Reading God's divine nature (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Tuesday, August 06, 2019, 01:03 (1935 days ago) @ dhw

A Thomist philosopher has an essay interpreted by Ed Feser:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/08/mccabe-on-divine-nature.html#more

"What God is not

"What is God? McCabe’s answer is that God is that which accounts for why there is anything at all. “God is whatever answers our question ‘How come everything?’”

***

"What he is saying, in effect, is that when we start trying to think about God’s nature, we should begin by putting out of our minds everything but the idea that God is that which accounts for there being anything at all. “What we mean by ‘God’ is just whatever answers the question”

***

"In particular, any aspect of a thing that makes its existence stand in need of explanation by reference to something else cannot be attributed to God. For example, since spatio-temporal objects require causes, God cannot be a spatio-temporal object. For if he were, then he would require a cause and therefore he just wouldn’t be that which accounts for why anything exists at all. He would himself just be one more thing among all the others whose existence we are trying to account for.

***

"So creation is making, but not making out of anything. When X is created there is not anything that is changed into X. Creation is ex nihilo… The fact that things are created does not make the slightest detectable or undetectable difference to them, any more than being thought about makes a difference to things.

***

"Among the things we need to delete from our conception of divine action is the idea that it amounts to an “interference” with what happens in the world. Creation is not a matter of God tinkering with the natural order so as to make it do what it otherwise would not do. It is a matter of his making it the case that there is any natural order at all.

***

"Again, because God is that which accounts for there being anything at all, what is true of the things we are accounting for by reference to God cannot be true of God himself. Hence we have a clearer grasp of what God is not than we do of what he is.

***

"Still, we can say something further, though here too negative theology plays a crucial role. McCabe points out that on Aquinas’s philosophy of mind, to have an intellect is essentially to have the capacity to possess form without matter. For example, when you understand what a dog is, your intellect takes on the form or nature of a dog but in a way that abstracts it or divorces it from the matter in which it is embedded in the case of a given particular individual dog. Now, when this account is worked out it has the consequence that something is an intellect if and only if it is immaterial. Intellects are necessarily immaterial and immaterial substances are necessarily intellects.

***

"Now, negative theology tells us that God is immaterial, since he is that which accounts for why anything exists at all, including material things. He must be distinct from the material world that is among his effects. But if being immaterial entails being an intellect, then we have to conclude that God is an intellect, albeit one from which we have to subtract all the limitations that apply to human intellects. There is also the fact that even when it comes to the human intellect, our conception is largely negative. It is easier to say what the intellect is not than what it is. So, attributing intellect to God, while it adds content to our conception of him, is itself largely a further application of negative theology.

***

"Once again, negative theology is crucial, because we have to subtract from our understanding of this model any of the limitations that apply to finite intellects like ours.
(my bold)

Let's skip to Part II