Divine simplicity and modal collapse
Proponents of the doctrine of Divine simplicity, and especially Thomists, maintain that God is a necessary, absolutely simple and immutable being who is identical to all of his properties.
E;g. God is God's knowledge and God is God's goodness and God's knowlledge is God's goodness.
I would think it follows from this that God is His act to actualize A and hence, A is necessary. That would mean that God does everyting out of necessity.
Now some Thomists claim that God's act to actualize A is God's act to actualize B, so God can also actualize B instead of A. But if that is true, how could God have any control over what He ends up actualizing?
E;g. God is God's knowledge and God is God's goodness and God's knowlledge is God's goodness.
I would think it follows from this that God is His act to actualize A and hence, A is necessary. That would mean that God does everyting out of necessity.
Now some Thomists claim that God's act to actualize A is God's act to actualize B, so God can also actualize B instead of A. But if that is true, how could God have any control over what He ends up actualizing?
Comments (113)
First you have to consider how God loves himself. Is it necessary or free? If he has any freedom he has every freedom and his acts are necessary because of the will he applies himself with
I would think God's love for himself is necessary, but then I think everything God does is necessary.
I think everything God does is free. Freedom is objective choice about ends in order to "be good". God is act and can't be any different from how we become good. If we are free and he is not, what is he to us? A hyperuranion? The core of simplicity is the ability to choose to think and act
I know that lots of Thomists claim that Divine Simplicity does not preclude God's free choices., but my question is how this is possible given that God is identical to all of His 'properties', which would include that he is identical to both His choice to do X and to His choice to do Y and even to His choice to do nothing at all.
God would have his normal thoughts with the addition of his knowledge that he choose something (such as to create). You're basically presenting Spinoza's critique
How can God be in everything if we are free?
I don't know whether I am presenting Spinoza's critique, but what is wrong with my critique?
Additional knowledge seems to be impossible, because then there is no simplicity anymore.
I don't think God can be in everything is we are free, unless we are, in a way, God.
In a way. We all have individualized empirical selfs. God has room for everything, and I think you are correct contra Thomism. Even the Trinity seems contrary to simplicity. There is more than a relationship to self involved. Christians claim 3 persons, 3 experiences as one experience
I think that's a nice bit of imagery. This sort of idea gets developed more in Jacob Boheme's vision of a God who necessarily creates because the existence of something that is not God is required to define God. This entails that God must create to have self-knowledge. A single, undivided unity existing alone becomes no different from nothing at all existing. Any description of such being would be contentless.
Anyhow, if I recall the Thomistic definition of contingency correctly, then God's choices are sort of necessarily not contingent. Only created things are contingent, since only they can have created causes.
Building off Saint Augustine, one could argue that God is necessarily tripartite because meaning itself is necessarily tripartite. God cannot have self knowledge without this tripartite nature, for the conveyance of meaning always required an object known, the sign through which it is known, and an interpretant.
As Augustine shows in De Trinitate and De Doctrinal, there is some solid pieces of Scripture to work with in supporting a mapping of the object/sign/interpretant to the Father/Word/Spirit as well.
Returning to the original question, I'm not sure exactly how to conceptualize God as actualizing A versus B. The Logos is itself the ground of cause and effect, before and after. We tend to think of freedom entirely in terms of before and after, cause and effect, so this makes thinking of divine freedom tricky.
[Reply="Gregory;862149"]
Our freedom is part of God's freedom. Created beings are, in a way, like subsystems within the universal system that is God. These subsystems can have relative amounts of freedom, since they can be more or less self-determining. I think it would be fair to call most pre-Reformation Christian thinkers panentheists, and the problems of God's sovereignty versus human freedom seem less acute in panentheism.
In the Summa, Saint Aquinas argues that God is present to/in everything as cause (and effects are signs of their causes). This jives with the older Augustinian view that God is "within everything but contained in nothing."
Following Aristotle, all our concepts come from sense experience sense experience that is necessarily [I]of[/I] only finite, created things. So, when we make affirmative statements about God, such as "God is living," what we are actually doing is making a negative statement about "what God is not." God is not living in the way that creatures are living. Rather, the statement is really meant more along the lines of "God is not dead."
Likewise, "God's attributes are necessary," can be taken as "there are no contingent facts vis-á-vis God in the way that facts about creatures can be contingent." Saint Aquinas doesn't buy into the need to hew to the via negativa as strictly as Maimonides, but I do think this jives with his explanations of how facts about God are necessary if I am remembering correctly. Contingency applies to creatures, by definition.
In the language of Saint Thomas, we would say that predicates assigned to God are a form of analogical predication as opposed to uniquivocal.
I know about the via negativa, but I don't tjink it applies to necessary things."God is identical to all His 'properties' " is very clear. Those 'properties' or 'predicates' themselves can be attibuted analogically to God, that is, God's knowledge is identical to God's Goodness, but that doesn't mean that creaturely knowlegde is identical to creaturely goodness.
But i see no way out of the conclusion that if God is identical to all of his properties, then God's 'property' of creating A is identical to God's 'property' of creating B.
This Thomistic fetish doesn't make sense: "absolutely simple and immutable" excludes "properties" just as, for instance, a triangle excludes parallel lines. The only modal implication to this "doctrine" is that (à la L. Carroll or A. Meinong) it describes an impossible object.
The way I understand it, divine simplicity is tied to God's total lack of contingency. For Aquinas, God's essence includes existence itself, making God unique among all beings. In contrast, everything else derives its existence from God as the Uncaused Cause.
Contingency involves a reliance on causes and conditions, but God, as the Uncaused Cause and necessary being, transcends such dependencies; God is the foundation of all existence. God can't be a composite being because there is no way for God's "parts" to interact, since everything in the divine nature is necessary.
Aquinas posited that in God, essence and existence are identical. This means that God's nature and His act of existing are one and the same.
The idea that God's act to actualize A is also God's act to actualize B doesn't imply a lack of control on God's part in Thomism. Rather, Thomism suggests that God, in His simplicity, is not composed of separate parts or aspects that might conflict. This makes more sense in the Platonic-Pauline view of freedom that prevailed in the ancient world and medieval period. Rather than Lockean "lack of constraint," freedom was more often defined as reflexive self-determination. So God is free if God isn't acted upon by outside forces/contingencies, which is the case. As Uncaused Cause, nothing can act on God, similar to how downward causality works across the Plotinian Hypostasis in Proclus or early Augustine.
Now we might be more likely to look at necessity as its own form of "logical," constraint, but I think Aquinas was more concerned about God's actions not being determined by either creatures or conflicting parts in the divine nature. God's will is unified and consistent, allowing for a coherent and purposeful exercise of divine freedom; God is not in the state that man is, described by Saint Paul in Romans 7, at war with itself.
If you accept Aquinas' premises re God's essence and existence, I don't think there is necessarily a problem here. God isn't really constrained by God's own necessity. Following Boethius, God is also always present to all moments, so there is no problem with temporal decision making; all decisions to actualize are made eternally. That's how I understood it anyhow.
Yes, simple and immutable exclude all properties, but Thomists tend to translate that as "God is identical to all His properties" they say that God's omniscience is His omnipotence is His love etc. and that they are all identical to God. That means they are no real properties, of course.
God is God, and that's it,
But, IMO, this entails that God also is His intention to create X, hence X is necessary.
Count Timothy van Icarus
"Thomism suggests that God, in His simplicity, is not composed of separate parts or aspects that might conflict."
But that's the problem. God's intention to actualize A does conflict with God's intention to actualize B.
So, ther can be no intention to actualiz A or B in God's mind. How can God have control over whther A occurs in that case? If God's will is is unified and consistent, then it cannot lead to A in one possible world and B in another, at least not if God is supposed to be in control.
I think that you want to understand God's actions before you know him (who is infinite according to the definition of philosophers and the question is, how can the finite know the infinite?), this seems not possible and you attribute an action to him before you understand what his action really is.
Before knowing God, it is not possible to understand his actions, just like before knowing a human being, one cannot understand his actions.
Yes and, regardless of Thomistic wordplay, a tautology is a tautology vacuous.
It is not a matter of wanting to understand God's actions, it is a matter of analyzing claims about his actions in light of logic.
That may be true, but I am willing to grant, for the sake of the argument, that it makes sense.
That's an interesting take, perhaps correct.
Then let' say the simplest object has one property, this property aligns with the simplest possible thing that could exist which must have at least one property.
What could this be?
A point in space?
I've wondered about this.
Not even "a point" nothingness.
Can nothingness have a property?
Speaking of human beings... you do understand that each individual human gets to describe their god any way they want to, right? Thus gods are therefore subjective (intersubjective actually), not objective.
Maybe: propertylessness.
:lol:
According to Thomists, it is Existence itself and it has no spatial dimensions at all.
Its Essence is Existence and that's all there is to it, except of course that it also rewards and punishes people, creates things ex nihilo etc.
That in itself seems incoherent to me, but I am focussing on something else here, for which I accpet, for the sake of the argument, that it is coherent.
The question in that case still is: how can such simple and immutable being act differently across possible worlds?
No spatial dimension? That's not entirely clear. If something has no spatial dimension, how can we say it exists in the world (as opposed to how we could imagine it to exist in our minds)?
Well, your second question assumes there are possible worlds, maybe, maybe not. But you'd first have to say what leads you to believe that it could act in a way that if has effects on this world.
If you can state how this belief carries force for you, then we could proceed. Otherwise, it seems to me like we are stuck.
I don't see how you can introduce possible worlds to the scenario. What God wills is necessary by His act of willing it, therefore it is actual. You cannot say that God wills A in one possible world and B in another possible world, because that would contradict the nature of God as 'His essence is His existence'. Therefore God is necessarily actual, and this excludes Him from "possible worlds" which is a tool of the human intellect. Attributing possible worlds to God is to attribute matter to God, but God is immaterial.
Possible worlds are simply a way of saying if God what could be/have been the case.
According to most Christians, including Thomists, it could have been that God created a completely different world or even no world at all.
My question is if God's essence is his existence , how can He end up xiiling to create different things?
That belief doesn't carry force for me. I am simply assuming it for the sake of the argument.
That's fair enough, though I do not see how to proceed. This now becomes speculative metaphysics which, to be sure, is fun, but more often than not doesn't lead anywhere.
But keeping something so broad so as to argue that a simple being acts any possible world is nebulous in the extreme.
For sake of a total baseless guess, perhaps it can be said that the simplest possible thing is the cause of everything in the universe, somewhat akin to the singularity in the big bang, but ever simpler.
So, this simple being would thus necessarily be responsible, in an extremely remote and far off manner, for everything that there is.
Aside from this, I can't invent anything else that is intelligible in the least.
I think sums it up rightly here. It just doesn't make sense to think of God as in any way contingent in Thomism, which the "possible worlds" style of analysis seems to do implicitly.
Arguably, there are problems with Thomistic metaphysics "higher up the chain" problems with the very concept of divine simplicity itself. However, I think that, if we're accepting Thomistic divine simplicity as a given, then there isn't necessarily a problem here "downstream" of that assumption. God only actualizes what God in God's perfect divine freedom actually does actualize. God is above "normal" properties in some sense, in the way that the Plotinian "One" is above the forms of Nous, being a higher Hypostases and the ground of being. Possibilities, to the extent they exist, must exist [I]within[/I] God's essence since they are a part of being in the Aristotlean framework being employed re potentiality.
Plantinga has an influential attack on divine simplicity summed up here that is relevant: https://iep.utm.edu/divine-simplicity/#:~:text=Divine%20simplicity%20is%20central%20to,necessary)%20accruing%20to%20his%20nature
But in part, this is resolved by modern Thomists who have embraced Husserl via Edith Stein, resulting in "Thomistic-Personalism." If personhood is ontologically primitive, and God is a person (or three), the attribute question seems less acute since persons can manifest attributes without being those attributes (since they are fundementally persons, not abstract objects). This also seems to help to quell a long term problem between the extremely abstract thinking of some Christians, e.g. Eriugena, Hegel, on the one hand, and the traditions deep focus on personal experience and the particular individual on the other.
This does not produce the problem you mentioned. If God's intention is to create A, then A is created, and if God's intention is to create B, then B is created. If there was confliction between A and B then God would know this, and not will both. Nowhere is it implied that God would will conflicting things.
Well, I am not saying that God can will conficting things. But God's will to create A cannot be identical to God's will to create B, unless God is not simple or has no control over what He creates.
A Will, no matter what it exactly is, is intrinsic to a person.
-@LuckyR
NO!
I don't understand your point. Let's say that at t1 God wills to create A, and at t2 God wills to create B. We could say that A and B are each a part of God's bigger plan, but I don't think that expressing these as distinct parts denies God's simplicity. It's just a feature of how we describe the situation, as A being something distinct from B, when the truer description would show the whole. Then A being distinct from B is just an artificial separation created by human analysis.
Well, we are not talking about God creating A at t1 and B at t2, we are talking about God creating B instead of A, which, according to most Thomists, is prefectly possible.
Well, you're welcome (for enlightening you to that basic reality).
How is that a problem? God created (or actualized) B, and God did not create (or actualize A). Where's the problem?
Well, God can't actualize A instead of B AND actualize B but not A. Aquinas is clear that God cannot perform contradictions.
God's freedom is that God actualizes exactly what God wants to actualize and nothing else. This doesn't seem like a limit on divine freedom. In the same way that Plantinga shows that "God cannot create a rock God cannot lift," is equivalent to "God can lift all rocks," "God cannot actualize what God hasn't chosen to actualize," seems equivalent with "God only creates what God wants."
The question is: was it possible for God to create B instead of A? The Thomist's answer is yes.
Yes, but is what God's wants to actualize necessary or not? Could God have wanted to actualzie B instad of A?
So, how do you perceive this to be a problem? If God had created B instead of A, then there would be B instead of A. How is that a problem for divine simplicity? The fact is that God created the one, and not the other, and if He had created the other, He would have created that one instead. It is never implied that God could actualize (or will) both.
The claim.is that God is identical to God's Will. But if God Wills A, then God is identical to His Will to create A, while if He Wills B, He is identical to His Will to create B.
That means there are two Gods
As you said, God does not will both A and B, God wills one or the other. Therefore we cannot conclude that there is two Gods.
But what did God actually do? Do you have any evidence that God had done something?
God is simple and immutable, but He can be red of blue?
The redness or blueness of God is a contingent property. But if God is necessary and simple He is identical to all His properties. But how can a necessary being be identical to a contingent property?
If God exists and He is the creator of this world, then He obviously did something, namely creating this world
If you could prove your premise "If~", then it would help clarifying your conclusion "then"~.
Does God exist? Is he the creator of the world? Please prove them.
I don't think God exists.
I am agnostic, but interested in reading about either positive or negative arguments for the proof of existence.
Are you confident that arguments can establish whether or not gods exist?
They are totally separate matter. My confidence in anything doesn't have any relevance in the arguments.
You have not been saying that God is red or blue, you have been saying that God can choose to create A or B. The property we are talking about is a property of God, and this is God's will. We are not talking about a property of the thing which God creates, such as if the thing created is red or blue. So the example is not analogous.
It appears like you do not respect a separation between God and the thing which God creates, so that if God creates a thing describable as A, you want to say that A is a property of God. That would be a pantheist way of understanding God, and this is not Thomistic.
I have been talking about God's Will to create A and God's Will to create B.
Are they different or is God's Will to create A the same as God's Will to create B?
If they are different, then they are contingent properties. How can contingent properties be identical to a necessary being?
If they are the same, how can God have control over whether A of B will obtain,?
I think you are misunderstanding what is meant by "God's Will". The will is the source of action, as the cause. So there is only a will to create A (cause of A) if A is created, and a will to create B (cause of B) if B is created. If A and B are conflicting there cannot be the will to create both.
Quoting Walter
They are not properties of God at all. As I said earlier, "God's Will" refers to the property, the Will of God is a property of God. "A", or "B", is what we use to describe what has been created by that will. Our description of what God has Willed is not a description of God's Will.
So. the Will of God is a property of God and this Will of God is the same, whether A of B is created?
And God's action to create A is the very same as God's action to create B?
How can God make sure A is created instead of B?
As far as I know, Tomaszewski is an advocate of Divine Simplicity.
I think we're back to the beginning, and you are just going around in a circle. God only makes one of the two choices, A or B. The choice was A. So we have "God's action to create A". There is no "God's action to create B" because God did not make that choice. That is a false premise. So your conclusion "God's action to create A is the very same as God's action to create B" is an unsound conclusion because it requires the false premise that God created bot A and B.
Maybe you ought to consider it in terms of a counterfactual. Take your own will for example. Suppose you could have gone to work this morning, but you stayed home instead. Therefore "went to work this morning" is a counterfactual, it is not what you really did. And if I say "you went to work this morning" when you did not, that is a false premise. It is not a true description of you. Likewise, if God chose to create A, then "God's action to create B" is a false description of God, in the very same way. Therefore to say "God's action to create A is the very same as God's action to create B" is false in the same way that "your action to go to work is the very same as your action to stay home" is false.
What I would like to ask you now, is are you really having so much trouble understanding this? Or, are you just refusing to understand, denying, for the sake of supporting an obviously ridiculous argument?
Since it seems likely that Walter is asleep...
Would you agree that there is no possible world in which God creates B and therefore it was necessary that God create A?
By what Walter stipulated, A and B are incompatible, so not only is it impossible that such is necessary, I would say that it is not even possible that God create A, if God has already created B.
So would you agree that means that if God is simple then he did not have a choice to create a world other than this one?
No. How would you draw that conclusion?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It's not possible that God created a different world, because the world that we have is the world that God created. However, at the time when God was about to create, it was possible for him to create whichever world he wanted.
I don't see why that is hard to understand.
What is your view on possible world semantics?
You'd have to be more specific in your question for me to give a reply, but off the cuff, I'd say that possible world semantics is inappropriate for discussing God as the assumed "necessary Being". Perhaps this is why I am not getting anywhere with Walter. Walter seems to want to apply the terms of possibility to something which is necessary, and that opens a gap of incompatibility. So we just continue to talk past each other.
I'll leave it to @Walter.
If 'at the time when God was about to create' it was possible for Him to create whichever world He wanted, then you deel to be the one 'applying the terms of possibility to something which is necessary'.
My question is simply, how can something which is necessary' and simple 'want' different things.
I don't see any evidence that God wanted anything other than what He created. We are agreeing that it is logically possible that God could have created something other than He did, because He is deemed to have had the capacity to do such, but nothing indicates that He wanted to create something other than He did. And, since God is deemed to have the highest possible degree of intelligence, and also deemed to want only what is good, then I do not see why you would even consider the possibility that God would have wanted something other. Don't you find that to be illogical?
Here is an example which may be analogous. You and I are capable of doing many things, not nearly to the degree of God, but still at any moment each one of us has the capacity for a wide assortment of activities. We have many possibilities in front of us. But this in no way implies that we "want" all those things. In making a decision we would consider different things which we want, and this presents us with a very much narrowed field of possibilities, in comparison with what is actually possible to each one of us. Then, we judge and choose from this field of possibilities which is present to our minds, but is very much narrowed from the overall field of what is possible.
In the case of God, He only wants what is good, the absolute best in fact. This means that God narrowed His own field of possibilities to one thing, the absolute best. The narrowing of possibilities is not due to the non-existence of the infinity of other possibilities, they were all still available to Him. The narrowing was due to Him only wanting one thing, the best thing.
If you want to argue that God actually did not create the absolute best thing, then that's a different argument.
OK, if we live in 'the best thing' that God could have created, then God could not have wanted anything else, which means this creation is necessary.
Right, from our perspective it is "necessary" in the sense of 'what we have is what we got, and things are not otherwise'. From God's perspective, prior to creation, it was what is "necessary" in the sense of needed or wanted.
Do you think God wanted me to be autistic, or needed me to be autistic?
Do you think that is the case with all people who believe themselves to be autistic?
Anyway, don't answer. I've threadjacked too much already.
From God's prespective, prior to creation, A was necessary because His "wanting" A is necesary and cannot be otherwise.
No, that's why I was clear to differentiate between two senses of "necessary". It was necessary in the sense of needed. For example, if I want to walk it is necessary for me to move my legs. But moving my legs is not necessary in the absolute sense of "cannot be otherwise", because I might decide not to walk.
But in what way might God have decided otherwise?
If you are asking if I know what God's intentions were, the answer is no I do not. Otherwise, the answer is in the way that I've already described, a way similar to the way that you or I might decide in taking action, we are free to choose according to intention.
But I am not abolutely smple. So, my 'intention' is a contingent part of me. But God's intention can't he contingent since God is identical with His intention.
I think this displays a misunderstanding of "intention". Contingent means dependent on a preceding cause, but the will (intention) is understood to be free from such determination. Therefore your intention is not a contingent part of you.
You are not "absolutely simple" because this part of you is combined with the contingent part (known as dualism). In the case of God, there is said to be no contingent part. All contingent existence is derived from, as created by, the Will of God, which is prior.
Contingent means neiher necessary nor impossible..If the intention is not determined, it can be different
So, if God van have different intentions, those intentions are Parts of Him. And if they are not necessary, they are contingent unless they are impossible.
In theology, in the sense of "contingent being", contingent means requiring causation. Any existent which is dependent on something else, as cause for its existence, is said to be contingent. "Contingent" has a number of different uses, we need to adhere to the relevant meaning.
Quoting Walter
Nothing I said implies that God would have differing intentions. And I see no logic in your statement: "If the intention is not determined, it can be different". God's intention is "not determined" in the sense that it is not caused, just like the free will is not determined by causation.
The fact that there were many possibilities open to God does not imply that God had differing intentions. And the fact that God only wills what is good implies that He does not have differing intentions.
In philosophy contingent means neither necessary nor impossible. Free Will, if it exists, is not determined yet it is contingent.
Did God 'freely' choose among the many possibilties that were open to him? If so, His choice, Will, intention or whatever is contingent.
If not, it is necessary and God could not have decided otherwise.
OK, by your definition of "contingent", from God's perspective, the thing He creates is contingent. But God's Will, as an essential property of God is necessary. As explained earlier, we must be careful to distinguish between the properties of the creation, and the properties of the creator, or else we produce a pantheist God. Does that make sense to you, and how does it bear on your argument?
I think the intention to do A is clearly a property of the creator.
Now if that intention is necessary, we are stuch with a modal collapse.
I don't see how we can separate God's Will simpliciter from God's Will to do A.
The intention to do A is not necessary, it is a freely made choice. We've been through this already. God's will, is a necessary part of God, but the particular choice, "the intention to do A" is not necessary from God's perspective.
Quoting Walter
Why not? It's actually very simple. Do you agree that human beings have a capacity called will, and this allows them to choose? Do you also recognize that no specific choice is necessitated by that capacity, it is free to make different choices as required according to differing circumstance. So the capacity to choose (the will) and the choice made, the intention to do A, are not the same thing. They must be separate and different types of thing, or else the person would have to always choose the exact same thing when using one's will, and that's not what is the case, we make many different choices. Therefore we must conclude that the capacity to choose, as a property of a human being (or God in this case), which is called "the will", is distinct and different from any particular thing willed, the will to do A, or the will to do B, etc..
Since "The will to do A" is a contingent property of me as a human being, it is not necessitated by my capacity, but it is still a property of me. Hence "the will to do A" is also a property of God , which, is distinct from God's will simpliciter. But that is the problem. If "the inetention to do A" is not necessary, then it is a contingent property of God, but God, unlike me, cannot have any contingent properties.
Ok I see the problem clearly now. From God's perspective, to do A is necessary, needed as good, and God cannot be wrong. From our perspective. we do not know the premises which produced the necessity for the decision, therefore it appears to be contingent, as is the case for us, our choices are contingent. In the case of human beings, we can see what is good, yet choose not to do it for some reason, but God must do only what is good. So God really did not have any choice at all, being omniscient He had to choose one thing, the good, and He could not choose otherwise, not be mistaken, therefore "the will to do A" was necessary. Does that look correct?
Unless if course, doing B is just as good as doing A.
Then God should be able to do B. But that would be a contingent choice.
If there is something in the container, it is not simple.
Ever read Plato's Euthyphro? The question would be whether an act is good because it is what God chooses, or whether God chooses it because it is good. The former implies that intrinsically A is no better than B, but God choosing it is what makes it good. The latter would imply that one act is intrinsically better that the other, and that is why God chooses it. Which do you think would be the case?
If an act is good because it is what God chooses, "goodness" is meaningless.
So, I think one act can be intrinsically better than another. But perhaps there are acts that are intrinsically equally good. So God actualizing A would be just as good as God actualizing B.
Hmm, I see things in the opposite way. Since God has the most knowledge possible, if there is supposed to be something beyond God which determines "good", then "good" would be meaningless as absolutely indefinite, or undeterminable, impossible to know.
And, since two acts are distinct and unique, each having a different effect, (and the two possible acts we are talking about are necessarily so, having been stipulated as incompatible), and if all things are taken into account by the supreme knower, it is impossible that two such acts are judged as equally good.
This leaves your final statement meaningless. God, of necessity would choose one or the other, A or B, knowing the effects that each would have, and knowing which is the better choice.
But that is epistemology. God would know what is good, but He doesn't decide what is good, just like He doesn't decide that 1 + 1 = 2, or that square circles can't exist.
Could you not argue that these things were decided by God in the 'actual' design of the world? I.e he designed/invoked a world in which those things are true?
But could He have designed a world where 1 + 1 = 3?
God could have invoked a world where if you put 1 thing next to 1 thing you perceive 3 things so our only empirical data show that 1+1=3 in all cases. . Don't see how that is outside of God's power.
Okay then.
But most theists don't agree with you.
I think most theologians would argue that God does decide what is good. They clearly claim that human actions are good only insofar as they are consistent with what God wants. So God is above humans in the decision of good. And, if it wasn't God who determines what is good, we'd have to look for a principle higher than God to validate whether a human action is truly good or not, because the higher principle might be inconsistent with what God wants. But theologians would not accept this. So I think it must be God who decides what is good. Why don't you think that God would decide 1+1=2, and that square circles do not exist. Isn't that exactly what God's job is, to ensure that the world is consistent with logic? Otherwise God would not see it as good, and not create it in that way.
Christians typically think that God, being good, wouldn't mislead us.
Quoting AmadeusD
:) :) "God works in mysterious ways" and all that... No misleading to be had here, though. Otherwise, we're assuming that 1+1 IS 2, and God is contravening...something. But if God is the almighty Creator of all, that's not what's happening there. It just is the case that 1+1=3.
That may be, but it is harder to convince people to worship the god of baffling with bullshit.
This may be the greatest feat Logic has ever achieved :)
Then again, if you had no other frame of reference, its a bit incoherent to think it would be baffling. It just is
No, I don't think it's God's job to make sure the world is consistent with logic. If He truly decides what is logical and what is not, every world is consistent with logic.
In that case, there can be no logical arguments for the existence of God.
When Aquinas says God is in all things as cause, as presence, and also in things in His essence, how is this different from panentheism? Also, if the Ideas are in the mind of God, this seems to be a mutiplicity unless there is one single Idea, one Concept, that includes all truth within it. Like the greatest number that B. Russell talked about in Logic and Mystcism. The infinity that can't be thought of except as complete and one with all reality.