The Ultimate Paradox of Divine Creation

God freely creates beings that are both (i) wholly dependent on God's creative activity at every moment for their existence, and yet (ii) beings in their own own right, not merely intentional objects of the divine mind.  The extreme case of this is God's free creation of finite minds, finite subjects, finite unities of consciousness and self-consciousness, finite centers of inviolable inwardness, finite free agents, finite free agents with the power to refuse their own good, their own happiness, and to defy the nature of reality.  God creates potential rebels.  He creates Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus.  He creates Lucifer the light bearer who, blinded by his own light, refuses to acknowledge the source of his light, and would be that source even though the project of becoming the source of his own light is doomed to failure, and he knows it, but pursues it anyway.  Lucifer as the father of all perversity.

God creates and sustains, moment by moment, other minds, like unto his own, made in his image, who are yet radically other in their inwardness and freedom.  He creates subjects who exist in their own right and not merely as objects of divine thought. How is this conceivable?  

We are not mere objects for the divine subject, but subjects in our own right.  How can we understand creation ex nihilo, together with moment by moment conservation, of a genuine subject, a genuine mind with intellect and free will and autonomy and the power of self-determination even unto rebellion?

This is a mystery of divine creation.  It is is above my pay grade.  And yours too.

God can do it but we can't.  We can't even understand how God could do it.  A double infirmity. An infirmity that sires a doubt: Perhaps it can't be done, even by God. Perhaps the whole notion is incoherent and God does not exist. Perhaps it is not a mystery but an impossibility.  Perhaps Christian creation is an Unbegriff.

Joseph Ratzinger accurately explains the Christian metaphysical position, and in so doing approaches what I am calling the ultimate paradox of divine creation, but he fails to confront, let alone solve, the problem:

The Christian belief in God is not completely identical with either of these two solutions [materialism and idealism]. To be sure, it, too, will say, being is being-thought. Matter itself points beyond itself to thinking as the earlier and more original factor. But in opposition to idealism, which makes all being into moments of an all-embracing consciousness, the Christian belief in God will say: Being is being-thought -- yet not in such a way that it remains only thought and that the appearance of independence proves to be mere appearance to anyone who looks more closely.

On the contrary, Christian belief in God means that things are the being-thought of a creative consciousness, a creative freedom, and that the creative consciousness that bears up all things has released what has been thought into the freedom of its own, independent existence. In this it goes beyond any mere idealism. While the latter , as we have just established, explains everything real as the content of a single consciousness, in the Christian view what supports it all is a creative freedom that sets what has been thought in the freedom of its own being, so that, on the one hand, it is the being-thought of a consciousness and yet, on the other hand, is true being itself. (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, German original 1968, latest English version Ignatius Press, 2004, p. 157, emphasis added)

And that is where the good Cardinal (later Pope Benedict the XVI) leaves it. He then glides off onto another topic. Not satisfactory!  What's the solution to the paradox?

If you tell me that God creates other minds, and then somehow releases them into ontological independence, my reply will be that makes hash of the doctrine of creatio continuans, moment-by-moment conservation.  The Christian God is no mere cosmic starter-upper of what exists; his creating is ongoing. In fact, if the universe always existed, then all creation would be creatio continuans, and there would be no starting-up at all.

On Christian metaphysics, "The world is objective [objectified] mind . . . ." (155) This is what makes it intelligible. This intelligibility has its source in subjective mind: "Credo in Deum expresses the conviction that objective [objectified] mind is the product of subjective mind . . . ." (Ibid.)  So what I call onto-theological idealism gets the nod. You don't understand classical theism unless you understand it to be a form of idealism. But creatures, and in particular other minds, exist on their own, in themselves, and their Being cannot be reduced to their Being-for-God.  Therein lies the difficulty.

Is divine creation a mystery or an impossibility?

Related: Realism, Idealism, and Classical Theism 

Comments

[Dave Bagwill]

Hi Bill - thanks for posting on this subject, which I have been very interested in lately.
I don't understand what you mean by ".. and their Being cannot be reduced to their Being-for-God."
Help a brother out?
Thanks

[EGP]

Allow me to attempt an solution. Perhaps the tenets of classical theism can help us.

If God is a being, then if I am merely an accusative or intentional object of God’s mind, this would appear to radically undermine my status as a genuine being and a real substance. For it seems that in every case that something exists merely as an intentional object for a being, that something has at best a second-rate existence. I imagine a fictional character, and this man “exists” only insofar as I continue to conceive him. My existence as a being seems to deprive genuine being from the intentional objects of my thought.

But for at least some classical theists, God is not a being at all, but rather, God is Being Itself. This might be our way out of the aporia.

If God is a being, then other beings would indeed seem to be nothing but “moments of an all-embracing consciousness” (Cardinal Ratzinger). They would not be genuine beings. But if God is not a being but Being Itself, then for every being, what it is to be just is to be the intentional object of God’s mind.

And here we have the one case wherein something which is an intentional object of thought is nevertheless “released...into the freedom of its own, independent existence.” How can one and the same thing be at once the “being-thought of a consciousness and yet...true being itself?” If that consciousness was itself not a being at all, and if what it is to be a being is nothing else than to be thought in such a way. The fact that I am sustained by God in existence at every moment that I exist in no way threatens my genuine being only if God is not a being like me, but Being Itself.

In the end, this may not have been a solution at all, but a mere rewording of the original problem. Or perhaps I have just kicked the can down the road, or have not said anything coherent in the first place.

[BV]

Greetings Brother Dave,

>>I don't understand what you mean by ".. and their Being cannot be reduced to their Being-for-God." <<

That merely recaps what I argued above, namely, that creatures -- whether material or spiritual -- cannot be merely intentional objects for the divine subject. They cannot exist merely for God; they must also exist in themselves.

As Ratzinger says,Christianity is in "opposition to idealism, which makes all being into moments of an all-embracing consciousness . . ."

[Dave Bagwill]

BV: got it, thanks.

EGP: thanks for the input.

[Jonathan Barber]

I had not come across the piece by Joseph Ratzinger before. He too seems to be alluding to the Platonic doctrine that I expressed (in a comment to the previous post) as the 'convertibility of being and knowledge'. I quoted the Greek because I have never found a satisfactory translation of 'to auto estin noiein te kai einai'. What I rendered as 'knowledge', the Cardinal renders as 'being-thought'. I must admit that he captures the meaning better than I did. (If only Plato had used a passive infinitive ('noiesthai'?) instead of an active one! But I believe he was quoting Parmenides.)

Be that as it may, I find myself in agreement with EGP. God is not a being. At the very least he is Being-itself. To refer to Plato again, he is even 'beyond Being' (epekeina tes ousias'). In the Platonic tradition he is referred to as 'the good that is above being'.

This being so, we can see why an Idealist is not committed to pantheism. As EGP says, "But if God is not a being but Being Itself, then for every being, what it is to be just is to be the intentional object of God’s mind." (my italics).

This does not dispose of the mystery, but it does restate it in a way that may be more palatable to some. God, who is the Fullness of Being (the Pleroma), is able (and here we are using highly symbolic language) to withdraw himself to 'make room' for other beings, his creatures, which are the intentions of his thought. These have a quasi-independent subsistence while at the same time requiring his sustentation. The immanence of God that sustains all beings requires the absolute transcendence that is able to create all beings. Quite how this works is certainly beyond our pay grade.

[BV]

EGP,

Thanks for the comment.

You say: >>If God is a being, then other beings would indeed seem to be nothing but “moments of an all-embracing consciousness” (Cardinal Ratzinger). They would not be genuine beings. But if God is not a being but Being Itself, then for every being, what it is to be just is to be the intentional object of God’s mind.<<

Why? It is important to note that if God is Being (esse), it does not follow that God is not also a being (ens). After all, the formula is Deus est ipsum esse subsistens. Inasmuch as God is self-subsisting he IS, i.e., he is ENS. There are three positions that need to be distinguished:

A. God is a being among beings. (Plantinga and the analytic theists)
B. God is Being but not a being. (Pseudo-Dionysus and negative theology, radical-alterity theology)
C. God is Being and a/the being. God is Being in its prime instance. God is like a Platonic Form. Justice is itself just. Goodness is itself good. Being (esse, Sein) is itself being (ens, seiend).

(C) is classical theism. Since God is ENS, I don't see how EGP's proposal works.

[BV]

JB,

Right, it goes back to Parmenides.

>>Be that as it may, I find myself in agreement with EGP. God is not a being. At the very least he is Being-itself. To refer to Plato again, he is even 'beyond Being' (epekeina tes ousias'). In the Platonic tradition he is referred to as 'the good that is above being'.<<

I disagree. See my response to EGP and my three-fold distinction.

You are committed to saying that God is not. For if God is esse, but not also ens, then God is non-ens, i.e., not a being. And if God is not ens, how can he be a subject of intentional states?

This dialectic comes up in Heidegger. If Being is other than every being -- as per his ontological difference -- then Being is not, which implies that Being is the same as das Nichts, Nothing.

You seem to be going the radical alterity route. But then every predication about God would have to be equivocal and not even analogical.A, B, and C correspond respectively to univocity, equivocity, analogicity.

[Thomas]

> Is divine creation a mystery or an impossibility?

Much too hard. But, backing off a little, are there any inroads to be made into the above by answering the simpler question:

Are mysteries and impossibilities distinguishable?

Hmm. Still looks too hard (for me). But, would it help to pull back a bit further and instead of going straight to mystery vs impossibility, start with non-sense vs falsehood?

For example: assuming, the normal, everyday meanings of the various words involved, does each of the following sentences correspond with falsehood, or nonsense? (I’m hoping each must be either one or the other!)

1. The present King of France is bald.
2. C++ is more water-resistant than Shostakovich V.
3. There are four and a half Persons in the Trinity.
4. A square circle has an area of zero, and a perimeter of length infinity.
5. Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrue, [rasp], [fart], [sneeze].

[BV]

Thomas,

Something tells me you are a professional philosopher.

>>Are mysteries and impossibilities distinguishable?<<

It is logically impossible that a rubber ball be red all over its surface and not red all over its surface at the same time assuming that 'red' has the same sense in both of its occurrences. In this simple case, we have no reason to think that such a ball is possible but that we just cannot understand how it is possible, and so it is a mystery.

Compare the ball to the Trinity. In the case of something like this so far beyond our ken we do have some reason to say that, while it must appear logically contradictory to us given our cognitive architecture, it is possible -- it is just that we cannot understand how it is possible, hence it is a mystery.

[BV]

As for nonsense vs. necessary falsehood, the man in the street makes no distinction. But philosophers must.

If a proposition is necessarily false, e.g. (4) above, then, since it has a truth-value, it must have sense/meaning, ergo it has sense and is not nonsense.

'No potrezeebie is a slithy tove,' on the other hand is nonsense, although syntactically well-formed.

'Toves is or,' is nonsense both syntactically and semantically.