divine processions, for example, there is no diversity of nature (the nature remains numerically the same) but only a diversity of persons according to the opposition of relation. In the body of the article, St. Thomas intended only to explain this truth of faith by a conceptual analysis of the word “procession, ” discarding at the same time any false interpretations. His process, therefore, is not illative but explicative. This is clear from the first words of the paragraph, in which he explains the idea of procession, as used by the Scriptures, and from the following article, in which St. Thomas explains the idea of generation.
Garrigou-Lagrange OP, Reginald. The Trinity and God the Creator.
((…see quote 15…))
End Quote 14.
Quote 15
Q: The dogma of the Trinity is a violation of the principle of efficient causality, according to which nothing produces its own being. But in this dogma the person who produces, the Father, and the person produced, the Son, have the same divine essence. Otherwise the Son would not be God. To put it more briefly: Nothing produces its own being. But the Father in begetting the Son would be producing His own being since it is the same as that of the Son. Therefore the Father cannot beget the Son. This objection is made by many rationalists, by the Unitarians and the Socinians.
Reply: I concede the major. I distinguish the minor: if the divine being were caused in the Son, I concede; if it is communicated to the Son, I deny. The conclusion is distinguished in the same way. Thus begetting in God is not a change from non-being to being, but implies the origin of one living being from a living principle conjoined to it. This principle is not a cause.[ 366] Aristotle pointed out that a principle is more general than a cause.[ 367] Thus the point is the principle of the line, but not its cause; the aurora is the principle of the day, but not its cause. So in God the principle does not signify priority, but origin, and the Father does not produce His own being; He communicates it only. The term “communicate” transcends efficient and final causality. Thus in God to beget is not more perfect than to be begotten because in God begetting is not causing. That which is caused does not exist before in act, whereas that which is communicated exists before in act. For example, the first angle of the triangle communicates its surface, already existing in act, to the other two angles.
Q: The third objection (by way of insistence) states that this dogma distorts the notion of person. For personality renders a nature incommunicable to another suppositum. But the nature which is in the person of the Father is communicated to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. Therefore this dogma distorts the very idea of personality.
Reply: I distinguish the major: absolute personality renders the nature incommunicable, I concede; relative personality renders the divine nature incommunicable, I sub-distinguish: nature in itself, I deny; nature as personified, I concede. I contra-distinguish the minor: the nature which is in the Father is communicated as nature in itself, I concede; as personified, namely, the divine nature in the mode of the Father, I deny. Thus there cannot be two Fathers or two Sons in the Trinity. Similarly in an equilateral triangle the first angle constructed renders the area of the triangle incommunicable inasmuch as it belongs to that first angle; nevertheless this same area remains communicable and is communicated to the other two angles. I insist. But the person renders incommunicable a nature that is numerically the same even considered in itself. But this would not be true in God. Therefore. Reply. A person absolutely renders a finite nature incommunicable which, since it is finite, is filled by the one personality. On the other hand, a relative personality, for example, the person of the Father, does not render an infinite nature incommunicable to other persons. The divine nature, being infinite and infinitely fecund, is not adequately filled by one relative personality; or, I say please prove the contrary. Personality in God differs from human personality inasmuch as it is not something absolute but something relative, and it is of the nature of relative things that they have a correlative. The Father cannot be without the Son, to whom He communicates His nature, not by causality but by the principle of origin.
Garrigou-Lagrange OP, Reginald. The Trinity and God the Creator.
End Quote 15.
—End quotes dealing with Divine Freedom.
—Somewhat Overlapping Segues:
The Illusionist ~ On Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back ~The Evolution of Minds ~ By David Bentley Hart https://metachristianity.com/the-illusionist-on-daniel-dennetts-from-bacteria-to-bach-and-back-the-evolution-of-minds-by-david-bentley-hart/
Creation Ex Nihilo, The Principle Of Proportionate Causality, Seamelessness In Being From Pure Act To The Contingent And From I Am To Imago Dei https://metachristianity.com/creation-ex-nihilo-the-principle-of-proportionate-causality-seamelessness-in-being-from-pure-act-to-the-contingent-and-from-i-am-to-imago-dei/
That Beautiful Freedom Called Permanence
Part 1 of 4: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/can_genuine_love_only_be_a_product_of_free_will_video/#comment-3591259515 That will open to (…should…scroll if not…) the comment which opens with: “Continuing — A Qualification: Addressing a fear which some seem to have with respect to losing Permanence or with respect to losing Irresistible, which, as we’ll see, is unwarranted……”
Part 2 of 4: https://disqus.com/home/discussion/standtoreason/can_genuine_love_only_be_a_product_of_free_will_video/#comment-3591342407 That will open to (…should…scroll if not…) the comment which opens with: “Continuing – Permanence: That beautiful Freedom called Permanence is still to come, up ahead. The syntax of such Freedom and such Permanence houses some, not all, but some, of the syntax of Irresistible but such has less to do with TULIP proper and much more to do with the fact that, on the other side of that radical ontic change which is yet to occur (…in the blink of an eye as Scripture puts it…) we find, well, we find several contours. First, we find…..”
Part 3 of 4: https://randalrauser.com/2018/11/do-bad-children-go-to-hell/#comment-4224953310 That will open to (…should…scroll if not…) the comment which opens with: “Whence Free Will in Heaven? Whence that beautiful freedom called Permanence? To begin with: A Proposal ≠A Wedding……”
Part 4 of 4: The Simplicity of I-Thee-Wed as per the content of https://randalrauser.com/2018/05/if-god-wants-to-save-us-why-isnt-salvation-simple/#comment-3906669116 That will open to (…should… Scroll if not…) the comment which begins with: “The Simplicity of I Thee Wed [1] Why The Cross? [2] What Is The Minimum Requirement For Salvation? [3] Why Not Create Perfected Man From The Get-Go? All of those source to the same misunderstanding about the nature of what it is that God Decrees when He Decrees “His Own Image”, as in the Imago Dei. As in “Adam”. As in “Mankind”. Many of the…..”
Christ Is The Thematic Melody Uniting All Scenes And Acts:
“The Scriptures are an opera, with Christ as its central leitmotif. He is the thematic melody uniting the scenes and acts of the various books together. This is what the Christ meant when He said “they are they which testify of me.” And this inspiring melody is what ignited the passion in the disciples saying “did not our heart burn within us when He opened to us the Scriptures?” The text is opened like a curtain call. In operas the curtain call occurs at the end of a performance when individuals return to the stage to be recognized by the audience. And this is precisely what Christ does. He comes before us the reader upon the stage of thematic narrative to be recognized as the main actor. To put this into perspective, when you read about Jonah coming out of the whale, or Lazarus coming out of the tomb, the paschal melody of “Christ is Risen” should be ringing in your ears. Scripture has an instrumental soundtrack, except for when Christ the lyric enters the scene. For hundreds and hundreds of years, mankind sought the meaning of this melody, and what words would be inserted therein. Man wished to know this melody. Christ, the “Word made flesh,” is both the melody itself and its meaning.” (By Ambrose Andreano)
Irreducible Being? Moral Fact? Logic Itself? Reason Itself? Mind as per Absolute Consciousness? Abstraction’s Transposition? Are THOSE reality’s concrete furniture? One way to see why that in fact IS the case is to look at the following:
Our Non-Theist friends often Challenge Logic along the same line as they Challenge Moral Fact and while that is honest on their part it is interesting that the they seem unaware ((…or unconcerned…)) with the cost of that choice. And it is a choice of course as other options are immediately available.
The Form of the Challenge which our Non-Theist friends present with respect to the fundamental nature of Logic typically shows up along the following lines:
Challenge A— “….If Logic ends in God then God must be subject to Logic and so God is not God, or else God is metaphysically free to be Non-Logic and therefore able to make round-squares such that [A = Non-A] is true in some possible world….or something like that….”
Challenge B— That which is “Logic Itself” is either 1. itself under the Laws of Logic or else 2. It (logic) can be, or is metaphysically free to be, Non-Logic.
The following is incoherent: “God Is The Source Of Goodness”. The Why/How of that incoherence follows necessarily from what is actually being referenced by the term “God” in the Christian Metaphysic and so it is critical that one move forward with the proper meaning of the term God, and, so, see “God vs. A God vs. Gods vs. The Gods vs. Sky Daddy vs. Santa Clause vs. Imaginary Friend vs. Being Itself vs. Existence Itself vs. Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility” which is at https://metachristianity.com/god-vs-a-god-vs-gods-vs-the-gods-vs-sky-daddy-vs-santa-clause/
This preliminary lens of The Moral before moving into “Logic” per se is helpful because we are somewhat more familiar with “The Good” as per “Being Itself” than we are with “Logic” as per “Being Itself” and, so, this allows us to approach in steps. Notice that we find this pesky fact: X can’t be the source of X given that X is “Being Itself” / “Existence Itself” as per the previous linked essay and, so, as we move forward we will look at why/how “Source Of” and “Is Subject To” and “Is Beneath” and “Comes From” and “Is Obligated To” are all incoherent — and they are incoherent because they are fallacious re-invents of Being Itself from that which “God” “IS” to that which “God–Has“.
Notice what this is NOT a discussion of: the Trinitarian Monarchy and the reason we are not looking at these terms in that setting is because we are looking instead at Movement & Being & Pre & Source & Etc. in various fallacious senses regarding “ultimate reality”. Given “The Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility” as per The Always & The Already as per “The Metaphysical Latticework Of All Possible Syllogisms In All Possible Communique In All Possible Worlds” we discover that “Logic” is fully funded in and of Divine Simplicity and so we find ourselves in referents which are relevant to Being/Life/Progression with respect to the Trinitarian Monarchy and Spiration and Procession and so on. But the topic here is the Act of simply starting with Perception and Moving-Forward as we to work towards all of that, not to start there. Moving forward then, we would have the following:
Existence-Itself Cannot Be The Source Of Existence-Itself Part 1 of 3
The following is from God and Logic at https://thomism.wordpress.com/2021/11/16/god-and-logic
“…we see why the divine mind necessarily gives rise to logical truth without being subordinated to it…”
Begin Quote:
It seems like the conclusion is false since logical rules include e.g. the principle of contradiction and divine action will necessarily fall under such a principle. The argument can be pushed further since our mind is subordinate to logical rules because it is perfected by following them as opposed to flouting them, so:
The conclusion is nonsense: one might as well take it as a proof that God can’t exist at all.
But “being perfected” occurs either through addition or identity: the room might be be lit or a lamp might be lit but for a lamp to be lit simply makes it an actual lamp while a room is an actual room even when we darken it, whether to develop pictures or watch a movie. Said another way, the room is lit by addition of a new actuality whereas a lamp is lit simply by being actual, since if something isn’t actually casting light then it is not a lamp in full actuality. So we could say that truth perfects our mind by adding a new actuality to it while truth perfects the divine mind by simply being the divine mind in actuality. […Pure Act||Pure Actuality…] Though we use the passive voice in saying the divine mind is perfected by truth, this does not correspond to something passive in God but simply indicates the diving actuality. If so, we see why the divine mind necessarily gives rise to logical truth without being subordinated to it, since truth is for him simply to be actual while something subordinated to truth clearly has truth by addition.
End Quote.
To springboard off of that, there is Pure Act||Pure Actuality and Logic||Absolute Consciousness in the following two senses:
First: “……the concept of being is one of power: the power of actuality, the capacity to affect or to be affected. To be is to act. This definition already implies that, in its fullness, being must also be consciousness, because the highest power to act — and hence the most unconditioned and unconstrained reality of being — is rational mind. Absolute being, therefore, must be absolute mind. Or, in simpler terms, the greater the degree of something’s actuality, the greater the degree of its consciousness, and so infinite actuality is necessarily infinite consciousness. That, at least, is one way of trying to describe another essential logical intuition that recurs in various forms throughout the great theistic metaphysical systems. It is the conviction that in God lies at once the deepest truth of mind and the most universal truth of existence, and that for this reason the world can truly be known by us. Whatever else one might call this vision of things, it is most certainly, in a very real sense, a kind of “total rationalism.” (David Bentley Hart)
Second: “…..if reason’s primordial orientation is indeed toward total intelligibility and perfect truth, then it is essentially a kind of ecstasy of the mind toward an end beyond the limits of nature. It is an impossibly extravagant appetite, a longing that can be sated only by a fullness that can never be reached in the world, but that ceaselessly opens up the world to consciousness. To speak of God, however, as infinite consciousness, which is identical to infinite being, is to say that in Him the ecstasy of mind is also the perfect satiety of achieved knowledge, of perfect wisdom. God is both the knower and the known, infinite intelligence and infinite intelligibility. This is to say that, in Him, rational appetite is perfectly fulfilled, and consciousness perfectly possesses the end it desires. And this, of course, is perfect bliss.” (David Bentley Hart – The Experience of God)
Existence-Itself Cannot Be The Source Of Existence-Itself Part 2 of 3
All of that seamlessly transposes to Pure Actuality vis-à-vis Being Itself as the Metaphysical Wellspring of all Ontological Possibility vis-à-vis Pure-Actuality-Itself||Logic-Itself as the Metaphysical Latticework Of All Possible Syllogisms In All Possible Communique In All Possible Worlds. Once again we are necessarily and seamlessly carried into “…we see why the divine mind necessarily gives rise to logical truth without being subordinated to it…”
Existence-Itself Cannot Be The Source Of Existence-Itself Part 3 of 3
Now let us look at the problem of tying to insist that Existence/Being Itself is or even can be “The Source Of” Existence/Being Itself. It is in what is supposed to be “happening” or “arriving” or “transposing” within the syntax of “The Source Of”. The very notion that “Reality’s Wellspring is “The Source of” Reality’s Wellspring” leads us to the same problem within the re-invention of Being when it is stated that Being Itself is the “Source Of” Being Itself. The incoherence there is born of a metaphysical absurdity and in fact the only way to FORCE / SHOEHORN it into coherence is to CHANGE the very essence of “Being” / “Existence” so that in fact one COULD find a “Pre” and therefore one COULD insert a “Source”. And so IF one finds a “Pre“ well THEN one inserts a “Source“ and hence IF there is NO SOURCE well THEN there is NO PRE to be had. One has “landed” at “Reality’s Rock Bottom” — at one’s Explanatory Terminus:
“…..The reason is that for the classical theist, whatever else we mean by “God,” we certainly mean by that label to name the ultimate source, cause, or explanation of things. Properly to understand classical theism, the hostile atheist reader might even find it useful to put the word “God” out of his mind for the moment – given all the irrelevant associations the word might lead him to read into the present discussion – and just think instead of “the ultimate source of things…” ((…https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-is-there-anything-at-all-its-simple.html…))
We find that the claim of “Being-Itself/Existence-Itself Is The Source Of Being-Itself/Existence-Itself ” reduces to the nonsensical “Changed Essence of Being Itself” and so we end then with incoherence in that Re-Invented Shoehorn. The result is of course that we reject incoherence and instead follow what actually presents itself amid Being vs. Non-Being and thereby discover that it is in fact logically impossible to find any “Source” and any “Pre” and therefore it is logically impossible to insert any “Source” or any “Pre”. Again see “God vs. A God vs. Gods vs. The Gods vs. Sky Daddy vs. Santa Clause vs. Imaginary Friend vs. Being Itself vs. Existence Itself vs. Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility” which is at https://metachristianity.com/god-vs-a-god-vs-gods-vs-the-gods-vs-sky-daddy-vs-santa-clause/
Logic As The Metaphysical Latticework Of All Possible Syllogisms In All Possible Communique In All Possible Worlds
The concept of “Come From” and the concept of “Logic” again reveal an incoherence. Notice that the problem is again in what is supposed to be “happening” or “arriving” or “transposing” within the syntax of “Comes From” and this is also true with “Where does Morality come from?” and “Where does Intentionality/the-intentional come from?” and “Where does Consciousness/Mind come from?” and “Where does Being Itself come from?” and “Where does Existence Itself come from?” The difficulty in “Come From” is that it again hints of “Source Of” and it is incoherent to say “The Source Is The Source Of The Source”. The example vis-à-vis Morality is that Irreducible Love vis-a-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-a-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-a-vis Being Itself does not “Come From” – not in any sense – but is instead The Always & The Already. The reason why is because “THAT” is “Being Itself” and “THAT” is “GOD” and “GOD” is the Metaphysical Wellspring of all Ontological Possibility and “THAT” does not “Come From” – in any sense.
Logic is not different: While it is accurate to say that we as contingent beings do in fact “come from” etc. etc., it is NOT accurate to say that Timeless-Reciprocity//Ceaseless-Self-Giving in any sense “comes from” – because “THAT” is “Trinity” and “THAT” is The Always & The Already and “THAT” is the Metaphysical Fountainhead of all Ontological Possibility. We find that Logic is no different — when someone asks about logic we find lurking within all semantic intent a series of unavoidable ontic referents which carry us into “Where does the metaphysical latticework of all possible syllogisms in all possible communique in all possible worlds come from?” But that just is to ask, “Where does the Metaphysical Wellspring of all Ontological Possibility come from?” – which of course is a nonsense question – as per “God vs. A God vs. Gods vs. The Gods vs. Sky Daddy vs. Santa Clause vs. Imaginary Friend vs. Being Itself vs. Existence Itself vs. Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility” at https://metachristianity.com/god-vs-a-god-vs-gods-vs-the-gods-vs-sky-daddy-vs-santa-clause/
How all of that translates over inside of “The Good” and “Morality” becomes evident given that the Trinitarian Life as per the Christian Metaphysic finds the uncanny Singularity vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving. So, when we speak of “Morality” we speak of Timeless Reciprocity and we speak of Ceaseless Self-Giving because we speak of “Reality’s Concrete Furniture” because we speak of Trinity because we speak of God. So, that said, there is the following:
Notice that nothing changes when we use any of the following:
Again see “God vs. A God vs. Gods vs. The Gods vs. Sky Daddy vs. Santa Clause vs. Imaginary Friend vs. Being Itself vs. Existence Itself vs. Metaphysical Wellspring Of All Ontological Possibility” which is at https://metachristianity.com/god-vs-a-god-vs-gods-vs-the-gods-vs-sky-daddy-vs-santa-clause/
Zeroing In On Absolute Logic: Cognition & The Absolute
The following is from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s “The Phenomenology Of Spirit”
Quote:
“If the absolute is only to be brought just a bit closer to us through the instrument, without the instrument changing anything about the absolute, perhaps as is done to a bird through a lime twig, then the absolute would surely ridicule such a ruse if it were not in and for itself already with us and did not already want to be with us; for cognition would be a ruse in such a case, since through its manifold efforts it creates the impression of doing something altogether different from simply bringing about an immediate and therefore effortless relation. Or, if the testing of cognition which we suppose to be a medium made us acquainted with the law of its refraction, it would be just as useless to subtract this refraction from the result, for it is not the refraction of the ray but rather the ray itself through which the truth touches us that is cognition, and if this is subtracted, then all that would be indicated to us would be just pure direction or empty place. Meanwhile, if the concern about falling into error sets up a mistrust of science, which itself, untroubled by such scruples, simply sets itself to work and actually cognizes, it is still difficult to see why on the contrary a mistrust of this mistrust should not be set up and why one should not be concerned that this fear of erring is already the error itself. In fact, this fear presupposes something, and in fact presupposes a great deal, as truth, and it bases its scruples and its conclusions on what itself ought to be tested in advance as to whether or not it is the truth. This fear presupposes representations of cognizing as an instrument and as a medium, and it also presupposes a difference between our own selves and this cognition; but above all it presupposes that the absolute stands on one side and that cognition stands on the other for itself, and separated from the absolute, though cognition is nevertheless something real; that is, it presupposes that cognition, which, by being outside of the absolute, is indeed also outside of the truth, is nevertheless truthful; an assumption through which that which calls itself the fear of error gives itself away to be known rather as the fear of truth.”
End Quote. ((—from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel The Phenomenology Of Spirit))
Zeroing In On Absolute Logic: A & B
Recall from earlier the following two challenges:
Challenge A— “….If Logic ends in God then God must be subject to Logic and so God is not God, or else God is metaphysically free to be Non-Logic and therefore able to make round-squares such that [A = Non-A] is true in some possible world….or something like that….”
Challenge B— That which is “Logic Itself” is either 1. itself under the Laws of Logic or else 2. It (logic) can be, or is metaphysically free to be, Non-Logic.
Notice that the problem with that approach in Challenge A and Challenge B ((…. [A] and [B]…)) is the same problem with all contingent abstractions of all contingent minds in all contingent beings and that is true whether one makes the attempt with Existence Itself or with Wellspring-Itself or with Logic Itself or with Being-Itself or with The-Good Itself or with Reason-Itself or with Mind Itself and so on. Notice that we cannot move to fast here because all of this also holds if and when one makes the attempt with First Person Data as per the First Person Experience and therein the veracity of “I” vis-à-vis one’s one perceived “Irreducible-I-Am” vis-à-vis that which is nothing less than “Self” vis-à-vis “i-am” / “i-reason” / “i-intend” / “i-exist” and so on ((…see Consciousness, Emergence, Intentionality, Searle, Reason Atop The Irrational, And Naturalism’s Egregious Deficiency at https://metachristianity.com/consciousness-emergence-intentionality-searle-reason-atop-the-irrational/…)).
Notice that in both [A] and [B] the challenge redefines that which “God-Is” into that which “God-Has” such that THEN — and ONLY then — it can be (fallaciously) said that Something Is Above/Beneath Something Else such that “…Existence Itself must be subject to Existence Itself and so God is not God, or else Existence Itself is metaphysically free to be Non-Existence…” and of course with “Logic” we see fallacious forms akin to what ends up being something like:
“….the [Metaphysical Latticework Of All Possible Syllogisms In All Possible Communique In All Possible Worlds] must be Subject-To / must be Beneath / must Come From the [Metaphysical Latticework Of All Possible Syllogisms In All Possible Communique In All Possible Worlds] and so God is not God or else the [Metaphysical Latticework Of All Possible Syllogisms In All Possible Communique In All Possible Worlds] is metaphysically free to be [Non-Being || Non-Existence]….” ((…and so there are no possible worlds… including our own…. and no possible syllogisms… including our own…. and no possible communique… including our own….))
…or more typically with logic we see the standard fallacious straw-man of “…God must be subject to Logic and so God is not God, or else God is metaphysically free to be Non-Logic…” and so on as per Challenge A and Challenge B above. When the Christian speaks of “God” as “Being Itself” it is for the obvious reason that whatever “Has Being” cannot be ((…in any coherent sense…)) the Ground of All Being — cannot be Being Itself.
Obviously both [A] and [B] employ the syntax of the following:
A2— Logic-Is-Subject-To-Logic and/or
B2— Logic-Is-Beneath-Logic and/or
C2— Logic-Is-Metaphysically-Free-To-Be-Non-Logic or else Logic is not Logic.
Which then forces / sums to the following:
D2— “X Is Subject To X“ akin to
E2— “X Is Beneath X“ akin to
F2— “Being Itself Is Subject To Being Itself” akin to
F2— “Being Itself Is Beneath Being Itself” akin to
G2— “X Is Metaphysically Free To Be Non-X” akin to
H2— “Being Itself Is Metaphysically Free To Be Non-Being”
It may help to place “Existence Itself” on each side of the descriptive, such as “Existence Itself Is The Source Of Existence Itself” or “Existence Itself is Metaphysically Free To Be Non-Existence” and so on. Recall again that nothing changes when we use any of the following:
Those are of course all nonsensical Identity Claims and we rationally say of all such syntax:
— 1 — None of them have anything to do with the Christian Metaphysic
— 2 — All of them are themselves logical absurdities
— 3 — The incoherence there is born of a metaphysical absurdity and in fact the only way to FORCE / SHOEHORN it into coherence is to CHANGE the very essence of “Being” / “Existence” such that in fact one COULD find a “Pre” and therefore one COULD insert a “Source” and hence IF one finds a “Pre“ well THEN one inserts a “Source“ and so also IF there is NO SOURCE well THEN there is NO PRE to be had. One has “landed” at “Reality’s Rock Bottom” — at one’s Explanatory Terminus.
The Incoherent Attempt Of Getting In Behind Being-Itself To Foist Pre-Being And So Force Pre-Supposition
Notice that “Getting In Behind/Beneath Oneself” is not coherent such that “We Mean To Apply Logic’s Force To Pre-Logic” is not coherent. “Presupposition” is not possible UNLESS and UNTIL the Critic can coherently pull-off A2 through H2. But of course the Non-Theist cannot pull-off those Nonsensical Identity Claims. It is not clear what our Non-Theist friends mean with respect to Reason/Mind when they accuse the Christian of Pre-Supposing by getting in Pre-Being and getting in Pre-Mind and getting in Pre-Reason and getting in Pre-Perception vis-à-vis getting in Pre-The-Intentional Self.
Think It Through: It becomes unavoidable as to WHY the Christian does not and in fact CANNOT Start/Stop in any such Pre-ANY-thing given that the very notion of Pre-Being collapses into a metaphysical absurdity. Indeed once we apply the UNDOING of those Nonsensical Identity Claims of A2 through H2 ((…which were only the result of fallacious re-inventions / fallacious strawmen of actual Christian premises/definitions…)) we find the express Start/Stop or the express A—Z of the Christian Paradigm vis-à-vis Reason Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Goodness Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Logic Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving as Being in totum || Being Itself vis-à-vis All Processions as The Trinitarian Life.
Think It Through: We are forced to find Being Itself and I-AM as a metaphysical Singularity and here there are no options for any Non-Theistic Map of the Underived/Derived. The question of “The Fundamental Nature of X” vis-à-vis Intentionality, Reason, Self, Mind, and Being/Existence in/of i-exist/i-am in and of the First Person Experience forces us to ask, “From Whence The Fundamental Nature of i-am?” That question is what is on the table and the Christian Metaphysic alone houses all such semantic intent in and by the Principle of Proportionate Causality ((…not to be confused with the PSR…)) whereby The Necessary Being Creates||Grounds||Fully-Funds The Contingent Being as per the following:
“…The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way. To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all – which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all…” (E. Feser)
With that same Principle of Proportionate Causality in hand we realize that without any such (actual/ontic) Being-To-Being as per (actual/ontic) seamlessness there is no seamless ontology for the fundamental nature of Being/Existence vis-à-vis i-am/i-exist in ANY Non-Theistic “explanatory terminus” which necessarily includes the metaphysical latticework of all possible syllogisms in all possible communique in all possible worlds as in all such ((Non-Theistic)) termini one must attempt the metaphysically impossible — as alluded to in the following:
Think It Through: In one’s i-am/i-exist First Person Experience it is that very Consciousness as Intentional-Being which must willfully trade away i-am/i-exist vis-à-vis the Irreducible First Person in Reasoning as Intentional-Being when it is in fact impossible for one in/as i-am/i-exist vis-à-vis the Irreducible First Person Experience of Being/Existence to do/make any such Trade/Giving. The very notion of Reasoning Being ((Illusion)) following Reason In Being ((Illusion)) and thereby on the Force of Reason Itself ((Illusion)) giving away Reason Itself ((Illusion)) to Non-Reason/Non-Being ((Non-Illusion)) collapses into a metaphysical impossibility. But then that just is the Circularity & Question Begging & Reductio-Ad-Absurdum of all Non-Theistic “Ends” given Metaphysical Naturalism’s Necessary Conservation of [No-I-AM] in ANY “Fundamental Nature of X”.
The Compulsory A—Z as Logic Itself Sums To Irreducible Being: In simplicity and in seamlessness we arrive in that which is free of all Non-Being and thereby free of Pre-Being and thereby free of all Pre-Supposition and therein we arrive at the same A—Z which we arrive at through Natural Theology which [A] starts off with nothing but the Presupposition-Free Neonate + Perception + Self + the External World + Change ((Etc. Etc.)) and which eventually [B] terminates in nothing less than the Principle of Proportionate Causality vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Divine Mind vis-à-vis Pure Act vis-à-vis the Christian Paradigm and all of that of course in arrives in seamless singularity as the Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis Reason Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Goodness Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis Logic Itself as Being Itself vis-à-vis the Reference Frame of Totality — or The Absolute’s Own Reference Frame — which necessarily saturates (1) all possible reference frames within all possible worlds and (2) all actual reference frames within all actual worlds vis-à-vis Logos void of Potentiality and so in nothing less than Pure Act as the Fountainhead of all ontological possibility which necessarily streams from nothing less than all possible Procession & Communique amid The Infinite Knower & The Infinitely Known in Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving as Being in totum compelling us – carrying us – into the Map of The Underived.
Logic As The Metaphysical Wellspring of All Ontological Possibility finds a compulsory A through Z regarding the Essential Metaphysical Latticework of All Ontological Possibility as per the following:
Latticework & The Compulsory A—Z therefore unavoidably Maps as follows: [Logic Itself] sums to [Irreducible Being] if and only if [Being Itself = Pure Act] and therefore is Itself the Metaphysical Wellspring of [All Ontological Possibility] — and therefore is Itself the Metaphysical Wellspring of [All Possible Propositions] in All Possible Reference Frames — and therefore is Itself the Metaphysical Wellspring of [All Possible Syllogisms] in All Possible Frames of Reference — and therefore Itself necessarily saturates all possible reference frames within all possible worlds and all actual reference frames within all actual worlds vis-à-vis Logos void of Potentiality in Timeless Processions vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life.
Latticework & The Compulsory A—Z Therefore unavoidably Maps as follows: The entire Noetic, Incorporeal, and Essential Metaphysical Latticework of [All Ontological Possibility] — and therefore of [All Possible Propositions] in All Possible Reference Frames — and therefore of [All Possible Syllogisms] in All Possible Frames of Reference — and therefore All Possible Saturation-Of all Possible Reference Frames within all Possible worlds and All Actual Saturation-Of all Actual Reference Frames within all Actual worlds vis-à-vis Logos void of Potentiality vis-à-vis Pure Act as Timeless Processions vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life.
From here we move to a different inroad into the Map under review:
Being Necessarily Displaces Non-Being
It is helpful to look at Perception/Sight as it relates to the Reductio Ad Absurdum and to Evil and to Logic in the following 3 steps/phases:
Step/Phase 1 of 3 is the concept of Privation: There is that which “IS” such that there is there what we all “Being” and there is that which “IS NOT” such that there is not there what we call “Being” but we would instead say “Non-Being” as in the Philosophical No-Thing. A helpful bridge to explain that concept is the Christian Metaphysic’s definition of Evil. Evil is not a positive substance such as, say, “Goodness Plus X” but is instead a deficiency of substance ((…deficiency of Being, of Good, of Life, of Mind, and so on…)) or we can say that Evil is a Hollow or Vacuum of said Substance/Ontic as in “Goodness Minus Something”. Evil “Exits” in that “Goodness Minus Something” in fact “Exists”. That is what the Christian Metaphysic means when it speaks of The-Good and then in turn speaks of “The-Good-Minus-Something” which is to say “Evil is Good’s Privation” or “Evil is a Privation of Good” which is to say “A Deficiency Of Being”. It is not No-Thing, nor is it The Whole Thing, but instead it is “The Whole/Good Minus Something”.
Step/Phase 2 of 3 is Sight/Perceiving: When one “Sees/Perceives” that which is “Evil” one is seeing that which “IS” such that there is what we call “Being” but notice that what IS and what is Seen/Perceived is “Something Good With A Deficiency”. We see a “Part Of What Is Left” such that there is what we call “Being” ((though Corrupted/Deficient)). We do NOT See/Perceive an “Illusion” or “No-Thing” which is to say we do NOT See/Perceive that which “Is Not” which is to say we do NOT See/Perceive “Non-Being”. Hence the following arrives intact:
It is a metaphysical and logical impossibility to “See/Perceive the Philosophical No-Thing” which is to say that it is a metaphysical and logical impossibility to “See/Perceive Non-Being” – which is to say that Being necessarily displaces Non-Being at any/all “decision-points”.
Step/Phase 3 of 3 is Logic, Being, and the Reductio Ad Absurdum: We can claim to follow what we “Perceive/See”, however, that which is in the box/category named “Reductio Ad Absurdum” or in the box/category named “Contradiction” is in fact the metaphysical equivalent of “Non-Being” or the Philosophical No-Thing. For example, the Round Square ((Reductio)) is not a “Thing That Exists” and it cannot even in principle exist, and therefore it referents a Non-Thing — or the “Being-Less” — that which “IS NOT” such that there is NOT there what we call “Being” nor even Being-Minus-Something but we would instead say “Non-Being” as in The Philosophical No-Thing.
Here it helps to think of “Privation” in the same way we think of “Evil” as Being-Minus-Something or a Deficiency Of Being. To “See Evil” is to see “Something” rather than “No-Thing”. However, that is not the case with “Seeing/Perceiving” the Reductio and/or the Contradiction and that is because when it comes to “Following Reason” and “Following what we can in fact Perceive/See” we do not and cannot even in principle in fact “See/Perceive” “Non-Being”. Notice again what all of this does to those earlier Nonsensical Identity Claims of A2 through H2
Combining All 3 Steps/Phases:
There are metaphysical maps or decision-points when the Reductio Ad Absurdum and/or the Contradiction are Chosen/Followed “rather than” some other option such that “Illusion” and therefore “The Philosophical No-Thing” and therefore “Non-Being” are claimed to occupy some part of some Map at the expense of some other option which is NOT itself the Reductio Ad Absurdum and/or the Contradiction. Notice that this “other option” need not be “Whole” in order to actually be “something” and so win out over and above the “No-Thing” of the Reductio and/or the Contradiction and so notice that Being wins out over Non-Being merely by summing to ANY-thing more than No-Thing, even a mere “Privation” ((Being-Minus-Something)).
The Conscious Observer in the Map of all Non-Theistic Paradigms finds that very move/decision point given Non-Theism’s Necessary Conservation of [No-I-Am] in ANY “Fundamental Nature of X” whether we move from the Top Down or from the Bottom Up. Therein ALL First Person Data vis-à-vis “i” / “i-reason” / “i-think” / “i-exist” / “i-am” must die the death of a thousand equivocations and finally forfeit the Irreducible Hard Stop that is The Self / Conscious Observer and trade it away for what cannot even in principle take its place. One ends up “Equating” something like, say, “Gravity” for “i-reason” ((…and so on as Non-Theism must finally Honor the aforementioned Necessary Conservation …)) which of course collapses into “Non-A Equals A” which of course collapses into a Contradiction and the Reductio Ad Absurdum vis-à-vis the Total Illusion that is the First Person Experience. And again the following arrives intact:
It is a metaphysical and logical impossibility to “See/Perceive the Philosophical No-Thing” which is to say that it is a metaphysical and logical impossibility to “See/Perceive Non-Being” – which is to say that Being necessarily displaces Non-Being at any/all “decision-points”.
When we say that we “Follow Reason/Evidence/Sight” we mean we follow that which “IS” to wherever it may lead us and therein we will find that all strong vectors converge in nothing less than the full-on syntax/semantic intent in and of The Great I-AM.
Seeing Evil vs. Seeing Reductio & Contradiction:
The following is an excerpt from a discussion which has overlapping content and again notice what happens to those earlier Nonsensical Identity Claims of A2 through H2
Begin Excerpt From Discussion:
We can “Perceive/See” Evil via Evil as a Privation of Good and the reason why is because “Privation” entails “Being Minus Something” (so to speak). In other words that which in fact Is/Has Being is “there” to “See”, its just that it is deficient. It’s missing something.
So that is “Being” as it relates to “Perception/Sight”.
But when it comes to Seeing/Perceiving that which is “Contradiction / Reductio-Ad-Absurdum” then we are dealing ((now)) with Non-Being. For example there is no such “Entity” as “Married Bachelor”. We can SPEAK OF such a “thing” but in fact it sums to “Philosophical No-Thing” as per Non-Being.
This then forces us to interact with First Person Data. We “See/Perceive” ((introspection / first person data / etc.)) in the unity of consciousness that which is i-am ((…the Intentional Self/Mind…)) and of course with the dissolution of I/Self comes the dissolution of the Mind and with that comes the dissolution of all epistemic justification. So far we have that fatal problem of “No Conscious Observer” in Being and so then also “No Self-Reports Of Perception” in Being and we make our way into Opaque Skepticism. Yes, the Skeptic is ready to embrace his final loss of all epistemic justification vis-à-vis the loss of all veracity and all truth value of all First Person Data “…for all we know…”.
That’s opaque skepticism and so that’s that. But that is not what this brief digression is about. Rather, there is another layer too often left off of the charges against the Opaque Skeptic. And that is as follows:
First, the Opaque Skeptic must tell us “at some point” that he does NOT SEE/PERCEIVE i-am ((…but that’s just dishonesty…)). By that we mean the following: Because the Opaque Skeptic is offering his own, “For All “I” Know “I” Am Hallucinating or Illusion or Etc.” and so “I” is there in principle traded away for Non-Being. That is what we mean when we say that he in fact must tell us “at some point” that he does NOT SEE/PERCEIVE i-am ((…there’s more…)) and therein EQUATE what he SEES ((Being)) with something ELSE that he in fact SEES, namely the in principle possibility that he himself via “I” sums to Non-Being.
So what does that look like in practice? Well let’s unpack that:
The Opaque Skeptic must tell us that he DOES SEE/PERCEIVE the in principle possibility of the [A] married bachelor when dealing with the Identity Claim of the [B] Unmarried Bachelor. We have an equivocation there amid A vs. B such that “A = B” is a False Identity Claim, and so we have a contradiction and logical impossibility as per actual SIGHT. We find that he must tell us that he SEES the POSSIBILITY of that same “A = B” vis-à-vis an Identity Claim. Notice, however, that what he must claim to see is that which sums to Non-Being ((…either the Married Bachelor and/or the Logical Possibility of the Married Bachelor…)).
Now we take all of THAT and we apply it to the unity of consciousness and the Self. When we do that we run into that same category of the “A” = “Non-A” claim when the Opaque Skeptic is forced to interact with semantic intent (Language) as it applies to the “YOU” telling folks of one’s own Self-Report all about one’s own First Person Data ((…”I/”Me”/”My”…)). What the Opaque Skeptic must do is to find something ELSE besides “Irreducible-I-AM” to in fact BE the “Stand In” for the [A] the Intentional-Self / I-AM and so, then, he somehow ((per his own claim)) must assure us that said [A] is going to in principle possibly be that which is, say, [B] Gravity ((…or ANY “X” for which our First Person Semantic Intent of I/Me/My does not fit or capture….)).
But to “See/Perceive” that Equivocation is to “See/Perceive” what just is a False-Identity Claim which is to NOT ONLY DENY what IS SEEN ((…First Person Experience/Data via i-am…)) but it is ALSO the claim to in fact SEE the in principle possibility of that “A = Non-A”. But that just is to claim to See/Perceive Non-Being, which is a Metaphysical Impossibility.
As for lower case being/i-am, well there is the Upper Case Being/I-AM and the Principle of Proportionate Causality ((…see the quote/definition below…)) by which to get FROM the Upper Case and TO the lower case. Being From Being. Sight From Sight. Truth From Truth.
It’s uncanny but notice that as Living / Thinking / Reasoning / Perceiving Beings / Minds there was never a time where we PRE-Supposed ANY-thing. Rather, all we did as Living / Thinking / Reasoning / Perceiving Beings / Minds was simply look ahead of us and chased after Evidence/Sight as we placed our foot down upon whatever Stepping Stone happened to show up out in front of us every step of the way.
To SEE/PERCEIVE Evil ((Privation / Being Minus Something)) is possible. To SEE/PERCEIVE Reductio/Contradiction is to see/perceive Non-Being and that is gibberish. When the Skeptic says he sees “it” we simply shrug and say “See what? Where?” And his silence will end all debate. Well, except for the part where he himself must claim to NOT-BE. Wait… For… It… The Nonsensical Identity Claims of A2 through H2 are in fact found trading away Being for Non-Being ((…a metaphysical impossibility…)).
Principle of Proportionate Causality:
“The idea is perhaps best stated in Platonic terms of the sort Aquinas uses (in an Aristotelianized form) in the Fourth Way. To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all – which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just is Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all. So only God – who just is pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others – can cause a thing to exist ex nihilo….” ((…from https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html...))
End Excerpt From Discussion.
The essay “The Lord of Non-Contradiction: An Argument for God from Logic” by James N. Anderson and Greg Welty is at https://www.proginosko.com/docs/The_Lord_of_Non-Contradiction.pdf and is 22 pages long. A brief excerpt offers context and segues of obvious relevance here is below. Recall first that it’s only an excerpt and also recall that the Pains of Platonism fail to do the necessary work here for the reasons described in https://metachristianity.com/platonism-and-be-ing-and-do-ing-and-pure-act-and-counterfactuals-and-moral-facts/ — Here’s the excerpt from Anderson and Welty’s argument for God from Logic:
“….In any case, the laws of logic couldn’t be our thoughts — or the thoughts of any other contingent being for that matter — for as we’ve seen, the laws of logic exist necessarily if they exist at all. For any human person S, S might not have existed, along with S’s thoughts. The Law of Non-Contradiction, on the other hand, could not have failed to exist — otherwise it could have failed to be true. If the laws of logic are necessarily existent thoughts, they can only be the thoughts of a necessarily existent mind….. The laws of logic are necessary truths about truths; they are necessarily true propositions. Propositions are real entities, but cannot be physical entities – they are essentially thoughts. So the laws of logic are necessarily true thoughts. ((…recall the failures of Platonism…)) Since they are true in every possible world, they must exist in every possible world. But if there are necessarily existent thoughts, there must be a necessarily existent mind; and if there is a necessarily existent mind, there must be a necessarily existent person. A necessarily existent person must be spiritual in nature, because no physical entity exists necessarily. Thus, if there are laws of logic, there must also be a necessarily existent, personal, spiritual being. The laws of logic imply the existence of God….”
Notice again that regardless of one’s “….metaphysical wellspring of all ontological possibility…” it is the case that “Getting In Behind/Beneath Oneself” is not coherent such that our earlier D2 “X Is Subject To X” akin to our earlier E2 “X Is Beneath X” are metaphysical impossibilities when we speak of ANY “Fundamental Nature” and for all the same reasons we here again find that “We Mean To Apply Logic’s Force To Pre-Logic” is again incoherent. “Presupposition” is not possible UNLESS and UNTIL the Critic can coherently pull-off those earlier/aforementioned A2 through H2. But of course the Non-Theist cannot pull-off those Nonsensical Identity Claims. It is not clear what our Non-Theist friends mean with respect to Reason/Mind when they accuse the Christian of Pre-Supposing by getting in Pre-Being and getting in Pre-Mind and getting in Pre-Reason and getting in Pre-Perception vis-à-vis getting in Pre-The-Intentional Self. The principle of proportionate causality, the metaphysic of Being Itself, and the fallacy of Presuppositionalism are perhaps segues into ((…or out of…)) the following:
“The most basic pedagogical decision to make in presenting the doctrine of the Trinity is whether to begin the exposition with the temporal missions and reason back from them to the eternal processions, or whether to take the opposite approach, beginning rather with the eternal processions and then working out and down to the temporal missions. Both procedures have much to commend them.” (Fred Sanders: The Triune God – New Studies in Dogmatics)
We know that whether we speak of Presentism or whether we speak of Eternalism it is the case either way that Time is neither the Absolute nor the absolute reference frame nor the Absolute’s Own Reference Frame. The Absolute’s frame of reference cannot even in principle *be* Self-Explanatory unless and until the Absolute is in fact Self-Referencing. We also know by both reason and logic that at the end of all explanatory termini we are forced into either A. final absurdity or else B. the Self-Explanatory in and of and by the Absolute’s Reference Frame, which must by necessity be Self-Reference and the reason why is found in both the necessity of Totality and in the necessity of Identity as each reveals (….forces else reductio ad absurdum…) all over again that the Absolute’s frame of reference cannot even in principle *be* Self-Explanatory unless and until the Absolute is in fact Self-Referencing — which is a metaphysical absurdity but for the Triune God who meets us in Genesis.
The I AM identity: There is no frame of reference for “Self” but for the fact of “Other”, as the Absolute’s Self-Reference presses in through the eons of the “I AM” traversing history:
“….. we are forced to conclude that these are relational qualities and have no meaning in isolation. In other words, in God, qualities of personality can be actualized only if there is an actual, eternal relationship in him prior to, outside of, and without reference to creation. Only in that way would God be a personal being without being dependent on his creation. When Moses asked God for his name, the answer he got was least expected: I AM (Ex. 3:14). This amazing mystery of the name (identity) of God solves a problem that we may not always be aware of: God is his own frame of reference. We have already considered the fact that the infinite cannot be defined with reference to the finite. God, therefore, must be self-referencing. This would be an absurd proposition but for the fact that, in the being of God, there is a plurality of infinite persons and each can define himself with reference to the other. God can truly be said to be self-existent only because he is the all-personal, all-relational being…” (L. T. Jeyachandran)
Truth-Telling When Reporting First Person DATA
Truth-Telling vs. Sight – Part 1 We must not conflate [A] Negative Theology or terms like that which speak of truths over the horizon that we cannot see for [B1] Contradictions and Absurdity and that [B2] is the “Brute Fact” which lives in [B1] simply because it is a member of category called the Reductio Ad Absurdum which we find over inside of “Not Intelligible Even In Principle” ((…see https://metachristianity.com/platonism-and-be-ing-and-do-ing-and-pure-act-and-counterfactuals-and-moral-facts/ as well as its section for “Similar content with segues from E. Feser”…)). Both “A” and “B” are different categories all together such that “A = B” ends in a false identity claim. Equating Mailbox to Self is not a problem of something being out of our range of sight. Rather, it is a problem of Truth-Telling and dishonesty as per Contradiction and Absurdity given the fact that one cannot “see” “non-being” and so therefore the claim to “see” the “in principle possibility” of “round squares” just is to claim to “see” Non-Being. When it comes to “that” “sight” there comes a point when the person making such a claim cannot claim to be doing anything more than, well, Lying.
Truth-Telling vs. Sight – Part 2 It is a straightforward discussion regarding “First Person Data” and “Third Person Data” vis-à-vis the intended meaning when the Experienced Self is report in the First Person and that self-report uses the terms “I” and “I-Intend” and so on. We find that those terms reduce to contradiction when we replace “I” and “Intention” and “I-Reason” and “I-Think” and i-am and finally “i” with terms that cannot house the intended property under review which of course is DATA but not Third Person DATA. Instead the DATA is exactly what the label referents, namely it is First Person Data. When we speak of Truth-Telling here we can recall the obvious fact that “YOU” ((…say, the person reading this and who only a few days ago upon introspection pondered how a particular movie would end…)) are not “The Self-Report” given when “YOU” speak of “I wonder what how the movie will end….” Just as “YOU” ((…still the person reading this, who, a few days ago upon introspection pondered how a particular movie would end…)) are not “The Language” and “YOU” are not “The Premises/Syllogisms”. If “You” “reason about X” well then premises with respect to X are not “identical” to “You”. We have there then the simple fact that “A” is not “B” with respect to the intended property under review.
Truth-Telling vs. Sight – Part 3 Truth-Telling in these preliminary steps of language and semantic intent sets the stage for moving into what the Language is “ABOUT” and of course “aboutness” will at some point arrive in our self-reports regarding First Person Data vis-à-vis Intention as one of the many intended properties under review. Our Self-Reports are of course, at first, “Language” but we must recall that there are Meaning Makers which necessarily precede and underlay all of our language given that “language” is ONLY a carrier of something ELSE – namely what turns out to be, in the end, HARD DATA vis-à-vis the Experienced-Self. Regarding “Language Games” perhaps Wittgenstein can help as per “Goodill on Scholastic Metaphysics and Wittgenstein” at Ed Feser’s blog via https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/12/goodill-on-scholastic-metaphysics-and.html
An Interesting Title: “Against Pure A-Priori-ism“
The A-Priori A brief segue related to A-Priori from the following excerpt of “Against Pure A-Priori-ism” at https://theologiansinc.wordpress.com/2018/06/02/against-pure-a-priori-ism/
The core of Russell’s argument comes down to this: ‘All of our justified everyday empirical and scientific beliefs are justified either because they rest on the principle of induction or on the principle of IBE.’ For Rusell, both induction and IBE are themselves justified a priori, so any belief we have by way of either is justified a priori. In order to show the falsity of Russell’s position, all that needs to be done is show that some empirical propositions are not acquired by either induction or IBE.
Here’s a more formal explication of my argument against Russell’s theory of a priori justification (R):
- Either every empirical belief is justified a priori or it is not
- On (R), for this to be true, every empirical belief is acquired either by induction or IBE
- Not all empirical beliefs are acquired by induction or IBE
- Therefore, some empirical beliefs are not justified a priori
- Therefore, (R) is false
End excerpt.
All Relevant Forms Of Reasoning The book “A Manual For Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian” is reviewed by Robert L. White and White offers some interesting segues with respect to epistemological justification. His helpful review of Peter’s book is at https://www.robertlwhite.net/philosophy/manual-creating-atheists-review/ and the following are a few excerpts:
“Since I care about spreading true beliefs in the world…”
“…we are now discussing the meta problem of epistemology when dealing with Christianity vs atheism, rather than the details of arguments for God, historicity of the Bible, etc. That meta problem is probably my favorite subject….”
“Logic always wins…. You can’t escape reason. It is, indeed, the freight train coming your way. As much as you avoid it, reality is unfortunately based on, well, reality, and you are doomed and destined to rub up against…”
“All relevant forms of reasoning are on the table…”
A List Of Relevant Segues:
The above post is in part ((not all)) several excerpts from the following and so there are perhaps segues of interest in a. “A Thoroughly Trinitarian Metaphysic” at https://metachristianity.com/thoroughly-trinitarian-metaphysic/ and also in b. “Indefeasible Inner Witness, Holy Spirit, Properly Basic Belief, Solipsism, Idealism, Eliminativism, And Absolute Consciousness” at https://metachristianity.com/indefeasible-inner-witness-holy-spirit-properly-basic-belief-solipsism-idealism-eliminativism-absolute-consciousness/
Evil exists. Therefore God. More to the point, Objective Evil exists and therefore God vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis The Good exists.
The horrific evil which exists is precisely that — it is irreducibly horrific and it is irreducibly evil. Anyone who has witnessed cancer knows/perceives this. It is, painfully, undeniable.
The damning claim upon the irreducible preciousness of all men, of our beloveds, is that everything which the above paragraph just stated is fiction at bottom — which is — ultimately / cosmically — the claim of Non-Theism.
Intellectually honest Non-Theists more and more of late concede their paradigm’s failure to deliver objective moral facts given its lack of means with respect to the convertibility of the necessary transcendentals. “…there is no irreducible Moral Fact at Reality’s rock-bottom…”
Objective Evil testifies — loudly — of the fact of both The Good and of The Good Minus Something. Non-Theism is therefore left without even a single witness testifying on its behalf.
“The problem of evil is irrefutable evidence that the people who raise the problem of evil deeply believe in objective morality.” Greg Koukl
Both that which is truly (ontologically) Beauty/Good and that which is truly (ontologically) Ugly/Evil compel the rational mind to the fact of their irreducible reality, and thereby all such transcendentals compel the rational mind Godward.
“…since the problem of evil does not arise until we already know that God exists and is infinitely good, it is therefore a given that the problem of evil can be rationally resolved…”
Following Through:
Does Non-Theism/Atheism (1) cause Cosmic Indifference? Does Non-Theism/Atheism (2) comport with Cosmic Indifference vis-à-vis Non-Theism’s/Atheism’s explanatory terminus?
The answer is that clearly (1) is fallacious and equally clear is that (2) is absolute and unavoidable. Whereas, it is logically impossible for Being Itself vis-à-vis indestructible love vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life to 1. cause Cosmic Indifference or to 2. comport with Cosmic Indifference vis-à-vis the explanatory terminus of Life’s “A” & “Z”.
Ultimately reality is going to be, and *is*, defined by that which exists irreducibly, by the “Always & Already”. Not by frail and mutable contingencies such as me or you or some other relative or friend or enemy.
Begin Preliminary Framework
“…all theodicies fail because they provide a possible explanation for which we have no independent reason to believe is true….or the explanation is not probable on the assumption that theism is true…..” (J. Lowder)
—&—
“…since God knows what each of them would do in every possible situation, he gets to decide, so to speak, what the upshot will be – which world will be actual…” (..other..)
—&—
“Every worldly good that permits or requires evil is greatly exceeded by a pure good of the same type existing in God prior to creation…. What it forces us to notice and take seriously is that since (say) instances of courage and compassion presuppose evil or its permission, these goods cannot exist in God prior to creation. And yet God is then unsurpassably great!” (Schellenberg)
Seven Observations:
Ob-1 The part which says “…a possible explanation for which we have no independent reason to believe is true…” hinges on the explanatory power of Identity/Logical Necessity afforded by Theism over the Identity/Logical Necessity afforded by Non-Theism.
Ob-2 The part which says, “…the explanation is not probable on the assumption theism is true….” hinges on both Law of Identity and the logically necessities and logical impossibilities which arrive given this or that Theistic Metaphysic ((…the Hindu’s Pantheism vs. the Christian Metaphysic and so on…)).
Ob-3 One must account for the fact of the Law of Identity and of Logical Impossibility and of Logical Possibility all converging and forcing Possible but not Necessary Evil. Should one encounter an Irreducible state of affairs ((…forced by said convergence…)) in which the [Highest Good] in fact logically necessitates [Possible but not Necessary] Evil then one’s only possible rebuttal is to turn one’s semantic intent 180° and damn the [Highest Good] by calling it Evil “…in this World but not that World…” Notice the self-negation which the Non-Theist must posit — for he must posit something akin to, “The highest Good is in fact the Highest Good and so my Non-Theism has Non-Illusory Moral Facts but The Highest Good is NOT The Highest Good in and through [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds] and the Proof of that is that in THIS mutable and contingent world or [Set] it is the case that The Highest Good is NOT The Highest Good.” Notice that one is left without an actual Ontic with respect to an actual Metric of The Good even as one also forces a Reductio Ad Absurdum.
Ob-4 One is in need of one’s own logical proof for one’s Moral Realism vis-à-vis one’s [Highest Good]. If we discover that one’s semantic intent when one speaks of Good and Ought and Better and so on reveals that its ontological referents regarding this or that “X” in the end land on something that is Contingent & Mutable – as opposed to Necessary & Irreducible/Immutable – then one is not speaking of an actual Ontic with respect to Realism vis-à-vis reality’s rock-bottom. One is left in the Reductio described in Ob-3 ((…also see the two sections further down titled “Platonism & Moral Facts?” and “[All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] & Moral Facts & The Moral Dilemma”…as well as https://metachristianity.com/platonism-and-be-ing-and-do-ing-and-pure-act-and-counterfactuals-and-moral-facts/ …)).
Ob-5 Such an outcome as per Ob-4 leaves one with a “Good” which does not and in fact cannot Even-In-Principle retain Being and Identity and Irreducibility||Immutability through [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds]. Any Moral Realism which cannot or will not speak of all Worlds and all Realities but instead must only be found within Contingent Sets of Counterfactuals vis-à-vis mutable and contingent metrics such as Time and Circumstance ((and so on)) is NOT rising to the level of Moral Realism and leaves one with the Arbitrary & Mutable. Additionally one therein affirms Hume all over again as Reason finds no Factual/Ontic contradiction against REALITY ((…un-reasonable as per contradicting [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds] vis-à-vis reality…)) should she ((Reason)) pursue one Goal or some other Goal vis-à-vis Preference. It is uncanny but notice that we cannot avoid the fact that [Death] is the # 1 Killer in the World. To cure one’s spouse of cancer now only to lose them ten years from now is not “Ending Evil”. We find that Eternal Life — *and *nothing *less — is the # 1 Dissolution of our # 1 Problem. In fact BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) for/of the # 1 Killer in the World.
Ob-6 One cannot posit Objective Closure vis-à-vis a logically necessary / logically compelled path to the End Of Evil until one posits the logically necessary / logically compelled Objective Evil. Similarly one cannot posit a logically necessary / logically compelled path In-To||Out-Of that which just is Objective/Irreducible Evil if one has no logically necessary / logically compelled path In-To||Out-Of that which just is Objective/Irreducible Good.
Ob-7 Should one fall short in ANY of the above observations then one’s Map is incoherent and following said Map only leads one into the pains of Circularity. The Objective/Irreducible End of Evil is either Illusion or else Noble Lies or else Autohypnosis without the Objective/Irreducible Good.
If and only if one has navigated and satisfied Reason’s relentless demands for logical lucidity vis-à-vis Observations 1—7 above can one then ask the pressing question which we all ask:
What is the most efficient path to the End of Evil?
On Christianity “Ending Evil” just is “Ending Privation”. What is it that will rise to the level of [Necessary & Sufficient] with respect to the “MEANS” to achieve that “END”? Well that depends on the nature of Evil ((…see Observations 1—7…)) and in the Christian Metaphysic that depends, then, on the nature of “Evil as Privation”.
Further, we find that we must speak of Worlds and Realities and not merely of Sets of Counterfactuals vis-à-vis mutable and contingent metrics such as Time and Circumstance. That is to say that we find that we must speak of Ending Evil vis-à-vis Ending Privation vis-à-vis the Privation of an entire Paradigm||World||Possible World. But of course for an entire Reality/World to be found IN Privation and/or to ascend OUT-OF Privation necessarily entails that The-Good be found OUTSIDE-OF||INDEPENDENT-OF any of those particular Possible Worlds or Sets of Counterfactuals. That Wider-Lens insists that we must avoid hijacked versions of the Greater Good theme which land in a surreal mixture of Utility and Occasionalism. The Greater Good umbrella does not find God allowing [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] “….in order to get to….” XYZ. Instead we find [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] not as a Means by which God is to gain or to get to some End but, rather, because it is a logical outflow/logically necessary given His Decree of the Imago Dei vis-à-vis His Decree of The Blueprint reducing to irreducible Reciprocity vis-à-vis Self-Giving vis-à-vis the singularity of Self/Other vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life. To (first) Decree “Square via World X” just is to (secondly) find “Round via World X” a logical impossibility/absurdity.
One more time for the sake of the logically necessary / logically compelled:
For an entire Reality/World to be found IN Privation and/or to ascend OUT-OF Privation necessarily entails that The-Good be found OUTSIDE-OF||INDEPENDENT-OF any of those particular Possible Worlds or Sets of Counterfactuals.
Our Non-Theist friends have no idea what such a thing looks like or even could look like. In fact they ((…perhaps willingly… perhaps in the light of logic’s Day…)) commit themselves to their own Ceiling beneath which they rummage about “Nothing-But” different “layers” and “arrangements” of frail and mutable contingencies.
If God heals my cancer today and I die in ten years from cancer is that “Ending Evil”? Is it Evil in all possible worlds/universes? Is it Evil in the Stasis/Non-Change of a 4D-Block Universe such that Evil is therein on ontological par with Good which is therein on ontological par with Indifference? If so then one finds David Bentley Hart’s “…metaphysical armistice of eternally colliding ontological equals….”
Evil is not a positive substance but is instead a deficiency of substance ((…deficiency of Being, of Good, of Life, of Mind, and so on…)) or we can say that Evil is a Hollow or Vacuum of said Substance/Ontic. That is what the Christian Metaphysic means when it speaks of The-Good and then in turn speaks of “The-Good-Minus-Something” which is to say “Evil is Good’s Privation” or “Evil is a privation of Good”.
The Christian Metaphysic posits a cure for Evil — for Privation. By force of Identity/Logic we find that the cure is nothing less than the *only* *logically* *possible* *Means* by which the aforementioned Hollow or Vacuum or Deficiency could be brought to Non-Existence. And what is that Only-Logically-Possible-Means? Well once we know what is MISSING we then know what must be POURED into said Hollow/Vacuum/Deficiency.
If we say that it is “X” which is missing in said Void/Hollow then we find that ONLY that which “Is Itself X” ((so to speak)) or we can say ONLY that which is “X Itself” ((so to speak)) can Pour-Out||Pour-Into and so thereby Fill-Up||End that Void/Hollow which is itself the Deficiency of “X” ((so to speak)).
Here Again Logical Necessity presses in through all possible worlds with respect to Evil as we find that said “X” amid said Deficiency by force of Identity/Logic *cannot* *be* anything less than Being Itself poured out — or Goodness Itself poured out — or Life Itself poured out — or All-Sufficiency Himself poured out — or God — vis-à-vis His Own Self-Outpouring — to the bitter Ends of Time & Physicality vis-a-vis all things Adamic — and that is Christ.
We can say it this way: Should one want to know what “all of the above” in fact “Looks Like” ((…from here within pains of Privation vis-à-vis our particular set of counterfactuals and logical possibilities…)) one need only turn one’s gaze towards Christ. Don’t worry about the question of “Fall or No-Fall” with respect to the necessity of “…nothing less than X Itself.…” as the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Adamic finds the SAME Logically Necessary Means/Ends inside of “The Edenic” as the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Adamic finds within “Privation” and in fact the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Adamic finds the SAME Logically Necessary Means/Ends in [All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] || [Possible Worlds] and in fact it is necessarily the case that it cannot be otherwise.
But of course all of that is the Groom’s Proposal amid His Beloved’s Reply. The beautiful Freedom called Permanence can only come later ((…again by force of Identity/Logical Necessity)) vis-à-vis the ontics of “Weddings” and “Births” — all of which is found in another Chapter up ahead — by force of Identity/Logical Necessity.
Closure — we cannot avoid the fact that [Death] is the # 1 Killer in the World. To cure one’s spouse of cancer now only to lose her ten years from now is not “Ending Evil”. We find that Eternal Life — *and *nothing *less — is the # 1 Dissolution of our # 1 Problem. In fact BUT FOR Eternal Life there is no Ontic Resolution ((Closure)) for/of the # 1 Killer in the World.
“No Good Reason For Possible Word X / Possible Worlds”?
The problem with the Non-Theist’s “No Good Reason For Possible Word X / Possible Worlds” is not difficult to see assuming one interacts with the Trinitarian Metaphysic and not some other, Non-Christian, Metaphysic. Basically that looks like the following:
Evil is a Deficiency of Being vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis Goodness Itself as per “Privation”. Evil is not a Positive Substance but is instead “The Good Minus Something”. That is one of the many reasons why the Non-Theist’s “Degrees Of X” somehow existing in a Reality which is necessarily void of X just won’t do. Non-Theism’s Necessary Conservation of [Irreducible Indifference] from A to Z affords it no concept of what Good/Deficiency might even “look like” — and therein no Metric or Tool to employ and by which to “Map”. The term “Suffering” has no Ontic Referent which can even in principle sum to “Evil” on Non-Theism.
Therefore our Non-Theist friends are forever self-negating here in between their own ontological “A” and “Z”. It is that simple. Again: it is that simple as Objectivism of ANY Good/Evil necessarily entails The-Good Full-Stop as one cannot find a coherent definition of “Evil” but for The-Good vis-à-vis Being vis-à-vis Closure. “Degrees of X” is gibberish in Non-Theism simply because we must finally end either with Being or with Non-Being — not with Degrees-Of-Philosophical-No-Thing ((…a Reductio…)).
The category of Moral Objectivism includes the category of Objective Evil and we rationally count Moral Objectivism — and hence Evil too — as one of the many positive ((Perceptible)) evidences of God ((The-Good as Being Itself)). That is also one of the reasons why we rationally & morally reject Non-Theism’s terminus of Indifference.
“No Good Reason For Possible Word X / Possible Worlds” Notice here that far worse than the Non-Theist’s self-negation and inexplicable belief in “Degrees Of X” somehow existing in a Reality which is necessarily void of X is the fact that the sum of Groom/Bride vis-à-vis Self/Other makes a metaphysical necessity out of the Edenic IF God Decrees the Imago Dei. The reason why is because the Blueprint for that just is Irreducible Reciprocity viz. the Trinitarian Life and the Map of any such Self/Other or I/You or Groom/Bride which houses the Contingent/Created must and does – from A to Z – subsume all Ontological Possibilities “therein” and therefore all Possible Worlds “therein” are necessarily found as Permissible/Possible yet not Necessary. There the full-on semantic intent of “Possible But Not Necessary” vis-à-vis the Contingent/Created arrives on scene and all of that Heavy-Weight Ontic Real Estate is ((so far)) found merely at the initial/start of the Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis “Let Us Create” as per the Blueprint of the Trinitarian Life – never mind all that “Necessarily Can” ((then)) follow/actualize.
End Preliminary Framework
Definition 1 of 2: Gratuitous
gra·tu·i·tous
ɡrəˈt(y)o͞oədəs/
adjective
adjective: gratuitous
1. uncalled for; lacking good reason; unwarranted.
“gratuitous violence”
synonyms: unjustified, uncalled for, unwarranted, unprovoked, undue; indefensible, unjustifiable;
needless, unnecessary, inessentia || “there was one moment of violence in the movie, and it was ridiculously gratuitous” || antonyms: necessary
Definition 2 of 2: Principle of Proportionate Causality
Quote: “…..To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all — which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just *is* Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all. [Only] pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others – can cause a thing to exist ex nihilo…..“ (E. Feser) End quote. ((…from http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html …))
Five Background Data/Segues For This Essay:
Various Lenses — What About Calvinism & Platonism?
First let’s lok at Calvinism:
The point of this section is not to refute Calvinism’s Five Pillars ((…T.U.L.I.P…)) but rather to demonstrate that “Even If” we simply “Grant” the Non-Theist his wish that he ONLY had Calvinism to contend with we find that “Even Still” Non-Theism fails where that branch within Christendom succeeds with respect to the Problem of Evil.
Briefly, for references on correctives to those five pillars perhaps the following four items for a basic framework:
[3] https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/does-the-atonement-imply-universalism
[4] https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/gods-unconditional-love/
[5] 1 through 5 as per:
[6] The following quote:
Quote:
“God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, ‘What doest thou?’ Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.”
End quote ((– A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God))
Any traces of Calvinistic jargon (…or other overtones housed within Christendom…) are (radically) irrelevant to the problem at hand (as in Evil, as in, say, Auschwitz), and I say that as one who has several theological & philosophical disagreements with Calvinism per se and in fact as one who has a list of such disagreements. Why are any traces of such jargon irrelevant to the problem at hand? Because of this: Christendom has the means and “ontic-reach” to rationally reject Non-Theism’s metaphysical terminus of [[Evil Sums To The Illusory Shadows of Non-Being]] which is Non-Theism’s fundamental and irreducible ground of Auschwitz as Auschwitz – full stop. The intellectual and philosophical megastructure asserted here by Non-Theism is untenable in any “layer” we happen to find.
“Calvinism & the Problem of Evil” – Edited by David E. Alexander and Daniel M. Johnson. An introduction begins with — “….Contrary to what many philosophers believe, Calvinism neither makes the problem of evil worse nor is it obviously refuted by the presence of evil and suffering in our world……. The collection includes twelve original essays by….”
Again, I say that as one who has several theological & philosophical disagreements with Calvinism per se and in fact as one who has a list of such disagreements.
What About PLATONISM & Moral Facts?
If Abstract Objects exist how are we (as causal agents) obligated with respect to those (non-causal) Abstract Objects? If the Abstract Objects in question are Causal Objects such that they cause to “be” or “happen” various beings and events ((and so on)) and yet are NOT Intentional|| Volitional, then again how are we (as intentional / volitional causal agents) obligated with respect to those (non-causal) Abstract Objects? If the Objects ARE not only Abstract but also Causal, Intentional, Volitional, such that they cause to “be” // “happen” various beings/events ((and so on)) then which Abstract Object is the Metaphysical Fountainhead of the other Abstract Objects? Also, and this is key, how would THAT state of affairs end up as NON-Theism and/or how is it NOT Polytheism?
“[Erik] Wielenberg on Moral Realism and Theism” has 3 parts. In “Part 3 — Mysterious Floating Values” (linked below) it seems to end in Brute Fact. First of all, even IF we grant Platonism, the problems described earlier remain unaddressed. The linked essay on Wielenberg wrongly equates both Platonism and [God] to Brute Fact and leaves out the element of the Self-Explanatory vis-à-vis Being. Edward Feser is easily accessible and comments on what Brute Fact actually entails and why reality’s rock-bottom // self-explanatory terminus isn’t a Brute Fact.
Additionally we find that [The Necessary Being] & [The Necessary Universe] are two radically different statements. Further, it seems that for Wielenberg it is the case that Abstract Objects v. Platonism DO in the end FAIL to rise above the level of Brute Facts. Here’s the link to part three: https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2010/05/wielenberg-on-moral-realism-and-theism_8454.html
A telling quote from Erik Wielenberg is from God vs. ‘Just Because’: Two Explanations for Objective Morality ((…see https://strangenotions.com/god-vs-just-because-two-explanations-for-objective-morality/ …))
Quote:
Given that these laws exist, why do they exist? Steven quotes Erik Wielenberg, who treats these laws as an effect without a cause:
“Such facts are the foundation of (the rest of) objective morality and rest on no foundation themselves. To ask of such facts, “where do they come from?” or “on what foundation do they rest?” is misguided in much the way that, according to many theists, it is misguided to ask of God, “where does He come from?” or “on what foundation does He rest”? The answer is the same in both cases: They come from nowhere, and nothing external to themselves grounds their existence; rather, they are fundamental features of the universe that ground other truths.”
This is not an answer. It’s a shrug of the shoulders and a “Just because.”
That’s not the case in the Christian answer that God is uncaused. We argue that God must exist, since you cannot just have an infinite series of conditional and created beings. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Third Way proves the existence of a Being (who we call God) who must exist necessarily, and who relies only upon Himself for His Being. Without Him, there couldn’t be a universe. We don’t assume that God must exist: we show that He must.
Further, this conclusion makes sense. After all, God is Subsistent Being (ipsum esse subsistens). Being could no more not-be than non-being could be. Asking who caused the Uncaused Cause is contradictory, and it makes sense to say that a necessarily-existing Being necessarily exists.
That’s quite different when we’re dealing with moral principles: there’s no apparent reason or explanation why we would assume that they’re uncaused (other than the alternative requires God).
And asking who or what causes these truths isn’t contradictory. On the contrary, it’s a question that……”
End quote.
Highlights From Debate with Erik Wielenberg. Part One https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/highlights-from-debate-with-erik-wielenberg.-part-one/
Highlights From Debate with Erik Wielenberg. Part Two https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/reasonable-faith-podcast/highlights-from-debate-with-erik-wielenberg.-part-two/
Platonism & Moral Fact & Rule-Setting?
Twitter’s @robertdryer makes the interesting observation about the logically prior. He states that Abstract Math ((Etc.)) in Platonism may exist ((he offers a hypothetical/question)) and so, well, OK let’s say we grant Platonism but in order for us to (verb) abstract any numbers one must FIRST be able to apply (verb) rules in order to then SECONDLY access (verb) any Platonic like system of numbers. Notice that neither the VERB of Apply nor the verb of ACCESS logically or necessarily precedes the other IF both are contingent & mutable because…. because why? Well because “rules” of the Rule-Setter ((our own contingent minds)) and the Rule-Doer ((our own contingent minds)) can be forced onto the other by either part side of such mutable and contingent “termini” – we must make up Blind Axioms and fall victim to the Münchhausen Trilemma.
So IF Platonism is granted THEN the rules have a causally inert set of numbers in that they “are” but they don’t “do” and all of that is just sitting there and so the Rule Setter||Rule-Doer is now // are now me and you — the mutable and contingent. There is no Setting nor Doing but that which we do and the nature of Verb-ing/Reason-ing/Think-ing our way to the very Source of our very Being eventually collapses into incoherence.
Additionally that all fails because not only can we have no coherent Do-Ing amid Be-Ing vis-à-vis Verb-ing but, also, and just as bad, it is the case that Meaning ((rule setting)) cannot flow FROM the contingent & mutable ((contingent minds)) INTO the Necessary ((Platonism’s Causally Inert Numbers)).
So now what?
Well so then the Absolute Mind vis-à-vis Absolute Consciousness forfeits nothing, retains all, and that false direction of rule-setting||doing is left behind even as Do-Ing amid Be-Ing is rationally affirmed and is also found ontologically prior to and logically prior to our own Do-Ing//Be-Ing. How? Well that becomes obvious now as conceptually all of that semantic intent lands within the express topography of Pure Act as the only coherent Be-Ing((Setting))||Do-Ing((Procession/Logos/Communique)). The odd part of Platonism is that all such objective objects are causally inert. They “exist” but are void of “Act” but of course Pure Act ((…Thomistic brands etc…)) provides the Whole-Show and does so seamlessly. David B. Hart speaks of the Divine Mind housing “The Infinitely Known & The Infinite Knower”. Uncanny.
Platonism fails in other ways too and when we come to specifically Moral Facts we find the following:
One’s own “motion in being” ((so to speak)) a. ultimately converges with or else b. ultimately runs against the Objective or Irreducible Grain of reality — whatever that is. If Reason as Truth-Finder is not obligated “there” with respect to love then Hume wins and Non-Theism fails to afford us an ontology for Moral Realism. All vectors short of love vis-à-vis Reciprocity vis-a-vis Being as Self-Giving vis-à-vis the meta-ontological question: “…what determines one’s ontological commitments…?” actually fail to obligate Reason in her role as Truth-Finder. This is one of the many reasons why the many capricious Greek gods/termini come up short.
Abstract Objects reach further – yes – but there’s a problem if one means to tell Reason that reality’s rock-bottom is — qua Truth — Love vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Being in totum. Reality’s “concrete furniture” as some physicists like to put it.
For another thing — Reason *as* Reason finds her obligation in seeking/chasing that Irreducible Grain ((whatever it is)). But Hume got it right and set Reason free because the term “morally un-reasonable” collapses once we realize that ((on Non-Theism)) Reason never can find said Concrete Furniture vis-à-vis Reality offering her Being *as* Irreducible Self-Giving.
There is only one Metanarrative infused into the consciousness of Mankind wherein Being Itself *as* Self-Giving just is Reason’s final satisfaction. All Progressions vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life arrive as “The-Always” & “The-Already” and no other Sub-Narrative, Narrative, or Meta-Narrative infuses the collective consciousness of Mankind with said transcendentals with more clarity than the uncanny Trinitarian Metaphysic.
In the Christian metanarrative we find the Trinitarian metaphysic and therein “….that eternal one-another…” and therein love’s timeless Self-Giving in and by and of nothing less than the irreducible diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum with respect to …being itself… and, thereby – once again – The Always & The Already, or that which is ceaselessly Beneath and Above – namely “Love & Necessity” as an ontic singularity.
It is there that we find in the Christian metaphysic the intellectual and moral grounds for affirming the term, “Love Himself” vis-à-vis the A and the Z of the Trinitarian Life / Trinity with respect to the Decree of the Imago Dei (…and all which comes with “that”…). That is to say, it is there that we find nothing less than the immutable love of the Necessary Being (…and all that comes with “that”…).
That is to say, it is there in nothing less than Being that we find The Always and The Already constituting love’s timeless reciprocity and Self-Giving diffusiveness of the Ontic-Self in totum (…and all that comes with “that”…). It is *that* explanatory terminus which is reality’s rock-bottom, reality’s irreducible substratum – the A and the Z of every possible ontic, of every possible sentence.
That uncanny A — Z finds the immutable with respect to, not “only” Being Itself (as it were) but instead Being Itself as love’s timeless reciprocity and therein we find Ceaseless Self-Giving revealing the fundamental fabric of reality’s concrete furniture. See “Malleable Truth? The Christian Ethic Shifts With Culture?” at http://disq.us/p/1wq6j96 which is also linked to with https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/okay-so-laura-ingalls-wilder-was-a-racist-now-what/#comment-4155674874
Moving Into The Ontic-Fraud
Auschwitz is Non-Theism’s unavoidable fatality — that by which she (Non-Theism) is revealed as a sheer Ontic-Fraud. Inventing [Moral Axioms] never can sum to [Moral Facts] there at the end of reality – that which reason is obligated in her (reason’s) role as truth-finder to chase after. Reason is obligated (…in her fact-role as truth-finder…) to chase after facts, after the fundamental/irreducible nature of X, whatever X is. Reason as Truth-Finder therein finds Obligation to chase after, say, [“A” || “Non-A”] and not after, say, [A = Non-A] with respect to her Fact-Role as Fact-Finder vis-à-vis Reason in her proper role as Truth-Finder such that we find:
Option A— Reason’s obligation should Reality’s Rock-Bottom of Indifference begin and end all syntax
Option B— Reason’s obligation should Reality’s Rock-Bottom of Self-Giving begin and end all syntax.
Hume understands the nature of Reason and its connection to Obligation and its connection to Reality as he reminds us that regardless of which Goal/Preference she (Reason) might chase after “out there” or “in here” it is the case that no Target/Tangent exists which can rise to the level of “Morally Contrary To Reason” — and that is simply Hume’s way of describing Reason’s obligation in “Option A” above and with respect to the following:
“– Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. -Tis not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. -Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than for the latter.” (Hume, Treatise of Human Nature 2.3.3.6)
“Hume was right. We have no objective guidance on how to distinguish right from wrong: not from God, not from nature, not from the pure force of reason itself….Morality exists only insofar as we make it so, and other people might not pass judgments in the same way we do.” (S. Carroll)
“The lack of an ultimate objective scientific grounding for morality can be worrisome. It implies that people with whom we have moral disagreements—whether it’s […insert any evil here…] or schoolyard bullies who beat up smaller children—aren’t wrong in the same sense that it’s wrong to deny Darwinian evolution or the expansion of the universe….But that’s how the world is.” (S. Carroll)
The false identity claim of [A = B] with respect to the Irreducible-Ontic of ANY Normative X need not request her seat at the proverbial Table as we discover that the perfection of love necessarily entails the perfection of reason, which itself entails the perfection of consciousness, which is the perfection of being. We are inherently relational beings — for a reason ((…let the term inherently do its full “ontic-work” vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life…)). For more regarding Reason’s Obligation as reason vis-à-vis Reality’s Irreducible or Concrete Furniture ((so to speak)) and Moral Fact ((…Non-Theism’s Indifference vs. Being vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life…)) see https://metachristianity.com/reason-reality-golden-thread-reciprocity/
The immutable love of the Necessary Being grounds the Evil of Auschwitz but it does NOT do that by grounding “the evil of Auschwitz as Auschwitz full-stop” — and in fact NO “grounding” of ANY Thing/Nature can find ANY closure in ANY contingent and mutable ontological cul-de-sac full-stop for the obvious reason that the very concept of “Isolated Bubbles Of Ontology” with Metaphysical Immunity is a concept which itself collapses into a metaphysical absurdity. Instead the immutable love of the Necessary Being begins and ends all Syntax with something so radically and irreducibly alien to Non-Theism’s megastructure that Non-Theism can only stand with her dumbfounded stare as she is permanently removed from reason’s affairs.
As we interface with Non-Theism’s ((…distinct from Non-Theists…)) horrific claim that there’s nothing factually / irreducibly “wrong” with Auschwitz – and thereby assumes the intellectually absurd and emotively sickening role of the metaphysical ground of Auschwitz as Auschwitz – full stop, Christendom speaks what is to Non-Theism the unintelligible.
When we come to Auschwitz and all Ontic-Metrics by which we “measure” Auschwitz it is going to be the Immutable Love of the Necessary Being vis-à-vis Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis Being Itself vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life — or else the Ontic-Metrics will sum to Non-Theism’s illusory shadows of Ontic–Nothing with respect to Irreducible Moral Fact. Another way to say that is to say that all such Ontic-Metrics of WHAT Auschwitz IS will by necessity begin and end in Vacuity/Indifference or else in the Triune-God/Love. And if it is vacuity, if it is nothing, then all of Non-Theism’s supposed “metrics” with respect to “Evil” and “Lack” and all of its “metrics” about it / in it / on it / and around it in fact do not exist — literally — and it is “there” where we begin to spy the divergence between the Subjective and Objective with respect to Reason and Reality and Obligation. Reason as Truth-Finder therein — again — finds Obligation to chase after [“A” || “Non-A”] and not after [A = Non-A] with respect to — again — her Fact-Role as Fact-Finder vis-à-vis Reason in her proper role as Truth-Finder such that — again — we find:
A— Reason’s obligation should Reality’s Rock-Bottom of Indifference begin and end all syntax
B— Reason’s obligation should Reality’s Rock-Bottom of Self-Giving begin and end all syntax.
In short: If anything – then immutable love. If anything – then the uncanny syntax of the Triune God — else all syntax A-Begins and Z-Ends in Non-Being. More context on that is in both Love, Reason, Reality, And The Golden Thread Of Reciprocity —at https://metachristianity.com/reason-reality-golden-thread-reciprocity/ and also at Moral Ontology Vis-À-Vis The Ontological History Of Reason Itself —at https://metachristianity.com/moral-ontology-vis-a-vis-the-ontological-history-of-reason-itself/
In David Bentley Hart’s, “The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth“, there is a much longer comment surrounding the interface of divine love and horrific evil. To offer just parts of it, we find in “Part Two” of that book the “Section 1” entitled Trinity and the first sub-part there is “Divine Apatheia”. Obviously that section in whole gives a fuller picture than these few excerpts here as we discover that the pure dynamism that is God’s love is —
“….pure positivity and pure activity, that His love is an infinite peace and so needs no violence to shape it, no death over which to triumph: if it did, it would never be ontological peace but only metaphysical armistice…”
Further in and by the Trinitarian landscape we discover that not only is there no necessity of Evil but there is also no necessity of the actual history of Evil. Moving further —
“….the cross of Christ does not determine the nature of divine love, but rather manifests it, because there is a more original outpouring of God that – without needing to submit itself to the order of sacrifice that builds crosses – always already surpasses every abyss of godforsakenness and pain that sin can impose between the world and God: an outpouring that is in its proper nature indefectible happiness….”
Again, in 12 pages there’s more but this is only to introduce a landscape where we find that love’s ceaseless outpouring in the triune God reveals that —
“….crucified love is precisely what makes the entire narrative of salvation in Christ intelligible. And second, it is an almost agonizing irony that, in our [misguided] attempts to revise trinitarian doctrine in such a way as to make God comprehensible in the “light” of Auschwitz, invariably we end up describing a God who – it turns out – is actually simply the metaphysical ground of Auschwitz….”
Indeed, ultimate reality void of the triune cannot sum to immutable love and the potential errors looming there on evil are many. The section closes looking at that which —
“….is divine beauty, that perfect joy in the other by which God is God: the Father’s delectation in the beauty of his eternal Image, the Spirit as the light and joy and sweetness of that knowledge. As Augustine says of the three persons, “In that Trinity is the highest origin of all things, and the most perfect beauty, and the most blessed delight. Therefore those three are seen to be mutually determined, and are in themselves infinite, that is, infinitely determined as the living love of the divine persons – to “one another” – to which infinity no moment of the negative or of becoming or even of “triumph” can give increase. Hence God is love” …….”
And again:
“[The] very action of kenosis is not a new act for God, because God’s eternal being is, in some sense, kenosis – the self-outpouring of the Father in the Son, in the joy of the Spirit. Thus Christ’s incarnation, far from dissembling his eternal nature, exhibits not only his particular proprium as the Son and the splendor of the Father’s likeness, but thereby also the nature of the whole trinitarian taxis. On the cross we see this joyous self-donation sub contrario, certainly, but not in alieno. For God to pour himself out, then, as the man Jesus, is not a venture outside the trinitarian life of indestructible love, but in fact quite the reverse: it is the act by which creation is seized up into the sheer invincible pertinacity of that love, which reaches down to gather us into its triune motion.” (D. B. Hart)
The longer excerpt/quote surrounding those from David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth is copy/pasted further down at the end of this essay.
There’s far more of course as we describe where and how the Christian metaphysic ushers in coherence amid evil and the God who is love, but from the get-go we leave Non-Theism’s megastructure behind. Within the proverbial House that is Christendom such dialogue ensues and the intellectual price tag needed to even comment on nature(s) within ontic-layer(s) is paid in full by those beneath its robust canopy ((…contra Non-Theism’s assertion of No-Objective-Moral-Fact…)). As for Auschwitz – given reason’s proper role as truth-finder – given love’s timeless reciprocity within the irreducibly triune – it (Auschwitz) is irreducibly – cosmically – ultimately – Evil–Full–Stop.
Begin Evans’ Quote:
What must remain clear is that this has been a project in grounding the good; it has not been a project in grounding moral obligation — the topic of Taylor’s quote. But I bring this up to highlight a very important feature of our discussion. God offers the best account of moral values as well as offering the best account of moral obligations, especially when compared to rival naturalistic theories. Why is this nuanced discussion important for a book on the problem of evil? The title of the chapter indicates the significance of this topic, for if one’s worldview cannot establish the moral foundation by which we may indict obviously heinous human behavior, then that worldview fails to launch a meaningful discussion on a phenomenon of our experience that requires explanation.
Given the pervasiveness of evil in our experience, and the failure of naturalism to provide the ontological grounds for moral values attendant to the issue, one rightly questions the rationality of naturalism— at least regarding the problem of evil. This observation brings about a startling turn of events, for evil is traditionally considered to be the weightiest objection against the existence of God. How might one turn the table on the atheist objector and suggest that evil is actually an argument for the existence of God? William Lane Craig pares it down nicely:
– If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
– Evil exists. Therefore, objective moral values exist — namely, some things are evil!
– Therefore, God exists.
A person may be fully committed to this line of reasoning without any indication as to what God is up to in permitting atrocities, for example, in [Auschwitz]. But at least the theist has the metaphysical grounds to claim that the atrocities in [Auschwitz] really are atrocities. As such, even the atheist must concede that theism has great explanatory power. The claims to the demise of theistic belief as derived from the existence of evil are too quick, especially when those proclaiming its demise are borrowing from its principles to reject it.
End Evans’ Quote. (by Evans, Jeremy A., “The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs”)
Briefly, a satisfactory definition of Evil would be The-Good Minus-Something or more specifically….
Evil As Privation
Overlapping segues are found in “How To Approach The Problem Of Evil” at https://strangenotions.com/how-to-approach-the-problem-of-evil/ The author of that is also the author of Aquinas’ Proofs for God’s Existence — St. Thomas Aquinas on: “The Per Accidens Necessarily Implies the Per Se” ((…Dennis Bonnette Ph.D…)) and a brief excerpt regarding “Evil” as “Privation” or as “The Good Minus Something” is helpful:
“Since the good is equivalent to being and good and evil are diametrically opposed, it would appear that evil must be simply non-being. But, evil is not simply non-being. Rather, evil is the lack of being or perfection that should belong to a given nature… It is self-evident that the infinitely-good God could never directly will moral evil for the sake of any end whatever — however good….”
[…in addition to Bonnette’s book there is also Edward Feser’s Five Proofs of the Existence of God providing helpful content…]
Notice that over inside of Non-Theism “Evil” in fact does end in the illusory shadows of Non-Being as the term “Illusion” only begins the complete and total reductio ad absurdum which all “Moral Fact” undergoes given Non-Theism’s Means and Ends — whereas — over inside of the Christian Metaphysic “Evil” as “Privation” sums to “Something Missing” or as Being-Minus-Something as “Evil” is ((still)) not a positive substance but is instead a deficiency of substance ((…a deficiency of Being, a deficiency of Good, and Etc…)).
Evil is therein a Hollow or Vacuum of said substance — and that is Evil as Good’s Privation — as “The Good Minus Something”. The Christian Metaphysic posits a cure for Evil — for Privation and that cure is nothing less than the only logically possible Means by which the aforementioned vacuum or deficiency or hollow could be brought to Non-Existence. And what is that? Well in concrete terms we have a “Vacuum Void of X” ((so to speak)) and only that which “Is Itself” that which is “X” ((so to speak)) can Pour & thereby Fill that Hollow which is itself but the void of “X”. Such cannot be anything less than Being Itself poured out — or Goodness Itself poured out — or All-Sufficiency Himself poured out — or God — via His Own Self-Outpouring — to the bitter Ends of Time & Physicality vis-à-vis all things Adamic — and this is Christ.
Before moving over to J.L. Schellenberg’s “A New Logical Problem of Evil” and other topics a brief segue from the Ob-1—Ob-7 and why the following removes Moral Facts from Non-Theism:
[All] [Sets] of [Possible Counterfactuals] & Moral Facts & The Moral Dilemma:
Here’s reality “as it is” given the landscape of the aforementioned Privation (…or instead that Incline Godward / Upward and so on…) vis-à-vis the proverbial moral dilemma:
“…in a hypothetical war we find a few hundred people hiding and the crying baby will give away the hiding place of the 100 adults, hence they’ll be found and killed. The options: we can kill the baby and save the 100 or we can let the baby cry and sacrifice (thereby) all the adults and the baby too in the end…..”
In the middle of war’s hell we find that killing the crying baby in said time of war to save the many isn’t “Morally Good”, but it might be justified given this or that horrific impact of doing otherwise – with the catch that there is no World-Contingent Metric which can satisfy “justified” in that syntax given that there is only One True Ideal. Just the same, sparing the baby and sacrificing the many in said time of war isn’t “Morally Good”, but it might be justified given this or that horrific outcome of doing otherwise – again with the catch that there is no World-Contingent Metric which can satisfy “justified” in that syntax given that there is only One True Ideal with respect to The-Good, or as some say The-Always & The-Already.
Regarding The Illusive World-Contingent Metric:
Before we shout Consequentialism one must push through to the End of any Contingent World and get beyond all possible Possibilities and Counterfactuals such that one lands in, not this or that Contingent Fact but, instead, in the Necessary vis-à-vis Ending Evil vis-à-vis The Good vis-à-vis Ending Privation (…..in short one must arrive at Closure irrespective of a. Privation or b. Incline Godward….).
It is only “there” where we find That-Which is not and cannot even in principle be the-consequence-of this or that World Contingent Vector or Metric.
Just the same it is logically unavoidable in all of this that there are no options which rise to the level of Moral Excellence in such a world. And in fact Scripture expressly defines the pains of Privation (…which is “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing“…) as that which constitutes – not just a few ingrained mindsets in a few cultures – but reality itself. Even further, we find that such a reality sums to that very same category of World unless/until/pending nothing less than the “ontic-fact” of the only logically possible dissolution of a Vacuum (….as in “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing”….) which is to In-Fill said Vacuum with nothing less than All Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring into, and through, and to the bitter ends of that category of reality / world. As another Christian once pointed out to our Non-Theist friends:
“….As a side note, I don’t think executing child-molesting cannibals is, in your words, morally good….”
Now, how in the world would that act not be “Morally Good”? Because there is a Moral Better – or – a Higher Moral which does *not* include the destruction of the Man (….all narratives in Scripture converge in the Cross, in Christ…) and as such the Non-Theist has no rational grasp on what is actually being discussed here with respect to any coherent ontic in and of The Good. It’s almost as if fictions really do matter to our Non-Theist friends rather than the bitter reality of the pains of Privation with respect to, not a few ingrained mindsets, but of reality itself. That seems to motivate the unfortunate posture behind our Non-Theist friends with respect to their odd habit of beginning and ending all related analytics with “But Sinai…. But Sinai …..But…but… BUT SINAI…!!”
The Christian reply to that fallacious “Sinai Is God’s Eternal Ideal & The Means To Moral Excellence” is straightforward:
“You’re struggling over a very simple fact, which is that you won’t find any Morally Excellent vector within Privation (..or “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing“…). Notice that if one posits that Incline Godward then the syntax does not change as, all over again the problem is that of “The-Good-Minus-Some-Thing“. Hence either way we find the following simple fact: You just won’t find any Morally Excellent vector in any such Landscape. None. Zero. Every vector will, at some seam somewhere, come up as lacking good. That’s the whole show, and, so, though you suggest there is “parsing out” needed by the Christian, there is not and in fact cannot be any such need for any such “parsing-out.”
It’s not clear but it seems that our Non-Theist friends STILL want to claim that Scripture’s Metanarrative tells them and us to look to Sinai for the Means and the Ends of The Good – for the Means to the actualization of Moral Excellence in and through All-Things-Adamic. The reason that is the case is because they seem to have merely recast the entire question in this or that Non-Christian set of premises.
Unfortunately for such Straw-manning Scripture is quite clear about the means and the ends of [A] Laws in all/any time/place, including Sinai, with respect to all possible explanatory termini and also of [B] All-Sufficiency’s Own Self-Outpouring as the only logically coherent explanatory terminus.
What men do – Christian or not – Theist or Atheist – never can be “enough” with respect to any ontology of the Immutable & Necessary. We have to be careful about stopping our unpacking at the metric of normative shifts, else this or that action (…say… slavery or whatever…) forces the logical absurdity of A. condoned and a slice of the Good rather than B. tolerated and a slice of Privation. Rather, our metric must both precede and outdistance all such normative shifts. The necessary and sufficient “Means” to the “Ends” of that which is “The Good” is not, and never can be, the hard fist of Law, which is why God meets us right where we live such that Sinai is, according to the OT and the NT, anything but God’s Ideal for mankind as He works and speaks with us beneath our own conceptual ceilings. Now, that mode of tolerance on God’s part is a means towards the restraint of death rather than a means into The-Good.
J.L. Schellenberg’s “A New Logical Problem of Evil”
“Every worldly good that permits or requires evil is greatly exceeded by a pure good of the same type existing in God prior to creation…. What it forces us to notice and take seriously is that since (say) instances of courage and compassion presuppose evil or its permission, these goods cannot exist in God prior to creation. And yet God is then unsurpassably great!”
That is a chapter inside The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil. Before looking at that ((A New Logical Problem of Evil)) there are other items in the list of Schellenberg’s works such as:
“The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God” by J.L. Schellenberg
“The Hiddenness of God” by Michael C. Rea ((…a rebuttal of Schellenberg’s Hiddenness argument…)). Another look at that is “A New Response to the Problem of Divine Hiddenness” at https://capturingchristianity.com/responding-to-the-problem-of-divine-hiddenness/
As we unpack the proverbial Map of Schellenberg’s “A New Logical Problem of Evil” we will navigate the following landscapes, so to speak:
1— That of the Nonresistant Nonbeliever & Rational Disbelief ((…much farther down hear the end…under the section Schellenberg’s Nonresistant Nonbelievers & Aliens & Clever Skeptics…))
2— That of Logically Possible Worlds given Maximal Goodness which is to say Maximal Greatness with respect to Reality’s Highest Ethic – namely love and self-giving and reciprocity and so on – which is to say given Reality’s Concrete Furniture as per Processions of Timeless Reciprocity and Ceaseless Self-Giving vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life ((…wherein we find that Being Itself in fact “is” “Love”…)).
3— That of the following, which is almost right, but which contains a fundamental, and therefore fatal, error:
A— If P were in S1, P would do A.
B— If P were in S2, P would not do A.
1— If Adam were in S1, he would obey God.
2— If Adam were in S2, he would not obey God
4—That of the common flaw in the new logical challenge to Theism – namely that of insisting on a Logically Impossible World & God. Briefly put, Schellenberg’s Maximally Great God is fine as a starter, however, Schellenberg expunges Maximal Goodness from that Maximal Greatness and so posits a logically incoherent definition of God. He also defines such things as “Courage In The Face Of Grief” as something other than Privation and so as something other than Lack with respect to a Particular Decreed Nature’s Perfection of Being. We find that Schellenberg moves too fast there ((more later with Thomistic Casuality)) and finds not Lack but instead a part of Non-Contingent-Good and therefore Part Of God as in Moral Perfection and then in his next breath — Schellenberg again moving too fast — charges that God Can/Ought Create Moral Perfection ((absence of sorrow is possible but he conflates that with The Edenic)). He seeks to Fashion / Birth / Yield the Bride/Groom amid love’s Self/Other ((…[Highest God] / see 6 below..)) by expunging/gutting the Actual Content and “from the get-go” just “Create” the Round-Square of the “Already-Freely-Married-Bride” ((…more in other sections…)).
5—That of the complete failure of all of that to address Necessity of Being vs. Contingency of Being vs. Divine Simplicity vs. Moral Perfection and Logical Possibility. Of help there is the section of quotes titled Divine Freedom In Creating & “Does God Change If He Creates?” which is in https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/
6—That of Schellenberg’s move to expunge Reciprocity and Self-Giving vis-à-vis Self/Other and this he does BOTH with respect to God ((….such is found only in the Trinitarian’s God…)) AND with respect to God & Man ((…Groom & Bride…)) which forces Schellenberg to leave Maximal Greatness void of Maximal Goodness. All of which leaves Schellenberg faulting love as “that which” sums to evil and/or to the asinine. ((…see Ob-1 through Ob-7 as described above…)). Despite Schellenberg’s hopes he can only retain coherence by damning the very thing he ((rightly)) seeks to defend ((love)) and, therefore, Schellenberg’s Maximal Greatness ends up being just Nothing-Great-At-All. Additionally he sets up Knowledge/Belief-States in Contingent Beings as “The Thing” which Maximal Greatness must ((in order to be Maximally Great)) Keep/Maintain and that Without-Interruption in all Possible Worlds ((…there ought never be the Non-Resistant Non-Believer in his Modeling when in fact what he is faced with is Ob-1 through Ob-7 as described above and with the section of quotes titled Divine Freedom In Creating & “Does God Change If He Creates?” which is in https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/…)).
Again the complete failure of all of that to address Necessity of Being and Contingency of Being and Divine Simplicity and Moral Perfection and Logical Possibility and more is only in part addressed here but “in part” is enough as we will see.
All of that with Schellenberg will be looked at in various parts & slices as we go along here through other “headings/titles/topics” rather than in “one big chunk” and, so, let’s start with something quite general and work our way to that and into other concerns and premises:
Under the Umbrella that is Christendom there are three discussions with respect to Cosmic Fairness or Cosmic Justice or Cosmic Love and those three are a. Conditional Immortality and b. Hell as Eternal Conscious Torment and c. Universalism. Schellenberg’s entire body of earlier arguments are dissolved by Universalism alone ((…that’s the short answer…obviously there’s more…)). That is NOT to affirm or reject Universalism NOR is to say that Schellenberg’s Map is not out-performed by the other two NOR is it to say the content in “4—That of the common flaw in the new logical challenge….” described above does not itself dissolve BOTH Schellenberg’s earlier arguments AND his new argument — but, rather, that is mentioned only to point out the most obvious slice of the wherewithal of the Christian Paradigm in relation to J.L.S.’s earlier works. Regarding Schellenberg’s more recent items such as “A New Logical Problem of Evil” ((which is a chapter inside The Blackwell Companion to The Problem of Evil)) he fashions a Logically Impossible God and a Logically Impossible World by which and in which his new logical argument can push through ((…as per 1, 2, 3, and 4 above etc…)).
Let’s pause to recall the following definition and short list of references:
Definition: Principle of Proportionate Causality
Quote: “…..To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all — which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just *is* Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all. [Only] pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others – can cause a thing to exist ex nihilo…..“ (E. Feser) End quote. ((…from http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html …))
Five Background Data/Segues For This Essay:
Schellenberg’s A New Logical Problem of Evil hinges on logically possible worlds ((…as do all metaphysical topographies of course…)) and the array of Possible States of Knowledge/Belief within Contingent Minds given the Divine Mind as the Maximally Great ((which just is the Maximally Good)) all of which includes Non-Resistant Non-Believers ((Darkness, the Fragmentation of Knowledge, Etc.)) and to that end he does what he is forced to do — namely he goes about Re-Inventing the Christian Metaphysic by expunging the Trinitarian Life and thereby inserting a Non-Christian Blueprint for Possible Worlds with respect to the Imago Dei.
Schellenberg assumes that one can Model/Create Motion amid Self/Other vis-à-vis Reciprocity/Self-Giving/Communique ((…the Trinitarian Life…)) by just inventing the Round-Square of the “Already-Freely-Married-Bride” and so he quite blithely and haphazardly and carelessly and anti-intellectually equates and/or conflates all logically necessary // irreducible distinctions amid the metaphysical content and yield of Proposal/The-Edenic for/with the metaphysical content/yield of Wedding for/with the metaphysical content/yield of Birth for/with the metaphysical content/yield of Eternal Life and, also, makes the sloppy mistake that any/one/some of all of that is somehow NOT Logically Necessary. More on this is in various parts but again see the referenced “Five Background Data/Segues For This Essay” listed earlier.
Schellenberg also makes the Non-Resistant Non-Believer the “End Of All Progressions” and thereby makes Knowing-The-Right-Facts his End-All/Be-All in the sense that the Cure or the “Thing” which God would FORCE/KEEP “in-place” in all possible worlds without interruption is Knowledge/The Right Facts – in the sense that what The Adamic needs in all Possible Worlds is Knowledge – rather than Being Itself – rather than Goodness Itself – rather than Life Itself – which is to say rather than God/All-Sufficiency Himself. This is unraveled by exposing several key flaws.
The first basic point is the fact that God’s Decree of, Creation of, the “Y” that is the entire Adamic Landscape ((…the trio of 1. the Necessary place of the Edenic wherein Man ((the Potential Bride)) has not yet chosen Eternal Life and 2. the Possibility of but not necessity of Privation ((…that of Self void of Other…)) and 3. God’s Eternal Ideal for all things Adamic – namely Eternal Wholeness in Being/Life…)) is not a Decree of, Creation of, three separate created realities ((plural)) but is/was *one* created reality ((singular)) or landscape – and the blueprint for that singular Creation is the Trinitarian Life amid love’s Self/Other vis-à-vis the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei. To expunge THAT Singular Landscape’s topography just is to expunge the Singular Blueprint’s topography which just is to expunge Love’s Necessary Progressions amid Self/Other. Despite Schellenberg’s hopes he can only retain coherence by damning the very thing he ((rightly)) seeks to defend ((love & logic)) even as it is to foist Maximally Great void of the Maximally Good.
The second basic point is the tempting but fallacious move of landing within a set of Counterfactuals which looks something like P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G as we unpack a. [If P were in S1, P would do A] and b. [If P were in S2, P would not do A] and c. [If Adam were in S1, he would obey God] and d. [If Adam were in S2, he would not obey God]. Notice that P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G is defined/explained in https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/
The third basic point is that of the distinction between the Infralapsarian Christology vs. the Supralapsarian Christology as each reveals the same “Final Solution” regarding the “Thing” which God would ((and does)) FORCE/KEEP “in-place” in all possible worlds without interruption ((…those two Christologies are looked at in https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/ …)).
Recall from earlier what we find in BOTH the Infralapsarian Christology AND the Supralapsarian Christology:
Notice that over inside of Non-Theism “Evil” in fact does end in the illusory shadows of Non-Being as the term “Illusion” only begins the complete and total reductio ad absurdum which all “Moral Fact” undergoes given Non-Theism’s Means and Ends — whereas — over inside of the Christian Metaphysic “Evil” as “Privation” sums to “Something Missing” or as Being-Minus-Something as “Evil” is ((still)) not a positive substance but is instead a deficiency of substance ((…a deficiency of Being, a deficiency of Good, and Etc…)).
Evil is therein a Hollow or Vacuum of said substance — and that is Evil as Good’s Privation — as “The Good Minus Something”. The Christian Metaphysic posits a cure for Evil — for Privation and that cure is nothing less than the only logically possible Means by which the aforementioned vacuum or deficiency or hollow could be brought to Non-Existence. And what is that? Well in concrete terms we have a “Vacuum Void of X” ((so to speak)) and only that which “Is Itself” that which is “X” ((so to speak)) can Pour & thereby Fill that Hollow which is itself but the void of “X”. Such cannot be anything less than Being Itself poured out — or Goodness Itself poured out — or All-Sufficiency Himself poured out — or God — via His Own Self-Outpouring — to the bitter Ends of Time & Physicality vis-à-vis all things Adamic — and this is Christ.
There is more ahead regarding [A] the Necessity of Eden’s Freedom amid the Groom’s Proposal and the Potential Bride’s Reply to that Proposal and of [B] how/why “THAT” is ontologically/irreducibly distinct from “Wedding” and [C] how/why “THAT” is ontologically/irreducibly distinct from “Birth/Eternal Life” and [D] how/why “THAT” carries us into “Permanence & Freedom & Yet No Sin In Eternal Life” ((…again also see https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/ for more…)). Notice that from [A] to [B] to…. and so on is ONE SINGULARITY – that is to say it is not the Creating of 3 different Worlds but instead it is the Creation of ONE Metaphysic – or ONE Landscape – or ONE Adam and the reason that is ONE seamless progression vis-à-vis ONE Adam moving Amid/Among progressions from A to B to C to… and so on is because of the ONE Singularity that is the Trinitarian Life vis-à-vis Self/Other.
To expunge THAT Singular Landscape’s topography just is to expunge the Singular Blueprint’s topography which just is to expunge Love’s Necessary Progressions amid Self/Other. All of which leaves Schellenberg faulting love as “that which” sums to evil and/or to the asinine. Despite Schellenberg’s hopes he can only retain coherence by damning the very thing he ((rightly)) seeks to defend ((love & logic)).
Two Fallacies: Occasionalism and The Greater Good
As we work through all of that we find that the claim “God’s reasons for allowing evil are inscrutable & unintelligible…” is incoherent and even demonstrably false as all vectors converge within our discovery of (1) the fact that it is the case that Gratuitous Evil is a metaphysical impossibility ((…see #1 in the aforementioned list which is “Why Create If Possible Evil” and its subsection bolded/titled “MISUNDERSTANDING 1 — The Fallacy Of The-Greater-Good Theodicy”…)) and (2) our discovery that all vectors land in in a full-on contradiction that is the error of Occasionalism and/or peculiar mixtures of Utility.
For a basic framework on the errors within “Occasionalism” see 1. E. Feser’s “Metaphysical Middle Man” at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/01/metaphysical-middle-man.html and also 2. “Causality, Pantheism, and Deism” at https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/12/causality-pantheism-and-deism.html
With respect to “The Greater Good” the following example is correct for that fallacy but it is NOT quite accurate with respect to the wider Chritian Metaphysic:
“…..God allows various evils to occur because they will result, ultimately, in a surfeit of goods which outweighs the evils endured. Perhaps the simplest way to put the idea is as follows: no pain, no gain…..”
The reason that is NOT quite accurate is as follows:
We must avoid hijacked versions of the Greater Good theme which land in a surreal mixture of Utility and Occasionalism. The Greater Good umbrella does not find God allowing [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] “….in order to get to….” XYZ. Instead we find [ABC and/or the Possibility of ABC] not as a Means by which God is to gain or to get to some End but, rather, because it is a logical outflow ((…it is logically necessary…)) given His Decree of Love vis-à-vis His Decree of the Imago Dei vis-à-vis His Decree of The Blueprint reducing to the Trinitarian Life. This or that Possible World or Possible Reality require what Schellenberg specifically avoids – namely to interact with the Christian Metaphysic – meaning the specifically Trinitarian Metaphysic. It is remarkable how so many can muddy the waters with this concept which is no more complicated than the following:
To Decree “Square via World X” just is to find “Round via World X” a logical absurdity.
William Hasker and Kirk R. MacGregor are referenced later but a brief quote here:
“…The absurdity of the Greater-Good Defense is multiplied by its transformation of the universe into a philosophically overdetermined system….. Gratuitous evils are simply a logically unavoidable necessity of contingent living in a freedom-permitting world…… While God can [and does] surely use [even all] of those individual acts of evil for our good, it does not follow that every act of evil that God allows, He allows for the purpose of accomplishing some greater good….. He allows acts of evil, even gratuitous acts of evil, because He values and honors the freedom of our will….”
From “there” we discover Schellenberg’s terminus – namely that by Re-Inventing “God” and expunging the Trinitarian Life one is ((thereby)) left with a Non-Christian Blueprint for all things Adamic. Schellenberg’s logical argument works by tearing down that New & Non-Christian Blueprint with respect to Possible Worlds. In the end what Schellenberg actually does is to set about Faulting-God vis-à-vis Faulting Love’s Logically Necessary Metaphysical Content. All of which leaves Schellenberg faulting love as “that which” sums to evil and/or to the asinine. Despite Schellenberg’s hopes he can only retain coherence by damning the very thing he ((rightly)) seeks to defend ((love & logic)) and, therefore, Schellenberg’s Maximal Greatness ends up being just Nothing-Great-At-All. And additionally he sets up Knowledge/Belief-States as “The Thing” which Maximal Greatness must ((in order to be Maximally Great)) Keep/Maintain and that Without-Interruption in all Possible Worlds.
((…again by that we mean various lines of syntax as discussed in “Why Create If Possible Evil – Metrics Of To-Create – Metrics Of To-Not-Create” which is at https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/ and also discussed within that essays own links, including but not limited to the link to True In All Possible Worlds —PART 1— True Pre-Eden – True In Eden – True In Privation Pre/Post Christ – True Until Wholeness/Heaven – True Always & Already — which is at https://randalrauser.com/2018/08/can-violence-ever-serve-a-redemptive-purpose/#comment-4353198247 …))
Schellenberg has insisted on a set of counterfactuals in which he leaves out the uniquely Trinitarian Life vis-a-vis the Necessary Being & Timeless Reciprocity as reality’s Blueprint. He posits creating a Blueprint based in Imago Dei vis-a-vis The-Good in and of Irreducible Reciprocity and in/of Being in Ceaseless Self-Giving – all of which is fine – but then he presumes to do so WHILE Creating a Landscape void of the necessity of all things Edenic – which of course forces a reductio ad absurdum in the form of God Creating the Round-Square – or in this case specifically in the form of God Creating the [Already-Freely-Married-Bride]. Inroads into “all of that” is unpacked more fully in Why Create If Possible Evil — at https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/
A brief excerpt:
A quote which expresses a key error: “….since God knows what each of them would do in every possible situation, he gets to decide, so to speak, what the upshot will be – which world will be actual….”
We’ll get to the errors in that and why it is not accurate a few paragraphs down but first the general ((…and fallacious…)) Frame/Syllogism off of which that error springboards:
A— If P were in S1, P would do A.
B— If P were in S2, P would not do A.
1— If Adam were in S1, he would obey God.
2— If Adam were in S2, he would not obey GodBut First — The Wider Framework:
By which metrics will we Ask/Answer the question of Why Create If Evil Is Possible? By love’s metrics? Well yes – of course. But then how……
End Excerpt.
Schellenberg’s error is that he sets out and describes a set of Counterfactuals which looks something like P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G and, again, that error ((…which is not unique to Schellenberg…at all…)) is unpacked more fully in #1 from the earlier list of 5 Background Data/Segues For This Essay which is Why Create If Possible Evil — at https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/
Schellenberg fails to notice ((or account for)) that the Blueprint for the Imago Dei houses key vectors specific to the Trinitarian Life and thereby logically necessitated all things Edenic and that the Edenic logically necessitated not permanence in Eden but rather Two Options and only Two Options — namely either Privation or else Eternal Life — which is either Self (Isolation) or else Self-Other (Community). We speak of course “The Adamic” as Mankind vis-à-vis the Contingent & Derived “Self” and we speak of God as the Uncreated/Underived “Other” and as “Goodness Itself” and Being Itself ((and so on)) and we speak of “Eternal Life” of course as Man-In-God//God-In-Man as ANYTHING LESS of course necessarily falls short of logically necessary contents with respect to Man’s True Good // Man’s Final Felicity.
Schellenberg also fails to notice ((or account for)) the fact that we find three irreducibly distinct Metaphysical Landscapes with respect to Content and Yield regarding all things Adamic – namely all things vis-à-vis The Groom’s Proposal || The Beloved’s Volitional/Free Reply ((…which is all things Edenic…)) and all things Wedding ((…either from within Eden or from within Privation makes no difference…)) and all things Birth/Eternal-Life.
Schellenberg fails to notice ((or account for)) the fact that God’s Decree of,Creation of, the “Y” that is the entire Adamic Landscape ((…the trio of 1. the Necessary place of the Edenic wherein Man ((the Potential Bride)) has not yet chosen Eternal Life and 2. the Possibility of but not necessity of Privation ((…that of Self void of Other…)) and 3. God’s Eternal Ideal for all things Adamic – namely Eternal Wholeness in Being/Life…)) is not a Decree of, Creation of, three separate created realities ((plural)) but is/was *one* created reality ((singular)) or landscape – and the blueprint for that singular Creation is the Trinitarian Life amid love’s Self/Other vis-à-vis the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei. To expunge THAT Singular Landscape’s topography just is to expunge the Singular Blueprint’s topography which just is to expunge Love’s Necessary Progressions amid Self/Other. Despite Schellenberg’s hopes he can only retain coherence by damning the very thing he ((rightly)) seeks to defend ((love & logic)) even as it is to foist Maximally Great void of the Maximally Good.
Schellenberg fails to notice ((or account for)) the fact that it is the case that The Adamic necessarily cannot find Eternal Life, God’s Eternal Ideal, other than by traversing that landscape of God’s//His love’s Proposal amid the Adamic’s Reply which then necessarily carries forward into the syntax of a Wedding and that then carries forward into the syntax of a Birth.
Schellenberg’s Modeling/Creating “Map” never arrives at the Decreed Imago Dei within 1. a proposal, 2. a reply, 3. a wedding, and 4. Birth/Permanence and the necessary *distinctions* between each of those. They are all constitutions of *one* landscape and yet they are irreducibly distinct.
[[…an interesting observation is that the causal-ecosystem in 2 is not, either in content or in yield, that of 3, and, similarly, everything in 2 is *necessary* (…or cannot be otherwise, by Decree…), and yet nothing in 2 is *sufficient* (..by force of logical impossibility…), and so on…and so on…]]
Schellenberg’s Map Sacrifices Both Maximal Greatness/Goodness
The Christian is left reminding Schellenberg that he must bring in not only Goodness Itself but also Irreducible Self-Giving vis-a-vis Self/Other vis-a-vis the Blueprint of the Imago Dei. Schellenberg does well to quote others speaking of the fact that all goods are already contained fully in God – and so foists Maximal Greatness ((okay)) only to then Damn/Expunge Maximal Goodness ((not okay)). A brief excerpt from “Why Create If Possible Evil” linked to earlier:
By which metrics will we Ask/Answer the question of Why Create If Evil Is Possible? By love’s metrics? Well yes – of course. But then how does the Critic rationally damn love’s begetting of love EITHER within The Trinitarian Life (…God Not-Creating….) OR within the Divine Decree of the Imago Dei (…God Creating…)?
Is it Good of us and is it Logical of us and does it sum to our factual Valuing-Of-Love on our part if we fault God for begetting love vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life wherein we discover Timeless Reciprocity vis-à-vis Ceaseless Self-Giving with respect to Being in totum? How is it that one can rationally claim (there) that “God Is Un-Loving? Just the same if we turn it 180 degrees: Is it Good of us and is it Logical of us and does it sum to our factual Valuing-Of-Love on our part if we fault God for begetting love in the Creative Act vis-à-vis the Decree of the Imago Dei?
Divine Freedom seems blurry in Schellenberg’s Map ((to be fair he does not affirm/deny Divine Freedom)) only because it hints at a kind of God of Pure Power being unable to Not-Create as hints of determined ends leak into the landscape as a consequence of another side of the P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G problem. But of course the Creative Act is Free rather than Necessary & Determined and the Can-Do-Otherwise of Divine Freedom amid Self/Other is found within the Imago Dei.
Schellenberg’s Map Seems To Need As-If & Fake Memories
Modeling & Creating in this new logical problem finds God creating an [Already-Freely-Married-Bride] from the get-go — and of course that is logically impossible. The phrase “Already Freely Married-Bride” refers to creating a contingent agent (Man) capable of loving God and freely motioning amid Self/Other there amid God/Man BUT creating that Beloved/Bride/Adamic “as-if” Man had “already freely chosen/replied” to All-Sufficiency/All-Goodness ((…the Groom / God…)). THAT “AS-IF” yields the Inverse of ANOTHER “AS-IF” – the former As-If yields the illusion of the Possibility of Self/Privation/Fall for the Bride-To-Be with respect to her reply to said Groom while the latter As-If yields the illusion of the Possibility of Eternal Life for the Bride-To-Be with respect to her reply to said Groom. The Edenic is bypassed and the Automaton is given “Fake Memories” ((…see https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/why-didnt-god-create-only-those-who-he-knew-would-believe-in-him…)) Note that in the Christian Metaphysic Eden is NOT Perfection or Heaven or Eternal Life but is instead the Landscape of the Groom’s Proposal ((…not a Wedding… and not a Birth…)). Recall that WHY/HOW that is the case is looked at more closely in “Why Create If Possible Evil” at https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/
Schellenberg’s Map Succeeds In One Area
Schellenberg presents a well formed Non-Theistic argument against a Non-Christian Metaphysic and a Non-Christian God and a God who is neither Maximally Great nor Maximally Good. Logical Proofs against a Non-Christian Metaphysic are fine – but they’re not of any relevance to the Meta-Narrative actually in question. Schellenberg’s Logical Proof regarding evil DOES make a subset of [Theisms] logically incoherent with respect to “…Given God-X it is *not *even *in *principle *possible that [Evil As Privation] coexists with God….” But that Subset is of Non-Christian Metanarratives. However, that claim with respect to any sort of full-on ontological possibility fails once one encounters the specifically Christian Metaphysic.
But The Map Fails Elsewhere
There is no demonstration of the [Logically Impossible] coexistence of Privation/God. There is no demonstration that Knowledge/Belief-States are necessarily “The Thing” which Maximal Greatness must ((in order to be Maximally Great)) Keep/Maintain and that Without-Interruption in all Possible Worlds. Further, Schellenberg’s Map extinguishes Can-Do-Otherwise & Intentionality & Self-Giving with respect to Possible Worlds as his own discussion of Modeling/Creating insists that God MUST Create the Non-Edenic Proposal ((…atop of which he builds his logical argument…)) and by that we mean that in Schellenberg’s Modeling we find that God as the Groom Proposes but the Bride-To-Be is simply bypassed as God by raw fiat must create the Already-Freely-Married-Bride ((….the round-square…)). What is left is a knot of equivocations given that Divine Freedom with respect to Possible Worlds and Intentionality and Self-Giving and the Trinitarian Life are all “left out of” Schellenberg’s versions of Modeling and Creating.
IN SHORT
In short Schellenberg employs both Greatness void of Goodness and logically impossible worlds and just assumes and foists the fallacy of P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G as his Model ((described elsewhere)). He then uses that Logically Impossible World & Incoherent God as an argument against the logically possible worlds which we find streaming out of the landscape of The Edenic. Additionally there is the fact that he does all of that while fallaciously equating all of those logically impossible worlds ((Etc.)) to the Christian’s own definitions of what is “in-play”. Again see such definitions as discussed in “Why Create If Possible Evil – Metrics Of To-Create – Metrics Of To-Not-Create” which is at https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/ and also as discussed within that essays own links, including but not limited to the link to True In All Possible Worlds —PART 1— True Pre-Eden – True In Eden – True In Privation Pre/Post Christ – True Until Wholeness/Heaven – True Always & Already — which is at https://randalrauser.com/2018/08/can-violence-ever-serve-a-redemptive-purpose/#comment-4353198247
Schellenberg’s Nonresistant Nonbelievers & Aliens & Clever Skeptics
First, the intent here is NOT to unpack the very real ((valid)) landscapes of in the following:
Those are all valid and at any point one may be interacting with someone who is ((truly/actually)) working/replying from within one of those. Despite Schellenberg’s hopes he can only retain coherence by damning the very thing he ((rightly)) seeks to defend ((love &logic)). Of importance is that his Map gives no demonstration that Knowledge/Belief-States are necessarily “The Thing” which Maximal Greatness must ((in order to be Maximally Great)) Keep/Maintain and that Without-Interruption in all Possible Worlds.
That said, this brief section is primarily about the odd and almost magical removal of The Will from what goes on inside of the affairs of Rationalization and Self-Deception. To “insist” that God “must” non-coercively overcome a disbeliever’s doubt when He (God) first gives this or that contour of the light of day ((…Christianity does not affirm “Being Lost” for Non-Culpable Non-Belief…)) and the disbeliever knowingly persists in the light of day to value this or that known Reductio/Falsehood over this or that known Lucidity/Reality – and so on – is to again Re-Invent the aforementioned Blueprint of Self/Other as per the Trinitarian Life ((…and therein the necessity of all things Edenic…)).
Man is not Immaterial/Immaterial & The Fact-To-Face: The logical Necessity of Can-Do-Otherwise amid the Immaterial-Self||Immaterial-Other within the Edenic ||the Groom’s Proposal is a key which stands in stark contrast to the fallacy of ANY set of Counterfactuals in the form of P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G ((…as alluded to earlier Etc. via https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/ …)). Whether Man is Fully Dualistic such that “I”/“Me”/“Self” ((and so on)) CANNOT be Alive With God//Absent From The Body or whether Man or “I”/“Me”/“Self” CAN in fact be Alive With God//Absent From The Body makes no difference to the Core Fallacy within P|S1+S2+S3+S4|G and the reason why is because there is NO POSSIBLE MAP in the form of [Material Full Stop] or [Covalent Bonds Full Stop] which can “in fact” or “in principle someday” Map the Whole of The Adamic ((….the defense of the map of the philosophy of mind and refuting eliminative maps and fallacious “non-reductive” equivocations and so on is not / are not the topic here….)).
Begin Brief Digression:
Perhaps before leaving the topic of Schellenberg’s New Logical Problem we can pause to list a few references with respect to The Will and Rationalization and Self-Deception and Faith and Trusting the Knowns while Navigating the Unknowns. Keep in mind the key point that the Christian Map does not affirm “Being Lost” for “Non-Culpable Non-Belief“. So with that said:
You Cannot Just Will Yourself To Believe That The Sky Is Not Blue:
Rational Disbelief & The Enabler
Faith & Science & Trusting In The Knowns While Navigating The Unknowns
The Christian’s Actual Definition of Faith:
First — http://disq.us/p/1w3r23n which is also linked with https://randalrauser.com/2018/06/overcome-your-cognitive-bias-with-the-50-50-rule/#comment-4118001251
Second — At https://metachristianity.blogspot.com/2018/04/faith-evidence-hebrews-11-trusting.html there are a few initial primers and then there are 40-something comments each of which is headed/labeled with “[Comment #1]” and so on. See the first four or “[Comment #1]” and “[Comment #2]” and “[Comment #3]” and “[Comment #4]” with respect to the Christian Metaphysic vis-à-vis categories of Knowledge as it relates to Faith and so on.
Third — Also with respect to the Christian definition of Faith see a. http://disq.us/p/1w3sjkh and b. http://disq.us/p/1yh7bgt and c. http://disq.us/p/1yhjehw and d. http://disq.us/p/1yh3ruo and e. http://disq.us/p/1yh3gim
The following which is from elsewhere and while it is only tangentially related to Rational Disbelief it still suggests interesting segues — and it’s a bit entertaining as well:
Quote:
“…On another note, one of the essays in that volume linked above drives home the very clear point that no matter what type of “evidence” God might choose to give us, the clever skeptic can always seek to rationalize it away. Let’s say that God were to inscribe into the moon in shimmering gold letters a passage from scripture every night, or some such thing. I think that if someone really wanted, they could conclude that the existence of aliens who might try to commandeer us by doing such a thing is a “more likely” explanation than the existence of God as the ontological grounding of reality itself, and so by “occam’s razor” would still dismiss the existence of God.
You say, “But if Golden passages of scripture appear on the moon every night…” – That seems to fall apart as the skeptic could easily suggest the possibility of observing and manipulative aliens. Since the belief in such aliens doesn’t involve a paradigm shift in understanding the nature of reality as contingent upon a divine mind — they would probably not find it very difficult to go with “aliens”. In fact, I think skeptics would tout that reasoning as evidence against Christianity. “See, you used to think that there was a God, but this recent business with the moon shows that it was probably aliens all along.” They’d probably suggest that Jesus was an alien all along.
Likewise with a “voice” appearing in everyone’s head. Likewise with some sort of “alien artifact” which would probably be the easiest to dismiss for anyone who is familiar with video editing and special effects.
Consider instead what I think is evidence that we actually have available to us, the existence of our own consciousness which seems inexplicable on a philosophical naturalist paradigm. The existence of us as volitional beings seems to directly imply something about the nature of reality. To say (as we can with those others above) “ah well maybe there are other contingent, conscious aliens out there who made us” doesn’t actually seem to get us anywhere with consciousness but kicking the can down the street a little way.
You say, “Schellenberg’s nonresistant nonbelievers need not successfully rationally undergird their nonbelief. All they need to do is be nonbelievers, and be both epistemically and personally open to changing their minds.”
If one cannot rationally undergird their position (irrationality?), then how would one be epistemically and personally open? It seems relatively intuitive to me based on my personal observations that nonbelievers often have an innate resistance to having their mind changed that has very little to do with reason. For many there quite obviously seems to be an emotional stumbling block which prevents them from making an accurate assessment of the data….” (by T. Wakeman)
End quote.
Quote:
“…no amount of evidence that God could provide would ever be sufficient to non-coercively overcome a disbeliever’s doubt if the disbeliever did not wish to be convinced. Indeed, given the ability for hyper-skepticism to create doubt no matter what the evidence is, it must be pointed out that no matter what God did, a skeptic could always — if he wanted — attribute the event to aliens, or a hallucination, or that he was in a computer simulation, etc. And skeptic Michael Shermer even has a “law” which states that any sufficiently advanced alien intelligence would be, to us, indistinguishable from God; as such, atheism and naturalism are thus unfalsifiable if they wish to be given that any seemingly miraculous event could always be attributed to aliens rather than God. In fact, I know a prominent atheist who admitted that even if the stars spelled out the Apostles Creed and the whole world saw it, he would likely go mad or believe everyone had gone mad rather than believe that God had made a miracle occur. So, the point here is that even God could not freely convince certain unbelievers to believe in Him no matter how much evidence He might provide…” (by R. Initiative)
End quote.
End Brief Digression.
Leaving Schellenberg And Moving On To Wider & More Robust Vantage Points
Four resources with respect to the problem of evil ((…the “PoE”…)) are listed here:
“As regards the problem of evil, then, what is in need of justification is God’s allowing suffering. This is a book about the problem of suffering…….”
[1] “Divine Hiddenness: New Essays” by Daniel Howard-Snyder (Editor) and Paul Moser (Editor).
[2] “The Elusive God: Reorienting Religious Epistemology” by Paul K. Moser.
[3] “The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs” by Evans, Jeremy A.
[4] “Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering” by Stump, Eleonore.
Begin Quote from the fourth title:
“As regards the problem of evil, then, what is in need of justification is God’s allowing suffering. This is a book about the problem of suffering…….”
No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
· · · · O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne’er hung there……
Introduction:
My topic in this book is the problem of evil. Only the most naive or tendentious among us would deny the extent and intensity of suffering in the world. Can one hold, consistently with the common view of suffering in the world, that there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God? Some philosophers who were influential in the earlier twentieth-century discussion of the problem of evil answered this question in the negative and went so far as to claim that the existence of evil is logically incompatible with the existence of God. But, as the subsequent philosophical discussion of the problem of evil has made clear, such a claim is much harder to support than its proponents originally supposed.
The propositions:
(1) there is suffering in the world
(2) there is an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God are not by themselves logically incompatible. At the very least, for a sound argument from evil against the existence of God, we need to add this premise:
(3) There is no morally sufficient reason for an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God to allow suffering in the world.
But this premise is eminently debatable. In fact, a theodicy can be thought of as an attempt to show this premise false by providing a morally sufficient reason for God’s allowing suffering.
I have formulated this expression of what is commonly called ‘the argument from evil’ in terms of suffering rather than evil, because suffering, not evil, seems to me the salient thing.
It has become customary to divide evil into natural evil and moral evil and then to focus discussions of theodicy on one or another or both of these sorts of evil. But so-called natural evil would not raise the problem of evil if there were no sentient creatures who suffered from hurricanes, viruses, and the rest. It is the fact of suffering, not its origin, that raises the problem of evil in connection with so-called natural evil. As for moral evil, the phrase ‘moral evil’ is confusingly ambiguous as between ‘moral wrongdoing’ and ‘suffering caused as a result of human agency.’ But both of these referents for the phrase ‘moral evil’ raise the problem of evil only because of suffering. The second obviously does, and the first does so in only slightly more complicated ways.
When Jesus says about the person who will betray him that it would have been good for the betrayer himself if he had never been born, [1] he gives voice to a commonly felt but less commonly expressed intuition. Even if a malefactor feels no pain over the moral evil he does, his life suffers because of it. [2] None of us (well, virtually none of us) would willingly trade lives with a moral monster such as Herman Goering, even if Goering had in fact been jovial or content, even if Goering had died before the Nazis lost the war. Just because Goering was a moral monster, we would not want to have had a life such as his. So, even if Goering felt no remorse over the moral evil he did, his life suffered because of it, as our virtually unanimous unwillingness to trade places with him testifies. As regards the problem of evil, then, what is in need of justification is God’s allowing suffering. This is a book about the problem of suffering.
End quote. ((…from Stump, Eleonore. “Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering” Oxford…))
Any theodicy of purpose must begin and end all vectors with irreducible intention. And that is precisely what the Christian metaphysic does.
The middle, in between that “A” and that “Z”, can assume who-knows-how-many forms and shapes and combinations and permutations. What is evident is not always the immediate tie or link to that “A” and that “Z”. We cannot always see said “A” and said “Z” by looking through the knotted-up maze. We must in those times look up to see such Ends. What is evident is the unstoppable continuum itself which is, on force of logic, inescapable. It thereby transforms the term “gratuitous” into a logical impossibility. Or, to put it another way, it thereby transforms the term “gratuitous” into a claim based upon the content of an ontological cul-de-sac. But there are no such things as ontological cul-de-sacs. Such a thing would be, on force of logic, a metaphysical absurdity.
The eternally open-ended nature of Non-Theistic paradigms ruins the Non-Theist’s claims of purpose, irrespective of any path taken. Ontological cul-de-sacs need not apply. For the same reason, the ontic-closure within the Christian metaphysic ruins the Non-Theist’s claims of the gratuitous, irrespective of any path taken. Ontological cul-de-sacs need not apply.
Segue:
Is Occasionalism metaphysically necessary? Given the principle of proportionate causality it clearly isn’t. So the real question is what has God created. An interesting question is *how* can God decree such things as irreducible being or irreducible intentionality or irreducible reason and so on. With respect to the metaphysics of the creative act, that all brings us to the “principle of proportionate causality“. How can the Created X traverse the abyss of non-being and cross over into being?
Quote:
“…..To be a tree or to be a stone is merely to participate in “treeness” or “stoneness.” But to be at all — which is the characteristic effect of an act of creation out of nothing – is to participate in Being Itself. Now the principle of proportionate causality tells us that whatever is in an effect must be in some way in its cause. And only that which just *is* Being Itself can, in this case, be a cause proportionate to the effect, since the effect is not merely to be a tree or to be a stone, but to be at all. [Only] pure actuality or Being Itself rather than a being among others – can cause a thing to exist ex nihilo…..“ (E. Feser)
End quote.
Gratuitous Evil?
The error of Occasionalism is obvious and layered over that we’re reminded by A. Stanley that “God will use what He chooses not to remove.” Recall earlier that we looked at the hijacked version of the Greater Good theodicy and that is relevant because far too often the concept of “All Things” is tossed around without clarity. In “Why Create If Possible Evil” at https://metachristianity.com/why-create-if-possible-evil-metrics-of-to-create-metrics-of-to-not-create/ there is a brief section with a list of 1 — 11 which opens with the following with respect to the metaphysical impossibility of gratuitous evil:
Begin Excerpt:
Evil and the Goodness of God:
[1] The Greater Good reality (with respect to [All Things]) is true and is a valid statement about [All Things].
[2] Scripture affirms possible but not necessary evil given God’s decree of the Imago Dei with respect to the Adamic’s volitional authority to choose possible *worlds*… See both [5] and [7].
[3] Minus God: [All Things] whether good or evil or any amalgamation thereof which stream out of The Adamic in number [2] *are* fundamentally and ontologically gratuitous “at bottom”. Indeed, but for God and His Hand, “purpose” finds no grounding, and hence “Minus God” leaves all lines gratuitous.
[4] But God. Full stop. And God is the Necessary Being. Hence, this [4] *necessarily* subsumes [3] which *necessarily* subsumes [2] which *necessarily* subsumes [1].
[5] Creating and decreeing a coin is not decreeing or creating two separate faces, so to speak. It is creating *one* ontological reality with multiple sides. It is *one* creative act, *one* decree. Trinity is like that. Love is like that. God’s decree guarantees that, grounds that.
[6] In all directions, there can be no such thing, no such creation, no such decree, as a one sided coin. God cannot do nonsense. It is no insult to God to state that He cannot do nonsense.
[7] God……((and so on through 11))
End Excerpt.
Privation (or evil, or suffering, or lack, our current state of affairs) is a lack of Good, and going about “filling up” said hollow with more lack, more want, more hollow, is logically impossible, an outright contradiction. Also, given the principle of proportionate causality it is obvious that Occasionalism is not metaphysically necessary. In the same vein, “necessary privation” is both contrary to scripture and to the requisites of love and necessity with respect to Man/God. That said, we are, now, in privation, so, which semantics to use?
Though God did not cause evil (our privation streaming out of Eden) He can and does use, place His Hand upon, “All Things” and use them for, well for what? Well, for “The Good” of course. And there it is. On the ultimately purposeless (gratuitous), whether one takes the route of “The Greater Good” (Cannot do otherwise in Eden, perhaps Calvinism, perhaps others…. Perhaps…) or whether one takes the route of free will and consequential freedom-bearing worlds (Can do otherwise in Eden, perhaps Arminianism, perhaps others… Perhaps…), we find [All Things] taken and used by *God*, by “The Good“, and – therefore – wherever we may find not only evil, not only good, but *anything*, we cannot find the ultimately gratuitous.
It is *not* the route which makes that an irreducible “ontic-fact”, but God. In other words, it is not the Greater Good route/path nor the free will and freedom-bearing consequential world route/path which makes the difference. The difference-maker with respect to gratuitous/purposed is the irreducibility of love vis-à-vis Being with respect to The Good, namely, *God*.
Now, the irreducibility (non-illusory, ever present, that which precedes all) of love vis-à-vis Being with respect to The Good, namely, *God* is exactly what Non-Theism has rejected. Hence it has embraced, for some unstated reason, that [All Things] are ultimately, cosmically, gratuitous.
Given Non-Theism: We find that [All Things] end in the gratuitous for all “purpose” is non-ontic, illusory. In part because, as discussed earlier, the metaphysical absurdity of ontological cul-de-sacs.
Whereas, if the Christian God: We find [All Things] taken and used by *God*, by “The Good“, and, therefore, wherever we may find not only evil, not only good, but *anything*, we cannot find the ultimately gratuitous.
The difference-maker with respect to gratuitous/purposed isn’t Man’s path into this world, or any possible world, but, rather, the difference-maker (…the meaning-maker…) is the irreducibility of love vis-à-vis Being with respect to The Good, namely, *God*.
Notice that Free Will is NOT the End-All/Be-All just as the Greater Good is NOT the End-All/Be-All. Notice ALSO that in all of that we still arrive in a place where we find in Eternal Life BOTH Freedom AND the Inability To Sin, but we do NOT and in fact CANNOT find that Duo/Combination in The Edenic. The reasons why in all of that have to do with logically necessary distinctions between Proposal and Wedding and Birth ((…and the Blueprint of the Imago Dei vis-à-vis the Trinitarian Life…)) are looked at more closely in a few places as per the list in 5 Background Data/Segues For This Essay near the beginign of this essay.
So, once we are aware of the fact that the Meta-Narrative in play does NOT Live/Die to “Maintain/Keep” EITHER the Free-Will End Of Things ((so to speak)) NOR the Greater-Good End Of Things ((so to speak)) we can then, and only then, add the following content with the proper lens:
Granting gratuitous evil, in a manner of speaking:
“If we center the discussion on the consequences of freedom rather than what freedom is, it is far from clear that God has not faltered in his providence.“
It’s either “The Greater Good” route into this world or it’s the freedom-bearing consequential world route into this world. Two PDF’s which are available are “THE NECESSITY OF GRATUITOUS EVIL” by William Hasker and also “The Existence and Irrelevance of Gratuitous Evil”, by Kirk R. MacGregor
A brief excerpt:
“…The absurdity of the Greater-Good Defense is multiplied by its transformation of the universe into a philosophically overdetermined system….. Gratuitous evils are simply a logically unavoidable necessity of contingent living in a freedom-permitting world…… While God can [and does] surely use [even all] of those individual acts of evil for our good, it does not follow that every act of evil that God allows, He allows for the purpose of accomplishing some greater good….. He allows acts of evil, even gratuitous acts of evil, because He values and honors the freedom of our will.”
End excerpt.
Now, what he is referring to there with “gratuitous” is that which is not caused by God (rejecting Occasionalism), and has no bearing on the fact that God does still use All Things and therein, by the ground of Being, of Good, of Love, as in God, we find no such possibility of the gratuitous in the wider sense.
Before the quote looking at consequential freedom bearing worlds, a brief clarification:
First, moves which equate the ontological condition of Man in Eden, Privation, and Heaven, are simply fallacious (at worst) or uninformed (at best). These comments are conditioned primarily by privation and the semantics “therein” and simply are not meant to (meaningfully) address Man in Eden nor Man in Heaven. It is noteworthy that we find two outward facing Doors both within Eden and within Privation. The unavoidable ontic-change which all things Adamic must traverse regardless of which Door (…which possible world…) is chosen is a proof that Eden was not God’s Ideal for Mankind forever in the same sense that Sinai was not God’s Ideal for Mankind forever in the same sense that Privation is not God’s Ideal for Mankind forever. The necessary metaphysical landscape of love’s Proposal (….which cannot fail to reach all men….) cannot be the same metaphysical landscape as the Wedding (..in content or in yield, and so on…), and the necessary metaphysical landscape of the Wedding cannot be the same metaphysical landscape of Gestation (..in content or in yield, and so on…), and the necessary metaphysical landscape of Gestation cannot be the same metaphysical landscape of Birth downstream vis-à-vis the New Creation as such relates to the Door into God’s Ideal, a Door which faces outward from both within Eden and from within Privation.
So then, having given that clarification:
Scripture affirms possible but not necessary evil given God’s decree of the Imago Dei with respect to “Man’s” volitional authority to choose not only possible *worlds* with respect to Eden (apparently) but also (obviously) actions. Regarding those actions: clearly Man is contingent and therefore his choices are not infinite, but constrained (limited), however real freedom amid a few million real possibilities will do just fine. Minus God we find that the proverbial box called [All Things], whether good or evil or any amalgamation thereof, which stream out of those acts/choices (on Eden’s implications we can even say worlds apparently) *are* fundamentally and ontologically gratuitous “at bottom” in the relevant sense (ultimately or cosmically illusory meaning-makers). Indeed, but for God and His Hand, “purpose” finds no grounding, and hence “Minus God” leaves all lines gratuitous. However: But God. Full stop. Therefore, whether one takes the route of “The Greater Good” or whether one takes the route of free will and consequential freedom-bearing worlds, we find [All Things] taken and used by *God*, by “The Good“, and, therefore, wherever we may find not only evil, not only good, but anything, we cannot find the ultimately gratuitous.
It is not the route which makes that an irreducible “ontic-fact”, but God. In other words, it is not the Greater Good route nor the free will and freedom-bearing consequential world route which makes the difference. The difference-maker with respect to gratuitous/purposed is the irreducibility of Being with respect to The Good, namely, *God*.
Then there is this:
“If we center the discussion on the consequences of freedom rather than what freedom is, it is far from clear that God has not faltered in his providence.“
That’s from the following:
Begin Quote:
The second theodicy is the free-will theodicy. According to the free-will theodicy, God is justified in permitting evil and its consequences because “he has to do so if he is to bestow on some of his creatures the incommensurable privilege of being responsible agents who have, in many areas, the capacity to choose as they will, without God, or anyone else (other than themselves), determining which alternative they choose.”
When Adam partakes of the fruit in Genesis 3, the most severe charge brought against God is not that he caused Adam to sin, but that in making Adam significantly free God brought about the possibility that Adam might misappropriate his freedom and choose a course of action that is morally wrong. God is not responsible for Adam’s choices given that Adam was endowed in creation with self-determining free will.
The ground for denying God’s causing evil is that human freedom is conceptually incompatible with divine determinism (not divine sovereignty).
Otherwise stated, determined choices are not free. Solidifying a free-will theodicy usually requires assent to the idea that being significantly free is intrinsically valuable rather than fleshing out the value of freedom from how people exercise it, that is, from freedom’s instrumental value. If it is intrinsically better to be significantly free than not, then questions concerning divine decisions in creation are asked and answered; objections from the abuse of freedom are derived from a category confusion regarding freedom’s intrinsic value with the ends that come as a result of misappropriating it. Even so, we value human freedom instrumentally in that it enables us to choose a path for our lives, allows for unique contributions to the human story, and is the source and origin of relationship development. The dissonance about freedom is that we love its benefits and hate its deficits, at least as far as instrumental value is concerned.
If we center the discussion on the consequences of freedom rather than what freedom is, it is far from clear that God has not faltered in his providence. After all, God could allow immoral actions and then remove the harmful consequences of those actions. Freedom is preserved, and intense suffering is avoided. While such a view agrees that freedom is valuable, it denies that allowing actions to have harmful consequences justifies permitting the free act. For example, if I freely burn down my neighbors’ house while they are on vacation, God can miraculously rebuild the house so that my neighbors never knew or dealt with the ramifications of their house being burned down. Freedom is preserved, and consequences are avoided. Consider the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. There is nothing logically problematic with asserting that God permits the rapist to commit the rape and to succeed in her subsequent murder, during which God disables the girl from ever being conscious of her rape and strangulation— and revives her upon her death without her ever knowing anything happened to her. Freedom is preserved, and consequences are avoided. Since the visceral reaction against the free-will theodicy centers on the negative consequences of freedom’s application, let us call this new construal of God’s activity a “non-consequence world.”
Several problems attend a nonconsequence world. First, the objection does not address the free-will theodicy at all but questions the lack of divine intervention. Notice that each suggestion indicates something God can do to mitigate the effects of free decisions, which says nothing at all about the nature of human freedom or the agent performing the act in question. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we allow the question about divine intervention to remain, and we suggest that God override the consequences of our actions while still permitting our freedom to exist full force. The scenario envisioned here makes our world much like the famous pleasure machine scenario — where all of our experiences are either directly pleasurable or transformed into a pleasurable experience. In such a world we would not have any recourse from committing horrendous evils because we would not know the seriousness of the ensuing harm from acting in such a way.
Admittedly the moral status of actions is not governed solely by the ends of our actions; however, we certainly deliberate about the consequences of our actions upon the well-being of others and ourselves. In other words, the suggestion that God stamp out bad consequences, albeit a freedom preserving proposal, undermines our ability to make significant moral choices. Proponents of a non-consequence world should expect God to make acts such as rape a pleasure for the victim either directly through the sex act or indirectly through psychological manipulation. In doing so, another critique is leveraged; the proposal effectually strips the moral accountability between the perpetrator and his victim [*relational* contours are expunged of *love*] as well as what the definition of rape entails. To use a less chafing example, suppose I steal my neighbor’s birdfeeder after a squirrel breaks my own. Before choosing to steal the bird-feeder I recognize that my action is morally wrong — I am not confused about the moral status of the action. Sometime after I steal the birdfeeder, my conscience gets the better of me; I return the birdfeeder to my neighbor (with a bag of birdseed as a gesture). The only discernible response I should receive from my neighbor upon my returning the birdfeeder is one of utter perplexity; for if God replaces the stolen birdfeeder to prevent the material and emotional harm caused by the action, then my ability to set things right will be completely undermined. My neighbor will have no concept of ever having been wronged or perceive any need for apology or remuneration.
What is more, it is hard to see how I could ever actually discern that my action was worthy of reproach to begin with, for if God “undoes” the negative consequences of evil choices, then presumably the wrongdoer will benefit from this undoing as well. The line of thought is as follows: one of the harmful consequences of my choices is the effects these choices have on me. Not only is it true that malformed decisions adversely affect my character; the ability to concede one evil action makes it more probable that I will make another concession in my future deliberations and choices. In an effort to stall this decline of character, God must undo the harmful effects of my own choices on me. Such an action would be a literal divine recreation of my character such that any of my future wrong decisions would have nothing to do with my previous deliberations and choices. For this suggestion to pass muster, God would have to be the ultimate revisionist historian. These reasons, and more, provide compelling grounds to question the claim that God can undo the harmful nature of free decisions while guarding the integrity of freedom itself.
End quote. Evans, Jeremy A. (2013-03-01). The Problem of Evil: The Challenge to Essential Christian Beliefs (B&h Studies in Christian Apologetics).
Lastly, as introduced earlier, here is the longer excerpt/quote from David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth as we look at Objective Evil & the metaphysical ground of Auschwitz and reason’s demands for lucidity through and through in the interface of Divine Love and Objective Evil:
—Begin Quotes/Excerpts—
“The freedom of God from ontic determination is the ground of creation’s goodness: precisely because creation is uncompelled, unnecessary, and finally other than that dynamic life of coinherent love whereby God is God, it can reveal how God is the God he is; precisely because creation is needless, an object of delight that shares God’s love without contributing anything that God does not already possess in infinite eminence, creation reflects the divine life, which is one of delight and fellowship and love; precisely because creation is not part of God, the context of God, or divine, precisely because it is not “substantially” from God, or metaphysically cognate to God’s essence, or a pathos of God, is it an analogy of the divine; in being the object of God’s love without any cause but the generosity of that love, creation reflects in its beauty that eternal delight that is the divine perichoresis and that obeys no necessity but divine love itself. Thus Rahner’s (utterly necessary) maxim can serve a genuinely theological end only if taken to mean that the Trinity who is economically revealed is indeed, without remainder (such as some Sabellian singularity prior to all hypostatic identity, or a fourth divine person, or a nature distinct from the one assumed in the order of relations within the mystery of salvation), the true and everlasting God as he is in himself: for God is not a finite subject, whose will could be other than his being, and so is truly fully himself in all his acts ad extra, and the taxis of his salvific activity toward us is the same taxis that is his triune life. The maxim stands then as a guard against any kind of nominalism on the one hand, and on the other, any tendency to forget that the dogma of the Trinity is required and defined – and permitted – by the narrative of Christ.
But, one might ask, how can the temporal event of God in our midst be the same as God’s event to himself in his eternity if so absolute a distinction is drawn between the enarrable contents of history and the “eternal dynamism” of God’s immutability, apatheia, and perfect fullness? How can the dereliction of Christ, his self-outpouring, truly be the same action as the eternal life of blissful immunity from suffering that classical Christian metaphysics insists upon? These are the questions that largely animate the Hegelianizing project in modern theology, and have long inspired theologians to reject aspects of the tradition that they see as a metaphysical corruption of the Bible’s “narrated” God: the distinction between being and becoming, between eternity and time, between the Logos as eternally begotten in the bosom of the Father and the Son of Man begotten “this day” (of course, in truth, it is never a matter of whether such distinctions are to be made, but how to make them, without compromising the narrative of Scripture and the unity of God in Christ). Immutability, impassibility, timelessness – surely, many argue, these relics of an obsolete metaphysics lingered on in Christian theology just as false belief and sinful inclinations linger on in a soul after baptism; and surely they always were fundamentally mentally incompatible with the idea of a God …….. of love who proves himself God through fidelity to his own promises against the horizon of history, who became flesh for us (was this not a change, after all, in God?) and endured the passion of the cross out of pity for us. Have we not seen the wounded heart of God, wounded by our sin in his eternal life, and wounded by it again, even unto death, in the life of the flesh? This is why so much modern theology keenly desires a God who suffers, not simply with us and in our nature, but in his own nature as well; such a God, it is believed, is the living God of Scripture, not the cold abstraction of a God of the philosophers; only such a God would die for us. At its most culpable, the modern appetite for a passible God can reflect simply a sort of self-indulgence and apologetical plaintiveness, a sense that, before God, though we are sinners, we also have a valid perspective, one he must learn to share with us so that he can sympathize with our lot rather than simply judge us; he must be absolved of his transcendence, so to speak, before we can consent to submit to his verdict (and, after all, in this age we are all rather bourgeois about such things and very jealous of our “rights”).
At its most commendable, though, this appetite testifies to our capacity for moral rage and perplexity, our inability to believe in a God of perfect power and imperturbable bliss in the wake of the century of death camps, gulags, killing fields, and the fire of nuclear detonations. We long for a companion in pain, a fellow sufferer; we know we have one in Christ; and we refuse to allow any ambiguity – metaphysical, moral, or theological – to rob us of his company. All of this I shall address when I discuss Christology, particularly in section 111.2, but I shall make two observations now. First, as valid as all such concerns are in their way, they entirely miss the point: the Christian doctrine of divine apatheia, in its developed patristic and medieval form, never concerned an abstract deity ontologically incapable of knowing and loving us; far from representing an irreconcilable contradiction or logical tension within Christian discourse, the juxtaposition of the language of divine apatheia with the story of crucified love is precisely what makes the entire narrative of salvation in Christ intelligible. And second, it is an almost agonizing irony that, in our attempts to revise trinitarian doctrine in such a way as to make God comprehensible in the “light” of Auschwitz, invariably we end up describing a God who – it turns out – is actually simply the metaphysical ground of Auschwitz…
…Logically speaking, “absolute consciousness” cannot simply find itself in one object among other objects, even if it includes those other objects secondarily, as its context or ambience, or simply as objects of grace; all other objects, however they are arranged around the unique object of “absolute” attention, are implicated in and indeed determine that object and so the contents of the absolute. Everything that allows Jesus to be who and what he is, all the historical determinations before and after, belong to that identity, as does every condition of cosmic and historical becoming. And this does not cease to be true even of the most tragic historical consequences of the event of God in Christ (but for the coming of the gospel, would the division within covenant history, between Jews and Gentiles, have occurred, would that division have become a division fixed in the heart of the West, and would the Holocaust have come to pass?).
This is not simply a matter of God allowing sin to exist and shape history: Jenson’s trinitarian theology cannot work unless one posits not only the necessity of evil, but indeed the necessity of the actual history of evil. The first part of this equation Jenson acknowledges; he accepts the “supralapsarian” understanding of the incarnation in its depressing [….] Calvinist form: for God to act in the fashion he does, the conditions that require redemption must be in place, for “the goal of God’s path is just what does in fact happen with Jesus the Christ, and sin and evil belong to God’s intent precisely – but only – as they appear in Christ’s victory over them”. For God to be the God he has determined that he will be, “a mystery of suffering, of an interplay between created regularities and evil, must belong to the plot of God’s history with us and to the character of its crisis and fulfillment”. The first problem with such a formulation is that, in depicting God as one who in any sense intends sin and evil, it reduces God to a being whose nature is not love (even if at the end of the day he turns out to be loving, having completed his odyssey of self-discovery, for a being can possess love only as an attribute); and one might justifiably wonder if a God who chooses himself so – should one say “dispassionately”? – over against the creatures who suffer the adventure of his self-determination should evoke love in return. But the second problem is the other half of the equation mentioned above: if God’s identity is constituted in his triumph over evil, then evil belongs eternally to his identity, and his goodness is not goodness as such but a reaction, an activity that requires the goad of evil to come into full being. All of history is the horizon of this drama, and since no analogical interval is allowed to be introduced between God’s eternal being as Trinity and God’s act as Trinity in time, all of history is this identity: every painful death of a child, every casual act of brutality, all war, famine, pestilence, disease, ease, murder ……all are moments in the identity of God, resonances within the event of his being, aspects of the occurrence of his essence: all of this is the crucible in which God comes into his own elected reality.
One risks here converting the Christian God into a god of sacrifice in the ultimate sense, the god of Stoicism or Hegel, in whom the divine identity and the offering made to the divine have been conflated in one great process of arrival and destiny, negation and triumph. And a god forged in such fires as these may evoke fear and awe, but not genuine desire. If, speculatively, Jenson’s theology seems to fail Anselm’s test, morally it seems to fail the test of Ivan Karamazov: If the universal and final good of all creatures required, as its price, the torture of one little girl, would that be acceptable? And the moral enormity of this calculus is not mitigated if all of creation must suffer the consequences of God’s self-determination. Nor can one get around these problems by speaking of God as an infinite identity, in which the finite can participate without determining the final truth of that identity: a genuinely transcendent infinity can assume the finite into itself without altering its own nature, but any “consciousness,” however “absolute,” that determines itself in a finite object is always a finite consciousness, even if the ultimate synthesis of its identity is, in its totality, “infinite” in the circular Hegelian sense. This can be only the infinite of total repletion, the fullness of ontic determinations in their interrelated discreteness and dialectical “yield”; only thus can being be one with becoming. The God whose identity subsists in time and is achieved upon history’s horizon – who is determined by his reaction to the pathos of history – may be a being, or indeed the totality of all beings gathered in the pure depths of ultimate consciousness, but he is not being as such, he is not life and truth and goodness and love and beauty. God belongs to the system of causes, even if he does so as its total rationality; he is an absolute causa in fieri, but not a transcendent causa in esse. He may include us in his story, but his story will remain both good and evil even if it ends in an ultimate triumph over evil. After all, how can we tell the dancer from the dance? The collapse of the analogical interval between the immanent and economic Trinity, between timeless eternity and the time in which eternity shows itself, has not made God our companion in pain, but simply the truth of our pain and our only pathetic hope of rescue; his intimacy with us has not been affirmed at all: only a truly transcendent and “passionless” God can be the fullness of love dwelling within our very being, nearer to us than our inmost parts, but a dialectical Trinity is not transcendent – truly infinite – in this way at all, but only sublime, a metaphysical whole that can comprise us or change us extrinsically, but not transform us within our very being. Were this the trinitarian mystery, we would indeed be unable to speak of God or faith in terms of original or ultimate peace; the postmodern suspicion would prove well founded, for in our story violence would prove necessary, belonging to who God is, and our faith would indeed be metaphysics after all, in the frightening sense: a myth of necessity, of ultimate grounds, a transcendental reconciliation of all contingent suffering in an ultimate structure of meaning, and another invitation to homo sacer to yield to his taedium deitatis and not only lay down his knife, but erase all faith from his heart…
…Theology must, to remain faithful to what it knows of God’s transcendence, reject any picture of God that so threatens to become at once both thoroughly mythological and thoroughly metaphysical, and insist upon the classical definitions of impassibility, immutability, and nonsuccessive eternity. This is in no way a contradiction of the story of God as creator and redeemer and consummator of all things: because God is Trinity, eternally, perfectly, without any need of negative probation or finite determination. God does not have to change or suffer in order to love us or show us mercy – he loved us when we were not, and by this very “mercy” created us – and so, as love, he can overcome all suffering. This is true in two related and consequent senses: on the one hand, love is not originally a reaction but is the ontological possibility of every ontic action, the one transcendent act, the primordial generosity that is convertible with being itself, the blissful and desiring apatheia that requires no pathos to evoke it, no evil to make it good; and this is so because, on the other hand, God’s infinitely accomplished life of love is that trinitarian movement of his being that is infinitely determinate – as determinacy toward the other – and so an indestructible actus purus endlessly more dynamic than any mere motion of change could ever be. In him there is neither variableness nor shadow of turning because he is wholly free, wholly God as Father, Son, and Spirit, wholly alive, and wholly love. Even the cross of Christ does not determine the nature of divine love, but rather manifests it, because there is a more original outpouring of God that – without needing to submit itself to the order of sacrifice that builds crosses – always already surpasses every abyss of godforsakenness and pain that sin can impose between the world and God: an outpouring that is in its proper nature indefectible happiness. These are matters to be addressed later, but here I can at least offer a definition of divine apatheia as trinitarian love: God’s impassibility is the utter fullness of an infinite dynamism, the absolutely complete and replete generation of the Son and procession of the Spirit from the Father, the infinite “drama” of God’s joyous act of self-outpouring – which is his being as God. Within the plenitude of this motion, no contrary motion can fabricate an interval of negation, because it is the infinite possibility of every creaturely motion or act; no pathos is possible for God because a pathos is, by definition, a finite instance of change visited upon a passive subject, actualizing some potential, whereas God’s love is pure positivity and pure activity. His love is an infinite peace and so needs no violence to shape it, no death over which to triumph: if it did, it would never be ontological peace but only metaphysical armistice. Nor is this some kind of original unresponsiveness in the divine nature; it is divine beauty, that perfect joy in the other by which God is God: the Father’s delectation in the beauty of his eternal Image, the Spirit as the light and joy and sweetness of that knowledge. As Augustine says of the three persons, “In that Trinity is the highest origin of all things, and the most perfect beauty, and the most blessed delight. Therefore those three are seen to be mutually determined, and are in themselves infinite, that is, infinitely determined as the living love of the divine persons – to “one another” – to which infinity no moment of the negative or of becoming or even of “triumph” can give increase. Hence God is love.”
End Quote.
Quote:
“[The] very action of kenosis is not a new act for God, because God’s eternal being is, in some sense, kenosis – the self-outpouring of the Father in the Son, in the joy of the Spirit. Thus Christ’s incarnation, far from dissembling his eternal nature, exhibits not only his particular proprium as the Son and the splendor of the Father’s likeness, but thereby also the nature of the whole trinitarian taxis. On the cross we see this joyous self-donation sub contrario, certainly, but not in alieno. For God to pour himself out, then, as the man Jesus, is not a venture outside the trinitarian life of indestructible love, but in fact quite the reverse: it is the act by which creation is seized up into the sheer invincible pertinacity of that love, which reaches down to gather us into its triune motion.” (D. B. Hart)
End Quotes/Excerpts.