Over at Parableman last week there was an interesting discussion on the relationship between Open Theism and Greek philosophy. The debate ended up being who was more influenced by Greek philosophy - Open Theists or traditional Christian theologians? Now we've discussed issues like this before here. Blake Ostler, in particular, has written a lot in his book rejecting absolutism and more or less adopting many views of Open Theism. (Or at least finding himself sympathetic to them) The issue I want to get at though was raised by Brandon in the comments to above thread. Allow me to quote him.
I'm not sure what you mean by ontological absolutism, either, Clark (although I have heard open theists use the phrase; they're never clear about what they mean by it -- but they generally aren't very clear about what they mean by anything they say).
Coincidentally Bill Vallicella wrote on a related issue today over at his blog.
Were I to give the simple (perhaps too simplified) answer to what ontological absolutism is, it is simply the claim that ontologically God must be first in all things. God can't simply be politically first, or historically first. Rather God can not be dependent in any sense on other entities. That's what Open Theism denies. I think it safe to say that this is a view arising out of Greek philosophical thought. Especially the notion of the One which arose out of Plato but was further defined by Plotinus.
I should add, that while Mormonism denies this view, it doesn't follow that Mormonism embraces Open Theism. Indeed many Mormons find Open Theism's rejection of foreknowledge deeply problematic.
One other thing I should touch upon. Jeremy noted in the comments that the claim Hebrew thought didn't embrace absolutism needs defending. Now I'm probably not the person to defend it. From what I've read the Hebrews just didn't think ontologically. That is the kinds of philosophical discourse just weren't had - at least not until the influx of Greek philosophical thought. (Perhaps exemplified in Philo) However Jeremy brings up a good critique, that of Psalm 139. However I just don't see anything in that Psalm which entails anything akin to the One of Plato. I just don't. I don't even see any indication that metaphysics is involved.
Just to add, some might find David Paulsen's short discussion on the LDS conception of God interesting here. He's mainly discussing James' pragmatic criticism of theological absolutism, which won't convince many traditional theologians but is quite interesting for Mormons.
Now that I have some sense of what you mean (but really still only some sense), I can see that Psalm 139 won't do it. I'd be very surprised if it's not anywhere in the psalms. I suspect there might be things in Job or Proverbs that will be closer, but I'm not sure. I think it's assumed in God's self-revelation in Exodus. I think it's there in the thought of John (both in the gospel and the first epistle), Paul (I'm thinking Colossians), and the anonymous author of Hebrews. I think it's assumed in Genesis 1. I think it may even be assumed in the prophecies of Balaam at the end of Numbers, some of the oldest materials in the Bible. I suspect some of the prophetic statements come close to affirming it as well. I'm not sure they would have expressed it in Greek terms, but I think there's some sense of God's being ontologically prior to all things at the very roots of Hebrew thought about God. It's not the same view Plotinus expresses, because he adds a whole bunch of things to it that open theists read back into classical theism that I don't think are there, but the root notion of God as the ultimate explanation for all things is, I think, much earlier in the Hebrew tradition than when they interacted with Greek thought.
But you'd concede that it isn't explicit anywhere in scripture.
I confess I've read a lot of Hebrew based texts and I just don't see anything vaguely ontological until the influx of middle Platonism. Certainly one can read it in to the scriptures you mention. But I'm not sure it's fair to say it is assumed. At least I don't think one can make the case that it is assumed by the figures.
Clark, I think it follows from Scripture if one understands Scripture to imply creation ex nihilo, as most classical and open theists do. And indeed, this is the real locus for why classical theists have insisted on the immutability and atemporality with which open theists disagree. This is not plausibly in Greek thought at all; and I think we must be careful (as open theists are usually not) to distinguish verbal similarities and similarities of meaning. I think the real point of disagreement between open and classical theists would be expressed by open theists not in terms of dependence but, as open theists I've occasionally talked to have done, in terms of change. They insist that God must change to be active, and they interpret classical theism as saying that God does not change in any sense. It's always unclear what they mean by 'change'. This is why the appeal to Greek philosophy is rather dubious; contrary to open theists, classical theists don't have a Greek view of a 'static' deity, whatever that would be. Rather, on the classical view, God is pre-eminently active; classical theists just hold that God's being active requires the opposite of what open theists say it does, because God is active as sovereign Creator.
As for everything else, it seems to me that open theists usually tend to follow Greg Boyd in holding that everything else about God stays the same; they just have the view that the future for creatures must be 'open' (which is the primary reason they think God must change to be active).
I must admit, I'm a bit confused as to what is at stake in these discussions.
Whether we define CEN as "creation of the universe by a deity using no raw materials" or "creation of the universe by a deity using only himself as raw materials", we're still presuming a non-created deity. And if we can presume that, why not just presume a non-created universe, and be done with it? Regardless of how many turtles you want to stack on top of each other, you still end up with something coming from nothing. Right?
What am I missing?
Brandon, I might just be conflating Open Theism with Process Theology too much. I have to confess that I've read just enough Open Theism to decide I disagreed with it. So you may be right that I'm simply getting their position wrong.
Having said that though, it seems that the issue of mutability (or change) entails that God simply can't be absolute the way he is typically taken. Most Open Theists I've talked to were pretty emphatic on this point. Even if one says God is active, one must seriously ask what active means in this sense if he is not simultaneously dynamic. Is that really activity? Further one can ask whether relations with creatures affects God or not. My understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that traditional theology says no.
It sounds like perhaps some Open Theists simply are backing off some of the views of the movement. Perhaps due to all the opposition from more traditional theologians? (Of course, as I said, perhaps I just misunderstand the movement)
Michael, I tend to agree. I think the key issue for traditional theologians and probably open theologians is creation ex nihilo. But then that's most emphatically what I disagree with in traditional theology.
Michael: Whether one regards a pre-existing cause or the universe (in whatever sense of the word 'universe') as non-created would presumably depend on the arguments used to reach that point. With some arguments, unlike with epics, one can't really begin in media res; one has to see where they come from. So I'd have to see what arguments are presupposed for saying the universe is uncreated, and also (1) in what sense 'universe' is being taken here (unformed chaos? eternal matter? space-time? a steady-state universe? God-occasion process? something else?) and (2) what in its formal characterization is thought to make it a plausible candidate for something uncaused.
I don't think I understand your turtle-stacking sentence at all. Why would you end up with something coming from nothing?
Clark: It might well be that open theists are backing off the original position a bit; I don't know. On the relations issue, it depends on what you mean by saying, "God can be affected by creatures." Classical theists are inclined to take it in a strict and technical sense, and deny it: God does not undergo a change from the potential to the actual as the result of a causal power operating on Him as an efficient or moving cause. Open theists, in my experience, take it in a looser sense, and affirm it: God interacts with creatures. The two need not be mutually exclusive on the classical view; but open theists do, and I always find their reasons for this rather obscure. But I find most of open theism obscure; like you, I've talked with a number of open theists who make the contrast between static and dynamic, but I've never been able to pin them down on what they mean.
The one thing I've been unsure of with the Open Theists is how they are able to still affirm a timeless God, as at least a few do. It really seems like their commitments lead them more into a Process Theology view of God. And since that appears to entail problems with fundamental traditional theological doctrines like ex nihilo or God's timelessness, I've never understood how the Open Theist resolves this. If they'd just reject such doctrines then I think there'd be less problem. But then that introduces messy issues with the history of theology.
The closest I've ever come to finding an open theist answer that is in William Lane Craig's God, Time and Eternity. But even there it isn't clear how it's supposed to work. Craig argues that 'prior' to creation God is timeless and subsequent to creation He is not. But that doesn't tell us anything unless we know in what sense we are to take "'prior' to creation". It starts sounding very like process theism: God has an antecedent nature, which is timeless, and a consequent nature is temporal. But we don't have any idea how the two are related.
I think those open theists who deny timelessness and say that God has an infinite past are more consistent.
Oh, regarding Michael's comments, I think he is really just asking why it is significant to have creation ex nihilo rather than endless regress. Put an other way, I suppose, one might just ask why there must logically be an unmoved mover. I tend to agree on that matter, but recognize that traditional Christian theology largely adopts it for historical readings tied to particular exegesis of scripture.
William Lane Craig is a Molinist and has taken a dissenting view against Open Theism and in favor of divine timelessness in several books. I don't see how any open theistic view that asserts (post-creative) divine timelessness can be logically coherent. It certainly would be noteworthy if any of the OT leaders (Sanders, Pinnock, Boyd, Hasker) had backed off this position. I am afraid if they did they would no longer be considered open theists.
See http://www.opentheism.info/ for more information.
I prematurely characterized William Lane Craig's views regarding divine temporality. I think it is safe to say he is no Open Theist, however.
You're right that Craig isn't an open theist; but I've heard open theists give Craig-based accounts. (Presumably such people would follow Boyd's proposal of regarding open theism as a modified Molinism.) The issue of middle knowledge only pertains to the question of foreknowledge; divine atemporality is a different issue. Strictly speaking, all open theism requires is post-creative temporality; there is nothing in open theism that is inconsistent with pre-creative timelessness, although most brands of open theism would reject such a view. The difficulties arise with connecting the two.
Clark & Michael: The reason you can't have an infinite regress of movers is that the transitive dependence involved in a chain of movers generates logical contradictions if regressed to infinity; the proof of it isn't difficult, and Aquinas formulates it quite nicely and straightforwardly in Summa Contra Gentiles. It is logically incoherent to have an infinite regress of movers. I had thought, though, that the issue was a different one, namely the nature of the original mover, which is, I think, a much stronger objection. That would be the Bertrand Russell sort of question: why can't you turn this alleged argument for God's necessary existence into an argument for the world's necessary existence?
I don't find Aquinas' argument at all convincing. In his argument for the impossibility an infinite regress of movers, his discussion of principal and intermediate causes essentially assumes his own conclusion. There is no reason why an intermediate cause requires a principal cause except pure semantics.
From a logical point of view, what makes an infinite regress of causes necessarily a vicious infinite regress?
To add to Mark's comments, I'd say it isn't at all clear what makes an infinite regress a vicious infinite regress. At least it isn't to me. Whenever I go through arguments like this (and Craig has several) it seems just the presupposition that actual infinities are disallowed out of hand. That is, it just comes down to our biases rather than some actual reason. The Peircean in me says, "what's so bad about infinities?"
Just to make life easier on those reading who might not be familiar with the arguments, here's the relevant passage of Aquinas which really does seem like he is assuming his conclusions. (If Brandon can clarify a reading in which he doesn't simply assume actual infinities are impossible, I'd be interested)
Whatever is moved must be moved by another. If that by which is moved be itself moved, then this also must needs be moved by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover, seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are moved by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is moved by the hand. (Summa Theologiae I.2.3)
The intermediate cause one wasn't the one I was thinking of (he gives more than one in SCG 1.13). But if the intermediate cause argument is understood in a way similar to the unmoved-moved argument (the one I was thinking about), it doesn't beg the question, either: Aquinas's point is not that we simply have to have a first cause, but that if you deny such a cause in the case of motion, you are logically committed to saying there is an intermediate cause that isn't intermediate. (This, I take it, is the way the summarized argument in the website you link to is supposed to be taken, but since it doesn't clarify the way P9 should be taken, it remains obscure.) I'm not sure what you mean by 'nothing requiring it but pure semantics'; since semantics is the meaning of terms, that's precisely where one always finds both logical contradiction and logical consistency.
Clark: What makes an infinite regress argument vicious is what makes anything vicious, namely, the generation of logical contradictions. I agree that Craig's arguments simply assume that actual infinites are impossible. Aquinas agrees that this is true in certain cases, but (for instance) he doesn't think an infinite past is an actual infinite in the relevant way, which is why Aquinas has no philosophical problem with an eternal world: an infinite past is not a vicious regress. So Aquinas's infinite regress arguments never assume that an actual infinite is impossible; they merely identify a problem when one posits an infinite regress of particular kinds of causal dependence. One can say the same thing of Scotus's infinite regress arguments; Scotus (in section 3) discusses the issue of dependence at somewhat greater length (but he is considering only efficient causation, not moving causation).
Aquinas's arguments in ST 1.2.3 are not his full arguments but brief summaries of them; so 1.2.3 actually doesn't have an argument showing that infinite regress is impossible -- it just summarizes the reason why it is.
Let me put it an other way. I'm not convinced that most "vicious" kinds of infinities really are vicious without begging the question in certain serious ways. (And this includes some of Russell's)
Let's go back to Aquinas. Exactly how can we say an infinite regress entails that there is an intermediate that isn't an intermediate? He says this effectively because "intermediate" means between first and end. But does it only mean that? Can't it also mean before the following and after the previous? In other words he sneaks in the first cause in his definition of intermediate.
Put an other way, one must ask about the definitions in question and whether we have consistency there. That's where I frequently see Aquinas as begging the question.
BTW - for others, Brandon has a good summary of all this on his blog.
I don't see how redefining in terms of 'following' and 'previous' would avoid the contradiction, because I take Aquinas to mean by 'first' a relative first: an intermediate cause is between something that is its first and its end. And in that sense, 'previous' and 'following' would just be synonyms. (Scotus's arguments against infinite regress in efficient causation are even more clearly to be understood in this way.) And then, given the transitivity of moving causation, you either reach a first cause that is not an intermediate cause, or the effect is caused by an intermediate cause with no previous causes (which is a contradiction).
Perhaps one possible response to this would be to take the whole set of previous causes (which, given the transitivity of moving causation, is itself a cause) and designate that a previous cause with no previous cause, and then hold that every subset of that causal set is an intermediate cause with something previous and something following. But that wouldn't evade the basic point, namely, that you have to have a first cause (it just makes the first cause a causal composite of infinite parts); and given that Aquinas at this point hasn't yet done his inquiry into what being a first cause entails, that would be all he needs at this point in his argument.
Another possible way (and in my view the most reasonable and plausible way to deny Aquinas's conclusion) would be to hold that there are no causes that exhibit the relevant sort of transitivity; in that case you could have an infinite regress -- because it would, in effect, be an infinite regress of what the scholastics would call accidental causes, which only people like William Lane Craig think are vicious. (But Scotus argues, plausibly, I think, that, while an infinite regress of accidental causes is possible, it is possible only if there is a first cause to which the whole series is essentially ordered, to be what makes it actually possible.) But that would really be a denial of Aquinas's first premise (that there are moved things), and not of the infinite regress argument itself.
So, in other words: I don't see that Aquinas can be charged with begging the question. He can (perhaps) be reasonably charged with too quickly assuming that the causal concept he analyzes (Aristotelian moving causation) is applicable in the real world. But if it's not applicable, that would take us to entirely different arguments (why it's not applicable, what is applicable instead, etc.) and so the charge would be different from the charge that he begs the question. But, even if Aquinas is wrong on this point, I don't think he's too hasty here. Clearly some sort of causation is found in change; and Aquinas has an entire book (the Commentary on Aristotle's Physics) arguing that Aristotle's moving causation account accurately describes this sort of causation.
Brandon, I'm at work so I don't have the time to dedicate to thinking through this just yet. I'll hopefully break out my Scouts and look at this in more depth later tonight.
Oops. That should have read "Scotus" and not "Scouts" in the above. (LOL)
Anyway I went through the arguments last night and thought about them quite a bit. I honestly can't see where I'm wrong. However I usually tread on thin ice while invoking medieval philosophy. I fully recognize that reading medieval philosophy is difficult at the best of times. While I recognize its neglect yet importance, I am anything but well versed in it. Lots of books on my shelves about it, but I always have a problem reading the original documents. (But then I have trouble reading Kant too - so take that for what it's worth) I often get in trouble when I invoke medieval philosophers. The last time I did it I embarrassed myself to no end by confusing Duns Scotus with Scotus Erigena. So take this for what it is worth. If you have time, I'd really appreciate your clarifying this for me, as I can't see where I'm mistaken.
Let me use the presentation from your post that I'd linked to. I'd wanted to comment on it when you first posted it but didn't have time. I'll put it in a separate thread though, since this one is already getting long. That should be up in a few minutes.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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