God and Deus

Originally published here. Copying here for reference.

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Bill Vallicella, the famous Maverick Philosopher, just dropped me a line asking whether, when Thomas Aquinas and Baruch Spinoza use the term 'Deus', they are referring to the same being. This is a difficult and interesting question.

Bill uses the Latin name 'Deus', alluding to the fact that both men wrote in Latin. Latin was the choice of the 'scholastic' theologians of the 13th century, because it was the language of European scholarship. Thus the work of Thomas, an Italian writing in the 1260s, would have been accessible without translation to his English contemporary Roger Marston. For much the same reason, Spinoza, writing 400 years later, also used Latin.

Clearly both writers would have understood each other's work, as regards the dictionary meanings of Latin words. So when Thomas writes (Summa Iª q. 7 a. 1 co.) esse divinum non sit esse receptum in aliquo – the divine being is not a being received in anything, Spinoza would have understood what he meant because he would have understood the standard meanings of 'esse' (being), 'divinum' (of or belonging to a deity, divine), 'receptum' (that which is taken to one's self, admitted, accepted, received) etc. That is clear. All these words are in Latin dictionaries. But when Thomas writes Manifestum est quod ipse Deus sit infinitus et perfectus – it is manifest that Deus Himself is infinite and perfect – would he and Spinoza understand the proper name Deus in the same way?

This is a difficult question, for many reasons. But there is at least one sort of case where it is clear they are using the name ‘God’ in exactly the same way, namely when they discuss the interpretation of the scriptures. Aquinas does this many times in Summa Theologiae, using the words of the Bible and the Church Fathers to support complex theological and philosophical arguments. Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise is an extensive commentary on the text of the Bible and its meaning, also supported throughout by biblical quotation. So when Thomas writes

According to Chrysostom (Hom. iii in Genes.), Moses prefaces his record by speaking of the works of God (Deus) collectively. (Summa Theologiae Iª q. 68 a. 1 ad 1)

and Spinoza writes

As for the fact that God [Deus] was angry with him [Balak] while he was on his journey, that happened also to Moses when he was setting out for Egypt at the command of God [Dei]. (Tractatus ch. 3, alluding to Exodus 4:24-26)

it is clear that they are talking about the same persons, i.e. they are both talking about God, and they are both talking about Moses. It is somewhat more complicated than that, because Spinoza has a special theory about what the word ‘God’ means in the scriptures, but more of that later. In the present case, it seems clear that whenever we indirectly quote the scriptures, e.g. ‘Exodus 3:1 says that Moses was setting out for Egypt at the command of God’, we are specifying what the Bible says by using the names ‘Moses’ and ‘God’ exactly as the Bible uses them. Bill might disagree here, but we shall see.

God and Allah

Originally published here at Dale Tuggy’s site. Copying here for reference.

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Last month my publisher gave the green light to start work on The Same God? Reference and Identity in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Scriptures. Yes, that old question of whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians, which surfaced again last year when Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor at Wheaton College, was suspended following her Facebook post citing Pope Francis's statement that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. Bill Vallicella has a good post about the question here, and see Beckwith’s discussion, as well as this by someone called ‘Tuggy’.

The first, and natural reaction, is that the Muslim and the Christian God cannot be the same, given the radically different conceptions that Muslims and Christians hold of the supreme being. Muslims believe that God is not triune, Christians believe that he is triune. Since being triune and not being triune are incompatible, it follows that no being could simultaneously instantiate the Muslim and the Christian conceptions, and so, given that there can be only one supreme being, it seems to follow that Muslims and Christians do not worship the same God. On this view, either the Christian or the Muslim is an idolater: one or the other entertains a conception of something that does not exist, but that which does not exist cannot be a genuine object of worship. But not so fast! As Christopher Howse pointed out here, the fact that you think others are mistaken in their description of someone's characteristics does not mean that they are referring to a different person.

Someone, for example, might call Spartacus a "freedom fighter" and someone else call him a "murderous rebel", but they are talking about the same man.

On this view, either the Christian or the Muslim is a heretic, by claiming that God has attributes which are contrary to the orthodox view. John of Damascus says:

There are many other extraordinary and quite ridiculous things in this book [Quran] which he [Muhammad] boasts was sent down to him from God. But when we ask: ‘And who is there to testify that God gave him the book? And which of the prophets foretold that such a prophet would rise up?’—they are at a loss.’ ‘Moreover, they call us Hetaeriasts, or Associators, because, they say, we introduce an associate with God by declaring Christ to the Son of God and God.’ ‘by avoiding the introduction of an associate with God you have mutilated Him. It would be far better for you to say that He has an associate than to mutilate Him, as if you were dealing with a stone or a piece of wood or some other inanimate object. Thus, you speak untruly when you call us Hetaeriasts; we retort by calling you Mutilators of God.’

John is clearly referring to God throughout. Second, he is also stating what Muhammad says via indirect quotation: ‘which he [Muhammad] boasts was sent down to him from God’. Thus he concedes that the being that Muhammad is boasting about is identical to the being that he worships. And so it is heresy, not idolatry. Muhammad denies there is an ‘associate’ of the very same being that John worships. Muhammad does not deny the existence of Jesus, but he does deny the relationship between Jesus and God claimed by orthodox Christians. But it is still more difficult. Howse claims that when someone calls Spartacus a "freedom fighter" and someone else calls him a "murderous rebel", they are both talking about the same man. This begs the question. What relation is invoked by calling someone a name? How do we talk about that person? Well, we use a proper name like ‘Spartacus’, but how does a proper name enable us to do this? Does it embed a description like ‘Thracian gladiator who led an uprising against the Romans’? If so, names that embed contrary descriptions like ‘triune’ and ‘not triune’ cannot possible refer to the same being, and so we are back to the first position. The question is one of idolatry not heresy. If, on the other hand, proper names do not embed descriptions, if they simply refer to their bearers, then they must refer to an existing bearer. Hence (a) God necessarily exists, because I am able to refer to him in saying ‘God exists’ and (b) it must be possible to determine from the meaning of ‘God’ and the meaning of ‘Allah’ alone, whether they are the same being or not. If I know the meaning of an English word and an Arabic word, I must be able to say whether one translates the other or not.

Can we understand a proposition in which two names occur without knowing whether their meaning is the same or different? Suppose I know the meaning of an English word and of a German word that means the same: then it is impossible for me to be unaware that they do mean the same; I must be capable of translating each into the other. (Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.243)

Neither position seems tenable. More later, but as Vallicella says, there is no easy answer to the question. ‘It depends on the resolution of intricate questions in the philosophy of language’.

Genesis and Reference

Ed Feser has an interesting post about Christians, Muslims, and the reference of “God”.  Nearly 300 comments, including some very bad philosophy. The issue is essentially a linguistic and semantical one, not theological. Ed correctly points out that a speaker’s erroneous beliefs don’t entail that he is not referring to the same thing that speakers with correct beliefs are referring to, mentioning the example made famous by Keith Donellan.  He points out that it is “perfectly coherent to say that Muslims are “importantly” and “crucially” wrong precisely because they are referring to the very same thing Christians are when they use the word “God,” and that they go on to make erroneous claims about this referent.  That the errors are “important” or “crucial” is not by itself sufficient to prevent successful reference.

But then Ed claims (in a comment on his own post) that Jews, Christians and Muslims also use “God” to mean “the uncaused cause of everything other than himself, who is omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, etc.”  “

Why? By ‘God’ don’t they all just mean the being referred to at the beginning of Genesis “In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth”, and who is referred to continuously throughout the old Testament?  When any of them uses the name used in the Bible, they are using it with the same reference as the Bible, the text from which they learned the name.

So it is perfectly rational for a Christian to deny that God (i.e. the being referred to in Genesis et al) is the uncaused cause of everything other than himself. I.e. the proposition ‘God is the uncaused cause of everything other than himself’ is synthetic rather than analytic.   But it is contradictory to say that God is not the being referred to at the beginning of Genesis, at least if the use of ‘God’ is intended to continue the chain of reference begun in Genesis and which extends throughout the Bible.

More Scotus

Some more Scotus: the Prologue and the first seven distinctions of Book I of the immense Ordinatio.  Following the post the other day about actual infinity, note Distinction 2, Question 1 on whether there is an actual infinite, and Question 2 whether some infinite being is per se known to us, such as the being of God.

On knowledge of God

A nice post here by Maverick about whether the way to God is through the self, or by ‘scholastic’ analysis of propositions or thoughts or doctrines. He quotes Augustine (De Vera Religione, c. 39): Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine habitat veritas, which he translates as "Do not wander far and wide but return into yourself. The truth resides in man's interiority". I think ‘inner man’ is better and more literal – interiore homine is one of Augustine’s favourite expressions, which he himself probably borrows from the words of Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, 3.16 - ut det vobis secundum divitias gloriae suae virtute corroborari per Spiritum eius in interiore homine - “That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man”

Giles Fraser would frequently bang on about the two Gods of Genesis: the creator God, known by description, all-powerful and all-knowing, the God that the Scholastics mostly wrote about in their extensive theology. And the God who would walk through the garden of Eden, who looks like a man, and who cannot be approached by logical analysis.

Filed under 'propositionalism'. Propositionalism is the view that all reports of intentional states can be analysed as propositional attitude reports. See my discussion here. I assume it is obvious how this is connected with the idea of ‘the inner man’.

William Kane Craig

Buddy Kane is a fictional character in the film ‘American Beauty’. He is an extremely successful estate agent, the "king" of real estate, who has persuaded many people to buy the homes that he is an agent for. William Lane Craig is a character in real life. He is an extremely successful theologian and public speaker who has persuaded many people to buy the claims of fundamentalist and literalist Christianity that he is a spokesman for.

Craig on an infinite old universe

I listened to some of the podcast of the Craig-Law debate.  Craig's argument is in stages.  (1) An argument that the world had a beginning in time. (2) That the world therefore had a creator (3) that this creator is good (4) that this good creator is the very being whose son is the Jesus who was resurrected.

Taking the first, I was surprised by his arguments about an infinitely old universe.  He seemed to be arguing that there are parodoxes associated with a denumerable infinity. For example, if you take away all the odd numbers, you are left with infinitely many even numbers, so an infinity subtracted from an infinity still equals infinity.  Is this a paradox, or just a feature of infinite domains?  He seems to acknowledge this, but then says that this means that infinity is simply a mental construct, and nothing real.  Therefore an infinitely old universe, which would have to be real, cannot exist.  That is also odd.  Most mathematicians, who are Platonists to the core, would hold that the natural numbers are real, but have no difficulty with the 'features' associated with a denumerable infinity. 

Did anyone else find this odd?

Law vs Craig update

I didn’t make it to the debate at Westminster last night, having been lazy and left it too late to get tickets. You can get a flavour from the comments here, though, and a podcast will be available soon. The consensus seems to be the Law lost the argument because he did not even attempt to reply to Craig’s ‘kalam’ argument (The kalam argument is that the universe has a beginning, that everything has a cause for beginning, and that the cause is God. I believe Aquinas rejects this argument). Law’s argument was that if God exists at all, he must be an evil God, and therefore Craig’s god (who is perfectly good) does not exist. I argued in an earlier post that perhaps God is not fair, in leaving many clues (e.g. dinosaur bones) that suggest that the universe was designed in a different way that he has said it was designed, and thus designed it in a way that invites punishment of the inquisitive and intelligent.

Further update: Stephen Law has now posted his version of the debate on his site, with the following sections, with transcripts of his opening speech, and his criticism of Craig's moral and Resurrection arguments.

I summarise Law’s opening speech as follows. Law begins with the standard argument from evil, including a graphic description of the suffering that has existed in the world. If Professor Craig’s god exists, there must be, not just some reason, but an entirely adequate reason for every last ounce of all this suffering and horror.
He turns to an interesting twist on this argument (I don’t know whether this is and original twist or not, I shall ask). An evil god hypothesis is as well supported by Professor Craig’s cosmological and fine-tuning arguments as is belief in his good god hypotheses. Yet, if you believe in an evil god, you face the mirror problem of explaining why there’s so very much good. But if the evil god argument is absurd, so is the good God. (This is essentially an appeal to identical logical form, which we at Beyond Necessity like very much).

He forestalls an objection. Some Christians try to explain certain evils by saying that, being good, god gave us free will. Law flips this around. Why couldn’t the evil god have given us free will in order to choose evil? By means of similar ‘flipping’ arguments, he argues “if the evil god hypothesis can, solely on the basis of observational evidence, be ruled out as highly unlikely, why can’t we similarly rule out the good god hypothesis?”. He concludes “That’s the challenge I am setting Professor Craig tonight. To explain why belief in a good god is, on the basis of the available evidence and arguments, not just a bit more reasonable than belief in an evil god, but very significantly more reasonable.”
It seems clear from this that the Facebook commenters here did not understand Law’s point. One of them says “The kalam was not challenged once, only the moral nature of the Creator of the cosmos”, as though this was an objection, and quotes Craig as saying several times that “it’s a strange form of atheism that holds to the existence of an uncaused, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, powerful, transcendent and personal being who just isn’t morally perfect”.

This is not a reply to Law’s argument. As Law makes clear above, his evil god argument applies equally to the kalam argument as to the fine tuning argument. Law is not challenging these arguments themselves, but rather challenging the fact that they do not support the existence of an uncaused, immaterial, timeless, spaceless being who is good, rather than evil.

Stephen Law versus William Lane Craig

I’m thinking of going to the debate between ‘Christian Apologist’ William Lane Craig, and atheist philosopher Stephen Law:

17th October 2011 from 7:30pm – 10pm
Westminster Central Hall, Storeys Gate, London, SW1H 9NH
Premier Christian Radio Debate on the existence of God against atheist philosopher Stephen Law, who is also editor of the magazine of the Royal Institute of Philosophy THINK.

Law discusses it on his blog in several posts, the latest of which is here. One of the commenters on Stephen’s blog says

This is not being regarded as a game or some dry academic exercise by them. You are there to be beaten, defeated, humiliated and ridiculed, and, by extension, so is the whole atheistic worldview that you represent.

But then again, perhaps not. In what sense one can ‘win’ a debate like this? A show of hands is foolish, given who will be turning up (diehard supporters of Law, diehard supporters of Craig, neither side likely to be convinced by any argument on the opposing side). The only way to ‘win’ at logic is to survive careful analysis of your arguments, performed in a dark and quiet room, for at least five hours, alone. Logic and debate are quite different things, as is obvious from the following comments at an atheist website 

William Lane Craig is a prolific Christian philosopher, apologist, author, and public debater. He is the best debater – on any topic – that I’ve ever heard. As far as I can tell, he has won nearly all his debates with atheists. When debating him, atheists have consistently failed to put forward solid arguments, and consistently failed to point out the flaws in Craig’s arguments.

I.e. it is conceded that Craig is a good debater, yet his arguments are flawed.

Also, I was really not sure who to support. I studied Craig as part of my theology diploma, and I thought his arguments were slippery and crowdpleasing. On the other hand, I have a visceral dislike of atheism. In the end, Michael Sullivan decided it for me. In an excellent post here, he says that “One does not reason to Christianity or reason to Catholicism in the sense that philosophy ever proves (in any sense) that the Christian doctrines are true.”

That is entirely Ockham’s position (as I understand it). So I shall support Law against Craig, as if it mattered. Is Michael right? Well, Thomas thought you could reason to Christianity, and perhaps prove it in some sense. And Phillips has this to say:

Just as in S. Thomas's day there were those who maintained that the existence of God is to be accepted by faith alone, and so is not to be demonstrated, so there are also in our own. It is, in fact, felt by those who take this view to be, in some sort, impious to attempt to prove what they firmly believe; and possibly there is mixed with this attitude a kind of false mysticism, as if they had already a kind of direct intuition of God. All that has been said earlier as to the nature of the human intellect and its proper object runs counter to such an idea as this, for we are convinced that we know the immaterial and supersensible by means of the material and sensible; the proper object of man's intellect being the natures of material things. Moreover, it is clear that to say that we know God's existence by faith is to make an assertion which refutes itself, since no one can accept anything on the authority of God, i.e. by faith, who is not first convinced that there is a God. Hence S. Thomas says here in answer to this objection, that the existence of God is not an article of faith, but one of the 'preambula' to the articles of faith, natural knowledge being presupposed by faith, as nature is by grace, and in general that which is perfectible by perfection. (my emphasis)

Is God fair to scientists?

Is God fair? We have to assume that God will punish, harshly, those who do not believe his word. In which case, why did God design the universe in such a way that those of an intelligent and inquisitive disposition would conclude that the universe was not designed by God in the way he said he designed it?

Take the case of epicycles, of which ‘Belette’ comments.

“The massive difference, now, over say Copernican days is that the observations and calculating ability we have are so much better than before. It is no longer possible tlo believe in epicycles, because observations demonstrate clearly that they don't work, except in the trivial sense that any path can be fit by enough epicycles to an arbitrary degree of precision.”

I agree. One of Galileo’s motivations for his heliocentric theory was his observation of the phases of Venus. These cannot be observed properly without a telescope. Venus is lit by the sun from angles that are not consistent with the Ptolemaic system. There is a good explanation of this in the Wikipedia article on the Ptolemaic system. Why did God design the geocentric system in such a complex way that those of an inquisitive disposition, after inventing telescopes, would observe such apparent inconsistencies? In 1838, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel successfully measured the parallax of the star 61 Cygni, which is also difficult to explain in the geocentric system. Why did God go to the trouble of designing the geocentric universe in such a complicated way that an detailed observations such those of Bessel appeared to contradict the way God said (in the Bible) that he had in fact designed things?

Note, I am not arguing that the geocentric model is wrong. What I mean is that, if God says it is correct, and if, as seems to be the case, detailed observation and deduction (such as by Galileo and Bessel) suggests that it is not correct, and if God punishes harshly those who disbelieve what he says, then it seems as though God is not being fair. He has designed the universe in such a way that the way it appears to be designed is not the way he has said it was designed, and thus designed it in a way that invites punishment of the inquisitive and intelligent.

What reply can we make to this? Well, we could avoid fundamentalism by distinguish between literal and analogical truths. When it says in Psalm 93 that “the world also is established, that it cannot be moved”, perhaps it does not mean that the earth is literally immoveable. Perhaps it is immoveable in a spiritual sense. Or that it cannot be moved from its orbit around the sun, all things being equal. Perhaps it is a statement about the constancy of physical constants, such as gravitational acceleration etc. Yes, that is a reasonable objection, but then we can turn the whole question around. Why did God make statements that are so easily open to a literalist misinterpretation? If so, then it seems God is discriminating against fundamentalists. Is that fair? Surely not.

Or it could be argued that the inquisitive and intelligent are simply wrong. A careful examination of the matter (see the websites linked to in earlier posts) shows that the geocentric theory is the correct one. I reply: whichever theory is correct, it remains that God’s design has misled an extraordinary large number of people. Either he is being unfair to astronomers and scientists, or he is being unfair to fundamentalists. We have to choose, and either way it seems that he is not being entirely fair.

Or it could be argued that the inquisitive and intelligent have violated a version of the charity principle. They have followed a line of observation and reasoning that leads them to conclude that God has not told the truth. But logic, as well as the principle, should tell them that God would not have designed the universe in such a way as to contradict what he says. If any theory or reasoning of yours leads to a contradiction with sacred scripture or the teaching of the church, there is something wrong with your reasoning. Indeed, as Ockham argues – as discussed in my last post), we should even make exceptions to the laws of logic when this happens*.

So, is God not being fair to someone?  And is that not inconsistent with an essence into which goodness, justice, fairness etc. are built into as though by definition?


* Yes, I realise that Ockham’s point is more subtle than that. But this is internet land, where we lay things on with trowels.

Anselm without ontology

Anselm's attempted proof of the existence of God has often been criticised for the assumption that 'existence is a predicate'.  Is that right?  I'm going to have a stab here at representing the argument without using the word 'exists'.

The first thing to note is that Anselm gives two arguments, not one.  The first is in Proslogion chapter 2, the second is shortly after in chapter 3.  Another thing to note is that the argument was written in Latin, of a fiendishly difficult syntax, but I think the 1903 translation by Sidney Norton Deane is actually quite good, though not literal *.

Here is the argument in numbered steps, with minor changes that don't materially impact the sense of the original translation.

1. It is possible to conceive of a being X which cannot be conceived not to exist.
2. Such a being is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist.
3. Suppose that a being Y than which nothing greater can be conceived, can be conceived not to exist.
4. Then Y is not that, than which nothing greater can be conceived.
5. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction.
6. Therefore there is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived to exist, that it cannot even be conceived not to exist.
7. This being is you, O Lord, our God.

The real difficulty is the way that Anselm nests the verb 'conceive'.  We are not just conceiving something, we are conceiving something as conceived.  I will try and unpack this by representing the argument as a set of 5 steps, all of which fall within the scope of an overall 'conceive' that forms the main verb, and by translating 'x does not exist' as 'nothing is x' (thus removing 'ontology' from 'Anselm' - see the title of this post).

(0) We can conceive of an x and a y such that
(1) we cannot conceive that nothing is x
(2) nothing greater than y can be conceived
(3) we can conceive that nothing is y
(4) x is greater than y
(5) something greater than y can be conceived

Some comments.  Step (3) is 'we can conceive that nothing is y' whereas strictly it should be 'nothing is y'.  Anselm has "can be conceived not to exist" where the verb 'conceive' is clearly the one belonging in step (0).  but then the argument is not valid.  My translation is valid, however, if it follows from my conceiving that nothing is  y, that by immediate reflection I can conceive of myself conceiving this, and thus conceive that I am conceive that nothing is  y.  Otherwise, this is a serious flaw in the argument.

For a similar reason, I move from step (4), "[We can conceive that] x is greater than y", to (5) "[We can conceive that] we can conceive that x is greater than y".  If these steps are valid, it now follows that we are conceiving a contradiction, i.e. steps (2) and (5) contradict one another.  Note, this does not involve an actual contradiction, only the conception or the thought of a contradiction.  But this gets Anselm to where he wants, namely to a concept such that it is contradictory to think of it not being instantiated.  The verb 'exist' does not appear anywhere, thus translated.  The only question is the validity of the move from conceiving of an F, to conceiving of conceiving an F.  Is it valid?  I don't know. 

* For example, he translates Nam potest cogitari esse aliquid, quod non possit cogitari non esse, which is literally, but clumsily "for it is possible that something is thought to be, which could not be thought not to be", as "For, it is possible to conceive of a being which cannot be conceived not to exist".  I.e. he converts the passive to an active, and translates 'esse' as 'exist'.

The God of Christianity and the God of Islam

Vallicella has a nice post here about whether the God of Christianity and the God of Islam are the same God. He points out that if reference is mediated by sense, and that if the sense of 'God of Islam' is D1: 'the unique x such that x is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, created the world ex nihilo and is unitarian', and if the sense of 'God of Christianity' is D2: 'the unique x such that x is omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, created the world ex nihilo and is triune', then:

It is easy to see that no one entity can satisfy both (D1) and (D2). So if reference is routed through sense, then Christian and Muslim cannot be referring to the same being. Indeed, one of them is not succeeding in referring at all. For if God is triune, nothing in reality answers tothe Muslim's conception of God. And if God is unitarian, then nothing in reality answers to the Christian conception.

His examples bring out, in my view, the problem with description theories of singular reference. Suppose that, according to religion A1, there is one god who satisfies the uniquely applying description F1. And suppose that, according to religion A2, there is one god who satisfies the uniquely applying description F2. And suppose, for sake of argument, that F1 and F2 are contraries. Nothing can be both F1 and F2 (Bill's example is 'unitarian' and 'triune'.  Then if religion A1 is correct, there is exactly one F1 and (from the logical properties of F1) there can be no being that satisfies F2. Conversely, if religion A2 is correct, there is exactly one F2, and there can be no being that is F1. According to a description theory, neither god can be identical with the other, if either exists.

But now suppose that both religions have the same ‘core’ holy book B, which refers to one god by name G, but which gives no uniquely defining property for that god. However, at some point in the past there was a disagreement over some heresy, and each religion now has a different supplementary holy book – B1 in the case of religion A1, and B2 in the case of religion A2. It is from these supplementary texts that the disagreement over the uniquely defining properties F1 and F2 arises. But both texts refer to god using the same name G as the core book B. Thus the intended or purported reference of G is the same for both competing religions. The disagreement is not about the identity of the purported referents of G – for these have to be one and the same being – but rather the properties F1 and F2. Both religions agree they are worshipping one and the same god, but they disagree about whether he has the uniquely defining F1 (in the case of A1) or the uniquely defining F2 (in the case of A2).

Something like this clearly holds for Judaism and Christianity. The purported referent of ‘YHWH’ is the same for both Christians and Jews. That is a logical conclusion from the semantics of the Old and New Testament names. You will not understand the New Testament unless you understand that the names 'God' and 'Lord' are meant to refer to the intended referent of 'YHWH' in the Old Testament. But the properties are different. Christians hold that YHWH had a son, who is one and the same god as YHWH, but a different person. Jews do not hold this belief. So a description theory has the god of the Jews and the god of the Christians as being numerically different. But a reference theory (which holds that identity is determined by intended identity or intended referent) has them as being the same.

I do not know much about Islam, but I believe that the Islamic holy books are the records which Muslims believe were dictated by God to various Islamic prophets throughout the history of mankind. I.e. Moses (according to Muslims) was an Islamic prophet. Since Christians, Jews and Muslims agree that YHWH gave the laws to Moses, the intended reference of ‘YHWH’ is the same for all. I.e. if YHWH exists, all three religions are referring to him, even though they disagree fundamentally, and bitterly, about his properties. E.g. Christians believe YHWH he has a son in Jesus. Muslims believe he has a prophet in Jesus, Jews disagree with both of these things, believing Jesus to have been a heretic and a blasphemer, for which reason he was executed.

Did God create all things?

Vlastimil Vohanka has drawn my attention to an article by the American theologian William Lane Craig, which deserves a separate post. Craig, despite the fact he tends to include rather creepy-looking pictures of himself in his published work, is an admirable writer, who generally manages the trick that is essential to good philosophy, of being both clear and difficult at the same time. Here, he raises the question of whether numbers could have been created by God. He says that Christian theology requires us to say that everything that exists apart from God was created by God (John 1:3). But numbers, if they exist, are necessary beings. They thus would seem to exist independently of God. And (simplifying his point somewhat) the number 3 must have existed prior to God’s creating the number 3, which is impossible! "I remember the sense of panic that I felt in my breast when I first heard this objection raised at a philosophy conference in Milwaukee. It seemed to be an absolutely decisive refutation of theism. I didn’t see any way out."

First of all, I'm not sure this raises any genuinely theological issues. Craig should have read Augustine, who says (On the Literal Exposition of Genesis IV, c. 7) 'Six is a perfect number, not because God completed all things in six days, but rather, conversely, the reason God completed things in six days, was because that number is perfect, which would be perfect even if those things did not exist'. Moreover the second part of the verse from John which Craig quotes ("Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made") leaves open the possibility that there are some things which weren't made or created at all.

In any case, the solution that Craig comes up with does not do the trick. His solution is to propose some half-way house between being a thing of any sort whatever, and being a thing to which we are 'ontologically committed' (a favourite expression of his). Thus he agrees that we can 'quantify over' numbers, i.e. admit that there are such things as numbers, but not admit that numbers 'really exist', or that we are 'ontologically committed' to them.

There is a lot I could say about this, including how this is a good example of how pretensions to formal logic completely obscure something that should be quite simple. Here, I will briefly note that this manoeuvre does not resolve the difficulty at all. The first part of John's verse says nothing about real existence, or about 'ontological commitment'. It simply says 'God created all things'. Whether we are ontologically committed to numbers or not, whether they 'really exist' or not, Craig agrees that numbers are things, i.e. that some things (perhaps things that are fictional, or which don't really exist in any strong sense) are numbers. In which case, it logically follows that God created numbers.

Ironically, he says that "The existential quantifier simply serves to facilitate logical inferences." Quite. But then logical inference is what guarantees the move from 'God created all things, and some things are numbers' to 'God created numbers', and that is precisely the inference that creates his problem.

Note that Craig mentions a book by Jody Azzouni, Deflating Existential Consequence: A Case for Nominalism which I mean to read one day, and which will deserve a post or two when I have.

Aquinas on the names of God

Brandon here has pointed out that it is not inconsistent to hold that there are three persons in the Trinity, but only one God. For the following statements are consistent:

Jack has an F
John has an F
Jack /= John
There is only one F

However, this is true so long as we do not read 'is God' in 'the Father is God' as an identity statement, but as something like ' has the divine nature'. If, on the other hand, we read 'God' as a logically proper name, and 'the Father is God' as an identity statement, it is clearly inconsistent to hold that three things (the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost) are identical with a fourth thing (God).

Is that right? It is certainly consistent with what Aquinas says here, that no name signifying any individual thing is 'properly communicable to many', except by way of similitude; as a person can be called "Achilles". Thus the name 'God', can only be communicated by way of similitude. 'But if any name were given to signify God not as to His nature but as to His "suppositum," accordingly as He is considered as "this something," (hoc aliquid) that name would be absolutely incommunicable; as, for instance, perhaps the Tetragrammaton among the Hebrew; and this is like giving a name to the sun as signifying this individual thing.'

It suggests that our ordinary words for God only signify by description (as philosophers now say) not 'by reference'. But is that right?