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Transcendent God (Out of time)
- Painting analogy: God sees our lives in the same way we see a painting. He is one or more ‘dimensions’ up, and sees all temporal events concurrently (as we would see a still image).
- Analogy of the mountain: God is as a man on a mountain, seeing all points of the road at once.
- God is therefore completely omniscient in the classical sense – he knows the future.
- YET free will is important morally, to allow us to love God.
- Therefore when we use the word ‘know’ of God, we do it analogically.
- His knowledge is of a different sort to ours (as would also be expected of a simple being).
- God’s knowledge is NOT CAUSAL (Boethius) – God knowing what we will do is caused by the fact that we freely choose to do it, in the same way that the man on the mountain seeing a winding road does not cause it to exist – its existence causes him to see it.
- However, this does open the door to a realist theory of the future – that as God can see it, it is potentially correct to say that such and such is a ‘future fact’
- This ignores the view that God may from his transcendent vantage point see all possible futures – a view which meshes nicely with Plantinga and quantum theory (Everitt many worlds view). A realist view of the future is not inevitable.
Predestination
- Luther understood that Man’s free will was dictated by God or Satan, and that we could only change who our will was dictated by with the grace of God. ‘passively’ (Kenny)
- Whilst this solves the ‘problem’ of omniscience, most scholars agree that the consequent sacrifice of free will is too high a price to pay.
- We can seemingly direct our love too or from God – this view (shared by Calvinists as well as Luther) is too simplistic.
This leads to Eternal God
- Eternal God is within time.
- He has a full view of the past, the present and the future which is predictable according to physical laws.
- If materialism holds, then he is also omnipotent. (Leibniz sufficiently powerful mathematician)
- If the ‘liberty of spontaneity’ holds (actions completely determined by upbringing, genes etc), and we are free to do what our determined nature wants us to, then omniscience also holds.
- If ‘liberty of indifference’ holds, then unless God directly influences the ‘moral self’, he cannot see the future.
- Perhaps he acts as a grandmaster – if we played a grandmaster at chess we would be sure to lose, but he would not have to know our moves before hand to be certain of this fact. (Geach “God is the supreme Grand Master”)
- God can predict that his will will eventually triumph.
- Yet how can he predict this? How can he manipulate anything without voiding free will? (see miracles and free will notes from last year)
- Everlasting god leads to anti realist statements in this case – no truth to be known until the actions take place.
Aretaic (Revisionary) view
- Our freely undertaken actions shape our character.
- We must live with our character
- Our character shows on the outside and is visible to God.
- He can look at us to see our sin in us – he does not need to watch our every move, as everything that we do effects us. (Sutherland)
- We are responsible for our own character, and can become set in our habits – virtue and vice are habit forming, and it is easier to choose the path at the start. (Aristotle)
Comments
These notes are based on an essay plan for the topic of mortality and life and death for the OCR A2 Synoptic Philosophy and Ethics paper.
Origianlly written by XtrepT on TSR Forums.
