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Is God Essentially God?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

James F. Sennett
James F. Sennett
Affiliation:
Palm Beach Atlantic College, P.O. Box 24708, West Palm Beach, FL 33416-4708
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Extract

If theism is true, then there exists a being to which we appropriately refer with the term ‘God’. This point is analytic. Any object to which we appropriately refer with the term ‘God’ bears certain properties – e.g. omniscience, omnipotence and moral perfection. While the analyticity of this point may be a matter of debate, I find no problem granting its necessary truth, at least for the purposes of this paper. There are properties essential to the appropriate wearing of the title ‘God’. Does it follow from these claims that the object to which we appropriately apply the term ‘God’ bears the properties in question – omniscience, omnipotence, etc. – essentially? Is God essentially God? Or is it possible that the being to whom we refer with ‘God’ exist but not be God? Many would assume that the answers to these questions are obvious – that God is God essentially, or not at all. However, I wish to argue that there may be properties essential to Godhood, but not essential to the being that is God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 295 - 303
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 For the sake of simplicity, I will use the term ‘world’ metonymically for ‘possible world’. The implications of my claim for worlds that are not possible worlds – if any there be – is not a concern in this paper.

2 To avoid awkward grammatical constructions and distracting pronominal usages, I retain the traditional practice of using masculine pronouns to refer to God. This decision is purely stylistic. Like many, I find the practice of assigning exclusive sexual identity to God to be theologically objectionable, sociologically abhorrent and semantically incoherent. Unfortunately, current English syntax has yet to develop an alternative usage that does not compromise the meaning of a text by calling undue attention to its form. Hence, ever the rhetorical (if not theological) conservative, I take the road more travelled by – for better or worse.

3 There is, of course, a plurality of such substitutions, since there is a plurality of possible values for ‘p’.

4 ‘Can God's Existence be Disproved?’ in Plantinga, Alvin, ed., The Ontological Argument (New York: Macmillan, 1964), p. 117.Google Scholar Reprinted from Mind 57 (1948). Emphasis his.

5 The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 214. Emphasis his.Google Scholar

6 According to Plantinga's modal theory, an object S need not bear a property p in every world in order to bear p essentially. Rather, S bears p essentially just in case S bears p in every world in which S exists (this point is reflected in my (2*)). However, Plantinga argues in chapters seven and eight of The Nature of Necessity that no object bears any properties in any world in which it does not exist (a doctrine he elsewhere labels ‘serious actualism’). He uses this doctrine to argue in chapter ten that Yahweh exists in all possible worlds and is God in all possible worlds (his famous modal ontological argument).

7 I am grateful to Tom Senor for pointing out to me that this clarification is needed.

8 See, e.g., Guleserian, Ted, ‘Can Moral Perfection be an Essential Attribute?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 46 (1985), 219–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Notice that this sense of ‘can’ assumes no position in the debate over the compatibility of free will and determinism. Even for compatibilism, I can do A entails There is at least one world in which I does A. (This latter proposition is consistent with I is (actually) determined to do other than A.) For any morally wrong action A*, there are no worlds in which an essentially morally perfect being does A*. Hence, even under a compatibilist conception of ‘can,’ it is false that he can do A*.

10 ‘The Problem of Divine Perfection and Freedom,’ in Eleonore, Stump, ed., Reasoned Faith (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

11 Perhaps Plantinga and Findlay use these locutions simply to express the claim that Yahweh is not contingently God. But if this is the proper reading, then of course their assumptions become simply statements of the proposition in question, and not arguments for it at all.

12 Perhaps the Aristotelian practice of referring to contingent properties as ‘accidental’ has caused some equivocal confusion here.

13 I am grateful to the participants of the 1990 Society of Christian Philosophers Midwest Regional Meetings in Lincoln, NE, and the 1993 Society of Christian Philosophers Eastern Regional Meetings in Rome, GA, before whom previous versions of this paper were read. I received especially helpful comments and insights from George Mavrodes, William Rowe, Tom Senor and Eleanor Stump. In addition, I thank Rowe for very helpful spoken and written comments on at least two subsequent drafts. Finally, I thank Keith Cooper for helpful discussions leading to the formulation of the original draft.