Is God Beyond All Being?

This is a redacted re-posting of an entry that first appeared in these pages on 8 May 2015. It answers a question Fr. Kimel poses in the comments to Divine Simplicity and Modal Collapse.

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Fr. Aidan Kimel writes,

Reading through Vallicella’s article, I kept asking myself, Would Mascall agree with the proposition “existence exists”? I find the proposition odd. [. . .] What about the assertion of Pseudo-Dionysius that God is beyond all Being? Aquinas would certainly agree that the Creator transcends created being; but I suspect that Dionysius is trying to say something more.  I wonder what the Maverick Philosopher thinks about “beyond Being” language  (I can pretty much guess what Tuggy thinks about it).

I plan to discuss the strange question whether existence exists in a separate post.  Here I will say something about whether God is beyond all Being.

Well, what would it be for God to be beyond Being?  What could that mean?

First we must distinguish between Being and beings, esse and ens, das Sein und das Seiende.  It is absolutely essential to observe this distinction and to mark it linguistically by a proper choice of terms. If we do so, then we see right away that Kimel's question is ambiguous.  Is he asking whether God is beyond all beings or beyond all Being?  Big difference! (Heidegger calls it the Ontological Difference.)

I think what Kimel means to ask is whether God is beyond all beings.  A being is anything at all that is or exists, of whatever category, and of whatever nature.  Being, on the other hand, majuscule Being, is that which makes beings be. Now one of the vexing questions here is whether Being itself is, whether that which makes beings be is itself a being or else the paradigmatic being.  Heidegger and Pseudo-Dionysius say No!  Aquinas says Yes!  (That is, Aquinas says that Being is the paradigmatic being from which every other being has its being.)  Dale Tuggy would presumably dismiss the question by maintaining that there just is no Being, there are only beings; hence the question lapses, resting as it does (according to Tuggy) on a false presupposition.  

Now distinguish three positions.  (A) God is a being among beings. (B) God is not a being among beings, but self-subsistent Being itself.  (C) God is neither a being among beings, nor self-subsistent Being itself, but beyond every being.  Tuggy, Aquinas, Pseudo-Dionysius.  (You're in good company, Dale!)

I have already explained what it means to say that God is a being among beings.  But to repeat myself, it it to say that the very same general-metaphysical scheme, the very same scheme of metaphysica generalis,  that applies to creatures applies also to God.  This implies, among other things, that God and Socrates (Socrates standing in for any creature whatsoever) exist in the same way.  It implies that there are not two modes of Being, one pertaining to God alone, the other pertaining to Socrates. If, on the other hand, one maintains that God is not a being among beings, then one is maintaining, among other things, that God and Socrates exist in different ways.  The difference can be put by saying that God is (identically) his existence and existence itself while this is surely not the case for Socrates: he has existence but he doesn't have it by being it.  In God there is no real distinction, no distinctio realis, between essence and existence while in Socrates there is a real distinction between essence and existence.

Equivalently, if God is a being among beings, then God is one member of a totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties.'  But if God is not a being among beings, then there is no such totality of beings each of which exists in the very same sense of 'exists' and has properties in the very same sense of 'has properties' such that both God and Socrates are members of it.

How does (B) differ from (C)?  On (B) God is (identical to) Being but also is.  God is not a being, but the being that is identical to Being itself.  (C) is a more radical view.  It is the view that God is so radically transcendent of creatures that he is not!  This is exactly what pseudo-Dionysius says in The Divine Names (Complete Works, p. 98) It is the view that God is other than every being.  But if God is other than every being, then God in no way is.  

This can also be explained in terms of univocity, analogicity, and equivocity.  For Tuggy & Co. 'exists' in 'God exists' and 'Socrates exists' has exactly the same sense.  The predicate is univocal across these two occurrences.  For Aquinas, the predicate is being used analogously, which implies that while God and Socrates both are, they are in different ways or modes. But for Pseudo-Dionysius the predicate is equivocal.

Fr. Kimel suspects that Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more than that God transcends every creature.  The suspicion is correct.  Whereas Aquinas is saying that God is, but transcends every creature in respect of his very mode of Being, Pseudo-Dionysius is saying more , namely that God is so transcendent that he is not.  

My question for Fr. Kimel: Do you side with the doctor angelicus, or do you go all the way into the night of negative theology with Pseudo-Dionysus? 

Comments

[chris]

If God is beyond being in the radical sense suggested, then in what way is he different from nothing - non-entity? I maintain that if God is beyond being, then there is no such distinction, and God therefore becomes identical to non-entity.

Indeed, the only thing "beyond being" would be that which had no being, which did not have any "isness" about it whatsoever. But anything that is, that exists, must be. Therefore it must possess being. The only thing that could lack all "is" whatsoever is that which is-not. That is, to fully negate "is" is identical to affirm "is-not." Thus, whatever is beyond being is beyond existence - i.e. does not exist.

How can one say "God IS" if the word "is" cannot apply to him? But if one cannot say "God is" how can one say, or even think, that God exists?

It is like Kant's division of the noumenal and phenomenal world. If literally everything we can say applies only to the phenomenal world and not the noumenal, we don't even have a right to say the noumenal world exists. If you can say nothing at all about a thing, you certainly can't say that that thing has the most important property you can predicate of it: namely existence itself.

Also, there is the glaring problem that you raised Bill in your criticism of Hugh McCann's Creation and the Sovereignty of God. Namely, if God transcends even modality, we have no way of saying he accounts for the world. For God to account for the world would mean that the world depends on God, which is to say that the world is contingent. But if the world is contingent, then God must be necessary, else the distinction between God and the world collapses. I won't rehash your whole criticism here, nor the three points you bring up at the end of that paper which nicely articulate the problem in saying God transcends modality. I will simply say that, for God to cause the world - and if we cannot say God causes the world we have no right to think he exists at all - then, as you say, "we must have a God who is necessary, and a world that is contingent."