Reading God's divine nature Part II; more Feser (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by David Turell , Wednesday, September 13, 2023, 21:57 (227 days ago) @ David Turell

In a discussion of natural theology:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/

"Debate between atheism and theism often proceeds as if the burden of proof is all on the theist, and in particular as if the theist, but not the atheist, must make metaphysical presuppositions (about the nature of causation, teleology, the principle of sufficient reason, or whatever) that are likely to be as controversial as the conclusion he wishes to establish by means of them. By contrast, the atheist, many seem to assume, proceeds from neutral ground and simply finds the arguments for theism, and for the broader metaphysical theses underlying such arguments, unpersuasive in light of premises that both sides have in common.

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"Precisely because theism, properly understood, entails claims about ultimate explanation and the fundamental structure of reality, it is inevitable that the dispute between theism and atheism is going to entail broader metaphysical differences. The dispute cannot be bracketed off from these broader questions, and the skeptic can no more pretend that his position is neutral about them than the theist can.

"Hence, as Hartshorne points out, Hume’s and Kant’s influential objections to the traditional theistic proofs each rest on broader metaphysical assumptions that are no less open to question than the proofs themselves are. The same is true of contemporary objections that take for granted the metaphysical and methodological assumptions of scientism or naturalism. As Hartshorne writes: “Thus the procedure does what the proofs are accused of doing. It reaches a controversial conclusion by reasoning from premises equally controversial… it is as question-begging as it well could be.”

"And since “all rational argument presupposes rules, universal principles” under which the things being reasoned about fall as specific cases, “God must… be a case under [these] rules, he must be an individual being” (pp. 33-34). Otherwise we couldn’t say anything about him at all. So, while we must avoid the one extreme of implicitly reducing God to a creature by supposing that whatever is true of creaturely perfections must be true of him, we must also avoid the other extreme of putting God so far beyond what can be expressed in human language that we can know and say nothing about him at all.

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"God can also not be defined in the strictest sense in which other things can be, viz. by identifying a genus under which they fall and a differentia which distinguishes them from other species in the genus. For as Being Itself, he falls under no genus. In other ways too, God is radically unlike any created thing – he is pure actuality rather than a mixture of actual and potential, is absolutely simple or non-composite, and so on.

"we can certainly explain what we mean when we use the word “God” and when we ascribe various attributes to him (omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, and all the rest). We can demonstrate his existence in a manner consistent with canons of logical inference. And once having done so, we can validly draw further conclusions about the divine nature. For the Thomist, the key to understanding how it is possible to speak of God in these ways despite his being so radically unlike the things of our experience is in the analogical use of language, as Aquinas and his followers understand that. (my bold)

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"Hartshorne is also well-known for defending a version of Anselm’s ontological proof, and in A Natural Theology for Our Time he remarks that “since God’s existence has an aspect of necessity, something like an ontological proof must be possible” (p. 50). From a Thomist point of view, there is some truth to this insofar as, if we had a penetrating enough grasp of the divine essence, we would indeed be able to infer from it that God exists. The trouble is that the human intellect does not in fact have such a grasp of the divine essence, so that God’s existence cannot be known by us by way of an ontological proof.

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"What Hartshorne seems to have in mind is that the starting points for sound theistic proofs must lie in truths that go deeper than any that might in principle be falsified by observation or experiment. Here I think he is correct,

Comment: note the comment about analogical use of words when describing God. I could use metaphorical in that same sense. I have used allegorical in the sense of hidden meaning. Adler tells us any definition of 'God' is extremely difficult to achieve. So we know what words mean in our level of existence, but we really do not know how they apply to God and His personality.