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The nature of God - Coggle Diagram
The nature of God
Omnibenevolence
- God's benevolence suggests that God's entire attitude is one of compassion, love and fairness
- It is not just about the human word 'love', God's omnibenevolence is relational, total, linked to justice and judgement - it is fair, holy and expected to be found in his followers
- Jesus' focus on agape leads Christians to understand it in the context of loving even enemies, as well as the central idea of forgiveness
- Christians believe God's benevolence has been shown to the world through creation, interventions, miracles, the incarnation of Jesus and answered prayers
- Aquinas argued that justice is about God doing the right thing, even if punishment is involved
- Linking benevolence with the other attributes led Boethius and Anselm to conclude that God's foreknowledge is separate to human freedom and rewards and punishments are therefore just and fair
- Boethius concludes his argument about foreknowledge - "God sees us from above and knows all things in his eternal present and judges our future, free actions, justly distributing rewards and punishments"
Issues with benevolence
- Do evil and suffering contradict a benevolent God? Some would argue that it does because God would not allow his people to suffer. Others would argue that justice, fairness and free will mean that God might have to allow suffering
- Process theology suggests that God chose to limit his power so cannot intervene, but God becomes an empathetic fellow sufferer, who persuades rather than coerces - therefore benevolence is maintained - however is this God worthy of worship if he does not have the power to change anything?
- Can our language explain fully God's benevolence? Is it presumptuous to claim that we can understand God's nature?
- Is hell the ultimate sign that God does give up on some people or is hell a place, as the Catholic Church claims, that people send themselves to?
- Would a benevolent God create hell, inflicting infinite punishment for finite sin, without a chance for reform and repentance?
- The Euthyphro dilemma was posed in Plato's writings: is an action good because God commands it or does God command what is good? - If God defines goodness it becomes arbitrary, but if God is subject to an independent standard of goodness, he isn't the highest being and is not worthy of worship - Aquinas' approach argues that God can only command out of his goodness, so by definition, no commands could be arbitrary
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Omnipotence
- Omnipotence means that God is all-powerful and therefore can do anything
God can do anything, including the impossible
- Descartes argues that God can do anything, including the logically impossible eg God could make a square circle
- This suggests that God is not limited by anything, even logic
- As all logic comes from God, God can change logic or suspend it for a time
- If omnipotence does not mean that God can do absolutely anything, how could he perform miracles or save the world through Jesus?
- However Descartes' view has been criticised because it seems to be based on confused and conflicting reasoning
- This view may make God into an arbitrary figure who becomes unpredictable
- This may make someone question why God does not change the laws so that we do not do evil
- Perhaps our lack of understanding of omnipotence is a human limitation
- C.S. Lewis argued that simply adding 'God can' to the beginning of a nonsense sentence doesn't change the meaning - impossible things such as a square circle are a misuse of language
God can do only the logically impossible
- Aquinas argues that God can do all things that are logically possible - God cannot create a square circle because a square circle does not exist and is therefore not subject to God's omnipotence
- Swinburne agrees and argues that God being able to do everything has to be understood in context - a square circle is not a 'thing' and so God cannot create one - to say God can do every 'thing' does not limit him because it only refers to logically possible answers
Self-imposed limitation
- It has been suggested that in creating a limited universe, God decided that he would only operate within the natural laws he created, self-imposing a limitation on his power
- For Christians, this would make sense of God limiting himself by becoming a human in Jesus Christ, it would also tie in with the Biblical presentation of God's power as far surpassing human understanding without being unlimited - some thinkers use the word 'almighty' instead of all-powerful to describe God in this context
In this approach, is God still worthy of worship if he has specifically chosen to allow the extent of suffering that there is in the world, or if he has chosen to allow some but not all potential miracles?
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Eternity
- There are two approaches to God and time
- The first, and traditional, view held by Boethius, Anselm and Aquinas is that God is eternal because God created time and is outside time
- The second view held by Swinburne is that God moves along the timeline as we do - God is everlasting
God as eternal
- In this approach, God can perfectly see the past, present and future - this means that God's knowledge and power are not limited
- God created the universe and is apart from the universe in terms of both space and time
Boethius' view
- Boethius' view takes into account the problem that if God is eternal and knows the future, how can we be morally responsible for our actions?
- To understand knowledge, Boethius says that we have to understand the nature of the knower - what does it mean to consider God as eternal?
- Eternity is the 'simultaneous possession of boundless life' (Boethius) - God possesses all at the same time all of existence
- Humans have temporal existence and do not have boundless life, we live from moment to moment, from past to present to future - we do not 'embrace the infinity of life all at once'
- However God does as he is infinitely present to himself
- For Boethius, eternity is something God holds all at once - time has no meaning for God, everything is the present for God
Boethius' view of God's eternity is successful
- If God interacts with individuals, miraculously saving one person from disaster, this raises a problem of God being arbitrary and partisan - the view of God as timeless solves the problem because God cannot intervene at moments within time
- The incarnation would have to be reinterpreted, viewing Jesus as a perfect example of a human response to God, not God entering time and becoming human
- Believers could change the understanding of prayer from a list of requests made to God - instead prayer would be contemplation and communion with the divine
Boethius' view of God's eternity is not successful
- Kenny argues that the idea that God views events that happened years apart in one simultaneous moment seems incoherent
- A timeless God seems to be transcendent, unchanging and uninterested in the world - the God portrayed in the Bible seems to be immanent and interacts with believers, unlike Aristotle's Prime Mover which thinks only about thinking
- If God is timeless, how could he enter time and become Jesus Christ?
- How can a timeless God answer prayers? God cannot enter into a moment within time or change something in the future because all time is a simultaneous moment to God
Anselm's four-dimensionalist approach
- Anselm developed Boethius' view into his four-dimensionalist approach
- Anselm rejects the idea that from God's perspective, the only aspect of time that exists is the present - this is how humans live as we are within space and time
- God however is separate to time in the same way that he is separate to space
- The past, present and future all exist as terms that are relative to each other, just like we relate to each other in terms of space (using phrases such as 'in front of me')
- Time is a dimension, just like length, breadth and height are the three dimensions of space
- Humans may be limited by both time and space, but God is not limited by either
- In the same way God is present everywhere, God is present 'everywhen'
- Anselm develops Boethius' idea of the simultaneous present by stating that the 'eternal present' is different to our idea of the present, and eternity becomes a non-temporal word - it becomes a word to do with the fourth dimension
Anselm's view of God and time is successful
- Anselm claims that descriptions of time depend on perspective, God's perspective of time is different to ours - this shows that God cannot know the 'future' as 'future' describes time from human perspective - all moments of time are equally in God - God is more immanent in Anselm's argument than for Boethius, he is not simply an external and remote observer
- God has two types of knowledge: God knows about the laws of nature and physics because they have preceding necessity, however God knows human choices only because of following necessity - God's knowledge follows the moment of choice - this means that God is omniscient, there is nothing God does not know
- Anselm protects free will because God is alongside us in the moment of choice and knows our choice as a following necessity
Anselm's view of God and time is not successful
- It is very difficult to imagine what God's experience of time is like - Anselm still uses the language of time, his use of preceding and following necessity implies the passage of time
- A problem with Anselm's view of divine knowledge is whether God can know what day it is now - there cannot be a present or a more significant moment for God as all moments are equally present in God
- From our perspective, our future choices are free, but an eternal, omniscient God has already seen those choices being made - this challenges the existence of free will - this also impacts the problem of evil as it seems that God is alongside as we make choices, can he prevent or change those choices?
Strengths of God as eternal
- It does not matter if humans cannot understand the infinitude of God - just because our minds are limited does not mean it is false
- God is more transcendent and unchanging - God could not respond to prayer or intervene at one moment as all moments are either simultaneously present (Boethius) or equally in him (Anselm)
- God can be omniscient in this view because he has knowledge of every moment
Weaknesses of God as eternal
- An eternal God seems to conflict with free will - how can we make a different choice if God already knows what we will decide?
- If God knows the future, surely he is responsible for the problem of evil?
- How can God be omnipotent if he is outside of time or cannot intervene in time?
- How can a God so separate of the world have a relationship with humans - does this render prayer meaningless?
God as everlasting
- Many modern philosophers including Swinburne reject the idea of God as eternal
- Swinburne's starting point is that the God of the Bible seems to be within time - God takes part on the battlefields with the Israelites, he changes his mind and he is constantly interacting with people through the New Testament
- Swinburne rejects the idea of a 'simultaneous present' because he does not think it is coherent for God to view two events at different times at one timeless moment, and he argues that it is difficult for a timeless God to be said to be doing a miracle at a specific time or to say that God became a human at particular point in history
- A common example is of Hezekiah in the Old Testament - Hezekiah is told that God intends for him to die but he prays to God and God hears his prayer, seeing Hezekiah is upset God decides to extend to his life
- For Swinburne, the eternal, unchanging God needs to be rejected because this is not a God that can have relationships with humans and relationships are at the centre of human existence and the way the world has been ordered
- A God who is eternal cannot love his creation in the way that a God who is everlasting can
- Swinburne - "The Hebrew Bible shows no knowledge of the doctrine of divine timelessness"
Strengths of God as everlasting
- The everlasting view of God in time fits with the view that God can only do and know the logically possible - it makes more sense because this is how we understand linear time
- If God is within time, it is possible for God to react and respond to prayer because he can interact with time-bound humans
- A God within time means that humans retain free will because the future is not yet determined or known, so humans can make free choices
Weaknesses of God as everlasting
- A God within time challenges omniscience - God cannot know the future because it hasn't happened yet, therefore it is logically impossible - so perhaps God is not fully omniscient
- Has God been limited too much? Can God be omniscient or omnipotent if he is within time?
- If God does not know what choices we will make, is he still worthy of worship?
- If God is everlasting and moves along the timeline as humans do, that suggests God changes with time - can a perfect God change?