However, whereas Suber is a professional academic, I am not. Before reading any further, read my disclaimer and warning on my My Writings page.
The Concept of God
Glenn Mason-Riseborough (14/11/2002)
Some say that philosophy is about picking out and chewing over problems tossed into the too-hard basket. If this is the case, then, if one were to thrust one’s hand into that basket at random, there is a good chance that the problem picked out would have some connection with religion. In part, this is because religion ranges widely over many traditional philosophical topics—questions concerning the nature of ultimate reality, the good life and how we ought to live, what knowledge is and how we may arrive at it (such as revealed versus natural theology), the nature of language and art and their role in expression and representation, logic and argumentation, and so on. Historically, religion and philosophy have been deeply interconnected, with respect to the search for answers to these types of questions. But, in part, it is also because the field of religion is inundated with numerous hard-to-define terms, and concepts that are difficult to express completely and with certitude (or perhaps at all). As people have struggled with these questions above, they have also struggled with expressing themselves satisfactorily. At its best, this has resulted in a proliferation of new ideas; at its worst this has resulted in miscommunication, misunderstandings, and people simply talking past each other. Many of the key (and also the non-key) religious terms have been fought over, discussed, and debated, with respect to what they are supposed to refer, by both believers and non-believers alike. And the corresponding concepts have equally been fought over, with respect to how they ought to be expressed, whether such concepts are coherent, or whether they can be expressed at all. Paradigmatic words in this camp that most English speakers are familiar with include “god”, “God”, “faith”, “sin”, “holy”, “worship”, “trinity”, “theism”, “soul”, “spirit”, and even “religion” itself.[1] In addition, most English speakers are now also familiar with similar difficult religious words from other cultures, such as “dao”, “brahman”, “satori”, “karma”, “nirvana”, and “yoga”. And countless other words also become apparent once one starts reading the numerous religious works in these various traditions.
The issues that I will be addressing in this work fit more into this latter category of problems that has to do with terms and concepts, rather than the former, more substantive, category of problems. My focus will be on investigating certain words to understand how they are used, and analysing concepts with the aim of clarifying, drawing distinctions, providing taxonomies of possible positions and distinct concepts, and checking for coherence. That is, this is a work primarily in conceptual analysis and conceptual clarification. In case it isn’t obvious, the type of conceptual analysis that I will be doing is not the crude form that has been shown to be untenable at least since Ludwig Wittgenstein and Willard Van Orman Quine. That it, when analysing a concept I will not attempt to give a definite and complete list of features that must all be possessed to count as falling under the concept. After all, language is often vague and ambiguous, and so these features need to be captured adequately as well. I’ll be satisfied if I can pick out enough general features such that the relevant distinctions (as given by the context) can be made. As a further obvious point, this latter category of problems is also connected to the first category of problems to the extent that this type of reflective conceptual work clarifies the main substantive problems and issues, flags the possible positions that one may take, and clears away the side issues. But this latter category of problems can be considered to be the logically prior set of problems—after all, we cannot, for example, talk about whether souls exist or whether we ought to try to save them, without first working out, at least to some extent, what souls are. To narrow my focus in this work, I will not be proceeding to make further claims about, for example, what exists or doesn’t exist, or how we ought to live our lives.
The central concept that I will be analysing is GOD. But in order to do this I will also be analysing a number of related concepts—most especially THEISM. Before saying what this amounts to, I’ll say what this is not. In The Concept of God, Keith Ward[2] makes a distinction between two related issues: what God is, and what one thinks of when thinking of God. Ward takes his task to be about the latter issue, rather than the former. I have given my work here the same title as Ward’s work, yet I consider my task to be closer to the former issue than the latter. It seems to me that what Ward’s question is really concerned with is what one may call the image of God, not the concept of God. The distinction is that when one is concerned with images of God, one is concerned with beliefs, intentions, attitudes, intellectual assent, specific feeling-states, belief formation, social practices, ritual traditions, and other psychological and sociological phenomena. And unsurprisingly this is what Ward devotes much of his book to investigating. In contrast, I am more concerned with the concept itself.
A second difference is that I am wanting to investigate the concept of god, not the concept of God. The difference is that with the former we are interested in what counts as a god in the most general sense across all religions and cultures, whereas with the latter we are interested in the more specific and restricted cases of where the proper name “God” has been used. Not all gods have historically been called “God”, but I will assume that all those that are called “God” are gods. To examine the concept of God is to examine a subset of possible gods, within the particular religious or cultural traditions that have so labelled their god—most notably Christianity, but also sometimes Judaism and Islam.[3] Unfortunately, however, very few writers explicitly make this distinction, and they appear to slide between these two distinct issues. When I come to discussing particular writers, I am sometimes left trying to work out which they are really meaning, and I have had to both guess and translate accordingly. What I am wanting to investigate is what the word “god” means, what it is for a being, or putative being, to be correctly called a god (and hence perhaps “God”), and what it takes for a particular concept to be a concept of god. To some extent this can be divided into two parts. Firstly, that of looking at certain competing historical views of the nature of certain supposedly existing entities, called “gods”. And secondly, that of looking at what makes them all views about a single thing, god. One way of putting this is to say that the first part looks at various concepts of god, whereas the second part aims to describe the super-concept GOD. Less clearly, we might call the first part concepts of god, and the second part the concept of god.
Thus, I will initially (Section 2) look at a number of historical putative concepts of god (certain more or less fleshed out accounts of supposed characteristics of gods that have been put forward at various times). This section will not be an exhaustive account of the history of concepts of god. Instead, to some extent, it is intended as a warm-up to introduce certain key themes, issues, and putative properties of various gods. Given the dominance of theism in most Western discussions of GOD, I will give primary importance to theistic discussions of God (note capital-g). I will give a relatively in-depth analysis of the theistic concept (or concepts) of god and some of the purported central characteristics of the theistic god (or gods). I will then give a briefer discussion of two other approaches—negative theology, and an approach that sees God as a proper part of the natural world.[4] Most notably, I will not give any significant discussion of either pantheism[5] or panentheism (also called process theology),[6] though I will mention them briefly, as the need arises, in various contexts throughout this work. Neither will I discuss the idea that God is some sort of abstract principle of Good (e.g. Plato), or extreme axiarchism (e.g. John Leslie), both of which are discussed by J. L. Mackie[7] as alternatives to theism. And nor will I discuss any of the various polytheistic gods within Greek, Roman, Indian, Norse, Babylonian, Aztec, Maori, or other cultures. This choice of concepts of god I will discuss is somewhat arbitrary, but to discuss more than this would entail a far longer work than I am committed to at present. One must draw the line somewhere. The respect in which it is not arbitrary is that these three concepts of god discussed include, to my mind, most of the main putative properties of god discussed in the various cultures. In this section I will be concerned with the similarities and differences between the various concepts of god, and what the central characteristics are of each view. To a lesser extent, I will also consider whether these views articulate coherent concepts.
I will then (in Section 3) turn to the issue of what it is that makes it correct to call something a god. If for a moment we grant that there may be a number of distinct concepts of god (which I will have warmed us up to in Section 2), what makes them all concepts of a single thing, god, and not numerous distinct concepts, which have nothing in common except that they all happen to have the word “god” associated with them? In other words, what makes us assume that GOD is similar to, for example, ANIMAL, in the sense that distinct concepts of god are related to GOD in the same way that BIRD, FISH, MAMMAL, and so on are related to ANIMAL? That is, what is the connection?
To investigate this, I will be looking at a number of alternative views about GOD. According to one category of responses, it is required that for something to be a god it must hold certain intrinsic properties—for example to be a god is to be supernatural or omnipotent. An immediate worry of this approach is that we always seem to find counter-examples—supposed beings that in everyday language we would want to call gods, but are excluded by these definitions. For example, on many pantheistic views God is understood completely naturalistically, and Greek gods were not omnipotent. In reply to this we might either bite the bullet and say that such supposed beings are really not gods (which not only goes against natural language, but also seems unfairly arbitrarily exclusionary), or assert that GOD is a cluster concept, or give up on this category of responses as being adequate. An alternative category of approaches is one that is more extrinsic or person-centred, in the sense that we first look at certain aspects of the person using the term, rather than focusing on supposed intrinsic properties of gods. This ranges from the simplistic (but seemingly popular) view that something is a god if someone chooses to call it “God”. If I choose to call my chair “God” then, for me, my chair really is a god. This view gets bogged down in the obvious problem that it makes the word “god” essentially meaningless—anything can count as a god if someone stipulates it to be so. More sophisticated approaches look at the psychology (emotions, attitudes, cognition, etc) of the believer or person doing the considering. One such view is that for something to be a god it must be worthy of worship. Typically, worship gets associated with being held in the highest regard, or being the object of ultimate concern, or being whatever an individual cares most about, or of deserving loyalty, devotion, commitment, or reverence. A potential problem with this approach is that arguably an object of worship must be a person. I’ll consider this possible problem in more detail. Alternatively, the classic Anselmian definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” fits into this psychological approach, since it takes thought, conceivability and cognition as central. The aim is then to ascertain the characteristics of the type of being that fulfils such a criterion or criteria (what would the greatest possible being which one may conceive be like?), and hence, which putative concepts of god it excludes and which it includes. In some senses this is similar to the worship worthiness definition (sometimes they get equated, as sometimes it is assumed that only the greatest conceivable being can be worshipped), and I will compare these two approaches. A fourth person-centred view looks at the functional roles that belief that a god exists plays, which non-belief fails to play, in a person’s psychology. Examples of such functional roles might be that belief in the existence of a god gives a meaning to life (however this gets spelled out), or allows one to understand one’s place in the world. The task is then to determine which (if any) putative concepts of god fulfil the required function or functions, and, as such, can properly be called concepts of god.
An issue that comes up for many of these psychological views is whether we should look at what one actually thinks or believes (could one be hypnotised into thinking about greatness differently or sincerely worshipping a chair?), what one would do if one was in the ideal situation (such in a proper state of mind, and given the relevant facts), or what one would do if one was an ideal thinker (with a God’s eye view, so to speak). Another issue is to what extent these types of positions allow for more than one possible concept of god. How many putative concepts of god do these allow as actual concepts of god? Is it possible to say that, for one of these views, something might be a god for one person, but not a god for another, depending on a person’s attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, emotions, etc., with respect to worship worthiness, greatness, or what satisfies the functions? Does this mean that “god” has an indexical component, or we ought to be pluralistic? Do any of these approaches include concepts that we would not normally consider concepts of god? Also, for the fourth view, which functions are the proper functions, and how do we identify them?
Finally (in Section 4) I will summarise what I have done and make some concluding remarks about what I think counts as a concept of god and which putative concepts of god may correctly be called concepts of god.
But, before turning to this, I will make one final introductory remark, to do with whether we should take claims about any god literally or not.
1.1 Meaning what we say
All of this discussion above has been assuming that when we talk about gods we are talking in a literal way, and are meaning exactly what we say. That is, when people make claims about God existing, or about God’s nature, actions, properties, characteristics, and so on—in other words putting flesh on some particular concept of god, they really are making literal claims about certain aspects of reality or certain aspects of how reality may conceivably be, independent of human thought. In contrast to this, periodically in the history of religion the issue has been raised as to whether talk of gods is intended, or ought, to be always taken literally. D. Z. Phillips[8] reminds us of the story of Socrates, who says, speaking of the mythic stories that he is telling, that he believes them to be true but won’t insist on all the details. Once we start refraining from insisting on all the details of what we are saying, then we are moving away from literal language, and we are moving into analogical, metaphorical, figurative, mythic, symbolic, poetic, instrumental, fictional, mystical, spiritual, and/or expressivist language. When this happens, at the very least this makes the task of figuring out meanings and concepts that much harder. Ninian Smart points out a further complication, as the distinction between literal and non-literal language is far from clear. He writes:
When a non-literal use is relatively indispensable, we count it as
analogical. When it can fairly easily
be translated away, we are inclined to look on it as “merely
metaphorical.” It is always possible
for an analogical use to come to be regarded as the literal, when it has
established a certain dominance and commonness.[9]
He points out a connection between deeming something literal and either its historical or dominant usages. Sometimes the historical aspect takes precedence and sometimes the current dominant aspect takes precedence with respect to whether it is deemed literal. As an example of change, Smart informs us that “broadcasting”, in the sense of radio-communication, is now almost always uncritically accepted literally, but it was originally used analogically or metaphorically—the original literal use was in the context of farming. Additionally, change in the meaning of words, and when words are used literally or non-literally, is also linked to conceptual change. I take it we would want to say that the concept BROADCAST has changed during the 20th century.
Phillips also reminds us of Wittgenstein’s philosophical joke—speaking of Michelangelo’s painting of the Creation of Adam, Wittgenstein says that given that Michelangelo is very good, it can be expected that he will have got the details right. “But to say God is in the picture is not to say that it is a picture of God”.[10] With this in mind, we have to be careful. Since it is not a picture of God, we presumably cannot say that Michelangelo thought God is x metres tall, or his hair is this colour and length, or that he even has hair (or for that matter is male). But presumably we could still say that Michelangelo’s thought was that God is a creator, and created Adam (and perhaps also that God has certain supposed masculine characteristics). Again, claims that “God is a fortress” or “God is fire” are presumably not meant literally, and might, for the sake of argument, be taken as really meaning that God is strong or overpowering, respectively. But what about “God is good”? In some contexts “good” is taken literally, and in others it has a meaning that is of a different kind than that which we would apply to human situations.[11] Where should we draw the line—when is the god-talk literal, and when is it non-literal? I will give four further examples that draw out certain issues and themes. Towards one end we get those like Phillips’ depiction of Mackie. Phillips writes (without reference):
[Mackie] said that for there to be an event called the Last Judgement,
the details, as depicted by Michelangelo, would at least have to approximate to
what will be the case.[12]
Slightly more moderate is Mackie’s actual position in The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God, where he writes:
[A] somewhat old-fashioned Christian may believe, literally, that there
will be a last judgement … [but] need not … suppose that there will be a scene
as that depicted by Michelangelo on the wall of the Sistine Chapel.[13]
Mackie then goes on to say that such talk of God can be taken metaphorically, but that such metaphors can surely be unpacked and that the intended meaning can be stated explicitly. More towards the other end we get those who might be called non-realist, anti-realists, eliminativists, or atheistic theists, who typically regard god-talk (at least when they engage in it) as merely providing an ethical framework within which to adhere to certain shared fundamental values. Don Cupitt and Lloyd Geering[14] can be considered to be in this camp. And further over again we get those who have thought that god-talk is meaningless or mistaken, in the same way that metaphysics (variously understood) is meaningless or mistaken. Paradigmatically, those inspired by Logical Positivism thought it meaningless; and those inspired by, for example, Immanuel Kant, Martin Luther, Friedrich Schlieermacher, Soren Kierkegaard, Albrecht Ritschl, Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Heidegger and/or Jacques Derrida have tended to be anti-metaphysical and anti-onto-theological discourse.[15] In other words, the first position was that god-talk should for the most part be taken literally. The second position was that god-talk can be taken literally, but need not be. But in cases where it is not literal it can surely be translated into literal language. The third position was that god-talk, best understood, should not be taken literally (since it is false when taken literally) and although it may be translatable it is better (for ethical reasons) to continue with the god-talk than to discard it in favour of literal language. And the fourth position was that god-talk cannot or should not be taken literally at all. I identify five separate issues intertwined in these positions. One, to what extent can we clearly distinguish literal from non-literal language? Two, to what extent do we take claims about God or gods literally? Three, in cases where we don’t take the claim literally, to what extent can we translate it into literal language? Four, even if we can translate non-literal god-talk, ought we do so? And five, in situations where we may both legitimately and desirably translate, how do we uncontroversially get the correct translation? In this work I will sidestep all of these issues (as interesting as some of them may be). I will assume without argument that it is possible to make literal claims about God or gods. I will assume that the claims about any gods that I discuss in this work are meant literally (though I will flag those that I think may be questionable). I intend all of my claims and discussions of God and gods to be taken literally (except for the idioms; I aim for these to be clearly identifiable and understandable in the context).
2 Concepts of god
To reiterate, in this section I wish to examine some of the main
putative characteristics of various gods, via a discussion of a number of
putative concepts of god. I will divide
this into three main subsections, focusing on in turn, theism, negative theology,
and a god as a proper part of the natural world. My main purpose in this section is to compare some of the ways
that the putative nature of certain supposed gods has been expressed and
examined in the literature, to get an idea of the sorts of positions
available. Thus, it will be mostly
exposition, drawing distinctions, and taxonomising, with comparatively little
critical discussion with respect to whether such concepts might plausibly be
instantiated in the world.
2.1 Theism
When one looks at theistic discussions of the concept of god, there appears to be a tendency by many to aim for necessary and sufficient conditions. But it turns out that there are almost as many different accounts of what this amounts to as there are writers on the subject. I show in this subsection that “theism” is a very vague and ambiguous word. I will divide this subsection into two main parts, followed by a summary. Firstly, I will look at relatively recent discussions of theism, in which the theistic god is often equated with what some call omniGod or the “god of the philosophers”. Secondly, I will look at how, historically, “theism” was developed and used.
2.1.1 The god of the philosophers
If we focus primarily on recent discussions of theism, the first thing to note is that many writers on the subject simply start out assuming that we are all clear about what it is they are referring to, without the need for them to elaborate on definitions. And so these people get stuck into discussing the pros and cons of theism, its coherence or plausibility, the rationality or irrationality of being a theist, and so on. This need not be a bad thing, since, if everyone is clear about the meaning of “theism,” there is no need to continuously reinvent the wheel by rehashing definitions. This assumption of the clarity of meaning is supposedly particularly true within one subgroup of writers on theism—analytical philosophers who practice Philosophy of Religion. In “Can There be Alternative Concepts of God?”, John Bishop observes that there is a prevailing assumption amongst these people. He writes:
Such philosophers typically presuppose that theism virtually by
definition requires belief that omniGod exists.[16]
Where Bishop previously defines omniGod as a:
Unique omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, supernatural person who
is creator and sustainer of all else that exists.[17]
Thus, Bishop claims that analytic philosophers of religion typically use “theism” as a technical term to refer to belief in the instantiation of a particular concept of god, which Bishop calls omniGod. In the paper Bishop does not elaborate on to whom he is referring. But I’ll take an educated guess, and dig up some discussions of theism in a number of analytical Philosophy of Religion texts and dictionaries.
I’ll start with Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism: Arguments for and against the Existence of God—arguably the analytical Philosophy of Religion textbook. Mackie tells us that he accepts Richard Swinburne’s identification of theism’s central doctrine as belief in the existence of a god who is literally understood to be:
A person without a body (i.e. a spirit), present everywhere, the
creator and sustainer of the universe, a free agent, able to do everything
(i.e. omnipotent), knowing all things, perfectly good, a source of moral
obligation, immutable, eternal, a necessary being, holy, and worthy of worship.[18]
While it is the case that both these definitions of “theism” above are fairly specific—both claim that the central doctrine of theism is belief in the instantiation of a certain, very specific, concept of god—they are both slightly different in the spelling out of such a god’s properties. That is, Mackie’s definition clearly explicitly adds more than the omniGod definition. These further properties are that of being present everywhere, a free agent, a source of moral obligation, immutable, eternal, a necessary being, holy, and worthy of worship. Is this difference significant? Some of Mackie’s additional properties appear to be entailed by the omniGod definition, and so it is probably not necessary to explicitly spell them out in the definition. But it is also clear that Mackie adds a number of distinct properties. In between the clear-cut cases, there are some more arguable points. These arguable points would need a far more detailed fleshing out than I will give here, but I’ll just briefly go through the differences.
· Being present everywhere would presumably be connected to God being a sustainer of his creation, assuming that to sustain all parts of the universe in existence God would need to be present at all parts,
· Being a free agent might be fleshed out via the creator part, assuming that creation of all else that exists is a completely free act,
· A source of moral obligation is certainly an addition, since this is apparently buying into the Divine Command metaethical theory, which is not mentioned in the omniGod articulation,
· Immutability may tie in with the omni-properties, assuming change implies the possibility of improvement, which implies an initial lack (this idea of change and growth is something that, in contrast, panentheists prefer),
· Being eternal might tie in with the sustainer part, since to sustain the universe one needs to exist at least as long as the universe (though there are further complications about the metaphysics of time),
· A necessary being is a clear addition,
· Holiness and his worship worthiness are probably connected to omnibenevolence, if we assume that only perfectly good beings are holy or worthy of worship (though I’ll elaborate on worship worthiness in Section 3.2.2 below).
Thus, omniGod theism is clearly entailed by Mackie’s theism, but the entailment does not to go the other way. Someone may be an omniGod theist but not be a theist according to Mackie, since that person might not accept one or more of the added properties. The issue we need to consider at this point is whether these additions are substantial and significant enough such that we are talking about two different concepts of god. Has there been a conceptual change through the addition of the further properties? I take it to be an open question as to whether omniGod theists and Mackie’s theists are talking about the same concept of god, as it would depend on how strict we are with respect to the need to specify necessary and sufficient conditions. We might accept that both articulate the same concept if we allow that such a theistic concept of god is a cluster concept. That is, given a list of putative properties of the theistic god, one may be a theist and yet only accept a subset of the list (i.e. reject one or more properties on the list as properties of God). If we take this option, then we must address issues to do with which properties are included on the list, what percentage of the properties on the list must be accepted for there to be no conceptual shift, and whether any properties on the list remain necessary properties for theism. But I will not develop this discussion further here.
Perhaps it will have been noticed that I have been referring to Mackie’s definition of theism and not Swinburne’s definition. This is because when we turn to Swinburne himself we get a slightly different account than Mackie’s depiction of Swinburne would suggest. In fact, Swinburne appears to give two different views on his first two pages. Firstly, on page 2, just prior to giving the list that I quoted above, Swinburne tells us that the “book is concerned with sentences which purport to affirm the existence of a being with one or more of the following properties”.[19] That is, Swinburne is explicit that such a being does not have to have all the properties, but merely one or more. As to theism, Swinburne is a little unclear, but what he seems to be suggesting here, given that his book is entitled The Coherence of Theism, is that the characteristic of theism is belief in the existence of a being with one of more of the properties listed, not necessarily all the properties (I’ll call this Swinburne-2). This appears to be a cluster concept in which only one of the properties needs to be accepted. So, on this understanding one person might be a theist and believe in the existence of a god who is a creator and sustainer (but with none of the other properties). And another person might be a theist and believe in the existence of a god who knows everything (but with none of the other properties). To me, these hardly seem like articulations of the same concept of god, since the putative entities have very different properties.
Secondly, prior to giving this definition of theism, Swinburne starts his book with a different definition. He writes:
By theist, I understand a man [person] who believes that there is a
God. By a ‘God’ he understands
something like a ‘person without a body (i.e. a spirit), who is eternal, free,
able to do anything, knows everything, is perfectly good, is the proper object
of human worship and obedience, the creator and sustainer of the
universe’. Christians, Jews, and
Muslims are all in the above sense theists.
Many theists also hold further beliefs about God, …[20]
Notable omissions are: present everywhere, immutable, necessary, holy, and a source of moral obligation. Added is the property of being a proper object of human obedience. And it seems like on this version all listed properties are necessary for theism (I’ll call this Swinburne-1). Swinburne also footnotes:
I am using this word [person] in its modern sense. Some theists of course also wish to maintain
that God is ‘three persons in one substance’.
But in claiming this they are using ‘person’ in a special and rather different
sense, as a translation (and, I suspect, a rather unsatisfactory one) of the
Latin persona and the Greek
ύπόστασις.[21]
So much for having a single, uncontroversial, view of theism—three writers and four different definitions (plus a complication regarding the meaning of “person”). And all writers can be considered strongly analytical philosophers. But wait, things get worse. In Concepts of Deity Huw Parri Owen gives his definition of theism:
[B]elief in one God, the Creator, who is infinite, self-existent,
incorporeal, eternal, immutable, impassible, simple, perfect, omniscient and
omnipotent[22]
Owen further states that the properties from incorporeal onwards in his definition are entailed by the first four properties. Thus, strictly speaking, if he is correct about this entailment Owen only needs to say that the theistic god is a unity, a creator, infinite and self-existent. This entailment is questionable, but I shall not pursue this potential problem here. A few further clarification points are required. At first glance, one striking omission from Owen’s definition, in contrast to the four definitions above, is the property of omnibenevolence or moral perfection. However, Owen ties this into the property of perfection, as he takes it that perfection entails moral perfection. Another apparent omission is that of being a person. However, throughout his explanation and elaboration of his definition, Owen appears to implicitly assume that the concept of god under discussion includes personhood, since he often refers to God as “he”, he writes of God being loving, he writes of God’s knowledge, and so on. More explicitly, some 40 pages on, Owen connects God’s incorporeal nature with being pure Spirit or infinite Spirit, and this with being the “archetype of personality”. I take this to mean that God is claimed to be a person, assuming that if something is the archetype of personality, it itself hold the property of being a person. Again, I will not question this entailment, since my point is merely to clarify the concept of god under discussion.
And another definition: In Philosophical Concepts of Atheism, Ernest Nagel writes:
[By] theism I shall mean the view which holds … that the heavens and
the earth and all that they contain owe their existence and continuance in
existence to the wisdom and will of a supreme, self-consistent, omnipotent,
omniscient, righteous and benevolent being, who is distinct from, and
independent of, what he has created.[23]
On page 13 Nagel upgrades benevolence to omnibenevolence, making this position closest to Bishop’s omniGod position. Perhaps the main difference is that supernatural and unique are excluded, and self-consistent and righteous are included. Further, Nagel writes:
Theism as I conceive it is a theological proposition, not a statement
of a position that belongs primarily to religion. On my view, religion as a historical and social phenomenon is
primarily an institutionalized cultus or practice, which possesses
identifiable social functions and which expresses certain attitudes men take to
the world.[24]
Here, Nagel is drawing a distinction between theology and religion. Theism is a theological, not religious term, to the extent that theism is not about historical or social practices, functions or phenomena.
Summarising things so far. On the whole it seems to me that five of the six articulations (excluding Swinburne-2) are either all different articulations of the same concept of god (especially if we take this concept of god to be a cluster concept), or are articulations of concepts of god that are very similar to each other. I am more inclined to the former view, though I take this to be a debate about what constitutes a concept, when concepts change, and the nature of identity relations. For the sake of simplicity, I will call all these positions omniGod-like concepts of god. I exclude Swinburne-2 because it seems far too sparse and seems to allow for articulations that have no or few properties in common to be the same concept of god. In contrast to the omniGod-like definitions, though similar to Swinburne-2, there are those who, while still claiming that the central doctrine of theism is belief in the instantiation of a certain specified concept of god, take the theistic concept of god to be far more minimal, and less specific, in its central claims. For example, in God Without the Supernatural: A Defense of Scientific Theism, Peter Forrest writes:
I restrict the word “God” to mean a personal deity, and “theism” to
mean belief in a personal deity. Hence,
believers in an impersonal deity will, strictly speaking, be considered
atheists.[25]
That is, Forrest uses “theism” to refer exclusively to belief in a deity understood as a person, and he further explicitly contrasts theism with Nirguna Brahman and also nontheistic pantheism (as expounded by Michael Levine[26]), which are both impersonal concepts of god. It is unclear in this context whether Forrest is intending for “deity” to have the same meaning as “god”. If he is, then we can rightly compare Forrest’s explanation with the other explanations above. If he is not, then it is unclear what “deity” is adding to the definition. I will assume the former, if for no other reason than that Forrest does not mention this issue. By not including the properties of omnibenevolence or moral perfection, Forrest seemingly accepts that he allows for the belief in an artist-god (who creates the natural world for purely aesthetic reasons, and has a dark, immoral side) to be a form of theism. In addition, Forrest also apparently allows theism to include such things as belief in a god who is not omnipotent, or not creator of the universe, and so on. This is something that the omniGod-like articulations would not allow for. And he also seemingly includes panentheism as a form of theism, where panentheists typically hold that the universe is God’s body, and God is not separate from the world. Thus, it seems to me that Forrest’s theistic concept of god, like Swinburne-2, is significantly wider than any of the omniGod-like versions discussed above, and it is obvious that while Forrest’s theistic concept of god includes omniGod, it may also include other concepts of god. And hence, it is clear that Forrest is not one of Bishop’s “typical analytical philosophers of religion” (I don’t exclude Swinburne from being a “typical analytical philosopher of religion”, since I think Swinburne-2 is an exception to his general thinking).
In Arguing for Atheism: An introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Robin Le Poidevin’s approach is to defend atheism, and thus writes on the first page of his introduction:
An atheist is one who denies the existence of a personal,
transcendent, creator of the universe, rather than one who simply lives life
without reference to such a being. A theist
is one who asserts the existence of such a being.[27]
In this respect, Le Poidevin takes a mid-point view between the narrower type of omniGod-like theism and the wider type of theism that Forrest takes. That is, he adds creator and transcendence to Forrest’s view, but leaves out such things as omnipotence, omnibenevolence and sustainer of creation, with respect to omniGod-like definitions. Is this omniGod (or even omniGod-like)? Once again, our answer to this question will depend on how we are understanding the concept. If it is a cluster concept, then how many properties can we take away before we have changed the concept? I am inclined to think that Le Poidevin’s theism takes away too many properties to be rightly considered to be omniGod-like theism.
As a further complication, Le Poidevin also gives a slightly different definition in his glossary when he writes of theism:
In its most minimal form, the hypothesis that there is a creator of the
universe. Traditional forms of theism
have also ascribed omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness and benevolence
to the creator.[28]
Here Le Poidevin only requires that the theistic god be a creator, though his articulation of traditional forms of theism seems to be an articulation of omniGod-like theism (minus explicit mention of personhood or sustainer). Perhaps what is interesting is that while Forrest’s wide view of the theistic god only includes personhood, Le Poidevin’s wide (minimal) view only requires that of being a creator. Surely, like the different views allowable in Swinburne-2, these are two very different views regarding a theistic concept of god.
Another mid-point view is the view that is expressed by Anthony Kenny in The God of the Philosophers.[29] Kenny appears to equate the god of the philosophers with the traditional view of God in western theism. The two characteristics that Kenny takes to be essential to such a position are omniscience and omnipotence. And presumably for omniscience to make sense God would also have to be a person. On this view there is no mention of creator or goodness. In contrast Brian Davies adds all-goodness when he writes: “According to classical theism, God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good.”[30]
Yet another mid-point view is Levine’s, when he writes:
Theism is the belief in a ‘personal’ God which is in some sense is
separate from (i.e. transcends) the world.
(Theists just about always believe God to be a “person.” But few theists hold that God is completely
transcendent.)[31]
Thus, like Forrest, Le Poidevin, Kenny and Davies, Levine has a wider view than the omniGod-like articulations. However, in contrast to Forrest he adds separateness from the world. Also, what is interesting about Levine’s account is that, unlike the other writers mentioned so far, with the exception of Swinburne-2, he suggests that it is possible to have exceptions in which some theists don’t hold these properties to be characteristics of god. That is, Levine seems open to the small, though logical, possibility that a theist may not believe God to be a “person”, where by “person” he is referring to a:
‘Minded’ Being that possesses the characteristic properties of a
‘person,’ such as having ‘intentional’ states, and the associated capacities
like the ability to make decisions.[32]
Levine does not elaborate on this, since his emphasis is on analysing the pantheistic concept of god, but he is clear that he thinks that the forms of pantheism that are non-personalistic are also non-theistic. So, I am unsure of what he has in mind. It would be strange if he thinks of “theism” as a cluster concept, because he does not include very many properties. It is possible that he is thinking of theism more as a tradition that a specific set of doctrines (and I will look more at this approach below in Section 2.1.2).
Another wider view definition of “theism” is Garth Kemerling’s version on his Internet website, A Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names, in which he defines theism as:
Belief in the existence of
god as a perfect being deserving of worship.[33]
Given that this is merely a dictionary definition, Kemerling does not
elaborate on what perfection and worship worthiness means. Some people argue that perfection and
worship worthiness necessarily entails many of the other omniGod-like
properties.[34] I am not convinced by this (and shall
discuss this further in Section 3.2.3 below).
Depending on the outcome of this issue, this account may either be
another omniGod-like view, or it may be yet another variant of the wider views.
Summing up what I have been doing so far, I have been indicating that there is a large number of writers who take “theism” to be a technical term referring to belief in a certain specific stipulated concept of god. Just what this concept of god is differs from writer to writer, and we seem to have a continuum of views from narrow, restricted, detailed concepts (with the Mackie view being one of the more detailed) to wider, unrestricted, minimal, less detailed concepts (such as Forrest or Le Poidevin’s glossary position). Many of these narrower formulations seem to be referring to the same concept—which we might call omniGod, or concepts that are very alike, which we may call omniGod-like. In contrast, those that are wider not only allow for omniGod-like concepts, but also allow for other distinct concepts of god that are only similar to the omniGod-like concepts to the extent that they hold at least one property in common. That is, as we move along the continuum from Mackie’s definition to Forrest’s definition, the intension of the term decreases through specifying less detail, and the extension of the term increases. More extreme again, and perhaps at the limit of the continuum, we get definitions of theism like that expressed on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists website, where they define weak theism as the “belief in the existence of one or more gods,” and strong theism as a “positive assertion that (a) particular god(s) exist(s).”[35] And similarly the Collins English Dictionary: “belief in a God or gods”. That is, on this account one is a theist if one asserts that any concept of god is instantiated. Thus, we are far from getting a consensus view about “theism”, even amongst this small survey of mainly (though not completely) analytical philosophers.
But this is not the only way of investigating the concept THEISM, and the concepts of god associated with it. I now turn to look at whether “theism”, as it is plausibly used, need refer to a doctrine that centrally contains the belief in the instantiation of either some stipulated concept of god or any concept of god.
2.1.2 Not just a doctrine
As I said at the beginning of Section 2.1.1, Bishop claims that typically analytical philosophers of religion presuppose that theism (virtually by definition) entails belief in the instantiation of some stipulated concept of god (namely omniGod)—that is, theism is a specific singular doctrine of belief. But Bishop questions this approach, and suggests it might be overturned. Bishop’s central question that he asks is whether it is possible for one to be a theist and yet reject the belief that omniGod exists. And for there to be anything other than a “no” response, one has to hold that theism is not just a doctrine of belief in the existence of omniGod. I have suggested (in Section 2.1.1 above) that a positive answer is possible even accepting that “theism” refers to belief in the instantiation of some stipulated concept of god, since some authors allow for very wide definitions. But Bishop’s questioning in this context (as I understand him) consists not so much in saying what is wrong with this presupposition as a whole, but in merely implicitly assuming that it is wrong and instead implicitly assuming that theism is best understood as a historical religious tradition (containing Christianity as one of its branches). Nowhere does Bishop explicitly explain, or point us to explanations, of why we should understand it in this way. There are two places in Bishop’s paper in which this assumption is suggested. Firstly, in his Section 1 Bishop describes his project as investigating whether there might be any concepts of God (note capital-g) that are (i) alternative—that is, genuinely distinct from omniGod, and (ii) adequate—that is, religiously adequate to the theistic religious tradition, and a possible viable expression of that historical tradition. Secondly, in his Section 9 he addresses issues to do with those “within the Christian branch of theism” who call themselves “Christian atheists”. Bishop thus sees his task as showing how the religious tradition that is theism may allow for alternative concepts of God.[36] But in reply, Bishop’s opponents may say that Bishop has simply changed the subject. While they were stipulating that “theism” is a specific doctrine of belief, Bishop is stipulating that “theism” is a religious tradition. For Bishop’s project to even get off the ground he has to do some prior work to show, at the very least, that “theism” ought not be taken merely as a doctrine of belief in the existence of omniGod.[37] And to be consistent with Bishop’s further claims it also has to be shown what it amounts to, to say that theism is a historical religious tradition with Christianity as one of its branches (and indicate how “theism” has been historically used in such a way).
For the remainder of this section I will investigate whether there are other plausible ways of understanding “theism” besides as referring to a doctrine of belief in the instantiation of some stipulated concept of god. I now turn to a more historical approach, which considers how the use of “theism” arose in a particular cultural environment, and considers some of the words, concepts and positions with which “theism” was oppositionally defined.
Ingolf Dalferth[38] tells us that “theism” is a relatively recent term that post-dates the term “atheism”. Since pre-Socratic times there were those who denied the existence of the Greek or Roman gods; early Christians were called αθεοι because they refused to accept the state cult of the Roman Empire; Nicolaus de Autricuria, a 14th century atheistic materialist and Epicurean atomist, had to renounce that there is nothing to be found in the process of nature but the motion of the combination and separation of atoms; Mersenne said, in the 17th century, that at the time there were some 50,000 atheists in Paris, most so-called because they did not accept the authority of Aristotle; and Spinoza was accused of being an atheist. Dalferth tells us that “atheism” appears to have been introduced into English in 1540, in John Cheke’s translation into Latin of Plutarch’s On Superstition. Further, in 1572 Carlton wrote in his Discourse on the Present State of England that:
The realm is divided into three parties, the Papists, the Atheists, and the Protestants. All three are alike favoured: the first and the second because, being many, we dare not displease them; the third, because having religion, we fear to displease God in them.[39]
In this context atheism is not contrasted with theism, but with the two main western forms of Christianity—Catholicism and Protestantism. The first occurrence of “theism”, as far as Dalferth is aware, is not until Ralph Cudworth’s coining of the term in the preface of his 1678 work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, … wherein all the Reason and the Philosophy of Atheism is confuted. In this context “theism” was coined to label the response to atheism, which had been developing during the Renaissance and early Enlightenment. Thus in their initial usage, of the two terms “atheism” was logically, as well as historically, prior. In English “atheism” was first used to refer to the negation of Catholicism and Protestantism, and “theism” was used to refer to the negation of “atheism”. Initially the issues that these early English atheists were responding to were more to do with, for example, the intervention of providence in the world, rather than with respect to the existence of God. And thus initially theism had to do with asserting the intervention of providence in the world.
But more generally, “atheism” was used to refer to the negation of some particular religion or religious view such as that put forward by Jews, Christians, or Muslims. “Theism” was used to refer to any particular philosophical response to such atheistic criticisms, negations, rejections, denials, scepticisms, or uncommitted opinions. In this sense, theism, as a philosophical response, is based on reasonableness and evidences that are publicly accessible and acceptable. Consequently, with the development of theism we get an explicit contrast between publicly accessible evidences and private, individual evidences. Thus, on this account, theism is not a religious tradition, but a philosophical response to certain specific (atheistic) rejections of any particular religious tradition or religious view. And, on this account, since Christianity is logically prior to its related theism (given that Christianity is a religious tradition and theism is a reply to some criticism of any specified religious tradition), it is impossible to have a Christian branch of theism (contra Bishop); it would be more appropriate to talk of a theistic branch of Christianity.
In response to this openness regarding the content of theistic belief, Dalferth worries that this means that “theism” becomes vacuous as we get hugely many theisms. But it seems to me better to say that, on this account, both “atheism” and “theism” have indexical components. This is in the sense that the meaning of “atheism” is partly (but not wholly) determined by the context in which it is used, where the context is spelled out in terms of the particular religious belief to which it is used in opposition. And the meaning of “theism” is in turn partly (but not wholly) determined by the meaning of “atheism” as used in a particular context. Thus, the theisms discussed in Section 2.1.1 can be thought of as possible philosophical responses to atheistic criticisms of a certain (possibly vague, possibly common) concept of god within Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This doesn’t mean to say that such theisms discussed in Section 2.1.1 are the totality of what theism is on this view, since (a) we might have different initial religious traditions, (b) the atheistic rejection might be with respect to a different aspect of the specific religious tradition (either a different concept of god within the tradition, or with respect to some other aspect of the tradition that doesn’t refer to concepts of god), and (c) there could be further philosophical theistic responses to the atheistic rejection. And hence, on this understanding of “theism” there is potentially room to answer “yes” to Bishop’s question (depending on the specifics of what the corresponding atheism is denying). Further, this is not necessarily the totality of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. For example one might be a Christian without being a theist. In addition to (a), (b), and (c) above, there is (d) we might have non-theistic (that is, non-philosophical) responses to the atheistic rejections—that is, religious or theological responses to atheistic rejections, which are based on revelation, scripture, authority, tradition, private experience, and so on. In other words, I am saying that certain forms of Christianity might be non-theistic in the sense of being non-philosophical, as discussed above, and not in the sense of not requiring belief in the existence of God (as is sometimes thought of when considering non-theistic religions). But since (1) “theism” is not a tradition on this understanding (but a reply to a rejection of a tradition), and (2) it is impossible to have a Christian branch of theism, this understanding of theism is not consistent with Bishop’s position.
Dalferth tells us that with time, as further concepts
were distinguished, “theism” was used in opposition to other words, though
“atheism” remained and remains the dominant one. Firstly, when atheism and mere scepticism were distinguished,
theism was contrasted with agnosticism, where agnosticism is understood as the
refusal to commit to any answer about the big metaphysical questions.
Secondly, theism was contrasted with deism. Since “deism” comes from the Latin word
“deus”, meaning God, and “theism” is etymologically related to the Greek word
for God, “theos”, for some time both words were used interchangeably. Ray Billington[40]
tells us that the terms began to be distinguished in the late 17th
century (but does not cite sources). In
contrast, Dalferth tells us that “deism” was first used by P. Viret in 1564 in Instruction
Chrestienne, and both were used interchangeably throughout the 18th
century by Voltaire and others. He also
writes that Diderot first distinguished the terms in Oeuvres, where he
used “deism” to refer to the denial of revelation, and “theism” to refer to the
acceptance of revelation. Further, in
the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/7) Kant more systematically distinguishes
the two terms.[41] For Kant, while both deists and theists
accept knowledge based on reason (as opposed to knowledge based on revelation),
deists accept only a transcendental theology, whereas theists accept a natural
theology in addition to transcendental theology. This is a distinction based on how we may come to know certain
purported characteristics of God, though in addition certain claims about the
nature of God follow on from this distinction.
Transcendental theology is based entirely on pure reason, through either
“transcendental concepts” in the absence of experience (which is called
onto-theology), or “experience in general” (which is called
cosmo-theology). With this method of
reasoning one cannot determine “the nature of an original being” (God) any more
specifically than that it is transcendental, that is, “it possesses all
reality”. And so the deist sees God as
merely “cause of the world” (that is, “original being or supreme cause” or,
more simply, a “blind” creator), and makes no further claim as to God’s
nature. In contrast, natural theology
allows one access to “concepts borrowed from nature (from the nature of our
soul)”, and thus allows one to determine the nature of God more precisely via
analogy with nature. This allows the
theist to grant that God, “through understanding and freedom, contains in
itself the ultimate ground of everything else” (or, more simply, is sustainer
as well as creator). Through observing
the constitution, order and unity of the world, and the two kinds of causality
(that of nature and that of freedom) the theist sees God as not merely the
cause, but also the “Author of the world” and “a living God (summa
intelligentia)”, that is, a supreme intelligence who actively participates
in his creation (the world). Billington, while not attributing views to any specific authors,
analogises the difference between deism and theism by considering clocks and
Newtonian mechanics. He
tells us that the deistic god is the non-interventionist god, the absentee
god. It is the Newtonian god—God, as
the perfect Mathematician and Architect, who creates a perfect universe, like a
perfect clock, which never needs rewinding.
The deistic god then steps back (so to speak) and allows his perfect
creation to unfold without his involvement.
He watches on, and even if he ceased to exist his creation could still
exist without him. Many deists tended
to think of such a god as more perfect than a god who needs to get involved in
his creation. But Billington tells us
that there were some 18th century deists (no names mentioned) who
held that God acts in the world in some respects. These actions include: (1) divine providence, but only in the
material world, (2) God’s intervention in human affairs at a moral or spiritual
level, and (3) life after death.
Eventually though, this interventionism was completely rejected by later
deists. Thus, to compare, the deistic
god is completely transcendent whereas the theistic god, in addition to being
transcendent creator, must continuously sustain the universe if it is to
continue existing. The theistic god may
be thought of as the Great Rewinder (to continue the clock analogy)—every
moment of existence happens because God is present, and if he ceases to exist,
so would the universe. In addition, the
theistic god potentially performs miracles and supernatural events outside the
physical laws, in contrast with the deistic god. And the theistic god is free to intervene through people such as
preachers, priests and prophets and, in the case of Christianity, Jesus Christ.
Thirdly, Dalferth observes that with Kant theism gets
implicitly distinguished from polytheism—the view that there is more than one
god, and consequently from forms of polytheism such as henotheism—the view that
there is more than one god but one chooses to worship just one of them (and
ignores or rejects the others).
Likewise, it is clear that Kant’s theism can also be distinguished from
kathenotheism (as defined by Smart[42])—the
view that there is more than one god but one looks at just one god at a time,
and, within a particular narrow view, considers that god supreme (but then one
can do the same with another god, and thus may say, at different times, that
several gods are each individually supreme).
And also it can be distinguished from monolatry—the view that there is
more than one god, but there is only one that deserves worship. Similarly, theism is very similar to
monotheism (and the words are sometimes used synonymously), since both are about
belief in a singular god. The similarity
is greater if monotheism is also taken as belief in a living or personal god,
though, if this is not granted, deism would also be a type of monotheism (along
with pantheism, panentheism, and other distinct concepts).
Fourthly,
theism was contrasted with pantheism. I
will just survey some of the main themes of pantheism, with respect to
contrasts with theism. The word
“pantheism” is derived from two Greek words, “pan” meaning all and “theos” meaning God.
Pantheism is thus the belief that all is God, or, in other words, that
the universe and God are one. The
pantheistic god is the entirety of the universe, and it is not a person.[43] Hence it cannot have knowledge or
intentional states, or any other attributes that intentional agents might
uniquely have. From this opposition of
theism and pantheism we get two important characteristics. Firstly, that of personhood—the theistic god
is a person, in contrast to the pantheistic denial of personhood. Secondly, that of distinctness from the
universe—the theistic god is distinct from the universe, in contrast to the
pantheistic equating of the universe and God.
The theistic god is considered superior to the universe, in the sense of
ontological superiority. This
ontological superiority is the type of superiority that a creator has over his
creation; God does not depend on anything else for his existence, whereas the
universe depends on God for its existence.
Summarising
the totality of these conceptual contrasts, theism is centrally:
1.
A coherent (philosophical) fleshed out attempt at
providing a defence or explanation of a religious view or an aspect of a
religious tradition as a response to a given (atheistic) criticism of that view
or tradition (versus atheism),
2.
A doctrine of belief that contains a commitment to
certain metaphysical claims about the world (versus agnosticism),
3.
A doctrine of belief that God is a sustainer as well
as creator of everything else that exists (versus deism),
4.
A doctrine of belief that God is an interventionist
god—God actively participates in the world (versus deism),
5.
A doctrine of belief that God is supremely intelligent
(versus deism)
6.
A doctrine of belief that God is unique, and there are
no other gods (versus polytheism)
7.
A doctrine of belief that God is ontologically
distinct from its creation, the world (versus pantheism)
8.
A doctrine of belief that God is a person (versus
pantheism)
Taken together, we see that we are
getting a closer match with the characteristics given by the authors discussed
in Section 2.1.1 above. But the match
is not perfect to the extent that in this section no mention has been made of
the omni-properties (that is, omnipotence, omniscience, and
omnibenevolence). Thus, while not
omniGod, the putative being with the properties as described in 1 to 8 has many
similarities with omniGod. And so, with
this in mind, while we may still answer “yes” to Bishop’s question (regarding
being a theist yet rejecting belief in omniGod), we may worry about whether it
is “genuinely distinct” from omniGod (Bishop’s requirement (ii)), if genuine
distinctness means having almost no properties in common. But it is also clear that Bishop (in his
1998a) must reject both of these two broad alternative views of “theism” that I
have discussed above (in Sections 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, respectively), since the
view that theism is a tradition is incompatible with either of these.
2.1.3 Summarising
the meaning of “theism”
In this section I have looked at
three broad approaches to understanding “theism”. The first (discussed in Section 2.1.1 above) takes theism to be a
doctrine of belief in the instantiation of some concept of god (I’ll call this
theism-I). This may be either any
concept of god (theism-Ia), or some specific stipulated concept of god
(theism-Ib). If it is stipulated, then
there are competing views within this approach with respect to which putative
god-properties are central. Typical
properties mentioned include omni-properties (omnipotent, omniscient,
omnibenevolent), creator and sustainer of the world, and a person. But sometimes other properties are mentioned
as well, such as a necessary being, simple, perfect, supreme, eternal,
impassible, all-present, free, unique, immutable, infinite, supernatural, a
spirit, holy, worthy of worship, a proper object of human obedience, and the
source of moral obligation. On some
definitions only one or two properties are required. These various understandings of theism, in which the concept of
god is stipulated in this way, have tended to be called classical theism,
traditional theism, or non-radical theism.
The second approach (theism-II) is articulated by Bishop (in (1998a), as
discussed in Section 2.1.2 above).[44] This is the view that theism is a historical
religious tradition, which includes Judaism, Christianity and Islam as its main
branches. I have not attempted to
explicate what this might amount to in any detail. If we were to be exhaustive, this would be a monumental task,
going back perhaps almost 4000 years to the time of Abraham, when Islam split
from the other two branches, or even further still. If we weren’t exhaustive, we would have to pick and choose the
central issues, and presumably to do this we would look to certain canonical
figures in the tradition, certain themes that are repeated, and historical
interpretative debates that have flowed from these. On this account there is no initial discussion of concepts
of god, and to investigate which concepts of god are theistic concepts of god
requires a lot of interpretative investigation from within the tradition. It is potentially open regarding whether any
one branch allows for a number of different competing concepts of god.[45] The third approach (theism-III) is the view
that theism is a philosophical response to some given atheistic rejection of a
religious tradition or view (discussed in Section 2.1.2 above). In addition, details may be further
specified through contrast with agnosticism, polytheism, deism, and
pantheism. Given these additional
oppositions, on theism-III we get many of the same putative characteristics of
God as theism-Ib (minus omni-properties), and consequent similar (but not
identical) articulations of a concept or concepts of god. Moreover, the definitions within theism-Ib
(especially towards the Mackie end of the continuum) can be seen as precising
definitions[46] of
theism-III. That is, each is an attempt
at reducing the vagueness of the already existing word (defined lexically in
theism-III) by stipulating narrower uses of the word. That there are competing definitions should come as no surprise
given the vagueness of theism-III.
Theism-Ia and theism-II almost seem the reverse of precising
definitions, in the sense that they both increase the number of possible
theistic concepts of god. Theism-II
might also be considered a persuasive definition in some contexts. What I mean is that many Christians, for
example, might be more willing to consider alternative theistic (theism-II)
concepts of god rather than consider non-theistic (theism-Ib) concepts of god
(where we are actually talking about the same concept of god). And so one might choose to use theism-II if
one were advocating the possibility of Christianity without the belief that
omniGod exists.
2.2 Negative theology
In some sense, negative theology is the odd one out in discussions of different concepts of god. Whereas all other positions give fairly fleshed out positive accounts of the nature of God, those who defend negative theology typically completely refrain from giving positive statements about God’s supposed nature. To put it one way, negative theology is the project in which one looks at various positive theologies—claims about the nature of God—and finds them all inadequate. When one is engaged in negative theology one analyses various other putative concepts of god to show how they are all insufficient articulations of the nature of God. A negative theologian’s response is, when confronted with a claim about God’s nature, to say God is “not this, not that,” (“neither-nor”), and often one doing negative theology will resort to producing lists of what God is not. Thus, there is not one negative theology, but numerous negative theologies, each in response to positive theologies.
A person who does negative theology is a sceptic, not with respect to God, but with respect to our ability to understand or express in language God’s nature. At heart, he or she wants to say that language is always inadequate to completely articulate the full nature of God. Because of this problem with language and the possible resultant excessive use of language,[47] negative theology has recently been linked with deconstruction, the view put forward by Derrida (as a modification of a view put forward by Heidegger). Similarly, the god of negative theology has been linked with différance—one of the main points of discussion in deconstructive enterprises. This is a mistaken link. And in looking at why, we may have a clearer view of negative theology. In the case of deconstruction, any interpretation of a text is only one of many possible interpretations, and any claim about what is the case invites the criticism that it is only partial, at best. This is because language supposedly always says more than what we intend it to say, and it is infinitely reinterpretable. It thus becomes impossible to talk in absolutes, and it is language that is excessive in its meaning. For deconstruction, language can be said to exceed God, since différance precedes, by its very possibility, any act, and is the source of everything. In contrast, with negative theology, God, as ineffable, transcendent, and infinite, exceeds the language available to express God’s nature. It is language that lacks the necessary range of expression, and thus God exceeds the bounds of language.
To some extent, negative theology also invites a comparison with anti-metaphysical sentiments. This is because those in both camps are reluctant to make certain positive claims about reality. However there are some differences: (a) anti-metaphysicians’ claims are usually equally about God and other metaphysical entities alike—God has no special status, and (b) negative theologians don’t discard talk of God completely from claims about the world, but still wish to say something about God (albeit non-positively).
In Does God Exist? An Answer for today Hans Küng[48] gives a useful, if brief, discussion of some of the central characteristics of negative theology.[49] He tells us that a negative theological tradition comes from Neoplatonism, and is included in the works of Pseudo-Dionysius, Scotus Erigena, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, and paradigmatically Nicholas of Cusa (and that other negative theologies have developed in other cultures, such as in Buddhism). He notes that while there are various negative theologies, we may list their central characteristics. These are, (I have reordered and regrouped Küng’s claims in, as I see it, a more systematic way, though kept his phrases essentially the same):
· Concepts/language: God is incomprehensible (cannot be grasped in any concept); God is inexpressible (cannot be fully expressed in any statement); God is indefinable (cannot be defined in any definition); positive statements are inadequate and always, at the same time, need a negation if they are to be true—“God is good” also needs “not good”; positive statements can be translated into the infinite—“God is the good purely and simply”,
· Perception: God is not perceptible, even when his presence is experienced; God is present, even when his absence is experienced; all experiences of God must come through the ambivalence of being and not-being,
· Existence: God may be understood via the ontological difference between being and existent; God is, but is nothing of that which is and is not an existent; God is the hidden mystery of being,
· Transcendence: God transcends everything, but at the same time is immanent in everything—transcendence and immanence coincide in God; God is not outside all that is; God is inherent in the world, yet not absorbed by it; God pervades and is not separate from the world and man; God is infinitely distant, yet closer to us than we are to ourselves; God embraces the world but is not identical with it; God determines the world’s and man’s being from within.
These claims are, to say the least, difficult to understand. To start with, we may question whether we can take them literally. But if we don’t take them literally, it is unclear how we should take them. Whatever the case, I will not get into this interpretative issue here. Even if we do take them literally, they are still difficult to understand fully, and Küng gives no clear explication. For example, I am not entirely sure what is being suggested with respect to the distinction between being and existent. In conversation, Bishop suggests that Küng’s meaning is that an existent is one amongst many beings that are ontologically on a par with each other. For want of a better interpretation, I’ll accept this. When we turn to clearer statements, we may question their coherence. For example, “God is not perceptible, even when his presence is experienced”—surely experiencing God’s presence is an instance of perceiving God. And more clearly, accepting both “God is good” and God is not good” is contradictory if taken literally and in the same sense.
One of the claims above is that God cannot be conceptualised. If this is truly the case, then those doing negative theology cannot be articulating a concept of god. I am willing to entertain this possibility. But if we consider a number of these claims together, we might say that they build together to give us a concept of god, albeit an extremely bare-boned concept. Central to this is that God is something, but the sort of thing that is so different from us as to be indescribable in language. And God is either not understandable or knowable, or not understandable or knowable in regular ways. Further, God is not good, understood in the regular way we might ascribe to fellow humans, and as such the view that such a god exists cannot be criticised on the basis of the Argument from Evil. Similarly, other traditional arguments for or against the existence of God fail to apply to such a concept of god. Smart calls the type of concepts that consist of these sorts of descriptions above “second-order concepts”.[50] Thus for example, a first-order concept of god might include the property of being all-good; a second-order concept of god might include the property of not-to-be-described-by-concepts-such-as-all-good. Given this, I am in favour of saying that the view expressed by negative theologians is a concept of god (contra Küng). And the reluctance to accept that it is a concept can perhaps be put down to piousness, a liking for the mysterious, or wrongly assuming that to have a concept of something we must give first-order necessary and sufficient conditions.
2.3 A proper part of the natural world
While historically in most Western discussions of God there has been a presupposition of a supernatural realm, there is a strong motivation these days to abandon the notion of a dualistic supernatural/natural partitioning of the universe. In part the motivation comes from the success of the sciences in describing the world; in part the motivation comes from various philosophical arguments. I won’t get into the correctness or otherwise of these motivations here (although I find them convincing, myself). The alternative to the two-world view is to posit that there is only one universe, in which everything is contained. Since the motivation for rejecting the two-world view comes in part from the success of the sciences, we typically get a parallel motivation for accepting a broadly naturalistic ontology (however the details of naturalism are construed). If one rejects the supernaturalistic two-world view, then one (who still wants to assert the existence of God) no longer looks for God outside the natural world, but starts the search by looking within the natural world. One possibility is to equate God with the universe in its entirety. This is the pantheistic approach, which I’ve already briefly mentioned in Section 2.1.2 above. The other broad approach is to articulate an account of God as a proper part of the natural world. That is, God is contained within the natural world, but is not equated with the natural world. Since, at first glance, this appears radically implausible to many, I wish to (very) briefly describe some possible features that such a god might have, to (a) add some initial plausibility to the idea, and (b) mention some different properties a god might have, from those already discussed above.
Firstly, those who develop this type of concept of god often start out by denying one of the typically strongest-held presuppositions about God—that God is a substance. What is the alternative? One alternative is to posit that God is a relation. An extremely clear version of this is given by Bishop[51]; an extremely unclear version of this is arguably given by Buber.[52] I’ll give a brief exposition of Bishop’s version.
Bishop aims to develop an orthodox, though radical, Christian theory of the nature of God. It is radical because he wants it to be distinct from omniGod. But it is orthodox because he uses resources already present within the Christian tradition. He centrally uses three Christian doctrines, though admittedly all are used in non-standard ways. First, Bishop makes use of the doctrine of the Trinity. This is a particularly controversial doctrine, and there have been many commentators giving many different interpretations of to what it might amount. Bishop suggests that one acceptable interpretation is the “social” doctrine of the Trinity, which dates back at least to the 12th century Scottish theologian, Richard of St Victor. It is from this that we get the idea that God is a relation. Bishop is not suggesting that this interpretation is the only acceptable interpretation of the Trinity, but is merely saying that it is a valid one, which is still part of the Christian tradition, and as such is potentially useful. The second doctrine is that “God is love.” This statement is usually interpreted as a more poetic or analogical way of really saying that God loves us, or God is loving. After all, to literally say that God is love, while simultaneously holding that God is a person, is surely a category error. But Bishop is saying that we could take it literally, through claiming that God is the relation of love. The third doctrine is the Incarnation. Of course, the standard interpretation of this is that God uniquely became human in the form of Jesus Christ. Bishop suggests that it could, instead, be interpreted that God is realised within natural human existence. And perhaps further that it was paradigmatically realised in the life of Jesus Christ. When taken together, we get a concept of god in which God is literally the interpersonal relationship of love, which is realised in the natural world in certain situations where individual persons stand in the correct form of relation with each other. Bishop thinks that such a concept can be correctly understood as a concept of god. I might add that if we take the everyday saying “love is the greatest” literally, and we take seriously the thought that God is that which none greater can be thought (which I shall discuss further in Section 3.2.3 below), we get a particularly strong candidate concept of god, which moreover is clearly, at least sometimes, instantiated in the world. Thus, this concept has two broad reasons for being a concept of god (and God)—it is a candidate for a greatest being, and it is a concept developed using specific, traditionally accepted doctrines about God from within a religious tradition (that is, Christianity).
Paul Edwards[53] and his commentators briefly discuss the possibility of naturalistic concepts of god, and they approach things a little differently than that discussed above. In total, in his paper Edwards identifies three types of believers in God—what he calls respectively anthropomorphic, metaphysical, and naturalistic. The anthropomorphic account seems best understood as literalist theism. The metaphysical account seems hardly metaphysical, but is rather a non-literal, non-realist, understanding of typical theistic language. The naturalistic account is the one that interests us here. Edwards writes:
A naturalistic believer may be characterised as a person who says that
he believes in God and who then identifies God with some feature of man’s life
and aspirations.[54]
This seems perfectly legitimate, but Edwards is short on specifics, and does not elaborate on, or respond to, this idea directly. One example of this approach is given by John Herman Randall. Edwards writes, without further comment:
The word God, as Randall uses it, stands for “our ideals, our
controlling values, our ‘ultimate concern’” …[55]
It is worth noting that Randall’s claim is not the claim that God is the object of our ultimate concern, but is our ultimate concern itself. It is unclear whether Randall misspoke in this instance, since this seems a strange claim if taken literally. Surely no one would really think that our ideals, controlling values and ultimate concern were themselves God. It’s the claim that God exists in the world in the sense of literally being certain propositional attitudes in the minds of intentional agents. I suggest that we ought to (at least initially) remain neutral as to whether this is a concept of god, and not assume that it must be included as a concept of god. Depending on the outcome of the discussions in Section 3, we may then be in a better position to either confirm or deny that such a concept is really a concept of god (I lean towards denying).
Edwards quotes John Wren-Lewis as another proponent of this naturalistic approach to understanding the nature of God. Wren-Lewis takes the “Christian vision of God” to be equated with saying:
Given enough hard work, the natural order can be tamed and the world
made a better place in our efforts to realise the human values that are summed
up in the word ‘love’.[56]
As Edwards rightly points out, this is a vague statement. But Edwards thinks that Wren-Lewis is an atheist who has retained the word “God”, and Edwards thinks that we should criticise Wren-Lewis in the same way that John Stuart Mill criticised Mansel (partially quoted in note 11 above)—that is it is verbal deception, and Wren-Lewis is not using the word “God” appropriately. Perhaps he is correct, but this would entail a discussion of how “God” ought to be appropriately taken, which he does not do. More importantly, I think Wren-Lewis’ statement is ambiguous. It is unclear whether it is a non-realist claim similar to Cupitt or Geering (in which case it is metaphysical not naturalistic, in Edwards terminologies), or whether it is a primitive version of Bishop’s realist account of God.
Edwards gives no further positive claims about what the naturalistic approach entails, but states that naturalistic believers deny both the anthropomorphic and metaphysical accounts of the nature of God. Donald Evans[57] and Paul Kurtz[58] comment on Edwards’ paper, and largely endorse his criticisms of naturalistic belief. Looking at the latter commentator first, Kurtz apparently equates the naturalistic approach with the non-realist approach, and seemingly does not even acknowledge the possibility of a realist naturalistic god. He gently criticises Edwards for thinking that the naturalistic writers were engaging, in the first place, in literal propositional talk. In this way he slides into a discussion of metaphysical believers. Perhaps Kurtz is correct in the case of some of Edwards’ naturalistic believers, but Kurtz’s mistake is to write off all naturalistic believers as non-realists. Evans gives a more pertinent criticism of the approach, and also a criticism of Bishop’s candidate concept of god (and God). He writes:
Where an honest atheist might say, “Human love is what matters most in
life,” a naturalistic theologian says, “God is love” but means the same thing
as the honest atheist. The disguised
atheism is deceptive, since the word “God” is not used by believers merely to
describe or commend a human attitude or activity.[59]
In reply to Evans, I take it that he is slightly misrepresenting certain naturalistic theologians. It is not that they are saying “God is love” means the same as “human love is what matters most in life”. It is the stronger claim that believers that God is love ought to relate to love in certain appropriate ways that are the same as when theistic believers relate to their god. I’ve already mentioned that one way of relating might be that it has to do with greatness, but I’ll spell this out in more detail in Section 3.2.3 below. But conversely, this then gives us a reason to think that some supposed “honest atheists” are mistaken in thinking that they are really atheists. It might turn out that, in this respect, we have disguised theists, not disguised atheists!
3 The concept of god
Küng[60] tells us that the word “god” has a long history. It was originally a Germanic pre-Christian word (Gothic “guth”) meaning being which is invoked. It comes from the root word “giessen”, meaning to cast, in the sense of casting an image or statue to which sacrifice is offered. The Greek word for god, “theos”, which was first used by Plato, has a very wide meaning and, as used as either a subject or a predicate, means an overwhelming experience. This is especially in the sense of an “overpowering, mighty, gladdening Presence known to the primitive cults”. The Roman word for god, “deus”, meant the heavenly. These single-phrase dictionary definitions are interesting and they may give us a sense of some of the historical themes of historical usage, but they are less than useful with regards to specifics or to modern usage. In an entry entitled “The Concept of God” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Brian Leftow[61] observes that the term “God” now gets used in two main ways, first as a proper name, and second as a general predicate. The convention that I have been using in this work is that the former is labelled “God” and the latter is labelled “god”. And I have been aiming to give an account of “god”. Leftow neatly ties these together by observing that the term might work like a title-term, such as “Bishop”, “Pastor”, “Minister”, or “Doctor”. These words work as proper names, to the extent that we appropriately address the respective people by these terms (e.g. “hello Doctor”). But they also work as general predicates, to the extent that many people can potentially hold these respective positions (e.g. there are many doctors). The task that I will be setting myself in this section is to examine what it might be that ties together the various concepts of god discussed in Section 2, as a general predicate. In the case of “doctor” we might understand the term (approximately) with reference to the health system, that doctors are licensed medical practitioners, and that the job of the doctor is to assist in the well being of humans. But what about “god”? I will look at some of the main ways in which the concept has been analysed in the literature. I take it to be a problem if an analysis of GOD arbitrarily excludes, without explanation, any of these concepts discussed above in Section 2. This is because it is best, where possible, to be consistent with natural language, which generally includes such concepts above as concepts of god. But it need not include all contextually appropriate utterances of “god”—as Smart points out, if we were to say “Mao Tse-tung is the god of the Chinese”[62], we would be using “god” analogically, and non-literally. We shouldn’t expect to include Mao as a god, properly understood (similarly, even though we might appropriately call certain family members “doctor” when they take care of us when we are sick, we are not meaning to say that they really are doctors). More straightforwardly, since my task is to investigate what (if anything) makes the concepts discussed in Section 2 all concepts of the same thing, to exclude some putative concept as a concept of god is another way of saying that there is nothing that the concepts have in common. This might be the correct response, but we shouldn’t assume it without argument. It might be correct to think of GOD like a Wittgensteinian family resemblance concept, but we shouldn’t assume it from the outset. So to put it yet another way, given that I have discussed the differentiae in Section 2, what, if anything, is the genus to which all the concepts of god discussed belong?
3.1 Non-human-centred approaches
A natural place to start when looking for adequate accounts of GOD is to aim to give a list of intrinsic properties that something must hold if it is a god. That is, properties that any god has in and of itself, and not in relation to other entities. There are writers who start out their discussions of “god” (or “God”) by giving an account of what such properties must be. For example, in Section 2.1.1 above I gave quotes from both Forrest and Swinburne, who say that what they mean by “God” (note capital-g) is that God holds certain stipulated intrinsic properties. In the case of Forrest, for something to count as God it must at least hold the property of personhood; in the case of Swinburne, we are given a long list of properties (some intrinsic, some extrinsic), including personhood. Thus, to focus on Forrest, the way it is phrased suggests that, by definition, anything that is not a person cannot be God. But given that some people talk about non-personal gods without obviously contradicting themselves, at best this can’t be right about gods in general. And given that some people talk about God being non-personal, this can’t be right about God either. Most notably taking personhood as central excludes pantheistic approaches; and many of the naturalistic approaches don’t take God to be a person, or require all gods to be persons. It is unclear whether Forrest and Swinburne are intending to exclude all these other concepts completely as concepts of god, or whether they are merely using “God” in the restrictive manner in a narrow context, for the sake of ease of reference to the particular concepts of God (note capital-g) they are focusing on. Whatever the case, I take it that when we are looking at “god” in the most general sense, we ought to be inclusive of, amongst others, the pantheistic god as a concept of god, unless we have good, well-stated reasons for rejecting it. And in this sense we ought not simply assume or stipulate otherwise.
Given that the property of personhood has failed to be common to all concepts of god, it is very tempting to look through the various concepts of god for some other property that they all have in common. Commonly put forward candidate properties include supernatural, transcendent, or creator. But (1) versions of pantheism are naturalistic, and in Section 2.3 above I discussed views where God is seen as a proper part of the natural world; (2) the pantheistic god is not transcendent; (3) pantheistic gods and relational gods cannot be considered creators.
Talk of being a creator brings out a further complication, as it can be taken either intrinsically or extrinsically. It is intrinsic if we speak in terms of being creative; it is extrinsic if we speak in terms of creating everything else that exists. Thus, in this section, in addition to considering intrinsic properties I will also consider extrinsic properties that don’t contain specific reference to value or human intentionality. I’ll specifically focus on value and intentionality in Section 3.2 below.
Another possibility is that for something to count as a god it must have providence over everything else. This, according to Leftow, is Aquinas’ view. But Leftow points out that the flaw with this definition. He tells us that both Aristotle and Plotinus deny this aspect of the nature of God, and hence to gods in general. And, as a further problem, having providence over all is not a property of the deistic concept of god.
Instead, Leftow defends a more sophisticated variant on this general approach. Note, however, that he exclusively uses the word “God”, not “god”. I take it though, that if I successfully show where Leftow goes wrong with respect to God, this will logically follow though with respect to gods in general. Leftow writes that God is “ultimate reality, than which no reality is more basic”. He elaborates on this, giving four facets of this “ultimate reality”, which he takes to be “necessary truths de dicto” for something to count as God. That is, these four properties are built into the definition of “God”, such that anything that is God (and implicitly a god) must have them all. These are:
(1)
Nothing made God; anything that was made is not God
(2)
God is the source or ground of all that is not God
(3)
God rules all that is not God
(4) God is the most perfect being[63]
Leftow further elaborates on what each of these means:
(1) states that nothing is causally more basic than God. On (1), no
account of why things exist can go beyond God; if God explains anything, God is
an ultimate explainer. On (2), all explanations of existence do in fact
terminate in God. On (3), God has ultimate control over all things; on (4), God
is ultimate in perfection.[64]
Leftow thinks that all four are true for users of the word with respect to both “Eastern” and “Western” religions. I am unclear why Leftow thinks this. Surely it is “god” not “God” that is used thusly, and so I suspect that Leftow is really meaning to refer to concepts of god, not concepts of God. But I will aim to critique the stronger version.
Leftow gives four examples in which he connects ultimacy with specific religious positions. (a) Revelation 21:12 claims God is “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”; last is ultimate, and first is that than which nothing is prior, so it is also ultimate. (b) For pantheists there is nothing beyond the universe, and so the universe is ultimate reality. (c) For some polytheists, such as Proclus and some Hindus, their many gods are merely manifestations of the one ultimate being—Brahman, in the case of Hinduism. (d) Paul Tillich writes that only an ultimate reality can be our unconditional concern, and something that is “preliminary reality” is not sufficient. When put into these religious contexts this idea of ultimacy is far from clear. They all seem to be using “ultimacy” in very different senses. Moreover, these positions (a) – (d) in which some sense of ultimacy is claimed are clearly not committed to all of the stronger claims of ultimacy made in (1) – (4).
But more importantly, whether or not these senses of ultimacy in (a) – (d) are the same as those in (1) – (4), and whether or not these are good examples, I think (1) – (3) fail to be necessary truths de dicto, as they exclude concepts that we would generally consider to be concepts of God. While in the end I endorse (4), it has other problems, which I will discuss in greater detail in Section 3.2.3 below (this is because to say that something is perfect is to attribute value to it, and this requires a discussion of intentional agents who do the valuing, and how this valuing might be done). The first part of (1) seems best understood as a first-cause claim. If something is God, then there is nothing causally prior to it. And God cannot be the sort of entity that is a creation. In reply, this claim fails to hold if we wish to include Bishop’s view that God is love. In the case of a relational god, its existence is dependent on the existence of substances standing in the correct relationship with each other. This also excludes any other concept of God in which God is taken as a proper part of the natural world. So (1) is mistaken. Where (1) was about there not being anything causally prior to God, (2) seems best understood as saying that God must be causally prior to everything that is not God. As such, (2) is the stronger claim, and (2) logically implies (1). It says that if we look at the causal history of anything that is not God, then if we go back far enough we will eventually get to God, but the causal chain will end at that point. But, once again this fails to apply to the God as relation, and furthermore, would seem not to apply to the pantheistic concept of god. So (2) is also mistaken. Given that (3) is about God ruling, or being in control of, all that is not God, (3) seems like an omnipotence claim. Four counter-examples to this (among many): the concept of God discussed by Forrest does not hold the property of omnipotence; omnipotence is not a feature of the relational view of god; the panentheistic god is not in complete control, since typical features include libertarian free will, growth over time, and lack of knowledge of the future; and (specifically with respect to “god”) as I said in Section 1 the Greek gods were supposedly not all powerful and not always in complete control. So (3) is also mistaken.
Similar in approach to Leftow, Stephen Parrish writes (before turning exclusively to classical theism):
Primarily, ‘God’ means the God of classical theism [defined
previously]. Secondarily, it may refer
to whatever is the ultimate source of existence, values, the supreme authority,
and/or the supreme object of devotion.
Roy Clouser argues what is a ‘God’ in any philosophical or religious
system is that which exists without depending upon anything else, and upon
which everything else depends.[65]
I take Clouser to be claiming a combination of (1) and (2) above, though he appears to be specifically discussing “God”, not “god”. But this likewise fails to be adequate, as the counter-examples to Leftow are also counter-examples to Clouser. Parrish, like Leftow, emphasises ultimacy, though again it is with respect to God, not god. But once again the same sorts of criticisms given against Leftow also apply to Parrish. Also, with respect to being the supreme object of devotion, to say that something is supreme is to attribute value to it (similar to perfection), and I will discuss this further in Section 3.2.3 below.
I have shown that a number of attempts at giving a satisfactory definition of “god” based without reference to human valuing or intentionality fail. And I claim that all such attempts must fail. Concepts of god are just too varied to find in common some property like this that something must have to count as being a god.
As a final response, we might assert that GOD is a cluster concept. This is certainly a possible response. But what would this amount to? It seems we would either get a specification that is too tight, where for something to count as a god it would have to have many of the properties on the list. In this case some of the concepts discussed in Section 2 above would be excluded. Or we would get a specification that is too loose, where to count as a god it might only have to have a minimal number of very many properties. This latter approach would mean (a) we might include concepts that would usually not be counted as concepts of god, and (b) we might include concepts as concepts of god that have nothing at all intrinsically in common with each other. I cannot see any account that navigates between such a Scylla and Charybdis. So I turn now to attempts to give an adequate definition of “god” that includes reference to human valuing or intentionality.
3.2 Human-centred approaches
An alternative approach to that discussed above is one that starts out by looking at certain features of humans, to get a handle on GOD. The thought is that what it takes for something to count as a god is that humans (and perhaps intentional agents more generally) relate to it in a particular, appropriate way. It might be immediately replied (perhaps by a particularly pious critic) that starting out looking at humans makes humans more important than God (or any god). Our Pious Critic might worry that we are thereby creating God in our own image, or making God dependant on humans in some way. But this is a mistaken objection. It is not a claim about creating God or inventing reality, but a claim about correct naming. When we call something a god (and hence sometimes “God”) because we relate to it in some appropriate way, we are not further claiming that we have created that god. We are still open to holding that such a being is not in any way dependant on us for its existence. But this approach does commit us to saying that if no intentional agents existed other than God (for the sake of argument), and if this is the right way of understanding the word “god”, then God, even though it might be intrinsically identical in every way, could not be considered to be a god, properly understood. Or in other words, there have to be intentional agents (other than perhaps God) for God to be a god. There are a number of ways of fleshing out this human-centred approach.
3.2.1 Humpty Dumpty
There is a temptation these days to claim that whatever anyone says is God, is a god.[66] For example, if someone says that Mao was the god of the Chinese, then Mao really was the god of the Chinese. If a particularly devoted New Zealand rugby fan say that Jonah Lomu is (or was) a god, then Lomu really is (or was) a god. Or if I sincerely say that my chair is my god (I can’t imagine why I’d say this, but let’s suppose I did), then it really is a god. There is no possibility of using the word analogically, and all sincere utterances are literal. There are perhaps two main motivations for this position. (1) A reluctance to be dismissive of anyone else’s religious views—to say that something that someone claims to be a god is not really a god is to appear narrow-minded and bigoted. And (2) given the conclusions reached above in Section 3.1, an inability to come up with any adequate account of what it takes for something to be a god. But in reply I think the fatal problem with this approach is that it makes the word “god” meaningless. If anyone can say anything is a god, and they are correct, then their statement has zero content—they haven’t told us anything and they may as well have kept silent. I think there are better options available, and those who are in this camp have been too hasty. Why is this approach even worth mentioning? Because, sadly, it is one too often suggested to me (or implicitly assumed) by others in everyday conversation.
3.2.2 Worship
An alternative approach is to assert that for something to count as a god, it must be deserving or worthy of worship. Smart accepts this approach and sums it up nicely:
God is to be defined
in relation to worship. To say “My God,
my God” is to acknowledge that he deserves my loyalty and praise. God and gods are essentially the foci of
worship and ritual activity. So, when
by a metaphor, we say that a person makes a god of one’s stomach, we do not
mean that a person makes a Creator or First Cause of one’s stomach: but that a
person “worships” one’s stomach—eating is the greatest object of loyalty and
reverence. To say that there is a God
is therefore different from saying that there is a Creator of First Cause. God may be Creator: but primarily he is the
object of worship.[67]
But, what does it amount to, to say that to be a god is to be deserving of worship. Does it add any content to our discussion of “god”? Leftow thinks not:
Some say that to be God is
to deserve worship. But arguably one's
act cannot be an act of worship if one does not take its object to be truly
divine, and something cannot deserve worship if it is not divine. If either of these claims is true, 'to be
God is to deserve worship' amounts to something like 'to be God is to deserve
to be treated as God' — which is true but not helpful.[68]
To put it, I think, more simply: if one does not believe something to be divine, then one cannot worship it; if it is not divine, then it cannot deserve worship. And to say either of these is to say that “God” is equivalent to “the object deserving of worship”, in the same way that we say “bachelor” is equivalent to “an unmarried man”. And so Leftow’s criticism is not that there is anything mistaken about saying that to be God is to deserve worship, but that when we say it we are not adding anything new—we are saying exactly the same thing in two different ways. To defend this view of what it takes to be God and also reply to Leftow’s criticism, one would need to show that saying that something deserves worship tells us more than just that it deserves to be treated as God, and that this additional element is a proper account of what it takes to be God. That is, while being divine is necessary of something that is deserving of worship, it is not sufficient. Or alternatively, while accepting the criticism (that strictly speaking, nothing is added to the definition), one might claim that talk of deserving of worship is still useful, as it draws our attention to themes that we might otherwise miss without explicit talk of worship. It is different from “bachelor” because worship worthiness is a far more complex property than bachelorhood. Talk of worship shows us that for something to count as God, it has to deserve our relating to it in certain specified ways, that we might miss with talk of God alone. Smart gives the beginnings of a reply to Leftow in the quote above. It is unclear whether it is the first or second type of reply, but I suspect it is the first—there is real content added. He uses the words “loyalty”, “praise”, and “reverence”, and he also mentions ritual activity. If something deserves worship, then it deserves loyalty, praise, and reverence, and these may be expressed through ritual activity. We might also plausibly include love, admiration, awe, humility, commitment, and devotion, and that the object of these attitudes is holy, is held in the highest regard, is the object of ultimate concern, and is whatever an individual cares most about. This response at least seems plausible, since we needn’t automatically consider these attitudes when considering “God”.
I turn now to consider what sort of objects would satisfy this requirement, to count as being a god. It is a problem for this approach if it either excludes the concepts of god discussed above in Section 2 or includes concepts we would not normally consider gods. Clearly, we ought to include the pantheistic god, as a god. But is the pantheistic god an object deserving of worship? No, according to Levine. Levine argues that worship is “not suitable to pantheism”,[69] and that “[n]ot worshipping may even be essential to pantheism”.[70] This unsuitability, for Levine, is not because, as some have suggested, worship has to be “other regarding” and this ontological separation is not met in pantheism. Rather, Levine thinks the unsuitability is because worship is directed at persons, “or at a being with personal characteristics separate and superior to oneself”.[71] He writes:
Objects of worship are not oneself, and perhaps not even ontologically
distinct from oneself as theism claims, but they are generally taken to be
conscious, personal, and superior.[72]
If Levine is correct, this not just excludes pantheism, but all other approaches that see God as non-personal. Why must the object of worship be a person? The answer, for Levine, is that he takes moral praise to be a necessary part of worship, at least as generally understood. When one is worshipping God one is acknowledging and praising God’s moral superiority. One cannot praise or blame something that is not a moral agent (and by implication an intentional agent with free will). One also ought not give ultimate praise to an agent that is not morally perfect, so this further rules out any morally imperfect gods as deserving of worship (such as concepts of god according to some versions of theism, as discussed above in Section 2.1).[73] Is the “moral praise” approach to understanding worship the correct approach? Probably (at least I find it convincing!), but for those who think not, Levine also considers the “literalist” approach. On this account worship is not so much about acknowledging God’s worth, but petitioning to get God on one’s side. But since it is impossible to influence or persuade a non-personal God, such worship and prayer addressed to a person are unavailable to believers in a non-personal god. Thus, we have two strong reasons why worship worthiness is not a property of non-personal gods, and so being an object of worship is not a property of all gods. Consequently, the worship worthiness criterion cannot give us a handle on what is required for something to be a god. As Levine says, “[p]antheism rejects Smart’s contention that a god is, by definition, to be worshipped.”[74] And similarly, it rejects Leftow’s contention that “to be God is to deserve worship” is equivalent in meaning to “to be God is to deserve to be treated as God”. Talk of worship did add something, but not in a way that helped Smart.
Is there any possible reply to Levine’s argument, or is it a fatal objection to the worship worthiness approach? It is clear that the only way to reply to this to retain the notion of worship worthiness as a necessary feature of any god would be to widen the use of the word “worship” in some way. In conversation, Bishop says that he thinks Levine’s argument has weight, but is not convincing. He raises the idea that the object of worship must be “beyond moral praise”, but also that it must be “morally, that than which a greater cannot be conceived”. He suggests that moral praise is only for limited moral agents who have done their best, but who might have done less than their best.[75] But surely, it seems to me, being morally greatest, even without the praise, still necessitates God’s being a moral agent, which pantheists deny. Alternatively, we might widen the idea of worship worthiness to include as worship certain ritual activities or attitudes directed towards non-personal deities. For example something deserves worship if it is the greatest in some more general way, and not just morally perfect. But this is just changing the subject. We might as well abandon worship worthiness as a criterion, and turn to the perfect being approach (which I shall discuss in Section 3.2.3 below).
Levine’s criticism gives us the tools to explain why Smart’s two examples above are merely metaphorical uses of the word “worship”. In the case of worshipping one’s stomach, of course one’s stomach is not a moral agent. Neither is a stomach the sort of entity that could rightly deserve reverence, awe, or humility, or deserve to be the object of ultimate concern. What about Smart’s other example, that of Mao? While Mao was a moral agent, it is clear that he was not morally deserving of worship, since it is clear that he was far from being morally perfect. But it is also clear that, in all probability, Mao was worshipped, at least by many of the most patriotic of Chinese citizens.
This last point shows up an ambiguity in the quotes of Smart and Leftow that need mentioning. I have been assuming above that defining God in terms of worship means that for something to be a god is for it to deserve worship. But both Smart and Leftow appear to slip between two positions in the quotes above. Smart starts out with talk of deserving worship, but ends with talk of God being the object of worship; Leftow talks both of acts of worship and deserving of worship. That is, there is a clear slippage between talk of deserving worship and talk of being worshipped.[76] If we are talking of an object being deserving of worship, then clearly that object needs to be actually morally perfect. But if we are talking about an object being worshipped, then that object only needs to be that which someone believes to be morally perfect (and is an appropriate object of worship). And as Fred Kroon has pointed out in conversation, it is surely a lot easier to determine worship than it is to determine worship worthiness, as there are objective tests for the former. But, the discussion of moral agency above showed us that it doesn’t make sense to talk of worshipping non-personal gods, because worship can only be directed at moral agents. This means that we cannot attempt to resurrect the worship criterion by focusing on being worshipped instead of deserving worship.
My arguments above show that the deserving worship criterion is not necessary for the general predicate “god”, though it is plausible that it is an appropriate criterion for specific concepts of god (such as certain theistic gods). Neither is the being worshipped criterion one that is generally true of all gods.
3.2.3 Perfection
We have seen that the worship worthiness
criterion has failed to be adequate because worship can only be directed
towards moral agents. Is there any way
of resurrecting an approach to analysing GOD that focuses on what intentional
agents see as excellent or worthy in some way?
The perfect being approach gives us the potential to say yes. This is because it doesn’t just focus on
worship worthiness, but, more generally, on perfection or what is the
greatest. Whereas the worship
worthiness criterion focused on what sort of being might be of the appropriate
kind to deserve a certain type of attitude or ritual act expressing that
attitude (namely worship) directed towards it, the perfect being criterion
focuses on what sort of being might be the winner of some sort of
“best-of-the-best competition”; to be a god is to be perfect. This thought gets spelt out in two main
ways. Either, for something to count as
a god it has to be the greatest actual being (for example Augustine in Christian
Doctrine I, 7, 7, and Anselm in Monologion, chaps 1-3). Or alternatively for something to count as a
god it has to be the greatest possible being (for example Boethius in The
Consolation of Philosophy III, 10, and Anselm in Proslogion). Augustine (in On the Trinity V, 1, 2;
XV, 4, 6) clarifies this further by saying we must deny, as properties of God,
any properties that we consider imperfections, and affirm, as properties of
God, any properties that we consider perfections. What we have is an ultimate Miss or Mr Universe competition,
which, on its stronger version, not only includes as contestants beings from
the actual world, but also beings from all possible worlds. This stronger version seems more appropriate
because, unlike the weaker version, it gives us the option of saying that God
doesn’t actually exist.[77] When we are considering what is the greatest
possible, or the greatest conceivable, we don’t start out by comparing beings
in the actual world, but instead start out considering what properties it is
better to have than not to have, and we put these together to conceive of our
winner. And it seems coherent to say
that, supposing some being is the greatest conceivable, and while there is a
logical possibility of it existing, such a being just doesn’t happen to exist
in our world (taking Kant’s point with respect to the Ontological Argument,[78]
and contra Ward). The structure of the
approach is:
Whatever is F
is more perfect than whatever is not F.
Whatever is most
perfect is more perfect than everything else.
So whatever is
most perfect is F.
X is most perfect.
So X is F.[79]
These five lines are reiterated for all
great-making properties, F.
An initial problem that arises is
how to understand the word “being”. In
some places above I have conveniently left it off the end of my sentences—just
writing “perfect”, or “the greatest”.
But this is avoiding the issue.
Plotinus, according to Leftow, rejected perfect being theology because,
like Plato (in Republic VI, 509b), he considered “goodness superior to
being”. Presumably the thought is that
goodness is not covered by the word “being”.
Perhaps I am missing something, or perhaps something is lost in
translation, because I completely fail to see this point. If the claim is that goodness is the most
superior, then to be superior surely it must be in some
way, so surely it must be a being (where a being is whatever bes—to
conserve the sense, if not the grammar).
But suppose, for the sake of argument, that we grant this of
Plotinus. All we then need to say is
that God is that than which no greater X can be conceived—where X
covers goodness as well as whatever else one can possibly think of. We then have a perfect X theology,
and not a perfect being theology. But
I’ll stick to talk of perfect being theology.
Further problems arise when we
consider what counts as a great-making property, F. Problem 1: Leibniz, according to Leftow,
worried that we may get some Fs that are logically incompatible with
each other. Or alternatively, such Fs
logically entail other properties that are incompatible with each other. There is nothing that can consistently have
all properties F. The assumption
is that coherence is a necessary feature of any concept of god, and I take this
to be correct. If nothing can
consistently have all properties F, then we cannot include all
great-making properties, and we must select some maximal set, S, which
contains some, but not all, of these properties. But what if such a set is not uniquely maximal, and there is some
other maximal set, T, of different properties? A god with T-properties would be just as great as a god
with S-properties. In this case
perfect being theology cannot decide between these sets of properties. Problem 2: we might question the
commensurability of putatively greatest beings. For example, how could we compare the greatness of goodness (an
abstract property), with the greatness of a person with immense or ultimate
power (a substance), and with the greatness of love (a relation between
people)? These putative greatest beings
all seem great in very different ways—ways that have very different standards
of measurement. Perfect being theology
again cannot decide. Problem 3: what if
having certain Fs logically entails having further properties with disvalue? In reply, we might either say that a perfect
being must then have certain bad properties, or that a perfect being does not
have all Fs. I take it
that it would then be a matter of weighing up the total values of the complex
of properties, to decide if, on the whole such a complex has value or disvalue
(and whether having such a complex would make such a being greater than not
having it). When I turn to examine
specific putative great-making properties, we shall see examples of all three
of these problems.
Are the standards for identifying
the great-making properties objective or subjective? If they are objective, is it possible for humans to judge or have
knowledge of who or what is the greatest, or is the human intellect too
limited? Those who accept perfect being
theology and give fairly fleshed out accounts of the concept of god presumably
think that humans can have such knowledge. But those inclined towards negative theology would be inclined
towards the “too limited” view. For
them, we simply cannot know what such great-making properties might be. But it seems right to say that the standards
are subjective (e.g. Klaus-M. Kodalle,[80]
contra Ward), since talk of greatness or perfection is talk of values (and this
is why I include this approach in this section). It is surely impossible to have person-independent values; values
depend on a person doing the valuing.
Moreover, it seems plausible to (at least initially) leave open the
possibility that different people will give different lists of great-making
properties. This is because when we
talk of values it is possible that different people hold very different
fundamental values. From one set of
fundamental values we may arrive at one concept of god, and from a different
set of fundamental values we may arrive at a different concept of god. And to value or prefer one set of
fundamental values over another is already to presuppose some set of
fundamental values.
If this is the case, it follows from this that what counts for something to be a god is relative to the individual doing the valuing. A Christian may arrive at Jesus, and not Allah, as the object that is the greatest conceivable; a Muslim may arrive at Allah, and not Jesus, as the object that is the greatest conceivable. This means that what is a god to one person may not be a god to another person. Since whether or not an object is a god depends on the context of utterance and the person doing the uttering, on this account “god” has an indexical component. For a Christian, Jesus is God, and Allah isn’t God, and a Christian cannot say that both Jesus and Allah are gods, in the same context of utterance. For a Muslim Allah is God and Jesus isn’t God, and a Muslim cannot say that both Jesus and Allah are gods, in the same context of utterance. Jesus is a god when a Christian uses the word but not so when a Muslim uses the word; Allah is a god when a Muslim uses the word but not so when a Christian uses the word.
Does this result in an anything goes
approach, where what counts as a god is that it merely has to be considered the
greatest by someone? Not quite. At the very least the inferences leading
from the fundamental values and factual states of affairs to the consequences
must not be fallacious. But we might
still imagine a mass-murderer, or a masochist, or alternatively a sadist, whose
fundamental values are very different from the majority of us, and are
potentially extremely destructive.
Would the object of their ultimate values be a god (to them, if not to
us)? Or instead, should we restrict, in
some way, what counts as appropriate valuing?
Maybe the values need to have been developed (psychologically) in
appropriate ways. But, in reply, I
cannot see how to give such a developmental account without being viciously
circular. I think we have to grant the
possibility of there being such bad and destructive gods (relative to these
people).
Returning to problems 1 and 2 above,
the subjective aspect of perfection has shown us that we don’t need to include all
possible Fs that anyone might generate, as properties of some
single concept of god. We may have a
number of distinct concepts of god with different Fs, for different
people, using the perfection criterion.
But it seems clear that, at the very least, the relevant values adhered
to by an individual need to be consistent, and so do the Fs
generated. It seems to me that any
individual, whose values have generated either or both of problems 1 or 2,
would have to hold that there is more than one concept of god (relative to
her/him). Moreover, if more than one of
these concepts of god were instantiated in the world, then this person would be
a polytheist (and probably a kathenotheist).
For example, a person might think that, on balance, love and the
universe are both equally great (or both great in incommensurable ways), and so
that person would believe that there exists two different and distinct gods.[81]
In “A Defence of Metaphysical
Theism” Ward[82] implicitly
rejects the problems that I have been raising above, and the relativist implications
that result. He defends the claim that
there will be agreement “on at least some of the properties that are
‘great-making’”.[83] Ward thinks an obvious example of a
great-making property that we will all uncontroversially agree upon is power,
“in the sense of capacity to do what one wants”.[84] He writes: “Would any rational person hold
that it is not better to be able to do what one wants than to lack such an
ability?”[85] Further, he thinks that if power is truly a
great-making property, it follows that it is also better to have more of it
than less. And while there may not be a
maximal degree of power, there may still be a being which is the source of all
other powers there are or could ever be, and will hence always have more power
than any other conceivable being. Such
a being is greater than any other being.
On the face of it this seems plausible.
All things being equal, we all seem to prefer to do what we want, than
not do what we want. But, one might
object, this is already buying into a whole bunch of other assumptions about
greatness that are questionable.
Firstly, Ward’s claim is a claim about what is better, for a person. It is merely an argument that power is a
great-making property, qua intentional agent, not qua being. Thus, at worst it is beside the point—it is
not a claim about what is the greatest being, but merely what is the greatest
person. At best, it is already assuming
that being a person is better than not.
And this can and does get questioned.
(a) Pantheists seem not to be contradicting themselves when they talk of
the impersonal universe as the greatest.
(b) Perhaps it is not inconceivable to take literally the phrase “love
is the greatest”. (c) We have seen
Plotinus hold that goodness is superior to being. And (d) some Buddhists and Hindus aim at “nothingness” and ending
the chain of birth and death of the individual—they seem to think that the loss
of intentionality is greater than keeping it throughout numerous
incarnations. Secondly, even if we
grant that being a person is better than not, it is buying into the assumption
that having desires is better than not.
This gets questioned within some strands of Buddhism and Daoism, which
suggest it is better to minimise or eliminate desires. If it is better to eliminate desires, then
power, as Ward describes it, becomes irrelevant with respect to what is great,
because we ought not have any wants that need satisfying. Thirdly, even if we grant that having (at
least some) desires is better than not, as Kodalle[86]
points out the emphasis on power and satisfying desires indicates no more than
that such an individual has a more “authoritarian character”. This might be contrasted with a “sensitive,
sovereign, individual” who “might well put emphasis on God’s capacity for compassion
with the maltreated creature – at the expense of suppressing phantasies of
omnipotence”. Fourthly, even if we
grant that fulfilling our own desires is better than not, we may, as Lord Acton
did, make a connection between power and corruption—power corrupts and absolute
power corrupts absolutely. And so power
is bad, and absolute power is absolutely bad.
Ward replies to this criticism by claiming that it is not just power
that is the great-making property, but a complex property of “knowledge-goodness-power”. A being with this complex property will not
be corrupt. Let’s grant this, for the
sake of argument, and that this fourth objection is not fatal. Adding this complex property to the “better
more than less” claim above, Ward arrives at the traditional omni-properties,
as properties that everyone ought to accept as great-making properties. Thus, for Ward, for something to count as
god it must, at least, hold the omni-properties. But fifthly, we may reintroduce the previous point about logical
inconsistencies. If such a combination
of properties is inconsistent, then Ward can’t be correct about this complex
property being a great-making property.
(a) We might question it via the logical version of the Argument from
Evil. So, Ward must show how this
argument fails. Or (b) we may
reintroduce Lord Acton’s point, and this time it has more weight. Bishop writes:
I shall try to construct a case for thinking that, if God really is
wholly good, then God cannot be omnipotent – or at least that God ought to give
up whatever omnipotence he may have originally had. My claim almost amounts to the view that the well-known adage
that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely may be more than an
observation about human psychology and may amount to a deep metaphysical truth,
so that a being who retained absolute power could not remain supremely
good! I therefore wish to suggest that
the omni-God theory needs to be replaced by a theory of God according to which
God is not an omnipotent supernatural agent.[87]
Bishop’s thought is that an omnipotent god
could not avoid contriving outcomes for other personal beings, and so would be
unable to attain the good of uncontrived loving relationships. I make the connection between Bishop’s
thought and my point by observing that if we take uncontrived loving
relationships to be of high value (and if Bishop’s argument works), then we
cannot also think of God as omnipotent (even if we also think of God as
all-good, as Ward suggests). The result
is that the complex property of knowledge-goodness-power at an omni-level
cannot be accepted as a property of God if we grant the high value of
uncontrived loving relationships. To
summarise, even though Ward thinks that all will agree with him on these
great-making properties, he is implicitly making a number of assumptions that
can and do get questioned and denied.
The rational person need not accept Ward’s claim about power being a
great-making property, and further, ought to question the truth of such a
claim. Finally, Ward argues for a
number of other great-making properties that we should also all agree upon, but
it seems to me that they all build on from the property of power, and rejecting
Ward on power entails that Ward’s entire project fails.
The delightfully entertaining and
thought-provoking stories of Zhuangzi[88]
(along with his philosophical dialogues and commentaries) give us further
reason to reject Ward’s general claim that there are at least some properties
that we will all agree upon as great-making properties. We might take Zhuangzi as an almost two and
a half millennia prefutation[89]
of Ward. In one story, Zhuangzi tells
of a legendary woman who all men loved, and wanted to be with. And yet, when she walked by the river, all
the fish swam away. And when she walked
through the forests, all the deer ran away and the birds flew away. In another story, he tells of a tree that is
so gnarled and twisted that it is useless for cutting down for its timber, so
no builder deems it good. Yet, it is
precisely for this uselessness that it is still alive, and no one will bother
harming it. One might instead take a
nap in its shade. In another story, he
tells of a weasel that can spring from place to place, and catch mice. Yet it will die if it lands in a snare or
net. In contrast a yak is big and
strong, so it doesn’t get caught in traps.
But neither can it bend down and catch mice. In another story, he tells us that if people sleep in the damp
their backs hurt, but this is true of eels.
If eels live in trees they shudder with fear, but this is true of
monkeys. In this way Zhuangzi spends a
lot of time giving examples of reversals of hierarchies of greatness. His reasons for doing this are a matter of
academic dispute,[90]
but whatever the case, he builds a compelling argument against there being a
single agreeable standard for greatness.
What is beautiful to some is ugly to others. What is useful to some is useless to others. What is a strength in some respects is a
weakness in other respects. What one
takes to be a value, another takes to be a disvalue. What is appropriate for some is inappropriate for others.
When we turn to various ways perfect
being theology has been fleshed out, we find that what is a great-making
property for some writers is not so great for others. The lesson we get from this is that there is a great deal of
equivocation over “greatness”, as various writers focus on certain putative
great-making properties, and are forced to implicitly or explicitly deny other
putative great-making properties. I’ll
give a few examples:
1.
A
rational person vs. impersonal: Zeno of Citium sums up a common idea in Western thought that it is
greater to be a person than not, and a rational person at that:
That which is rational is better than that which is not rational. But
nothing is better than the cosmos. Therefore the cosmos is rational. One can
prove in a similar manner that the cosmos is wise, happy and eternal, since all
of these are better than things which lack them, and nothing is better than the
cosmos. [91]
Many others agree on this with
respect to personhood, including theists.
The assumption seems to be of an Aristotelian hierarchical structure of
greatness, with rational, minded beings at the top. But as already shown above, not all think mindedness important,
including pantheists. Pantheists don’t
seem to think they are contradicting themselves when claiming both (a) that the
universe is the greatest, and (b) that the universe is not a person.
2.
The
cosmos vs. separate and discrete creator: As shown above, Zeno thinks that there is
nothing possibly better than the cosmos.
The idea is:
Nothing at all is
better... than the cosmos. Not only is nothing better, but nothing can even be
conceived of which is better. And if nothing is better than reason and wisdom,
it is necessary that these be present in that which we have granted to be the
best.[92]
He argues that whatever contains
other parts also contains the parts’ perfections. And since the cosmos is the totality of everything that exists,
it contains the perfections of all its parts, and so contains the sum of all
perfections. It is hence greater than
anything else that exists. Moreover,
the cosmos is also argued to be better than anything else possible, because, no
matter what actually exists, the cosmos also exists. And no matter what makes it up, there is supposedly an identity
relation between such a cosmos and our cosmos (I suspect it is more like a
counterpart relation than an identity relation). The assumption seems to be that completeness and inclusiveness
are high values, and are greater than not.
Pantheists and panentheists would at least agree on this about the
actual world (if not all possible worlds).
But theists do not. As we saw in
Section 2.1.2 above, they argue that it is greater to be an ontologically
distinct creator of all else, and not dependant on anything else. There is an implicit assumption here (and in
much Indo-European thinking) regarding the importance of individuality, independence,
and autonomy (which, for example, is not present in much Chinese thinking[93]). Ward adds that the superiority is because it
is greater to be the source of all powers there are or could ever be. In addition, Leftow notes that many Western
thinkers take creation as ex nihilo, because it is assumed that it makes
God superior by increasing the creation’s dependence on God.
3.
Omni-properties
vs. limited: As we
have seen above, Ward argues that it is greater to have omni-properties than be
limited with respect to power or knowledge.
Interestingly, this is also a focus on completeness as a form of
greatness, but in a different sense than that described in 2 above. In contrast, panentheists don’t see it as a
problem to ascribe to God certain limitations associated with being a person
existing in time with libertarian freedom (and amongst other free existing
persons). These limitations are to do
with power and knowledge. Panentheists
often cite change and improvement over time as a high value, and that it is
greater to be improving than not. Rejecting
omniscience, but for a different reason, Alcinous, according to Leftow, thought
that since God’s ideas are eternal and perfect, God cannot have ideas or
knowledge of disease, artefacts, dirt, or individuals. Again according to Leftow, Ibn Sina and Ibn
Rushd similarly thought God would be more perfect for lacking knowledge of
things that aren’t good.
4.
Unchangeable
vs. changeable: A
central idea for many is that it is greater to be unchanging than
changing. If one changes, then there is
a sense in which one was previously incomplete, and to be incomplete is to be
not so great. There is an etymological
connection here, as the word “perfect” comes from the Latin word “perficio”,
meaning complete. In contrast,
as I mentioned above in 3, panentheists hold growth to be a great-making
property, and one is greater if one is changing and improving over time.
5.
Non-interference
vs. providence: As
we saw in Section 2.1.2, deists think that it would be greater if God had set
up the world perfectly without the need for later interference. Any later involvement in the world is seen
as indicating a less-than-perfect set-up.
The value here is reliability and consistency in the creation (analogising
with reliable mechanical artefacts that don’t need repairing). In contrast, theists think God would be
greater to get involved, and have personal relationships with his
creation. The value here is having
certain personal relationships.
To summarise, the main problems that have been
raised against the perfection or greatness approach have been to do with
disagreements with respect to what the great-making properties are. We seem to get an inconsistent set of
properties if we try to satisfy all intuitions and arguments on what is great. But, on the contrary, I take these disagreements
as a strength. We don’t have
to include all such properties and satisfy all intuitions at
once, to find a single concept of god.
As I have argued throughout this work, we need to be sensitive towards
including all the concepts discussed in Section 2 above, as concepts of god,
and our analysis of GOD needs to reflect this.
If we say that for something to count as God it must be perfect, we are
not saying that we get a single objective list of great-making properties that
God holds. Rather, we are saying that
what counts as a god is relative to individuals doing the deciding with respect
to what counts as great. And it is
relative to a particular set of values that an individual may have about what
is great. Also, “god” has an indexical
component, given that it is the context that tells us which values are being
used, and hence, to which putative entity one is referring. Whereas the worship worthiness approach had
a fatal objection, we don’t get any fatal problems on this approach. But while this approach gives us a
satisfactory means for deciding in general what counts as a god, there is still
a lot of work to do to decide on particular consistent sets of values that
determine what the great-making properties are. This is a task that I will leave for another time.
3.2.4 Functionalism
As we saw in the previous section, for something to count as a god it must be perfect. But this perfection is subjective and relative to individuals doing the valuing. And so it turns out that “god” has an indexical component. In this sense I have answered the question I set myself in this work. But are there any other properties we may add to this? I turn now to a completely different approach to answering the question that says nothing (at least initially) about the greatness or worthiness of the supposed deity. Instead, this approach starts out by asking the anthropological question of why, psychologically, one might believe that God exists rather than not exist. That is, “[w]hat is belief in God supposed to do for you that wouldn't be done for you if you didn't have this belief?”[94] Or to put the same idea in different words, what are the sorts of “functional roles” that belief that God exists plays in the “psychological economy of the”[95] believer, that non-belief fails to play? By answering this question, the hope is that we can then answer a further question: which concepts satisfy these functional requirements, to count as concepts of god?
Let’s look at a few candidate functions. Firstly, to clarify, we are not interested in the functions that religion plays that non-religion fails to play. What we are interested in is functions that belief that some specified god exists plays that non-belief fails to play. So the function of achieving authenticity through “cultural rootedness” (Bishop’s term), or “heritage” (as Heidegger calls it), while a function of religion, is not a function of belief in God, and won’t help us in our task here. Likewise, the morally negative functions of religions suggested by Karl Marx (religion as the opium of the people), or Sigmund Freud (religion as wish-fulfilment), are not relevant. I’ll list a few candidate functions, to give an idea of what we are wanting. Some of these are adapted from Bishop’s discussions of this. Some functions logically entail other functions. Belief that God exists (which non-belief fails to do) arguably functions to:
· Explain how things are as they are,
· Explain why there is something rather than nothing,
· Explain the origins of life, the universe and everything,
· Allow one to understand one’s place in the world,
· Give a meaning to life (however this gets spelled out),
· Motivate and support moral commitment,
· Tell one how to act in certain situations,
· Provide an object of ultimate concern to centre one’s life around,
· Direct one away from objects that ought not have such high value placed on them, perhaps such as oneself (avoidance of hubris),
· Provide hope in the face of adversity, that striving to live the best that one can is not pointless and futile,
· Tell one how the world will turn out in the future.
There are potentially countless other functions, in addition to these. But it is pointless continuing to list them, as it is obvious that we need greater constraints to focus our discussion. So far, this approach had raised more questions than it has answered. Should we be including morally negative functions as well as morally positive functions (for example, that such a belief gives rise to fanaticism or intolerance of other beliefs)? Where do we look to get the functions? Presumably we should look to religious practices or doctrines, but which ones (surely looking at all would be a monumental task)? Must each of the functions be present in all such practices and doctrines? Must each concept of god satisfy all of the functions discovered? Some of the functions listed seem satisfied by scientific theories—is this a problem? We need more direction.
This functional idea is one that is discussed at length by Bishop in “Can There Be Alternative Concepts of God?”. But, as I have said above, it is clear that Bishop is answering a different question than I am. Bishop is centrally concerned with what it takes for a concept of God (note capital-g) to be adequate to the theistic religious tradition. He is asking the somewhat theological question of which concept or concepts of God are religiously adequate to satisfy the requirements of the tradition in question (theism and Christianity, in the case of Bishop). Do those within that tradition have to accept that omniGod exists, or can they hold, instead, that some other concept of God is instantiated in the world? In “Radical Theology: Inventing or Discovering Reality?” Bishop uses the functional approach to address a slightly different issue. This issue is again theological, and he is addressing questions to do with the relationship between realist and non-realist beliefs about God, and the claim is that realist beliefs are able to satisfy certain functions better than non-realist beliefs. The issue that I would like to investigate here is whether it is possible to modify Bishop’s basic approach to address the wider, and logically prior, question that I have been asking in this work. Can we analyse the concept of god through functionalism, understood in this sense.[96]
A problem: it is obvious that the approach, thus modified, has become circular. We need to already have an idea of which concepts are concepts of god, to get a handle on what sort of functions are relevant. And we need to have the appropriate functions before we can decide which concepts count as concepts of god. Bishop does not get this problem for the question that he is concerned with. This is because (1) he has far greater constraints to direct his search for concepts of God—that of working within a specific historical religious tradition (Christianity, for Bishop). It is these constraints that Bishop uses to identify the functions that he thinks are central. Specifically, he thinks that it is the Gospel proclamation of the “good news” that generates the function of a certain species of hope (which he calls non-triumphalist hope), and it is this function that allows him to potentially develop alternative adequate concepts of God. And (2) given that he is looking for alternative adequate concepts of God other than omniGod, he is already assuming that omniGod is an adequate concept of God to the theistic religious tradition. But when looking at concepts of god, we don’t get these constraints. We cannot just look at the Gospels, to generate our functions, and we cannot assume from the outset that certain putative concepts of god are actual concepts of god. This is begging the question. Is this viciously circular, and a fatal problem? Unfortunately, I think it is, if the aim is to give an analytic account of the concept GOD. Thus, in this sense, the functional approach cannot help me to answer the question I set myself in this work.
I take it that the functional approach is potentially useful to address concerns to do with concepts of God, but is not with respect to concepts of god. We cannot get this approach to work for concepts of god, because there is a fundamental circularity that is not present in the more restricted search for concepts of God. At one point I considered the possibility of resurrecting this approach by assuming certain paradigmatic concepts of god (for example those discussed in Section 2), informed by the perfect being approach, to generate initial functions. But I think this flounders on the problem of trying to find a satisfactory set of functions that are also able to usefully inform us of what it takes to be a concept of god. Perhaps there is such a set, but I haven’t found it.
4 Conclusion
In this work I have been addressing
two main issues. Firstly, I have been
examining a number of concepts of god.
In particular I have described some of the main properties put forward
within theism as properties of the putatively existing being called “God”. I have suggested that, on the basis of a
historical overview of how the term “theism” came to be used, while there are a
number of distinct theistic concepts of god, there is typically a number
of central features that the various concepts have in common. This is because theism typically gets
used in opposition to a number of other specific concepts of god. But “theism”, in its original and widest
sense, merely referred to a philosophical response to a criticism of any given
religious tradition. And it is in this
sense that theism is open to a wide range of concepts of god. I have also briefly discussed the main
features of both negative theology, and a relatively new category of concepts
of god in which God is said to be a proper part of the natural world. In addition to these three categories of
concepts of god, I have also looked, in passing, at pantheism and deism. Further, I have also mentioned a few of the
key ideas of panentheism and other positions with distinct concepts of god.
Secondly,
and primarily, I have been discussing what it might take for something to be
correctly considered a god. Hence, I
have been examining the concept of god.
I have contrasted this with the examination of the concept of God, where
“god” is the general term and “God” is the proper name. When one examines the concept of God one is
concerned with a narrower range of concepts of god, of which the supposed
instantiation of the concept has been called “God”. That is, this narrows one’s focus to exclusively those religious
and cultural traditions in which the god in question was (or is) called
“God”. In contrast, when looking at the
concept of god, one does not necessarily have any particular religious or
cultural tradition in mind.
In
this work I have argued that we cannot understand the concept of god with
reference to some supposed intrinsic property that it is necessary for any
given god (or putative god) to possess.
I have argued that instead we must look for extrinsic properties that a
god (or putative god) must have in relation to intentional agents (for example,
us). This means that if no intentional
agents exist, no entity can be rightly considered to be a god, even if some
specified entity existed that would rightly be considered a god if intentional
agents did exist. I have
examined a number of human-centred approaches, and I have rejected:
(1)
The Humpty Dumpty approach, where something is a god
merely if someone calls it a god. This
just makes the word meaningless.
(2)
The worship approach, where for something to count as
a god it must be worship worthy. This
excludes all concepts of god in which God is not a moral agent.
(3)
The functionalist approach, in which we look for the
functions that belief in the existence of any specified god fulfils, but
non-belief fails to fulfil. This
approach is useful for identifying concepts of God, but not concepts of god, as
it is impossible to narrow down sufficiently our search for possible functions.
The approach that I have accepted is
the perfect being approach. I have
argued that for something to count as a god it must be perfect, or
(equivalently) that than which no greater can be thought. But I have qualified this somewhat. I have held that talk of perfection or
greatness assumes talk of values, and I have held that values are
subjective. Moreover, I have held that
(1) it is possible that not all great-making properties are consistent with
each other, and so it is possible that we will get more than one coherent set
of great-making properties where the total values of the properties in each of
the sets are equal and greatest. And
(2) I have accepted the possibility of value pluralism, in which not all of the
relevant values are commensurable. This
means that the perfect being approach potentially allows us to develop many
concepts of god, depending on which sets of values we start with. It also means that something is a god
relative to a particular set of values, and hence relative to a particular
person who accepts such a set of values.
What is a god to one person may not be a god to some other person. And it is possible that a person who accepts
certain relevant incommensurable values (or more than one equally supreme set
of great-making properties) will be a polytheist (specifically, a
kathenotheist). It also means that
“god” has an indexical component, since to what it refers depends on the
context of utterance (that is, which values are being assumed).
To
some it may seem that these consequences are a little strange and
counter-intuitive. But it seems to me
that this result clears up a number of potential confusions that talk of gods
always seems to generate. It provides a
means for clearing up the recurring worry that those talking about God or gods
are simply talking past each other. It
may be that two people are using the word “god” correctly, but they are using
it to refer to different putatively existing beings. It is important to be aware that different people may be talking
about very different things, because they are implicitly assuming different
sets of equally acceptable values. It
is important, when talking of God and gods, to clearly specify the context of
utterance. Saying “God exists” is as
meaningless as saying “he is over there”—both require further qualification and
a context of utterance.
(25,662 words)
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[1] Some conventions I will stick to: Capital-g “God” is the proper name of the actual or supposed being. Lower-case-g “god” is the general term. Words in double quotation marks refer to the words themselves. Words completely capitalised refer to the concepts.
[2] Ward, 1974.
[3] It is John Bishop who, in conversation, pointed out to me this important distinction. In this respect my project is different from that of his, and he explicitly states in conversation that the work that he has been doing is on concepts of God, not concepts of god (see for example Bishop (1998a) and Bishop (1998b)).
[4] Given the relationship between these three approaches and the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, it is typically (though admittedly not always) appropriate to call the gods discussed in these three contexts “God”. And for ease of reference, unless the context specifically dictates otherwise, I will call each of the various putative gods discussed in these three subsections “God” (still bearing in mind that I am looking at concepts of god, not concepts of God). And further, for ease of reference, I will sometimes use the proper name “God” to refer to any specified god, even though, strictly speaking, this is unwarranted.
[5] An extremely useful, almost exhaustively thorough book-length philosophical discussion of pantheism is Levine (1994). Other useful discussions include: Baruch Spinoza’s classic discussion in his Ethics; J. Allanson Picton (1905); H. P. Owen (1971) chapter 2(c); Günter Meckenstock, in Anderson (1994); and the website of Paul Harrison (1999).
[6] Useful discussions include: H. P. Owen (1971) chapter 2(d); Meckenstock and David A. Pailin, in Anderson (1994); John B. Cobb and Clark H. Pinnock (eds.) (2000)— including discussions of open/free will theology; and various works by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, John Macquarrie, and Grace Jantzen.
[7] Mackie, 1982, chapter 13.
[8] Phillips, in Anderson, 1994.
[9] Smart, 1970, p. 66.
[10] Phillips, in Anderson, 1994, p. 12.
[11] As John Stuart Mill (in Pike, 1964, p. 43) emphatically says in reply to non-literal uses of the word “good”: “I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures; and if such a creature can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go.”
[12] Phillips, in Anderson, 1994, p. 12.
[13] Mackie, 1982, p. 3.
[14] See, for example, Cupitt (1997) and Geering (1994).
[15] James Richmond (1970) gives a useful, though a little dated, discussion of the history of the relationship between theology and metaphysics.
[16] Bishop, 1998a, p. 174, section 1.
[17] Bishop, 1998a, p. 174, section 1.
[18] Swinburne, 1977, p. 2; Mackie, 1982, p. 1.
[19] Swinburne, 1977, p. 2.
[20] Swinburne, 1977, p. 1.
[21] Swinburne, 1977, p. 1, note 1.
[22] Owen, 1971, p. 1.
[23] Nagel, in Angeles, 1997, p. 4.
[24] Nagel, in Angeles, 1997, p. 5.
[25] Forrest, 1996, p. 8.
[26] Levine, 1994.
[27] Le Poidevin, 1996, p. xvii.
[28] Le Poidevin, 1996, p. 151.
[29] Kenny, 1979.
[30] Davies , 1993, p. 32.
[31] Levine, 1994, p. 2.
[32] Levine, 1994, p. 2.
[33] Kemerling, 2001.
[34] For example, Keith Ward in his paper ‘A Defence of Metaphysical Theism’ in Andersen, 1994, pp. 59-74.
[35] Massachusetts Institute of Technology Atheists, Agnostics, and Humanists.
[36] However, in Bishop (1998b), Bishop doesn’t seem to hold that theism is a religious tradition. He writes that the emancipation of ethics from Religion “is one which can even be exercised within Christianity—but, of course, only by those who claim that, properly understood, Christianity is not a theistic religion at all, but a system of ethical values, a way of life.” And as he says in Sections 9 and 10 of (1998a), some Christians call themselves “Christian atheists”. I cannot see how it is possible to hold both that theism is a tradition containing Christianity as one of its branches, and also grant that some Christians appropriately call themselves atheists and say that Christianity, properly understood, is not a theistic religion, (even if it is disguised by calling it “non-realism” or “anti-realism” instead of “atheism”). I take it that to be consistent one would have to hold that such Christians are mistaken to use “theism” as they do.
[37] Or alternatively the project could be restated in terms of Christianity rather than theism—that is, the question might be whether it is possible to adhere to Christianity, yet reject the belief that omniGod exists.
[38] Dalferth, in Anderson, 1994.
[39] Carlton, in Dalferth, in Anderson, 1994, p. 15.
[40] Billington, 1997.
[41] Kant, 1965, B 659 – 661.
[42] Smart, 1996.
[43] In conversation, Bishop wonders if we need to accept that the pantheistic god cannot be a person. He thinks it logically possible that God is identical with the universe as a whole, and also a person (assuming there are no other philosophical reasons against it). This is in the sense that the universe is the embodiment of a personal god. I suspect that this would then be better thought of as panentheism, given that some panentheists explicitly hold that the universe is God’s body (for example, Pailin, in Andersen (1994), writes that Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, the person who coined “panentheism”, uses the human body analogy).
[44] In conversation, Bishop accepts the issues I have raised in this section, on the basis of Dalferth’s discussion. His present position is that theism is best understood as theism-Ib, and he retracts his views with respect to theism-II. He doesn’t takes theism-III (discussed below) to be a different notion of theism, but rather the difference has to do with the circumstances in which the ideas are generated.
[45] Bishop (1998a) suggests a way of approaching this issue at the most general level, and also gives a start to the answer to this question just in the case of Christianity and concepts of God. He argues that within Christianity it is possible to adhere to belief in certain alternative concepts of God (from omniGod).
[46] To use the terms in Kemerling, 2001b. Kemerling identifies lexical, stipulative, precising, theoretical, and persuasive definitions.
[47] Derrida tells us that negative theology is driven to an “excessive practice of language”, according to Hart (in Ward, 1997, p. 163).
[48] Küng, 1980, Section G I 1.
[49] Other useful discussions of negative theology include: example, Smart (1970, chapter 2), John Caputo (1997), Kevin Hart (in Ward, 1997), and Brian Davies (1993).
[50] Smart, 1970, p. 46.
[51] See for example his (1998a) note 7, and (1998b).
[52] See for example Buber (1970). Geering (1983) provides a possible interpretation of Buber. But such is the difficulty of interpreting Buber, that it is unclear whether he is really developing a relational concept of god, or merely describing, in a radical way, a fairly traditional theistic understanding of god.
[53] Edwards, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968.
[54] Edwards, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968, p. 45.
[55] Edwards, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968, p. 45.
[56] Wren-Lewis, in Edwards, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968, p. 46 & 73.
[57] Evans, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968.
[58] Kurtz, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968.
[59] Evans, in Madden, Handy, & Farber, 1968, p. 78.
[60] Küng, 1980, Section G I 1.
[61] Leftow, 1998.
[62] Smart, 1970, p. 66.
[63] Leftow, 1998, Section 1.
[64] Leftow, 1998, Section 1.
[65] Parrish, 1997, p. 6.
[66] Hence, with reference to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland books, calling this the Humpty Dumpty approach.
[67] Smart, 1996, p. 11.
[68] Leftow, 1998, Section 1.
[69] Levine, 1994, p. 313.
[70] Levine, 1994, p. 321.
[71] Levine, 1994, p. 315.
[72] Levine, 1994, p. 315.
[73] Levine also gives an argument against various justifications for the moral acceptability of worship, and suggests that, on examination, “there seems to be no justification for the view that one morally ought to worship [Swinburne’s] God or anything else” (Levine, 1994, p. 321). This does not mean that no one does worship such a god, but that they have no justification for doing so.
[74] Levine, 1994, p. 325.
[75] Bishop’s suggestion regarding moral praise is similar to one of Levine’s reasons for there being no justification for worshipping Swinburne’s god. This looks like a case where one person’s modus ponens is another’s modus tollens. That is, for Levine: this account of worship implies that there is no justification for worshipping God. For Bishop: it is not the case that there is no justification for worshipping God implies a deficiency in Levine’s account of worship.
[76] I thank both Bishop and Fred Kroon for pointing this out to me. I, too, initially slipped back and forth between these two ideas.
[77] Mackie (1982, p. 230) seems to conflate these two versions when he writes: “If God is simply whatever you care most about, then not even St. Anselm’s fool will deny that God exists.”
[78] Kant, 1965, B 620 – 631.
[79] Leftow, 1998, Section 3.
[80] Kodalle, in Andersen, 1994.
[81] Bishop seems to conclude in favour of accepting both of these as concepts of God in (1998b), and, assuming that he holds that both are instantiated in the world, he seems best described as here arguing for polytheism.
[82] Ward, in Anderson, 1994.
[83] Ward, in Anderson, 1994, p. 59.
[84] Ward, in Anderson, 1994, p. 59.
[85] Ward, in Anderson, 1994, p. 59.
[86] Kodalle, in Anderson, 1994, pp. 75-94.
[87] Bishop, 1993, section 23.
[88] See, for example, Graham, 1981.
[89] I adopt this word from Dennett (1996), note 1. Daniel Dennett tells us that the verb “prefute” was coined in 1990 in response to the psychologist Tony Marcel’s tendency to interrupt at conferences with the phrase “I can see where your argument is heading and here is what is wrong with what you're going to say …”.
[90] He is variously interpreted as a relativist—there are many different ways and each is true in its context, a sceptic—there are no ways, or a mystic—there is a way, but it cannot be talked about.
[91] In Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods II, 21, in Leftow, 1998, Section 3.
[92] In Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods II, 18, in Leftow, 1998, Section 3.
[93] Chad Hansen (1992), for example, puts this difference down to differences in language. Most notably, the contrast between mostly mass nouns in Chinese languages versus mostly count nouns in Indo-European languages.
[94] Bishop, 1998b.
[95] Bishop, 1998a, Section 6.
[96] And of course, functionalism not in the sense as used in the philosophy of mind, or in architecture, or in any other discipline that also uses this much overused word.